Empire

Disco D

Dead DJ bears uncanny resemblance 2 TRUE

It’s a trip getting out at Wall Street. It’s a whole other world from the UES. Downtown there are lots of shadows and the air is always cooler. Surely the gravity is different, as everyone and everything bottoms out. I hear my blood in my ears and feel a pressure upon my ribcage. There aren't many cars but the narrow streets make each one that passes feel like a major encumbrance—in that way its reminiscent of a city center in Europe.

I'm sure it comes as no great surprise if I tell you that the area in and around Ground Zero is haunted. I'll turn a dark and moldy corner and there's the same feeling I had when I was in Charleston, SC: the vibe of ghosties and voodoo/living dead/mason type occurrences. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about paranormal possibilities, but I do think that certain places harbour resonances to the extreme violence that took place in them--a kind of cloud of evil that inspires a passionate energy that often begets still more violence--both acute and chronic.

Downtown NY is one of those places. Maybe that’s why I fit in so well.

Yesterday I watched as a line of firefighters made their way up the other side of the street. They were dressed in their formal navy blue dress uniforms with crisp matching hats still on their heads…they must have been coming back from the funeral for one of their own, who had recently been killed in a fire at the Deutsche Bank building a few blocks north, still draped in black as tho in perpetual mourning for its nearby fellows who fell on 9/11. As I watched nearly every one of the solid, ruggedly handsome men accepted a flyer from a man in a bright yellow vest with the name of a gentlemen’s club stenciled on the back.

Among the things I’ve noticed that I DON’T like is that the pigeons look more sickly than they do in midtown or on the UES. Their eyes are yellow and beadier and they tend to be missing feathers around the neck and have hook shaped beaks.

Lots of good sushi and indian food, tho