This is Gil Freeman and I’m not home. If you are calling about a temporary job, a part, or anything that may mean money for me, PLEASE, I’m begging you, leave your name and number and I will get right back to you as soon as possible. Thanks a lot. BEEP! I couldn’t have been poorer. One hopes that one’s accommodations continually improve but mine were going down, down, down … from the luxury of a Village sublet with money in my pocket to run-down Brooklyn to Hell’s Kitchen and now Alphabet City, the Lower East Side, lower being the operative word. I lived on Avenue A (hence Alphabet City) and as a rule, you should never live anywhere in New York designated by letters; this holds true citywide. Avenue A was slumland: heroin addicts in alleyways, homeless everywhere, bums up from the Bowery (which is nearby) for a change of scenery, the leftover druggy hippie-types mingling with the Puerto Ricans driven down from the West Side when that neighborhood gentrified and the PRs got summarily evicted.
