Observations on the JMZ line.

It’s when the train reaches, Bowery and Essex st that the most profound change really takes place. Graphic designers, writers, skate board kids, girls with high boots and slutty dresses now get on. They like to call themselves the creative class, even hipsters, but we know them for what they truly are- disenfranchised youth willing to make the eternal trek to artistic greatness, even it means living in squalor and deprivation in the immediate. Of course they have nice cafes and the occasional op store, but that will never disguise the sound of some screaming local, whose family has been bound there for decades courtesy of his proletarian roots.

At least walking past modest houses and dank alleys is alleviated by the brisk smell of caffe latte and the sight of some trendy girl who migrated from Connecticut last fall. Of course by now the locals have learned to ignore it, and frankly some of them are making hand over fist money serving these adventurers cuisine and other oddities that most locals stopped buying ages ago. Tequila usually sells well from memory, and I would think it sells well every night of the week as you cross the Williamsburg bridge deep into the JMZ territory.

As the train makes its weary trek over the bridge you will notice the hazy sunlight as it begins to set over converted factories and warehouses where the creative class choose to live. Below are barges pushing through time, weary captains looking above them at the constant flux of trains as they stretch back and forth. As the train screeches finally to its first hipster stop- Marcy Ave, it’s interesting to note the sudden abandonment  by its resident hipsters. That of course still leaves plenty of us on board, Latino’s, African Americans, the occasional white and of course the rare Orthodox jew who always keeps to himself, who are mulling over the silence and the odd behavior of some junkie who keeps falling over the passenger to his left.

As you may or may not know, crack and dope make the mainstay of this district and as we pass the trendy dive/restaurants inhabited by the creative class we chug past the first of many illicit hotels that cater to the broken class. It’s there, just past Hewes and Lorimer, and according to a friend who had the misfortune of staying there one night, where one can manage to be accosted by at least 3 prostitutes during the night, one of them being according to him a midget prostitute. One supposes that even midgets have to make a living…