HUNGRY GERALD

During HG’s budget restricted younger days, a long walk with a girl friend through the ever colorful streets of New York was an entertainment.  New York neighborhoods were low rise, lined with Mom-and-Pop shops.  The poor and middle class had not been banished and the city did not belong to oligarchs.  Inevitably, HG and girl friend would go to Little Italy and Chinatown for dining.   Chinatown has metastasized into a mega-Chinatown but looks the same, for the most part.   Little Italy, however, is a disaster.  The ultimate tourist trap.  Tony Soprano seems to be the local hero or at least the hero tourists want to believe in.   Every type of low TV kitsch glorifying fictitious gangsters is displayed.   And the restaurants that were such an ornament of Little Italy?  They’ve more than gone down hill.  They’ve gone down a precipice.  In the mourned days of long ago,  girl friend and HG would go to Puglia,  Angelo’s,  Grotto Azzura,  Luna and for less than five bucks have a very robust bowl of pasta, plenty of good bread and olive oil,  a big glass or red wine and tortoni or spumoni.   We were welcomed warmly, served with style and dignity.   Sent on our way with kisses and handshakes.   The Italian immigrants who lived in Little Italy built New York with their hands.  The subways.  The building foundations.  The masonry of the high rise structures.  Their sweat; their work.  All immigrant experiences in New York,  from the very beginning,  are sagas of hard work, pain, disappointment and hope. To see it all turned into a TV caricature is troubling.