Never fade away

Now I know why I feel invisible in my own neighborhood...

No Enclave for Old Men*
by James Wolcott
June 6, 2011, 11:14 AM

*Or women

Brendan Bernhard, the Orwell of the East Village (yes, I know Brenda says Auden but maybe we're both right), writes about the chasm between young and old in the theme park of the conscientiously hip.

You notice them everywhere in Manhattan, but perhaps particularly in a slightly out-of-the-way neighborhood such as the East Village — middle-aged or older New Yorkers who look as if they have remained in the city that doesn’t sleep way past the limits of insomnia or common sense.

They seem a little lost in this International House of Cupcakes, among i-Stoned youth, galvanized immigrants, packed bars, and cafes where the music is always played at a volume whose message might as well be posted on a notice board outside — Adults Permitted, But Youth Preferred.

Aging is a delicate, unrewarding business at best, and some people — as a result of genes, outlook, resolution, and money — manage it better than others. To judge by the relative lack of oldsters in the East Village (anyone over 40 is a rarity on the streets after 9 p.m., and most of those are either homeless, comatose, or possibly dead), it’s obvious that this is one of the more trying places in which to grow old. Those who hang on must also confront the irony of living in an era in which they are constantly scolded that it is within their power to remain “young,” while being made to feel ancient almost all the time.

[snip]

Journalists generally don’t write about growing older in a hip young neighborhood because even hinting at an interest in the topic is tantamount to an admission that they may be getting a little long in the tooth themselves. Yet age apartheid is one of the most salient and least discussed aspects of life in the East Village. In his disastrous but unforgettable mayoral campaign of 1969, Norman Mailer suggested turning the East Village into an autonomous zone, leaving the acid-heads and “freaks” to run the place, rather as the Danes did with the Christiania section of Copenhagen a couple of years later. It never happened, but in a way the neighborhood is as unbalanced as if it had.

No such apartheid here on the Upper West Side, where the oldsters terrorize young and middle-aged alike with random complaints that have long, complicated histories attached that we're all supposed to be familiar with. I would provide examples but it's no way to start a Monday.