The Edge Becomes the Center

by DW Gibson

  17.

  At any given moment on the streets of Bushwick, you might find Ephraim’s Nissan sedan zipping through the intersection, or Quang Bao emerging from a noodle factory–cum-artist studio, or, as it happens, a sixty-seven-year-old man walking to the subway, his steps fast and quiet. His name is William Hernandez and he is whistling; it’s a rich sound but soft, too, so it stays close to his chest. He grew up in Puerto Rico on a mountaintop farm. His grandfather owned one hundred acres and William worked the coffee bean and sugar cane fields.

  He has a compact frame and a shiny, bald head; he smiles even when his face is in the resting position, and that smile is framed perfectly by his close-cropped, gray mustache. William is retired now, living on a fixed income in Bushwick for the last fifteen years. He has moved four times within the neighborhood, always in pursuit of lower rent.

  Bushwick is the second half of his New York existence.

  He climbs the stairs to the subway tracks hovering over Myrtle Avenue, catching a ride to the Lower East Side—the first half.

  I came from Puerto Rico in ’81. I was trying to look for a job over here. I had a brother who used to work in two apartment buildings. He called me and he say, “William, I have a job for you.” So I came and he was happy because he was by himself here and wanted to have somebody. Because you can be with whomever in the world but you miss your family and you want your family to be close to you.

  Nearly every day, William waits for his daughter, Nanette, outside of Amalgamated Dwellings, the Lower East Side apartment building where she lives with her mother. It is the same apartment building where William lived until he divorced Nanette’s mother in the ’90s, and the same building where he worked for thirty-four years. The building originally housed Amalgamated Clothing Workers, one of the first unions to organize and sponsor building cooperatives—co-ops—through which all occupants could own shares in a newly established corporation, which acted as owner of the actual structure. That first generation of cooperators—“Pioneer Cooperators,” as they preferred—worked on community development beyond housing with educational and cultural programs.

  Today Amalgamated Dwellings is noticeably diverse—the orthodox Jewish community is strong but shrinking (though the bike rack is still removed every year to put up a walled structure covered with s’chach for Sukkot), and there are many recent arrivals, working professionals with infants and toddlers. Notices of sitting shiva are often followed by open house flyers a few weeks later. Pioneers often bought apartments for less than $10,000, and their mourning families sell them for upwards of $650,000.

  On the other side of the Williamsburg Bridge are the Baruch Houses, a sprawling public housing development with 2,194 apartments spread out across seventeen brick towers.

  Amalgamated is a brick, Art Deco–style building, only 6 stories tall, with 230 units that wrap around a courtyard with a fountain in the middle. Approximately four months out of the year the fountain, which is swimming pool blue, shoots water into the air under a cloudless sky; the rest of the year it is dry as a bone and stained with dead leaves. One feels cold just looking at it.

  After he and his wife separated, William couldn’t afford to live in the building—or the neighborhood. He moved around for a bit before settling in Bushwick. His bed and belongings are kept in Brooklyn but the rest of his life remains on the Lower East Side. “You want your family to be close to you,” he says. Nanette is due home from school within the hour.

  The guys at Zafis, the luncheonette next to Amalgamated, still recognize William when he walks through the door. He sits across the booth from me and checks his phone to see if Nanette has called. He tells me about her high school graduation and college applications and chemical engineering aspirations and with each ascent his smile expands. He drinks black coffee and speaks like he whistles, in a soft but rich voice:

  Maybe in the beginning I didn’t know English. I had English teachers before but I never went to their classes because I never needed it before. It’s funny at those early ages we don’t see the importance of a second language. But I studied when I came to New York and I got to speak a little bit, learning from tenants. So I catch the language a little bit, which I like now—I have a great respect for the language.

  When I came to New York I started to work as a porter, cleaning the buildings and doing snow detail, maintenance. That was the way of the job, which I like very much. You know one thing, when you live in a farm, you spend all day in the farm and the labor, it never ends. And here I get to put in my eight hours and then I go home and I forget about it. That’s what I think I like. Also I was working with people from different countries, and it’s nice because you learn more about all the people’s culture.

  I used to get offers for other jobs. But I was making more here. For me I don’t care if you going to have a nice job and you’re going to be well dressed in the office. They’re paying me more here. I’d rather be cleaning where I’m making more for the family.

  When I come to New York, I put in an application to live in the city projects on Jackson Street and Madison Street over here. What happened was that in the beginning it was only me working but when my wife started to work the rent went up. In the city projects the rent’s according to the income. So I decided to put in an application over here—pointing at Amalgamated Dwellings—where I used to live. So we put in the application and got the apartment. We were renters but then we become shareholders of the co-op. We were very happy with this. My wife went to work and my kids stayed here. They loved this site. My kids tell me, “Hey Papi, we like it over here.”

  I went to Brooklyn but I still like it over here. I have been all over. I have been in the Bronx, I have been in Brooklyn, but nothing compare like this community for me. I think it’s good. This is good neighborhood for me. My family, they are happy over here.

  At the beginning this neighborhood was nice and it’s only better now. We have different peoples. When you have only one race, you don’t feel comfortable with these different people, but when you see people from around the world you say we are human beings, we can get along. It’s more kind. More comfortable. I think it’s nice. When I used to live in the city projects and we have all kinds of people, we all different. We have French. We have American, we have smart people, English, Russian, Polish, and we used to get along like brothers and sisters and we used to visit each other and say, “Hey, come over to my house and have a cup of coffee.” And we used to get to know each other. I like that, I feel much better.

  There is perception that it has been not safe over here but for me that’s nonsense. I think safety is the same. That hasn’t changed anything. Since I came here I used to like to walk at night and any time I can walk in this neighborhood. You always have a group of people, they may be a little bit, you know, not good, let’s say, but they don’t mess with the people in the neighborhood. I think they go someplace else. They go out of the neighborhood, maybe to Brooklyn. And those from over there come here. So when something happens I don’t think it’s from this neighborhood. It could happen—anything could happen—but for me this is a nice place. And that’s why my kids like it over here.

  But there is one different feeling: people used to have better communication with each other. Now we live in a different world with these cell phones. Everybody is busy talking to somebody. And sometimes they’re talking and you think they are talking to you and you say, “What did you say?”

  And they say, “No, I’m not talking to you.”

  And you don’t know! Everyone is busy in their own way. And I’m not used to that. But a little bit we get used to it and it will be a part of the society more and more. Even with the family members. Now it’s a different world like with the cell phones.

  Just then his phone rings—I think it’s my daughter—and he takes the call. But the connection is bad and the call ends.

  She’ll call back. Now I see the grown people now—his phone rings again—this is my daughter.

 
He picks up and tells her he’s at Zafis. He hangs up and continues unfazed:

  When I came over here, it was mostly moved-in old people, maybe they were born here. There were only a few young people here. Now we have young people here because the old persons pass away and they sell the apartment. And we have young people and if they have the money, they have the apartment right here. People like cash money. It’s good for the people that have the money.

  In Brooklyn it’s becoming like the Lower East Side.

  Where I live now, before it was only Hispanic and Black American and Arab and Hindus but now we have many, let’s say, white people coming to the neighborhood. They’re building houses, they’re fixing things. They buy lots of stuff. They looking for apartments. They come and they talk to you and ask questions and they want some information about the houses. And you see this now: when the rents go up, the family moves two family in one apartment—they could be friends or brothers or family. I’m thinking maybe that this happen in the entire city. As rents go up and up, sometimes salary stays the same. I think that rent should be less or the salaries should be more. Rent is expensive. Clothes is expensive. If you go to a supermarket now, things are so expensive. So that in a few years maybe it’s too expensive. When I came here I wasn’t making that much money, but the money I got I used to pay rent, buy food and clothes, and it was okay. In my last year that I worked, even though I was making much much money, I was doing worse because things are going up.

  The rich is becoming more rich and the poor people more poor, and something that I’ve been saying to myself: “How does my son, or my daughter—how going to be their future? How will they pay their rent? How are they going to eat?” It’s so expensive. And I’m worried now. I’ve been asking myself this question: “Oh man, what’s going to happen with the family?”

  The future is insecure.

  I have a little house over there in Puerto Rico. I have five acres of land. I could go over there, and I live myself many nights, quiet nights. But I like to be with the neighborhood. I play guitar a little bit, I have a few friends and we get together and we go places. I like to see many people, that’s why I’m here. I was trying to live in the New Brunswick, New Jersey, and it was too quiet. I like to be in the noisy places. I like to be in a place with a lot of people, many people who are different than me—I feel good when I see that. I have family here, and they like it over here and I cannot leave my family by themselves. Especially my daughter, she’s very close to me, she say, “Papi, I love you but are you going to move back to Puerto Rico?”

  And I say, “No, no, no, no, I’m going to stay over here until the end. Until, I don’t know—”

  Just then Nanette walks in and takes the empty seat next to her father. He squeezes her and her smile is almost as big as Papi’s.

  18.

  The influx of capital into William Hernandez’s old neighborhood has marched west, to the Bowery, a neighborhood anchored by the street with the same name that was known throughout the twentieth century for flophouses and shelters. The Bowery Mission at 227 and the Salvation Army at 229 have operated in adjoining buildings for over one hundred years. In the 1970s they began sharing the street with a few commercial enclaves—mostly lighting and wholesale restaurant supply shops—and with the city’s music scene. Punk and new wave found their epicenter at 315 Bowery, at a club called Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers, better known as CBGB & OMFUG, still even better known simply as CBGB.

  CBGB is now a retail spot for the clothing designer John Varvatos (vintage music posters on the wall; $1,298 leather vests on offer) and in either direction, the street is crowded with restaurants, bars, and—increasingly—high-end boutique hotels. Polished, black SUVs idle outside shops and restaurants, ready at a moment’s notice. The Sunshine Hotel, which used to rent ten-dollar rooms with ceilings made of chicken wire, has been replaced on the ground floor by the Bowery Diner, which serves grilled branzino with ratatouille and tapenade for thirty dollars a plate (no substitutions).

  But still the Bowery Mission, which anchors the drag, bursts with homeless New Yorkers. The sidewalk in front of the building serves as a gathering spot for men who are freshly showered, rested, and fed—and more men seeking the same.

  The New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Mission’s neighbor to the north, inhabits a much newer building that was opened in 2005 and was funded by a Carnegie Corporation grant made possible by Michael Bloomberg. It has seven stories that look like six differently-sized steel blocks casually stacked atop one another. The museum is instantly captivating—and radically incongruous. It has nothing in common with the brick facade and stained glass windows of the Bowery Mission.

  The Mission facilities require twenty-four-hour staffing and Matt Krivich is the director of operations. At forty he remains bright-eyed and approachable. His smile is boyish, and the earnest tone in his voice transports me to a black-and-white television show.

  He greets me at the building’s reception desk. As we walk back to the dining hall, nearly everyone we pass knows Matt, and many have a question to ask or a message to give—someone is always vying for his attention. We sit at a table, and men come and go—an ongoing series of fleeting conversations, most of which prompt Matt to jot down reminders to himself.

  I grew up in Ohio, just outside of Cleveland. Had a great upper-middle-class life, had everything I wanted, probably spoiled. But because of a situation in my family—the family unit broke up. I was young, probably about twelve or thirteen, I was very angry. I became rebellious, met new friends who were also angry and rebellious, maybe didn’t have both their parents in the household, maybe weren’t going to the right schools. We rebelled together and I started a fourteen-year drug addiction.

  It started off very innocent, I thought, just weekends with LSD. But then it gradually built up. When I last stopped using I was addicted to heroin. I was homeless. I was in trouble with the law, with various agencies, and at what I thought was the end of my life. I attempted suicide. I wanted to pass. I wanted to be away from this life, away from that pain. I wanted to get rid of myself. And there had been a pastor who found me on the street through a family connection, and he looked me in the eyes and didn’t judge me, didn’t see me as I was, as I saw myself, and told me that he cared for me and wanted to help me if I was ready. It was one of the first times I really saw pure, honest love. It made a lasting imprint on my mind, on my heart. In a sense, I’d never felt that before.

  Momentarily I was able to embrace it. He wanted to send me to rehab in Fort Meyers, Florida. But he gave me the money instead of buying me the ticket so I went and used that money to purchase heroin. Ended up back in the streets. The next three months were probably twice as hard. I think I was carrying a little guilt but I also think there was a reason all the doors were shutting around me. It was either death or life and I had to make a decision quickly. And he found me again in the streets. He looked me straight in the face and he laughed and he said, “Matthew, you schooled me but I’m going to help you again. This time I’m going to buy you a ticket. And I’m going to put you on that bus and pray for you and I’ll wave as you’re going down the interstate.”

  And it was the beginning of my life being transformed.

  I had an amazing experience in Fort Meyers. I spent a year down there. I didn’t know where I wanted to go but I knew I didn’t want to go back to Ohio because that’s where things had fallen apart and I felt that if I went back there it would be too hard or it would be too sad for me. I checked a number of places and the only opportunity for me was an interview here at the Bowery Mission. A friend of mine bought me a one-way ticket to New York City. I had a place to stay for about five days in Garrison, upstate. So I came to the Mission and at the end of the six-hour interview the director said, “We’d love to have you here. When can you start?” And that was great news because if I didn’t have an opportunity I’d have to find a new place to stay in two days. So that’s when I started my inte
rnship at the Bowery Mission.

  And slowly, gradually, as I’ve been here over eleven years now, I’ve learned more about the Mission and the ministry in New York City and I’ve been given the opportunity to take on additional roles.

  Every aspect of the Bowery Mission, in one way or another, seems to fall under Matt’s domain—or perhaps it’s more that he seems willing to take up just about any responsibility in the name of the Mission. He oversees the kitchen, which serves three meals a day, every day of the year, through hurricanes and blackouts. He also oversees the endless maintenance required by a building constructed in 1876, in use twenty-four hours a day.

  Matt is usually on the premises for most of those twenty-four-hour cycles—he lives in staff quarters on the property. After ten years alone in the city, he recently married. He and his wife are hopeful children will be in their future.

  I think it’s a good example and a good testimony for the men that are in the program to see a healthy family. I want my wife and I to have a healthy relationship but it’s also for the men to see. It’s a continuation of my testimony to them.

  I usually start work before seven. I do my rounds throughout the building.

  I want to start work before anyone else is really moving so if there’s any issues or anything that needs to be addressed I can get ahead of the day a little bit. There have been fights. There have been days when I woke up and we’ve had people that came at the end of their day and they’re cold and in the morning they don’t wake up. So we’ve had people pass here.

  You know, I used to come to New York from Ohio for things that weren’t very productive—and you think of Times Square, you think of Wall Street but you don’t really think of the Christian community. There’s a deep, deep feeling of support in the Christian body here. But also the need is so great in New York City. There are so many opportunities to serve and I can’t imagine myself anywhere else.