The Divinie Miss M moves to the EV

So everyone I know who's actually read this thing has been pestering me to post something else. Well, I am flattered and flustered. I've been giving some thought as to what this blog would be about and settled on a couple of subjects that are near and dear to my heart - the South and NYC - and in particular what's been happening to my adopted neighborhood since I moved here thirteen years ago. A year and change after I graduated from a small liberal arts college in the South, I chucked my aspirations of a career in Academia and traded it all for a life in NYC. Under the aupices of staying here for 3 months, making money and paying down debts, I decided after a month to stay in NYC when I realized it didn't matter that I was still waiting tables and I recognized almost no-one on the street. My anonymity at that time meant everything and the palpable sense that I could do ANYTHING was intoxicating - I could survive without recognition and familiarity. Anything was possible and a sense of lawlessness appealed.

Since that time the East Village has undergone some troubling changes - an onslaught of "clean up" and "regentrification". Two words that on the surface seem harmless but in actuality are serving to achieve the systematic denudification of a neighborhood that once fostered a D.I.Y. attitude (and if you don't know what that is you shouldn't be reading this blog). The character that this City embraced is a shadow of its former self.

Wanna know more?...well, hang on, 'cause it's coming...