Hooverville or Bushville

Oh look, The beginning of fall......

Central Park has always been a very special place to me. It is so very beautiful all year !!


I love to be in it, walk through it , or just walk by it along 5th Ave ( I am an EastSider).

When I first moved to Manhattan in 1975 I danced the nights away at places like; Studio 54, Xenon's, Hippopotamus , The Library, and I would end up eating breakfast just before dawn at The Brasserie on east 53rd Street . The Brasserie was well known and great for people watching, there were many drunk & stoned Movies Star's along with the Famous Clothing Designers. 'The Lush Life' in more than one way.

Right outside the windows of cafes all over Manhattan you would see people sleeping in doorways , hallways, over subway grates covered with newspaper to keep warm. By the rivers , and under bridges you would see people living in boxes and burning fires in coffee cans to cook and keep warm. The city of Manhattan was bankrupt, there was no help or place for these poor people.

But thankfully, I never saw a policeman chase a cold sleeping man off a subway grate -

You know, It was a difficult time for me (and it certainly could have gotten worse for me) as well, because I was young, stupid, spending everything I got my hands on, and I was so afraid that I might miss something. I was burning at both ends. It was all so sophisticated and beautiful I thought.

I believe today that I was just luckier than the men on the grates, or the ladies pushing everything they owned in a shopping cart, while dressed in soiled evening gowns , with pale dirty faces wearing false eyelashes and ruby red lips at 8:00 am in the morning.

You know, we just need to force ourselves to look to the left and the right, up and down....or we will miss 'something' or 'everything'.

pics from BBC

Renee Finberg 'TELLS ALL' in her blog of her Adventures in Design