Heights of Stupidity
“Choosing Washington Heights had been easy: It was affordable, and it was in Manhattan. What else did I need to know?” Well. I think Miss Kristen Bonarni Rapp announced her “gringa estúpida” status quite early in her essay (“Gringa in the Heights,” July 2-8), so let’s help her a little bit and tell her what else she needs to know.
As she enthusiastically mentioned, Washington Heights has survived wave after wave of immigrants, who like the Dominicans, share one thing new tenants don’t: poverty. Washington Heights—birthplace of Dominican-American luminaries like newspaper coverboy and sometime slugger A-Rod—it’s becoming the next frontier for white kids to turn into a center of douchebaggery like the Lower East Side (where Dominicans were rented out a decade ago.) There’s already a Nolita-type border that separates the old Washington Heights from the new: West of Broadway, or Hudson Heights, like kids who chose Wikipedia as their neighborhood selection tool prefer to call it. Home of the first Starbucks in the area and a sign of things to come.
This new wave of gringos, who possibly never lived a single day in poverty, possibly ignore the part of the Wikipedia article titled “crime epidemic.” During the Crack Era, Washington Heights was pretty much a war zone. Dominican news would cover the caskets coming out of planes in Aeropuerto Las Americas the same way Americans news covered their own during Vietnam. The Heights may be romanticized on Broadway now, but it wasn’t a nice place. Every story covered in the neighborhood by the local news had the words “crime,” “poor” and “tough” attached to the name in the same sentence. I imagine, the same way Hell’s Kitchen had it in the ’70s.
Anyone who has lived in the city long enough already knows where this is going. These middle-class white kids are soon going to be done with Manhattan—to the delight of landlords—and turn it into the fantasy island Giuliani and Bloomberg envisioned years ago.
—Harry Pujols, NY
Fascist Film Studies
I have just a few simple questions for Armond. One, in response to his Hellboy II review (“Hell Hath Obvious Limits,” July 9-15), I just want to ask, “Who the fuck are the Ting Tings and what in god’s name do they really have to do with Hellboy II?” It usually helps if the reviewer uses a reference to someone that readers might have actually heard of, therefore making the parallels that much easier. Week by week Armond is morphing more and more into Matthew Broderick’s NYU Film Studies professor in the film The Freshman. I’ll be sure to pick up my copy of Das Kapital in order to see how it corresponds to the Lake Tahoe sequence in Godfather 2. Thanks Armond.
—mdf0220
against the wind
I just wanted to pass along the note that Armond White is the finest film reviewer in America—and the most courageous one, as well—in an era of mindless and/or PC pack-mentality film criticism.
I just wanted to pass along my kudos because I fear someone with such independent, original and informed judgment is probably constantly in danger of being ostracized. His is the most valuable voice out there, all the more because he has the courage to stand against the wind. Best regards, and thank you for publishing his review column.
—Warren Fahy
Got it Good
Just read the Steven Doloff’s article “In Search of the Hard to Get” (July 2-8) and it was GOLD! From beginning to end. I loved the way it was written and the humor and realism. Flawless! Thanks for putting that article through—it came right on time.
—Tonya Tko
“Choosing Washington Heights had been easy: It was affordable, and it was in Manhattan. What else did I need to know?” Well. I think Miss Kristen Bonarni Rapp announced her “gringa estúpida” status quite early in her essay (“Gringa in the Heights,” July 2-8), so let’s help her a little bit and tell her what else she needs to know.
As she enthusiastically mentioned, Washington Heights has survived wave after wave of immigrants, who like the Dominicans, share one thing new tenants don’t: poverty. Washington Heights—birthplace of Dominican-American luminaries like newspaper coverboy and sometime slugger A-Rod—it’s becoming the next frontier for white kids to turn into a center of douchebaggery like the Lower East Side (where Dominicans were rented out a decade ago.) There’s already a Nolita-type border that separates the old Washington Heights from the new: West of Broadway, or Hudson Heights, like kids who chose Wikipedia as their neighborhood selection tool prefer to call it. Home of the first Starbucks in the area and a sign of things to come.
This new wave of gringos, who possibly never lived a single day in poverty, possibly ignore the part of the Wikipedia article titled “crime epidemic.” During the Crack Era, Washington Heights was pretty much a war zone. Dominican news would cover the caskets coming out of planes in Aeropuerto Las Americas the same way Americans news covered their own during Vietnam. The Heights may be romanticized on Broadway now, but it wasn’t a nice place. Every story covered in the neighborhood by the local news had the words “crime,” “poor” and “tough” attached to the name in the same sentence. I imagine, the same way Hell’s Kitchen had it in the ’70s.
Anyone who has lived in the city long enough already knows where this is going. These middle-class white kids are soon going to be done with Manhattan—to the delight of landlords—and turn it into the fantasy island Giuliani and Bloomberg envisioned years ago.
—Harry Pujols, NY
Fascist Film Studies
I have just a few simple questions for Armond. One, in response to his Hellboy II review (“Hell Hath Obvious Limits,” July 9-15), I just want to ask, “Who the fuck are the Ting Tings and what in god’s name do they really have to do with Hellboy II?” It usually helps if the reviewer uses a reference to someone that readers might have actually heard of, therefore making the parallels that much easier. Week by week Armond is morphing more and more into Matthew Broderick’s NYU Film Studies professor in the film The Freshman. I’ll be sure to pick up my copy of Das Kapital in order to see how it corresponds to the Lake Tahoe sequence in Godfather 2. Thanks Armond.
—mdf0220
against the wind
I just wanted to pass along the note that Armond White is the finest film reviewer in America—and the most courageous one, as well—in an era of mindless and/or PC pack-mentality film criticism.
I just wanted to pass along my kudos because I fear someone with such independent, original and informed judgment is probably constantly in danger of being ostracized. His is the most valuable voice out there, all the more because he has the courage to stand against the wind. Best regards, and thank you for publishing his review column.
—Warren Fahy
Got it Good
Just read the Steven Doloff’s article “In Search of the Hard to Get” (July 2-8) and it was GOLD! From beginning to end. I loved the way it was written and the humor and realism. Flawless! Thanks for putting that article through—it came right on time.
—Tonya Tko
