Dispossessed - Part 2 on being evicted

“The landlord is moving your things into a truck!” my upstairs neighbor cried.

This was how I learned that I was being evicted from my apartment of twenty years. It was 4:00 when he called and I was in the middle of a major grant deadline at work. There was no way I could leave.

My neighbor had gone down to look for my cat but couldn't find her. He wondered if there was anything else he ought to retrieve. I couldn't think of anything, so I thanked him for his concern and went back to making umpteen copies of the grant application, trying to pretend that the world as I knew it wasn’t capsizing.

At 7:00, I finally finished and went home to find my cat. The stammering handyman who had serviced my apartment since the days when it belonged to a Puerto Rican landlord was standing guard as three men trudged up and down the stairs, carrying giant boxes to a waiting truck.

“Y-you c-c-c-can’t go in,” he said, flustered to see me.

“I just want my cat,” I said.

“We didn’t see n-no c-c-c-c-cat.”

“ I know just where she is,” I replied and marched into the apartment, without waiting for his response. He followed me in, stammering protests, as I called the cat out from her usual hiding place.

Books were scattered everywhere. The furniture was already gone. The place was a wreck – everything had either been boxed up or partially removed. I had lived half my life within those walls. The first time I walked through that door, I was a teenager. I had raised my son there, hosted countless dinners and birthday parties, fell in and out of love a half dozen times. The entire neighborhood had changed, but the apartment was still the way it must have looked in 1960. I took one last look at the familiar yellow walls and left, clutching my terrified cat, wondering if I would ever see the place again.

Jean Schneider is supposedly the most lenient judge in housing court but she denied the motion to restore me to my apartment, although I had managed to borrow enough to pay all my arrears.

“ I think it’s time for you to move on,” she determined.

Then realizing that this might make her seem pro-landlord, she allowed a week for me to appeal. After talking to my lawyer and a representative from the local tenant advocacy group, GOLES, I realized that there was no way I could afford a prolonged court case. But since this was the only leverage I had, I played it for what it was worth. I’m not convinced that the landlord really believed that I would really appeal the court decision. I think he just couldn’t believe his amazing luck that he had managed to dislodge a long-time rent-stabilized tenant.

“I’m not a bad guy,” he kept saying.

To prove that he wasn’t a bad guy, he showed me a teensy apartment that he generously said he would allow me to rent for $1,700, nearly double what I had paid for my two-bedroom. I seriously considered it, but I finally just couldn’t stomach the idea of spending more than half of my income for a place as wide as a jail cell, even if it had a brushed steel stove and exposed brick.

So I took $5,500 in conscience money instead. Chump change for what he could make on my apartment.

“I’m not a bad guy,” he insisted as he signed the check.

For the first time since 1992, I went hunting for a home. I had never once considered living elsewhere, but the East Village is now out of my price range. Which is rather ironic, since the reason why the East Village is the East Village is because of its immigrants, activists and artists. Without us, what is the neighborhood? A string of restaurants and bars and designer boutiques is not what makes the East Village edgy, hip and desirable. It’s the unique mix of artists and immigrants that creates value for the neighborhood. But we are now the unwanted tenants.

So I set my sights on Brooklyn, that bastion of exiled Lower East Siders. A joke has been going around: What’s Brooklyn? What Manhattan was twenty years ago. What’s Queens? What Brooklyn was twenty years ago. Well, then, what’s Manhattan? What Queens was twenty years ago.

One of those jokes that’s funny because it’s so damn sad.

In the meantime, I received a yellow letter with a shamrock from New York S Storage & Liffey Van Lines. Apparently, they weren’t satisfied with the $3,000 payment they had received from the landlord and wanted $650 from me for “handling charges.” The letter also gave me one month to retrieve my possessions before they were auctioned off.

I scoured Craigslist and looked at a dozen windowless rooms and characterless cookie-cutter instant renovation jobs in Brooklyn. A few places were nice but there were multiple roommates who wouldn’t be happy with someone who brought a cat and an entire family with her. I finally found a two-room suite in Bushwick, which was inexpensive and an ample size, but was oddly adorned with pink tiles. My boyfriend liked it and the two guys who also lived there didn't react with horror when I revealed that I had a kid who might occasionally visit, so I signed an agreement and gave them a sizable portion of the landlord's settlement.

Just a few days before the impending auction, I arrived at the storage company, anxious to find my HDV camera and a hard drive with the only copy of a documentary that I had been working on for the past three years.

New York S Storage & Liffey Van Lines, Inc. is owned by an Irish family. Danny, a stocky older guy with graying red hair, took $650 from me to transfer my things from a “bonded area” to a regular storage unit and then said in his melodious brogue that I needed to give them another $500 for two month’s rent. I only had another $350 on me.

“Not a problem,” he said soothingly, “You can pay what you owe next time. “

He then pushed a piece of paper in front of me, declaring, “Just a formality.”

I filled my name in the blank space and cursorily read the paragraph as I started to sign at the bottom, but then I stopped mid-stroke. The document said:

“I _________of ________hereby release New York S Storage & Liffey Van Lines, Inc. and all their agents and employees from any and all responsibility regarding my property. I have personally inspected my belongings and find them to be in good condition and intact.”

“I can’t sign this – I haven’t seen my belongings yet,” I protested.

“Oh, that’s all right,” Danny said, as he whisked away the offending document, “Merely a formality.”

He looked troubled though, as he called over a younger Irish man, Mark, who took me upstairs past a long hallway of gated and locked storage rooms, each with an oak tag bearing a name in black marker. I noticed that most were Latino and I began to muse about these other people who had also probably been evicted. Unlike me, they most likely weren’t able to get a settlement from their landlords. I wondered how they must feel to lose all their possessions and what might be found in those units – baby clothes and family photographs, stereo systems, plastic-covered couches, angel figurines?

At the end of the hall, Mark stopped at a storage room with an oak tag with a creative variation of my last name, “Linchun.” He pulled up the gate and the first thing that greeted me was a poster from the first play I wrote.

I dug through four boxes and found my computer, but if my video camera and the hard drive were still in my possession, they were buried beneath a billion books. As I attempted to lift a humongous box to the ground, a young Latino came and told me that the building was closing and I had to leave.

The next weekend, I came with my boyfriend and a car. This time, Danny was adamant about the document, “You’ll have to sign if you want to go up again.”

“Okay,” I replied and began to amend the document, crossing out that I had inspected my belongings.

“You can’t do that!” Danny exclaimed, yanking it away from me.

I sputtered a protest and my boyfriend chimed in, saying that some of the things in the storage unit belonged to him, since he lived with me. This gave Danny another reason to prohibit me from going upstairs, since now, he said, it was unclear whose possessions were in the storage unit. I attempted to brush past Danny, but he wouldn’t get out of the way. Mark came running and accused me of attacking an old man. Then he started to get ugly with Matthew, who retreated outside to avoid a brawl. I obstinately refused to go.

“I don’t know what you think you can accomplish,” Danny said.

In answer, I stared at him until he looked uncomfortably away. I spend the next hour patrolling the reception area. After staring at Danny, I stared at the receptionist. Then I looked at the world map on the wall, counted the toy trucks that lined a shelf and read all the signs. I imagined camping out and picketing the place. Danny picked up an Irish Times. I watched him thumb distractedly through it.

“If you don’t leave,” he said, “I’ll call the police.”

“Go ahead,” I shrugged. I made a quick mental calculation and figured that if I did get arrested, I would most likely just be in detention for one day and I could still be at work on Monday.

He hesitated and went back to his paper, but after another few minutes, he reconsidered, thinking that I was just bluffing.

“The police are on the way,” he said menacingly, “You’ll be arrested for trespassing.”

“We’ll see,” I replied. I could see this made him a little nervous but he was still too bullheaded to back down.

I continued to wander back and forth as we waited tensely for the police. After a moment, I began to tell him about the documentary.

“You know, the Taiwanese are like the Northern Irish,” I said, “The film I’m making is about their struggle for independence.”

Danny assiduously ignored me as I told him about the 1947 massacre in Taiwan and the White Terror and the democratization of the island and how the pro-Chinese party had been voted back in and how the country is now in danger of losing all the rights that had been so bitterly won. I began to wax on about how I identified with the Irish independence movement and independence movements all over the world.

“I don’t want your business here,” Danny finally said, “You take your things tomorrow and we’ll reimburse you for the month you paid and you get out.”

“Okay,” I agreed as the police arrived, just in time to witness the deal: No document, no boyfriend, an insured mover, reimbursement and I never come back again.

Of course, it didn't happen that way. The following weekend was St. Patrick's Day and Liffey wasn't open. So when I showed up with an insured moving company as promised, Mark immediately reneged on the agreement, stating that since it was already the end of the month, they didn’t need to reimburse me after all. But I still owed the outstanding balance of $150. With the landlord’s settlement, the money didn’t matter to me so off I went to the ATM. I suppose that must have puzzled them – I hope they choke on dollar bills in hell while being guilted over their Irish heritage. I was relieved when the moving men were finally allowed to load my things into the truck.

I doubt if there’s ever been a study of those evicted, but if there were, I would bet that very few people recover their possessions. If I hadn’t been able to get that settlement from the landlord, I would have had to jettison everything as well. There is something very wrong about a company levying $1,000 from an evicted tenant after already receiving payment from the landlord. And then on top of this, they won’t allow you to even see your belongings until you sign a document releasing them of all responsibility in the eviction. The upshot is those who are evicted are doubly dispossessed, both of their homes and their right to their possessions.

I don’t own anything expensive. I had an adverse reaction to the material values of my working-class immigrant parents, who live and breathe the American Dream, complete with a Cadillac and plasma TV. I love beautiful things but I'm not interested in owning anything – not a house, not a car, not a yacht in the Bahamas.

But being dispossessed does make you think about your relationship to possessions. Six months later, I still haven’t gone through everything and I am constantly remembering yet another missing item. The objects that I am saddest about losing may not be materially valuable, but they are utterly irreplaceable: A set of six hand-made bamboo steamer baskets that my great-aunt made in the 1950s. A 1930s hand-painted photograph of a little girl who had been adopted into my father’s family, cradling a bust of Beethoven like a doll. A quilt made by my boyfriend’s mother from the shirts he wore when he was a little boy. Two fortunes created by a spiritualist for my grandmother in brushed calligraphy on red paper, redolent of a time, place and tradition that no longer exist. I mourn the loss of these items as if they were old friends, recently deceased.

I mourn too my loss of community. I was born in the East Village and I lived in the same apartment for twenty years. I know the history of every block, every shop. I could chart the long-buried canals under the street. Contrary to what others may say, at heart, New York City is not a city of transience. Generations of families live, work, love and die in the same neighborhood, particularly a neighborhood like the East Village, which has a special cultural resonance. I find the transience rather disturbing – how can a community sustain itself when people are forced to move year after year? Floating from place to place, they can never put down stakes, join in neighborhood struggles or even discover what those struggles are.

But newer residents to New York think this is normal. Unaffordable housing and the resulting transience is now considered standard to New York City life. Transience has been commodified as the preferred lifestyle of celebrities and wealthy elites. Marketing jargon on new condominiums shrewdly peddle the idea to gullible college kids and their well-meaning parents: Time well spent. Sophistication of a boutique hotel.

This is probably exactly what developers want: transitory residents who don’t feel an ownership to where they live. I can’t, for example, imagine tenants of the Avalon or Blue Condominium handcuffing themselves to cement blocks to keep Esperanza Garden from being bulldozed. But it’s those very gardens that make the neighborhood desirable in the first place. Without the community standing its ground, defending its gardens and theaters and parks and community centers, the East Village would be a far less remarkable place.

This palpable shift to transience as a preferred lifestyle is insidious and short-sighted. Landlords, real estate developers and public officials who are intent upon decontrolling rent stabilized apartments fail to see that their rush to capitalize on market value in the East Village is eviscerating what is really of value – the unique blend of artists and immigrants, without which the East Village would have none of its substance or allure. This is not a predestined tragic cycle – artists do not inevitably gentrify a neighborhood, only to get the boot after paving the way for real estate developers. If long-term residents were more widely recognized for adding value to the community, there would be greater appreciation and protection of rent stabilized apartments. In order for a neighborhood to remain healthy and alive, its community needs as much protection as its historic buildings.  

Last Hurrah on 11th Street

Her name is Jean Schneider and she has a reputation for being the most lenient judge in the NYC housing courts. But don’t you believe it. The pro-se lawyer and Wassim, the tenant advocate at Good Old Lower East Side, both thought that if I had the full arrears that I would certainly be restored to my apartment. “It’s a slam dunk,” Wassim said. So I mustered another fight and borrowed from people who couldn’t really afford it to try to win back the only home I’ve ever really had.

It was a sunny spring day in 1991 that I saw the sign in the health food store Prana. Someone was looking for a roommate on 11th Street between Avenues B and C for $300 a month. I had just been on that block to see another apartment and had spent a good ten minutes huddled in the meager protection of a burnt-out crack building, while a teenage kid shot off a gun doing wheelies on a pint-sized bike. Drug dealers I was used to, but guns, uh… So far, though, every other place I’d seen was either totally depressing or way over our means, so I took down the sign, found a payphone and called for an appointment.

I had been in court for two hours and I was supposed to be at work in an hour. One of the two babies behind me had suffered a meltdown and had to be taken to the hall. The other one sucked on his thumb and looked dazed. Wassim had fallen into a catatonic state between awake and asleep. The landlord’s lawyer sat two rows ahead of us and I noticed that his gray hair went in a clockwise whorl around his bald spot. The guy he was sitting next to had a bald spot too, which reflected the overhead light. I suddenly realized that this guy was the landlord. And in another split second, I knew that he was there, twiddling his thumbs for two hours, since he was worried about the case.

The apartment was for me and my boyfriend at the time, later the father of my son. We meandered down 11th Street past two gardens. One was full of matted teddy bears on broken chairs, the other was locked and overgrown. No guns, all was well. Another garden was at the end of the block, an enormous one, where a Puerto Rican family grew corn and chickens. We buzzed and were met by Tom McGowan, a small guy with huge eyebrows, who was planning on escaping New York for the greener pastures of San Francisco at the end of the year. Somehow, he took a liking to us, even though on one of my first visits, I blew up the stove and singed his eyebrows. The next week, Tom strapped on his roller blades and we followed him to Avenue A, where we met Felix the landlord and signed a two-year lease for the apartment. It was $570 a month.

The judge finally called us and we went up to the bench, doing an awkward little dance as we got to the gate. The landlord finally opened it to let me by. Ladies first. Judge Schneider shuffled papers as the landlord’s lawyer presented their case.

“Your honor,” the landlord’s lawyer said, “The tenant has been evicted once before and was unable to keep the terms of the stipulation. Now, for her second eviction, we have removed all her possessions so she owes not only the arrears, but also the marshal’s fees, the moving fees and the storage fees.”

“How much is that?” the judge wanted to know.

The lawyer seemed not to be prepared for this question and gave her a few sums that added up to about $5,000.

Then she turned to me and asked, “What do you have to say?”

“I was prepared to pay $2,000 but I can find the money,” I said, surprised. I really had expected to pay $500.

“I think it’s a bit drastic for them to remove all my things so quickly,” I added.

“They did it so you would have a harder time getting back in,” she said, “It was within their rights. And you were evicted before, so I think they have a point.”

“I have the full arrears,” I began, “2008 and 2009 were really tough years for the arts, but I finally have a full-time job so I can pay my rent on time.”

“Well, the case has been dragging on for this long. I don’t think you can really afford the place. You couldn’t even bring me half the arrears when you came to see me last.”

“I did bring half the arrears,” I protested, “I brought $5,000!”

“Well, $5,000 is not quite half of $10,118.”

I was astonished that she would quibble in this way, “I’ve been in the apartment for over 18 years. I have a son, and without the apartment, I don’t know how we can find an affordable place where we can live together.”

“Oh, you’ll find a place,” she said and added, “I think it’s time for you to move on.”

I looked at Wassim, but he seemed as astonished as I was. The landlord’s lawyer began to defend his case, but then realized that there was no need. “The tenant is in a bad cycle of not paying until she is…” he said and trailed off. There was nothing for me to say. I watched the judge write on the stipulation and with every stroke of her pen, my home vanished for good.

Roosters used to crow in the morning when I wearily got into bed at 5AM after working in a bar all night. I peeled off three layers of linoleum myself and pushed around a humongous sanding machine to return the apartment to its wood floors. One summer, I found a kiddie pool and put it on the tar roof, delighting in watching wet kids climb in and out the window like some 1930s documentary come to life. I hung onto the apartment after the building was sold and the old tenants left one by one - the pot dealer next door, Sad Dad across the hall, the Irish guy in Apt 5, I used to know them all. My beautiful white cat Isis Crisis lived her entire life in the apartment and died on my bed. My kid was born and grew up in the apartment, turning from a fat baby who wouldn't let me out of his sight to a surly teen who refused to do chores. I was a teenager myself when I first walked through the door. I never thought my home would be taken away from me, turned into luxury housing for some trust fund kids looking for the East Village that is no longer here. Now I’m no longer here either; now I too am part of the East Village that’s gone.

CALIGULA MAXIMUS - A Review

As you probably know, I started in working in theater as a teenager in the mid-1980s. Might as well have been a century ago, things have changed so much. Anytime I'm with someone else who was around in the 1980s, it's inevitable we fall into old fogey talk, "Remember when....?" As in, "Remember when that fancy bar was a bodega with nothing in it except for a few cans of Goya for decoration?" "Remember when that luxury building was the Gas Station (or the World, or Cuando, or the 5th Street Squat)?" "Remember when you could get a bowl of soup for a buck at Leshko?" Theater people can add to the old fogey list, "Remember when everybody was naked?"

I was put in mind of ye olde nudity at the opening night of CALIGULA MAXIMUS, currently playing until April 10th at La Mama. A line of people snaked out the Annex and as I got through the door, I realized part of the hold-up was Andre DeShields in an eye-popping orange zoot suit, a throng of admirers gazing at him adoringly, everyone else doing the New York thing of looking up around left right, anywhere but directly at The Wiz in the flesh. I did the New York thing too, said my magic words, got tickets, and made my way upstairs, where I was greeted by a stiltwalker and a bodybuilder with a facial tattoo that looked sort of a like a giant bruise. Going in, I suddenly felt transported to the theater I experienced as a teen in the 1980s. A topless hula hoop dancer yammered to audiences, as a girl with a huge blonde 'fro and lots of eye makeup wandered around in a tiny red tutu, and a big African-American guy cajoled the audience to buy peanuts and candy. It was totally carny, wild, Dionysian.

Halloween at Theater for the New City used to be like that. I remember the first Halloween I went to, back when TNC was on 2nd Avenue, I stumble into the Stanley just as a short play DYSLEXIA was starting on the teeniest stage I have ever seen. I am not kidding it was literally like 6 feet by 6 feet. As the ratty red curtain opened, Rome Neal and an actress from the Living Theater named Amber rolled out kathunk kathunk totally naked, flopping around in a vaguely sexual way, looking like elephant seals on that tiny stage. And then as they tumbled off, George Bartenieff tumbled on, playing their baby, who of course was naked. And then more naked people peered out, each teaching the (naked) baby something. And the (naked) baby gets dyslexia. And everybody (naked) squeezed together on this six by six stage and sang a slightly dissonant song about dyslexia ala Kurt Weill. It was amazing. And the nudity bit? Well, after about ten seconds, you stopped noticing entirely. But I do remember thinking, "Vicky, you certainly aren't in Queens anymore."

After about ten minutes of CALIGULA, I thought, "Vicky you certainly aren't in the 1980s anymore." What stands out to me about the whole gestalt of the 1980s is the political urgency that was intrinsic to the time - it was the last hurrah of 1960s people power - with the struggle for nuclear disarmament, housing rights, Tompkins Square Park, Tienanmen Square, Haiti, the end of Apartheid, the fall of the Berlin Wall.

CALIGULA begins with the promise of great revelations - fleshly and otherwise - and then exhausts the audience with an hour and a half of titillation and no climax. The Roman Emperor (Ryan Knowles) first appears to the whacka-whacka of 1970s soul on a giant golden cock that spews confetti, rhetorically asking why his acts of perversity are continually invoked in literature, theater and film. Director Alfred Preisser and writer Randy Weiner never get beneath the surface to really answer this question, basically averring that people like Caligula because people like sick shit. So we witness Caligula rip out his unborn baby from his sister's womb (played by the lovely aerialist Anya Sapozhnikova). We watch Caligula egg on four women to beat up various barbarian men and cut off their balls. We watch Caligula wrestle with Jesus. By this time, the hyped-up energy was getting tiresome and I was looking for some kind of aha moment, some denouement, some transformation, a climax please, all the frolicking was wearing me out. But Jesus made some sappy Biblical remarks and got kicked off the stage like the barbarians (with balls intact, however). And then Caligula decides there should be a Church of Caligula. The congregation gets the audience to join in a Gospel song and everyone (including Andre DeShields) ends up killing Caligula.

Preisser certainly has a way with choreography and the best thing in CALIGULA is the energetic dancing. It did seem odd to me that, though ostensibly set in Rome, with a very Caucasian Caligula, all the music and dance in this production is African-American. Don't get me wrong, I love soul, gospel and funk, and I'm aware that Preisser is fresh from a 10-year stint as Artistic Director of the Classical Theater of Harlem, but the ethnic specificity and the all-out fun of the music seems rather misplaced for this particular piece.

And then after all that dancing, all that nudity, and all that excess violence, the whole play nosedives into Caligula pondering why people didn't love him. Various performers in the ensemble respond with eye-rollingly limp insights like, "Because you had slaves!" or, "You can't force everyone to love you. That just makes people hate you."

Like the song says, is this all there is my friend? I am reminded of the 2004 blackout when I took to the streets with my friend Matthew, expecting a carnival like the one that hit New York during the blackout of the 1970s. Everyone was outside, bonfires were lit in trash cans in Tompkins Square, teenagers cavorting around. But when policemen came around with the command to put out the fires, the kids all in unison whined, "Not now! Not now!" Matt and I laughed at how juvenile they sounded, "Not now, Dad, we're having such a good time!" Whereas the retort twenty years ago was, "Pigs outta the park! Who's streets? OUR streets!"

Like those kids in 2004, CALIGULA fails to grapple with the deeper political implications that are right there in front of them. Making much of the spectacle of Rome, the play never dives into the real question of Caligula's perversity, which is really the perversity of absolute power. Yes, the mob rules in the end but the political insight that might come from this is completely lost with Caligula instead bemoaning that no one loved him. Failing to go any deeper than this, CALIGULA is only mildly titillating, revealing nothing more than a few bare breasts.

Candles for James

James Purdy's birthday was July 17th. He was never one to make a fuss and there was never any kind of dinner or party to celebrate (or bemoan) the passage of another year. I would call him or at least send him a postcard from wherever I happened to be in July.

"Vicky!" he'd say when I called in a tone that was both surprised and pleased.

We never spoke for very long - James always got a little impatient with the telephone after a few minutes - but before he hung up he always said, "I love you!"

"Love you too, James!" I would reply.

Now that he's gone, there's no postcard to write or phone call to make. But it didn't seem right to not be in touch somehow. So a dozen of us who cared for James and worked with him gathered in front of his Brooklyn Heights dream palace at dusk this past Friday. We lit candles and it seemed natural to stand in a circle facing his front door. Some of us read passages from THE HOUSE OF THE SOLITARY MAGGOT and EUSTACE CHISHOLM AND THE WORKS and fragments of writing that had been personally bestowed. John recited The Running Sun, which seemed strangely appropriate:

We who are under the ground
Indians and voyagers and wilderness men
Still breathe the bloom of plants in the air
And dream of the running sun.

Then we took one last look at the corner window where James used to live and one by one blew out our candles.

The Paper Angels experience

So it's over and as usual, I'm left with a huge mountain of bills to pay. I always say that theater artists are secret masochists.

I was on line at HSBC this afternoon with the box office cash, behind an old man playing with the dentures in his mouth and an old lady consulting her savings account book (she had $829 and deposited $300 the previous week). The line was LONG. I got the distinct feeling that 80% of the crowd had never mastered ATM machines. With the check coming from Theatermania and some of my paycheck this week, I'll have just enough to cover everyone's fees. Except mine of course.

But the production went well despite six rehearsals turning into two because of double-booking in the space, and me losing my voice, and the lead musician turning out to be a nasty snooty bitch... We had packed houses and very good responses and the actors were generally great to hang out with. Wish that I hadn't gotten sick so I could have sent invitations to more foundations. I think though that this isn't the end of PAPER ANGELS... full-production this fall? Hooray for masochistic activities!

Our hot promotional pictures above were taken by Damian Wampler. Jan Lee at Sinotique is an amazing guy for letting us use his space and borrow props: