Good Reads Library
Stop Picking On the Bronx, Or: If It's Tourist Season, Why Can't We Shoot Them? Or:This Is What Happens When You Get Housebound..
My usual annual winter illness finally showed up this week, this time as mild bronchitis. And if I move around too much, I cough, so I have been out of work most of the week and spending most of my time in bed.
In fact, I am typing this curled up in bed, with both of the cats snuggled beside me....
Anyway, I have been watching a good deal of daytime tv and this afternoon came upon "New York City Guide 2", an episode of the "Globe Trekker" program.
It was fabulous--they were hitting all the spots I love. I was getting more and more homesick by the second.
Then they got to the Bronx.
Did they show my beloved childhood playplace, the fabulous New York Botanical Gardens? Did they show the world famous Bronx Zoo? Did they even for godsakes point out (boo, because I'm a Mets fan) fricking Yankee Stadium, the "House That Ruth Built"?
Nope, nope, nope.
They showed graffitti, slum buildings and a store selling fancy gold jewelry for the homeboy crowd. And they talked about how the Bronx has ALWAYS had a bad reputation, but is now getting safer and more tourists are visiting.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Look you morons. I was born and raised in the Bronx, and I know durned well that the Bronx has slums, poverty and crime.
But so do the other 4 boroughs! It's a city, remember?
Hell,my in-laws live up by City College, and their area looks just as nasty in spots as does the Bronx site you picked. But somehow, you never managed to get away from the tourist spots and "Sex in the City" neighborhoods in Manhattan, did you? The only part of Manhattan about 125th Street you showed was the sanitized section of Harlem inhabited by tourists and Bill Clinton.
I bet you didn't bother to discover that the Bronx was the place where immigrants went when they moved up in income. The grand apartment buildings on the Grand Councourse (patterned, BTW, after Paris's Champs Elysees) have faded with the years, but they were classy places to live once upon a time.
Hey, there is STILL an area of the Bronx filled with grand mansions. In fact, it's so classy there, they don't even admit to being IN the Bronx!
The Bronx has the grand gardens and magnificent Hudson River views of stately Wave Hill Manor--Mark Twain once rented the house there. There's Edgar Allen Poe's cottage,an Irish enclave straight out of the "old country",its own little Italy and yes, (boo) Yankee Stadium, one of baseball's most hallowed shrines.
And City Island, which they described as being "north of" the Bronx, is part of the Bronx. I have fond memories of special occasion seafood dinners there....
Just shows the "Globetrekker" folks are just freaking tourists, NOT travelers. And there's a difference.
If the "Globetrekker" ignoramuses had REALLY wanted to show that the stereotypes about the Bronx are just that, they'd have had that moronic presenter showing something other than gangster jewelry and chuckling with their local guide about how they were walking along the street and no one was bothering them--see how safe it is. Haw, haw, haw!
I'm not laughing.
Why don't you follow the advice of an old t-shirt of my brother-in-law's:
WELCOME TO NEW YORK. NOW, GO HOME
And next time you want to pick on a borough, try Staten Island for a change. Lots of material there......
