Pretty Colors - Bad News

Note: Chinatown is dieing. I take this personally.

 I spotted this first bit of 'street art' on a parking garage door in the heart of the old neighborhood. Pretty Colors - Bad news.

Chinatown is an important place in my world.  I am usually there at least once a week to eat or shop. Usually both. As a kid in the Bronx I remember our neighborhood Chinese restaurant on Tremont Avenue. They served total crap, but what did we know? Then, around one of my formative years,  I 'discovered' Chinatown.  Mysterious shops on strange streets that sold strange stuff.  Heady stuff for a kid from the Bronx.  Best of all there were 'real' Chinese restaurants.  Some didn't have English menus – or menus in any other language.  Huge plates of wonderous food served up in great little hole-in-the-wall places where the staff spoke no English and were suspicious of lo fan.  I knew I was accepted when my waiter did not drop a fork and sugar bowl on my table. Heady stuff indeed!

In spite of all the changes in the many years since, there are still some cool places to be found down there. Like, if you know where to look, you can walk through underground passages, remnants of the secret tunnels that once honeycombed the neighborhood and stretched to the East River.  And back then there really were hidden opium dens and brothels down there.   

And you can still see apothecaries blending herbal prescriptions or have your shoes repaired by artisans who work on the sidewalk. I usually get my watch batteries replaces by a guy who's been repairing watches at his sidewalk stand for 40 years; I buy fresh tofu from an outdoor vendor who's been there even longer. Some places, you can still hear the sound of mah jong tiles as the games go on in back rooms while you slurp down your bowl of noodles.  And that's not your Grandma's mah jong game either.  But in place of the opium dens and brothels, we now have hawkers steering customers to back street dealers where a genuine Rolex can be had for $40.00. And OK, there might still be a few brothels.

All that is about to become history and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Some of my favorite noodle shops – and their back rooms - have closed. the martial arts supply place on Canal Street where I bought my first Gi now sells knock off perfume. A Chinese friend who ran a cool little antiques shop on Mott Street  was forced out by the rent increases and had to move to Brooklyn. Now there's a telephone  store in his place. Tourists show up in huge groups to buy those Rolexes. On any given day, I have to fight my way through groups of them.  They behave like a herd of cows: fat, slow, stupid and not sure where they were going.  They find comfort in the McDonald's and the Starbuck's that have opened on Canal Street.  Just for them.

 And now we got the kind of art that marks other high rent turf appearing on a garage door.  Gather ye noodles while ye can.