First published at http://www.xiffi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=179:devilstown-is-on-fire&catid=415:new-york&Itemid=76 )
by Andrew Arnett
I grew up in Devilstown and I’ve lived all over the damn place. And I’ve just moved again. This weekend. It was one of those emergency moves, a falling out with the girlfriend. These situations tend to bring out the worst in people, and so I fled the premises, under a veritable hail of hell fire. But I feel this was ultimately for the best, for all concerned, and I’m sure the neighbors would concur on this, having had more than their share of overheard skirmishes. But the battle of the sexes will never cease and this is ultimately just one more chapter in that sordid saga. I have to be thankful really for the luck I had in finding a place so soon. In a town like Devilstown, any enclosed space surrounded by four secure walls is premium real estate, especially in the borough of Manhattan. Even if it is Harlem, on the upper west side, it is to be coveted. And covet it I do. Like a snail with its shell. Sure, it is a far cry from Murray Hill, just south of the United Nations, in midtown Manhattan. But it certainly has its charms. There is a liveliness that is undisputable. Salsa music can be heard blaring out in the streets at all odd hours. Gangs of kids roving the city blocks whooping and hollering just for the joy of it. I am currently ensconced on the second floor of a prewar five story walk up, looking out of my window at the traffic rolling by on Amsterdam Avenue. Eighteen wheelers and city buses vie with city cabs for dominance of the road. It is my own personal Speed Racer movie, on tap at the mere flip of the Venetian blinds. I can’t get over the sheer electricity of the place. It is hard to ignore it. Now, sirens are blaring. Lots of sirens. Is this typical? It is certainly exhilarating. That’s for sure. There’s a smell that comes in with the breeze. It is an acrid smell, like the scent of fireworks on the Fourth of July. There is something burning. Perhaps it is my imagination, ruminating over the vestiges of another love affair gone up in smoke. But no, this is very distinct, and definitely real. I crank my head out the window and peer down the street, in the direction those fire trucks were heading. Something big is going on just a few blocks away, my keen journalistic instincts can sense it. Besides, the flashing lights are all parked right there.
Well, I was headed down that way anyway. It was time for dinner, and I was famished. I saw one of those Spanish style places when coming in from the subway, a place where the chicken carcasses spin on rotating spits right there in the window, dripping grease. It was enough to convince me that this was a place worthy of investigation, even if I had made a resolution towards vegetarianism. Either way I had better get going, grab my camera while I was at it for I was a journalist, and Devilstown was my beat, after all. And those fine people down at Xiffi.com, they were expecting something. They hadn’t heard nary a chicken scratch from me in the past two weeks. As far as they were concerned, I had fallen off the face of the earth. How could they know I was at the center of the cyclone, even if it was a cyclone of my own undoing. The good thing about covering a story like Devilstown though, is that it is like fishing with dynamite. It’s almost unfair how easy it is to find a newsworthy story, they literally jump into your window.
When I hit the streets, the rain was coming down in sheets. Two blocks away, on Amsterdam Ave., the fire trucks were lined up. I counted over twenty of them in all. Firemen huddled in groups on the sidelines with oxygen masks and pick axes waited while their brethren were battling the flames at the center of the vortex. I moved through the masses of spectators to get a closer look. The fire was raging on the fourth and fifth floor of a five story building on 144th street. The water hoses were going and two men on an extended truck ladder were face to face with the flames. Later, on radio station 1010 WINS, it was reported that this was a four alarm fire, with nine people injured and forty families displaced from their homes.
After that I headed over to the restaurant where the greasy chicken awaited me. Television news vans with their three story tall satellite poles lined the sidewalk. I walked by a Fox journalist doing a standup right in front of the eatery. I’m not sure what her name was, but she certainly was a FOX. I snapped a picture of that, got my food, and came back home to file this report.
end.
I grew up in Devilstown and I’ve lived all over the damn place. And I’ve just moved again. This weekend. It was one of those emergency moves, a falling out with the girlfriend. These situations tend to bring out the worst in people, and so I fled the premises, under a veritable hail of hell fire. But I feel this was ultimately for the best, for all concerned, and I’m sure the neighbors would concur on this, having had more than their share of overheard skirmishes. But the battle of the sexes will never cease and this is ultimately just one more chapter in that sordid saga. I have to be thankful really for the luck I had in finding a place so soon. In a town like Devilstown, any enclosed space surrounded by four secure walls is premium real estate, especially in the borough of Manhattan. Even if it is Harlem, on the upper west side, it is to be coveted. And covet it I do. Like a snail with its shell. Sure, it is a far cry from Murray Hill, just south of the United Nations, in midtown Manhattan. But it certainly has its charms. There is a liveliness that is undisputable. Salsa music can be heard blaring out in the streets at all odd hours. Gangs of kids roving the city blocks whooping and hollering just for the joy of it. I am currently ensconced on the second floor of a prewar five story walk up, looking out of my window at the traffic rolling by on Amsterdam Avenue. Eighteen wheelers and city buses vie with city cabs for dominance of the road. It is my own personal Speed Racer movie, on tap at the mere flip of the Venetian blinds. I can’t get over the sheer electricity of the place. It is hard to ignore it. Now, sirens are blaring. Lots of sirens. Is this typical? It is certainly exhilarating. That’s for sure. There’s a smell that comes in with the breeze. It is an acrid smell, like the scent of fireworks on the Fourth of July. There is something burning. Perhaps it is my imagination, ruminating over the vestiges of another love affair gone up in smoke. But no, this is very distinct, and definitely real. I crank my head out the window and peer down the street, in the direction those fire trucks were heading. Something big is going on just a few blocks away, my keen journalistic instincts can sense it. Besides, the flashing lights are all parked right there.
Well, I was headed down that way anyway. It was time for dinner, and I was famished. I saw one of those Spanish style places when coming in from the subway, a place where the chicken carcasses spin on rotating spits right there in the window, dripping grease. It was enough to convince me that this was a place worthy of investigation, even if I had made a resolution towards vegetarianism. Either way I had better get going, grab my camera while I was at it for I was a journalist, and Devilstown was my beat, after all. And those fine people down at Xiffi.com, they were expecting something. They hadn’t heard nary a chicken scratch from me in the past two weeks. As far as they were concerned, I had fallen off the face of the earth. How could they know I was at the center of the cyclone, even if it was a cyclone of my own undoing. The good thing about covering a story like Devilstown though, is that it is like fishing with dynamite. It’s almost unfair how easy it is to find a newsworthy story, they literally jump into your window.
When I hit the streets, the rain was coming down in sheets. Two blocks away, on Amsterdam Ave., the fire trucks were lined up. I counted over twenty of them in all. Firemen huddled in groups on the sidelines with oxygen masks and pick axes waited while their brethren were battling the flames at the center of the vortex. I moved through the masses of spectators to get a closer look. The fire was raging on the fourth and fifth floor of a five story building on 144th street. The water hoses were going and two men on an extended truck ladder were face to face with the flames. Later, on radio station 1010 WINS, it was reported that this was a four alarm fire, with nine people injured and forty families displaced from their homes.
After that I headed over to the restaurant where the greasy chicken awaited me. Television news vans with their three story tall satellite poles lined the sidewalk. I walked by a Fox journalist doing a standup right in front of the eatery. I’m not sure what her name was, but she certainly was a FOX. I snapped a picture of that, got my food, and came back home to file this report.
end.
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