Some folks in Newburgh have been here for generations. Some have been here for a generation. And some – like me – had to get ourselves here.
Moving to Newburgh was Liz’s idea, so I guess the journey here started with her. And the journey to her started with The Nuyorican Poet’s Café.
It was 1975, and I was living in a fourth floor walkup on 6th street between A and B (B: an avenue perhaps made famous in 1983 by Major Thinkers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpU-C2klI4g) in Loisaida. It was an interesting neighborhood in those times: we didn’t nickname Tompkins Square “Killer Park” for nothing. The Irish pub on the ground floor had just moved out and although I was a night owl myself, it was a relief to finally be able to come home at 4:00AM and not find someone sprawled out on the curb, swimming in their own vomit.
It was but a few short weeks before I was awakened at 8:00AM sharp by several bangs. No, they weren’t coming from Killer Park, they were coming from downstairs! I stumbled out of bed and heard more bangs… and then the sounds of circular saws. Relief. After I showered and dressed and finished a couple cups of coffee, I ran downstairs and poked my head into the busy storefront to ask what was happening. A bodega, I hoped. “A new bar” came the reply. Sigh. I took off for class.
Weeks later, I am returning from calligraphy class. The door to the storefront is open, I poke my head in. A huge cherubic guy says “Don’t be afraid, come on in!” I look at the new bar on the right as you go in. Behind it is a mural the length of the entire bar.
This wasn’t a bar. It was a café. A poet’s café. A poet’s café with a bar in it. It was The Nuyorican Poets Café. The huge round guy was the writer and poet Miguel Algarín. That weekend was the opening. I met the rest of the cast: Miguel Piñero (whose “Short Eyes” was to premier at the Riverside Church two years later), Bimbo Rivas, Pedro Pietri and Lucky Cienfuegos. I did not know it then, but history was being made. And I was living upstairs.
Fast forward: it’s April 3, 1994. I am at the start of preparing for my case before the U.S. Supreme Court to try to get my artwork installed on a 101-foot-long billboard in Penn Station. That Sunday, my friend Juan Sanchez is having a solo exhibition of his drawings, paintings, collages and prints at the Nuyorican. It is at a new location, on East 3rd between B and C. It’s a lovely show and I am asking myself: why can’t I keep it simple and just show my work in galleries, museums, …. and poetry bars? It would be so much easier.
Eventually, the music comes on.
I have been a regular for a couple of decades: I go to the sound booth and ask Willie, the DJ whose day job was working as the sound engineer for the U.N. and by now good friend, if he could please play “Mi Primera Rumba” by La India with Eddie Palmieri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t6atLUMdIE, because I saw someone sitting at a table and I was going to ask her to dance. I could barely maybe kinda dance some Latin and that was the only salsa track that I could sorta keep time to. Of course, I did not know at the time that her ex was once the Latin DJ at the old Studio 54, that she knew every-which-way to dance Latin and then some, and how absolutely patient she must have been but if she wasn’t patient, at least that day she didn’t let it show, she just toughed it out. Her name was Liz Vega.
It was on a Sunday afternoon when two years later Liz and I defied superstition and got married on October 13th of 1996.
It was a fun wedding. It all started out from the curb in front of our loft at 36 Cooper Square. From there, Liz and the bridesmaids, all dressed in silky burgundy, climbed into three decked out pedicabs that took them on a long and winding route through the East Village as onlookers did double-takes and cheered. As they finally arrived at the entrance of the Nuyorican Poet’s Café on East 3rd in Loisaida, an amazing Latin flautist named Karen Joseph performed Bach sonatas as they entered. My godfather, a parish priest from Kansas, flew in to do the ceremony. There were readings by our closest friends. One friend thought he was auditioning for the McArthur Genius Award and went on for a little too long. Well, a lot too long (he did win the grant, but not for this performance).
The day ended with charanga by Johnny Almendra y Los Jovenes del Barrio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKkj4peJczM&list=OLAK5uy_mzCBsBa5HGlYoPaQcqX3ZZH7KrnMwgTpk&index=2
Since then, every anniversary we headed up to Ulster County for leaf peeping season. In 2014, we were driving down the NY Thruway, heading back to the city – “The City”: New York City – a little earlier than usual. I saw the sign to Newburgh.
Our daughter had been attending a school in the area, and Liz would take her to a Dominican hair salon in Newburgh from time to time, as it was minutes away. Liz had been nagging me for years to take a look at Newburgh so I took a sharp turn towards the exit ramp. Once in town, we drove up and down its creaking streets. I turned to Liz – who was born in the Dominican Republic – and said: “Oh, I see why you like it. This place looks like Santo Domingo during the Revolution”.
I took an immediate liking to it. In Newburgh’s grand but beaten architecture and urban distress, I also saw echoes of the raw, gritty and ethnically diverse life that drew me and thousands of other artists to the downtown neighborhoods of the East Village, SoHo and NoHo in the 1970s and 80s. The downtown where painters, musicians, dancers, poets, performance artists, sculptors, novelists, composers and so many others could congregate, feed off each other, afford to experiment and fail, yet still put a roof over their heads and food on the table, all while rubbing elbows with all kinds of people from all parts of the world and from all walks of life. The Downtown where you would get a call on a Wednesday evening asking you to come to Carl Andre’s loft to sit on the floor with your favorite substance while the Philip Glass Ensemble tries out some new compositions on a live audience. The Downtown before storefronts featuring $2,700 sports jackets finally signaled the neighborhood’s accelerating descent into the costly mentality of consumer excess.
Liz and I had read about the many couples who threw away their good paying jobs and left Manhattan for another life. We never suspected we would be one of them. The two of us had been urban urchins for forever. But I had been active in the New York anti-fracking movement since its inception in 2008. One of the first meetings of statewide grassroots environmental groups had been held at our farmhouse in Sullivan County. I quickly immersed myself in the environmental movement, and I just as quickly learned that the town and country lifestyle was one of the least sustainable things you could be doing with your life, and that existing buildings are the greenest buildings. There were a lot of distressed buildings that needed fixing up in Newburgh, so we sold the farmhouse, sold the $1,100 rent-stabilized lease to the loft back to the landlord (Sell the lease? Yup. More on that in a later blog post), bought three distressed buildings with my wife’s sister, started a company that we named dwellstead dedicated to restoring distressed historic homes to near passive house standards for half the typical cost, and moved. We were mission driven people (Liz was VP for Columbia Presbyterian Hospital’s Medicaid managed care plan), and in Newburgh, we thought we found our mission. We didn’t realize then that there were many missions in Newburgh to choose from, … and they didn’t all get along!
But we had made our commitment.
That first winter was a snowy one. I hadn’t seen that much snow in decades. One afternoon, I was driving to the post office after an 18″ snowfall. A quite elderly and elegant African American woman in very proper attire was walking down the sidewalk, struggling with each step. I pulled over to offer her a ride, but she declined so I continued. I had to wait in a long line at the post office, and as I left, I see her walking back. I pull over … again, and I say “C’mon! I don’t bite!” and this time she accepts. She struggles to get around a snow bank so I get out to help her. Once in the car, I ask her her name and where her home is. She says Myrtle Williams. Myrtle speaks in a slow, measured and delicate cadence. I say “Mississippi?” She says “Yes, how did you know?” I told her that my mom’s accent was similar, she was from St Louis, I was born there as well, that most people don’t know that Missouri is a southern state.
Myrtle had moved first to Chicago and then to Newburgh, where she lived most of her life. I asked her if she lived through urban renewal. She said “It was awful. When they tore out the heart of the city, they tore out my heart as well.” That silenced me for a very long minute.
We reached her front door. As she made the sign of the cross, she said something in a Creole language that I did not understand. She then blessed me and said “Thank you for your kindness. I will say a prayer tomorrow morning at congregation for you and your wife. May God bless you.”
I looked for her a few weeks later, but I never saw her again. After 8 years, Liz and I have evolved with this city: I feel Myrtle with us, watching over our next steps…
And so here we are.
