7th street


I lived on 7th street for 6 years,from 1996 to 2002 & Reno's apartment was across the street from mine. My (now ex)husband knew him pretty well, as he had been lving in our apartment for 20 years and had seen all the changes it went through. When I moved in, the busts were really happening and the neighborhood quickly changing. When I first moved there you couldn't even walk down 7th between B & C (I lived between C & D) due to the drug dealers. I do have a nostalgia for this time, as now the neighborhood is full of NYU students and trustfunders, there are so many bars and noise, and impossible to get a parking space weekends. The saddest thing about the gentirification is that the old neighbors have been forced out, all of the community gardens gone & NYU housing or condos in their place. I was thrilled to see many of my old neighbors in this movie, especially the guy with all the carts & cans/bottles who occupied the vacant lot across from us. It was also great to see Reno, as last I saw him before he died (him and all his dogs had been evicted)he was without his dogs and sleeping on a bench in Tompkins Square. Many neighborhoods in NYC have gone through this same change, but I feel fortunate to have been there.

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I lived on 5th Street between A and B from 1988 until the landlord forced me out in 2001 so he could collect twice the rent from the "NYC students and trustfunders." I miss the old days, when you could talk books with Merlin by the Con Ed building and smell the fires from TSP in the winter. Good times.

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