A friend suggested I blog about HBO’s Girls. But I can’t watch it. I saw the first couple of minutes of the pilot, and it was painful. I’m tempted to do a Sara Benincasa- style review without having seen it, but I’m no Sara Benincasa, and besides it would take viewing more clips or reading more about it than I can handle.
I have my reasons:
1. Williamsburg – I lived there in the 80’s. When I moved into my floor-through apartment on Bedford between North 11th and North 12th, I think the rent was $250 a month, and the other tenants saw my arrival as a sign of end times. I was the pilot-fish of gentrification. These were days when you might go to a party at a loft and the fire department would show up to shut the whole thing down (true story). When whacky clubs opened for a day or two or neighborhood bars were occasionally taken over by large goth drag queens and various performance artists. Back then the arrival of Kasia’s – a place you could actual get a bite to eat – was a big deal indeed, and I frequently stopped by a tiny bakery between North 7th and North 8th for a danish or bagel in the mornings, and there were always the same old Italian and Polish regulars. There was some weird chemical plant across the street, and if I get cancer someday it will be from that. Greenpoint and Williamsburg had the highest concentration of toxic material storage in the City, plus oil spills. Every once in a while the streets would flood bright yellow and there was a smell that even with the windows closed would seep from your nose onto your taste buds.
Despite its being America’s Bhopul, by 1990, I already felt out of place, supplanted by the younger more beautiful people moving in.