Controlled Chaos or Just Plain Crazy?

It’s almost Halloween and this is the season when the East Village most resembles reality. As they say,  “Anything goes in the East Village,” because many characters in this neighborhood look as if they are in costume year round. This time of year the crazy get even crazier.

I don’t know if it’s because we’ve lived here for eight months now and I’m starting to get used to it, but the homeless, drug addicts and crazies seem to be out in full force all around me. Maybe I notice them more now, or maybe my frequent exposure makes their impression on me more acute. Perhaps they notice me as a permanent fixture in the neighborhood that they can engage, rather than a hapless tourist who might actually give them money. All I know is their presence is constant yet nevertheless perplexing to me.

They come in all categories. First we have the artists, then the extremists, the activists, the weirdos, and of course the performers. After you’ve lived here a while you get used to the crazy outfits and the artistic expression of style and realize that these people would really not fit in anywhere else but NYC. They were freaks in their home towns, but they are welcome here. This is what makes the local landscape uniquely wonderful and eclectic. Last weekend Dylan and I tried walking around on a Saturday night in full face make up and people didn’t even flinch. In fact they loved it---we fit right in.

After the Artistically Crazy we have the Just Plain Crazy. These are homeless who roam the streets yelling at themselves, their ghosts and anyone within ear shot. For instance there was the homeless guy who pees on trees and hangs out next to Steve’s work barge on the East River. If Steve happens to walk out of his office trailer to use the phone the guy yells at him from 80 feet away, “Get Back to Work!”  To this Steve, not skipping a beat, replies, “You get back to work! If I see you piss on that tree again I’m callin’ the cops!” Just Plain Crazy.

Then there are the college students who perhaps drank or abused all their tuition and now just party openly on the streets all day and night. Or perhaps they are left over from Occupy Wall Street and have somehow lost their way. I am all in favor of the OWS movement, but it seems some of them have forgotten the movement part and now choose just to occupy the streets and sidewalks that we use everyday. Locally we call these guys crusties because their hair, clothes and animals get a bit crusty after a while. I love the one who was holding up a sign the other day, “Lost all my money. Please spare—what the fuck, it’s only a buck!”  Lazy.

My sympathy and fascination with the homeless is twofold. I realize that many of them have serious substance abuse problems or mental illness, and it is hard to witness that. It’s even harder to expose the kids to it but here it’s inescapable. One week there was a man who was so intoxicated he lived slumped over a car in a passed out state for days on end on our walk to school. About day three he was barefoot and mumbling to us for money. While I didn’t give him money on our way there, I did buy him breakfast and water on the way back. I asked myself if I should call someone, and why this person had become invisible to all who passed him in the neighborhood. Are we all numb to the needs of the mentally ill on our streets? Are we too caught up in our own problems to even notice anymore? She did say.....send me your homeless, right?!

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"	”
—Emma Lazarus, Statue of Liberty,1883

Another time there was a woman who was so strung out she was stumbling on the sidewalk in broad daylight in front of our house. Her friends were clumsily trying to get her to a bus or cab to get home. All at once she fell, hit her head and began bleeding. I was trying to get the kids in the house before the scenario erupted into violence or worse when she rushed over, fell to her knees in front of my daughter Dylan and began to pray. Blood streaming down her face, she rocked back and forth uttering some incoherent verse. I told her friends if they didn’t get her in a cab immediately I was calling the police. Needless to say, we were all a bit shook up over this but hey---it’s just another day in New York.

Then we have the seemingly normal people who have just blown a gasket in the stress that is New York City. These are normal people, going about their lives, who for whatever reason had their limit that day and the stress became too much and they totally lose it. The subway  is always a good place to witness Crazy (warning: not edited). I recently witnessed a guy on the train who suddenly stood up and began yelling at the top of his lungs at the poor guy hunched over quietly minding his own business, “Turn it DOWN, or I’m going to turn it down for YOU!” Mind you none of the rest of us heard anything coming from this man, but he had the omnipresent ear buds and apparently the quiet buzz of music was drowning out the normal voices in the other guy’s head. He got so violent we moved to the next car lest they start throwing punches. My friend with me at the time commented that in the Midwest, like Colorado for instance, guns would have already been drawn and someone would be down. Here in NY it’s quite run-of-the-mill; shouting matches occur here that in any other city or state would be reason to call the cops.  

It is so common that you see people ignoring the outbursts and going about their daily business like nothing is happening. No judgment, no interaction, almost a tacit resignation to the crazy as if to say, “Yup, he’s lost it. Today it’s his day. Tomorrow someone else’s, the next day may be mine.” Sometimes you even see bystanders diverting their eyes, or purposely walking in the other direction as if to say, “Uh oh….here comes crazy! Watch out! It’s contagious! I’m outta here!!”

I admit it’s even happened to me. One week our car side view mirror got smashed, and I think we were on our 3^rd $100 parking ticket and then our car got impounded. When your car is towed in the city you get a parking ticket AND they tow it. To get your car out of hock you have to go all the way to the West side and pay over $300 for release (on top of the ticket). If you don’t release it within 72 hours they put it up for auction and charge you $50/day parking until it’s sold. The system is huge money for the city and it’s a total scam. Needless to say we were not happy.  This city was beating us, and big time.

We got the car out of hock and decided to leave the city behind us for a weekend before we kill someone. Just as we’d packed the car up on the curb in front of the apartment, an oil truck parks opposite blocking the entire street from thru traffic. If you’ve ever been in New York, people don’t like it when you block traffic. So one delivery guy in a van decides he’s going to try to squeeze through anyway and in doing so scratches the whole side of our car and hits our wheel WITH ME SITTING IN THE PASSENGER SIDE.

I roll down the window, my eyes roll back in my head, and I’m pounding on his van and screaming wildly. He gets passed us and I’m chasing the guy down the street dialing the number of his company and screaming a few choice (perhaps four-letter) words. He stops. He gets out. He’s a very large black man. I see this and turn around to go find Steve. Steve is still in the car, to which I say, “Are you going to get out and help me out here?” I get back in the car. Steve gets out. The guy and Steve calmly exchange a “How ya doin.” They look at the car, kick the tire, do the male head shake and say good-bye, as if it happens all the time. Chalk it up to crazy. The whole family drove in silent shock and it was a half hour later before Steve says, “He picked the wrong day to mess with Goldie (our car), huh?” We laughed our way out of the city. Crazy.

So here we live in the land of the crazy. If you’re not crazy when you arrive you’ll most certainly be so by the time you leave. The daily life, the obstacles you face, are enough to make any good person crazy. On a good day you rejoice in the freedom of Crazy. On a bad day you begin to believe everything is rigged to make a normal person give up, fail and go Crazy. There are days when I feel like I’m living out a scene from the movies The Matrix , or The Adjustment Bureau. At the end of the day who is to say what is crazy, really. We’re all a little crazy, or just this side of crazy, or just back from crazy. Crazy comes in all shapes and sizes. To this I say: bring on the Crazy. Here comes a hurricane.......and still we're not giving up on living in New York. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! 

“We’re never gonna survive

Unless we get a little bit crazy……”

-Seal