New York Tenement Museum- Irish Outsiders

The Tenement Museum, Orchard St, New York

A few years ago, I moved into a brand new condo on a sweltering August 1st. When I arrived with all my stuff, my landlord told me that the A/C wouldn't be ready for another month. Surprise! I lost my mind. You would think I was being told I'd be without running water for a month. I naturally started crying. That night, I combed the city in search of cheap fans. I yelled at my landlord to knock some money off my rent. It was a tiny condo with not too many opening windows, and that place was humid bordering on fetid for the month. It was a nightmare. Well, compared to my usual environment of perfectly comfortable. In retrospect, I am aware that I did overreact. Yes, I was sweatier than I cared to be for the hottest month of the year, but come on. This was a prime example of what the nauseating but sort-of-right-on hashtag First World Problems describes.

I visited the Tenement Museum in New York this winter- it was the most affecting museum visit I have ever made. We did the Irish Outsiders tour, and by the end, I was choking back tears. The tour made it easy to imagine life for the people who lived in the squalid building- there was very little comfort to be had.

The guides did a great job setting the scene; this particular tenement was mostly German immigrants, but an Irish family moved in (hence outsiders,) because this horrible place was a step up from Five Points. We learned about the discrimination the Irish faced when they came to America... funny how that seems to be a never-ending theme for whichever group is new.

The part of the tour that had me crying was when we learned the fates of the ancestors of this particular family. They are still living in the area. Imagine the gift of being able to see so much of what your forebears went through to ensure you had a better life!

In this tenement, temperature, smell, workload, food- things I rarely if ever worry about- what passed for "good enough" was whatever they could get. I think of those tenement dwellers, or the first settlers in Canada, when I'm getting ready to complain about needing a cardigan in the office because the A/C is blasting. I know two things for sure- I am lucky to have the comfort I do, and good God, I would have made an awful pioneer.

Comments

Writing at Night

This is how I do it. My brain turns on at the weirdest times. I first saw a pen like this when I was in my 20s, in a TV report about a movie reviewer, who used one to take his notes in a dark theatre. I searched everywhere, and finally found one. Before I had it, I tried a few other tactics to help me save for posterity the incredibly deep, meaningful thoughts I felt I was having at night. I tried just writing with a pencil in the dark, but that didn't work out too well. My writing, on a good day, looks like someone suffering from the DTs sprayed Silly String on paper during an earthquake. What I mean to say is, it's really, really bad. So, the pencil thing was a bust. Next, I bought a mini-tape recorder, but my middle-of-the-night mumbling was almost worse than my writing. It seemed like my Shakespearean musings would be lost to humanity. How tragic! The pen. Then, I got my flashlight pen. It was a revela...

New Old York

"You'll love Toronto, Liz. It's just like New York, but without all the stuff!" - Gavin Volure, as played by Steve Martin, 30 Rock I live in Toronto, but I love New York. I've loved it from my first visit as a teenager , when I stayed at the Edison, and Times Square was still seedy and gross, to my most recent visit a few months ago, when I stayed at the Sofitel, and ate at Balthazar and Babbo again. I learned to love New York from movies as old as The Thin Man, to The Godfather and When Harry Met Sally. The joke is how many New York movies were actually shot in Toronto. Spring St on Adelaide St Yes, this has been going on for decades. Whenever our dollar is in the toilet, the American productions ramp up. Legend has it that set designers used to have to make fake garbage to litter our streets, since Toronto was so tidy that it didn't look authentic. Thanks to Rudy and Bloomberg cleaning up New York, and Rob Ford turning To...

Again with the Rain

Summer storm season is here. By that, I mean it's wherever I am. Apparently, I brought it back from New York with me. Last Wednesday, I left the office with my Wayfarers on, and walked home in bright sunshine, thinking to myself, what are those morons on the Weather Network talking about? It's not going to rain! 10 minutes after I got in the door (for once, I was lucky), sheets of water started falling from the sky. Seriously. An hour later, the lobby ceiling in the other condo in this generally lovely complex, which my friends call Cabrini Green , because the elevators break so often, partially collapsed when a storm drain broke. This left both buildings with no hot water Thursday morning. Great. I discovered this at 7 AM by sticking my leg under running water I assumed to be hot. The shriek I let out woke me, and probably a few neighbours, up. There was no way I was taking an ice cold shower, so I j...

Blue Velvet Sectional

Search This Blog