Walking the block of Orchard St. south of E. Houston early this afternoon, I started experiencing not so much the anticipation of discovery as the anxiety of place. The buildings that I thought were along in here were no longer here, and in their stead were some new buildings and construction sites of buildings yet to come. I'm having a hard time remembering what the old places looked like, and I can't imagine what the new buildings are supposed to be.
May I also remind readers that I come from a very different place. That would be a mid-century ranch house in the old Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. I recently discovered that not only does Google now have the Street View function for Big D on their maps but I was able to pull up recent images of my neighborhood street and my very childhood home and see that it is exactly the same now as I remember it - the wisteria-covered pergola on the front porch, the unpaved driveway and the long grassy front lawn that meets the street without any curbs. It was surreal, because after a few decades, I was expecting physical changes.
The Lower East Side is where I learned how to be a New Yorker. I'll explain the details some other time, but suffice it to say now that I realized then that millions of people came to the city, especially to this neighborhood, with personal memories and the culture of their original place and that it was okay to be who one was, really, even if the transition is hard, and it was okay to speak with a different accent and to walk to a different beat.
Images: Orchard Street, early afternoon, May 13, 2008. For the record, a snapshot of now.
Additional photos from Orchard St. and elsewhere on the Lower East Side today on WOTBA Flickr.
Part of a series about the Lower East Side. See related posts.
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