This is my offering of thanks. For the people and places who have made me.
An open book into a bygone era.. and a value system that could save us all.
Animal Squat
In 1980 My parents moved us back to California after a decade living in New Zealand.
I was a country boy, just turned eleven, and it was a tumultuous year for me and america. Right after returning home, Reagan had been elected, and I saw my parents tear up as Jimmy Carter cried openly while conceding on TV. I remember thinking that he looked like a good man, and I was sad too.
Then John Lennon was shot and my Mom sobbed all day. "Why did we move back to this brutal country?" she asked, and even though the Beatles kinda annoyed me - I was into Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath - I felt the loss of her hero, and I bawled alongside her, wondering out loud what was wrong with people.
The go-go eighties happened and we got to see what was wrong with a lot of people. Lots of us got hurt and left behind in the Reagan revolution, and as Wall Street gilded it's lilies, taxes and infrastructure spending were slashed, and america's inner cities began to rot to the core.
Meanwhile, I had made my way through middle school and high school, becoming a good american male by learning how to spit, fight, trade baseball cards, and brag about sex I wasn't getting. I also learned the ultimate importance of having the right haircut, designer jeans, and a preppy sweater. You couldn't get a date in the early eighties without these status symbols. So it's no wonder I turned to punk rock.
My friends were the weirdos and the scrotes who hung out in the smoking section. We were the gutter punks, hippies and losers - not the Barneys and the Bettie's, surfing the lane, or waiting on the cliffs, looking pretty.
By the time I moved to New York City in early '93, full urban blight had set in to most big american cities. Crime rates were skyrocketing, and New Yorkers had just elected a tough-talking mayor named Rudy Giuliani, who promised to clean up the town with tough policing, and make the streets safe again.
When I first walked into the neighborhood I was targeted by a group of young black kids on roller blades, who were wilding out throwing quarter sticks of dynamite at random folks walking down the street. I jumped as an M-80 exploded under my feet; the kids laughing as they bladed past me and leapt up on the rear bumper of a city bus, the driver trying to shake them off his backside - fishtailing the vehicle down Avenue A as it sped off.
"Fuck, this place is crazy!" I thought, my heart pounding - and it felt like coming home.
My friends and I had taken over thirteen abandoned buildings in a forgotten part of town called the Lower East Side. A place known for it's daytime muggings, junkies, and homeless encampments that took up whole city blocks. The thriving open-air drug market at the center of the neighborhood was known as Tompkins Square park.
The area was a grid of old tenement housing also known as 'Alphabet City'. It spanned from gritty Houston street in the south to the tony apartment complexes at Gramercy and 14th - From the trendy east village at Avenue A, to the sprawling and violent projects that ran the length of Avenue D. Mostly poor Puerto Rican families lived there at the time, but the neighborhood had traditionally been first landing for hated waves of immigrants washing up on America's shores throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
The LES had always been the where the world's wretched, tired, and displaced had arrived at our door - full of hope for a better life - only to to be warehoused in our worst ghettos, and left to suffer and die of overcrowding and tuberculosis.
In the 1990's the place was just as fucked. Vacant lots full of rubble and OD victims ruled the landscape. People lined up around the block to put their money in a basket that was trundled up to the roofs of buildings on pulleys, and then the heroin and crack would come back down the line.
The cops did not give a fuck. They were paid by all sides, and as long as people kept in their lane, no one would get busted. Compromises were made in order to get along. When the pastor of a local church on 11th street got tired of the lines of junkies blocking his parishioners from getting into Sunday service, he got the police to broker a deal with the neighborhood shooting gallery to not sell between 8 and 11 am on Sundays - and this was strictly enforced.
There was an awful status quo being maintained - as long as things remained this shitty, everyone got theirs. Across the village shady developers burned out buildings to collect insurance, and the city took ownership but got no revenue, so it didn't care. It was broke anyway.
All of this changed with the new mayor, and his declaration of war on "lifestyle crimes", starting with the "squeegee men" that were terrorizing commuters at the midtown tunnels. The cops starting busting ass on every petty crime committed in public. They had free reign and they used it, rolling many people up for the color of their skin, or for their perceived damage to the image of the city.
The city's homeless were rounded up and taken to huge warehouses in Queens where they had to stay if they wanted shelter. Times Square was drained of it's strip joints and prostitutes, and sold to the Disney corporation, and then the mayor turned his beady little eyes on the lower east side and it's potential for gentrification - total war was declared on the squatters.
We were by no means a perfect community, and with our best of intentions, we had helped to make the neighborhood more livable and ripe for the picking. With our community gardens replacing empty lots, and our buildings maintained more like artist co-ops than stereotypical flop houses, it was becoming a bohemian mecca.
Our allies took up our cause in the media, and some squatters began to think of themselves as celebrities. The extra attention created a vicious cycle of violent oppression and radical counter-reaction. Rioting squatters were pitted against paramilitary-style police in the news every night, and the mayor had no choice but to bring the hammer down. The forced evictions picked up pace and became more dangerous.
With the increased police, came uptowners feeling safe enough to "slum it" downtown in the east village for a weekend, and to accommodate their needs, the dollar-slice pizza joints, and beeper store weed-spots, started to give way to fancy Moroccan restaurants, and hipster theme-bars.
By the time I fled back to California with my daughter in 2000, the war had ground to a stalemate. Giuliani had been termed out, and the new mayor - Bloomberg - was concentrating on building bike lanes, and banning big gulps. Once again, governance of the lower east side was delegated to local officials.
A progressive city council was voted in and it was realized that compromise was the only way forward with the remaining, occupying force of squatters. They came up with a proposal that gave the squatters ownership of their buildings as long as they agreed to bring the dwellings up to code using city contractors.
Today the LES is an extremely unaffordable part of the world - unattainable by most american's wildest dreams as a place to live. About six of the original squatter buildings remain, and they are owned and managed by the residents, as co-ops.
I could have had a penthouse apartment in New York City for $700 a month if I had stayed! But that's not why most of us came there in the first place. We wanted to build a community, and be left alone to do our own thing.
My friend Pezent lives in C-squat still, and one day he got tired of all the drama that comes with communal living. He decided to strike out across the east river and set up in an abandoned building over there he'd crushed on for years.
It was on the last stretch of the waterfront yet to be developed, and hemmed in by gleaming high rise towers, it stuck out like a broken tooth in a dental ad for perfect smiles. Situated next to the burned out Dominoes sugar factory along the crumbling Brooklyn dockyards, to the untrained eye, the place was intimidating. It's gaping window holes stared across the river as if to say "come into my house, I want to hurt you."
To an old squatter like Pezent this was paradise, and a potential respite from his broken heart, and all it's needling, everyday reminders. For a year, as he set about making this huge vacant building his home, no one knew where he went. He left no clue behind, completely erasing his personal history as he arrived on the eastern shore of the Williamsburg bridge.
He occupied the top floors of the building by himself, and didn't interact with his unseen neighbors in the basement. He assumed from their screams and moans all night that they were CHUD (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers) - or at least dangerous drug addicts, and keeping a steel pipe at his side at all times, he settled into an uneasy peace, unbroken by trespass.
As the months passed he began to suffer from loneliness, but still he couldn't face going back yet. He had made a commitment to solitude, and he'd just have to adapt.
He began to develop relations with the local wildlife. He made friends and held long conversations with the pigeons that flew in the window holes every day, and he took in a baby cockroach as his pet.
One cold November morning, Pezent ventured up to the roof to catch some rare sunshine, but when he got up there he regretted it. Staring back at him across the frigid water was his former life in Manhattan. Forlorn, and eroded by weather like his face, the fallow rows of projects felt like his shambling and alcoholic friends, beckoning him back to familial and depressing habits.
Turning to flee back inside, he was suddenly distracted by a terrifying banshee-like scream from the vacant lot adjacent and below his own building. Straining over the edge of the buttress to spot it's source his mind raced with images of a murder and mayhem at the hands of his downstairs mole-people neighbors. Instead a large orange tabby with blood-matted fur and half a tail sanding straight up, darted out from behind the building and headed like a bullet for the busy dockside through-way on the other side of the lot, screeching bloody hell the whole way. He was closely pursued but an old stray mutt with blood in her eyes and on her teeth, snapping her fangs just inches behind the cat's furry and stunted tail explosion.
The cat made it to the road first and accelerated across the two lanes of heavy traffic, dodging oncoming dump trucks and taxis like a pro bike messenger. The old hound stopped at the sidewalk, defeated and snarling foam, as the tabby niftily jumped a chainlink fence on the other side and disappeared.
The scene fascinated Pezent, and during a warm string of winter mornings that month, he made his way to the roof to observe the daily drama unfolding between the stray animals.
He got to know the different groups of cats and dogs and assigned them names and rank matching their roles in the animal society. He noticed that "Nessa" - the old gray mare he'd seen the first day chasing "Sylvester", seemed to be the leader of the pack of mangy and starving dogs that searched through the piles of garbage for scraps. She would give them permission to pass if they showed her deference, but if they challenged her authority, they'd be quickly put on their backs, howling for forgiveness.
Nessa was a tough but fair leader, but nothing brought the dog clan together like their mutual hatred for the neighborhood cats that scrounged in even greater numbers along the docks.
They would chase them all day, but seemed to never be fast or agile enough catch any. One day Nessa led the charge on a group of fleeing cats, straight into a dead end air shaft with slick brick walls surrounding the trapped cats on every side. Pezent was sure the jig was up for these guys but couldn't see what was going on from his vantage point.
All of a sudden, a cacophony of braying and crying dogs came tearing back around the corner, some of them with hissing fur balls of vengeance attached to their backs, dug in and ripping helpless dog flesh to shreds. As they ran for their lives, a shock troop of half dozen vicious felines, led by Sylvester, the orange tabby, in hot pursuit.
Apparently ol' Nessa had led her troops into an ambush.
Other examples of Sylvester's devious and murderous nature began to emerge.He was the by far the oldest (and by extension the smartest) cat on the block, and his position offered him some security, so he got to spend a lot of his time resting. His favorite place to hide out and nap was under an abandoned low rider on the side of the road. Pezent thought no more of it until he noticed that whenever a local stray dog would amble by, Sly would always perk up from his nap and pay close attention. This wasn't unusual on it's own, but Pezent observed that the cat also seemed to be watching the traffic, and would raise himself up into a kind of crouch as the dog approached.
If there was no traffic on the street, he would let the dog pass without incident, but if it was rush hour, he would wait until the exact moment the dog was in front of him and a few mack trucks were barreling towards them on the road, preferably in both directions.
With precision timing, and with a screeching war cry, he'd jump out from under the car, and race across the street, zipping in between bus axles and truck wheels at an astonishing speed.
No dog ever didn't fall for it. Their instinct to chase was too strong. No dog's mother ever told them to look both ways, and they would always get halfway across the street before they'd realize their predicament - surrounded by careening death, the look on their faces, must have been priceless to Sly as he watched. Most of the time they made it across, or back to safety. But they never learned their lesson, especially the younger strays, and sometimes when he wasn't keeping his constant vigil up top, Pezent would hear the screech of brakes and then a thud of impact, and later he'd see a dog scraping himself across the docks, crushed hindquarters in tow.
"Got you too, huh buddy?" He'd say softly, and the dog would look mournfully up at him in the moonlight, as if he felt the pity, and appreciated.
As the hours of the day grew shorter with the approaching winter, Pezent noticed a change in the animals' behavior. They would still fight like cats and dogs all day, but as the sun began to settle towards the horizon, and a chill hung in the air, there were subtle approaches by the warring tribes.
Starting with the elders, small concessions were made, like Sylvester was allowed to pass to his favorite spot without being molested by Nessa, or any other dogs. Once the example was set, the younger dogs and cats began to allow each other free access, and as a slow dance of reconciliation commenced, dusky shadows lengthened across the lot, and a bitter cold set in.
Having never seen this before, Pezent was intrigued, and he made his way outside to get closer to the action. Sure enough, he could spot that the animals seemed to be gathering, or at least following each other down the same trail through the rubble.
As darkness surrounded them, my friend turned on his headlamp, and following a discreet distance behind, he watched as the animals arrived at another vacant building. Waiting for Sylvester and Nessa to lead the way, one by one they entered down a sunken concrete stairwell.
His curiosity straining every nerve in his body, Pezent waited in the dark until the condensation on the edge his hoodie began to freeze, and he was sure he could hear no more sounds of movement. He slinked around to the back of the building to see if he could gain access to the first floor, or peek through one of the barred up windows.
Using all his stealth, Pezent crept up towards what looked to be a first floor bedroom window. Empty tin flower boxes lined the sills on the fire escape, and as he envisioned on old maid leaning out to water her begonias on a spring morning, the moon came out from behind a cloud and lit up the scene with a silvery glow.
Peering through the window, his eyes followed the moonbeam down peeling victorian wallpaper to the bedroom floor. There, lying in various heaving heaps of quietly snoring and mangy fur .. were all the stray cats and dogs of the neighborhood.
"Blissfully sleeping, unaware I was watching, and cuddled together like .. well, like they needed each other to stay warm. That's when I realized it'd been a year since I'd left. It was time to go home."
Pezent tells me his story as we sit in his third floor apartment of C-Squat. He says that's why most of the squatters we know on the west coast are of the CHUD variety and never seem to organize. "It's not cold enough there," he explains.
It's years later and Hurricane Sandy has just blown through town. I'm here on a visit and we talk abut how things have changed in the village; how people reacted when a three foot wall of water rushed down Avenue C, blowing up an electrical transformer and plunging lower Manhattan into darkness for a week.
A crisis can bring people together, but not everyone knows how to act. It takes leadership to make the first step.
When Sandy hit, all the local businesses were wiped out in the flood. Fancy restaurant owners didn't know what to do with the food that was beginning to rot in their walk-ins and they threw it out in the gutters.
It took a squatter to see something wrong with this picture. Someone who's used to sharing what they have. The squatters organized, and proposed to the restaurants that they donate their food to an emergency barbecue for the whole neighborhood. They would be the cooks and volunteer their time.
The owners were skeptical at first. "How do I know I'll get my insurance money?"
"Is there anything in your policy that says you can't give away what's gonna rot and be thrown out anyway?" my friends replied.
Their logic prevailed and the party was on.
They busted out their pedal-powered mini generator and set up a long table in front of C-squat for passing yuppies to plug in and recharge their cellphones, while getting their sidewalk spin-class on. They BBQ' d and served kobe beef and maui sweet onion burgers to hundreds of people all day, then they hooked up their bicycle powered apparatus to a sump-pump, and pumped the water out of their neighbor's flooded basements all night.
For a moment, the squatters were the toast of the town. These people were society's rejects, unwanted by their families, and abandoned to their drug addictions - resented for bringing down home values with their facial tattoos and frightening pit bulls. And here they were, making the national guard irrelevant, by taking care of their neighbors.
The New York Times put the surprising story on the front page of the Sunday edition.
It wasn't an unusual way for my friends and I to be - and for that I'm very thankful.
