Downtown Diary: Do you miss New York?

This week, I’m going to pull us back into our discussion on arts funding, the creative class, and the Downtown Plan with an interview. New-Urbanist urban planners tend to quote Jane Jacobs when they talk about their design ideal, and use her writings to justify their vision. “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” describes the East Village of the 50s and 60s as a place teeming with life, a strong community center, and a success for organic growth in the face of big development. I interviewed Bonnie Lyons (soon to be Bonnie Lyons-Bowering) about the New York she grew up in that so inspired Jacobs' urban planning Bible. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Bonnie was an El Paso transplant for 20 years, and recently moved to Toronto to marry her long-distance love of two years. During the time in which she lived here, she was an Advertising Design teacher at the EPISD Center for Career and Technology Education. The fruits of her classroom include many of our local art directors, a host of screen printers, fine artists, graphic designers, successful ad directors, and a celebrity: Cedric from At The Drive-In. Bonnie is my mentor, friend, and -- since the passing of my mom -- my surrogate mother, and I’m very proud to present her perspectives to you today.

We conducted this interview via email, so I’ll give most of the credit for this column to Bonnie for her eloquent, pre-written answers.

***

“I was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1958… Eisenhower was still president and the Dodgers had just left Ebbets Field, much to the dismay of my daddy. I suppose his first-born child Bonnie Lee, who he immediately nicknamed Bonzo, was a great consolation, as we are still best friends even today. When I was born, we were living on West 7th Street and Kings Highway, a short walk from my grandparents, great aunts and uncles and great grandparents who all lived on West 1st Street, with a public school on one corner and our local temple on the other. When I was three and the birth of my sister was eminent, we moved all the way to East 22nd Street and Avenue P and we actually had to drive to visit my relatives … quite a shocker to the schtetl (small town) mentality of the old folks.

“I grew up in a neighborhood of mostly Jews and Italians. Each child was everyone’s child and we were safe and protected and looked after; sometimes too much, as every parent knew exactly what each child was up to. My two sisters and I played in the streets and back yards of our block with friends and we were welcome in any neighbors’ home. I remember lots of little pizza parlors, bagel and appetizer shops, butcher shops, bakeries, clothing stores, beauty shops that smelled of perm chemicals and nail polish and, of course, real candy stores where ice cream cones, malted milk shakes and egg creams were consumed at the counter. The sounds I remember most was the sound of the milkman leaving glass bottles of milk in our milk box early in the morning, the jingling bell of a real tinker who made his rounds in a horse drawn cart and the rumble of the elevated train lines, which lulled me to sleep at night.

“What were not typical, however, were my early childhood experiences with the folk music scene and the anti-Vietnam War movement. My parents were young and college educated and had musical tastes beyond the boundaries of the neighborhood. They were folkies and actually went to the Newport Folk Festivals and better yet, to places like Gerde's Folk City and The Village Gate in Manhattan. As a very young child, I got to see the likes of Bob Dylan (who they’d buy drinks for, as he was a nice, but poor Jewish boy trying to break into the music scene), Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel when they were still Tom and Jerry, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. My parents were good friends with Brother John Sellers, a folk and blues singer who went on to work with the Alvin Ailey dance company. Brother John was a tall black man with piercing eyes who I adored, as he and I had a game where he’d left me up high to touch the ceiling and we’d laugh with glee. When Brother John would come over for dinner, the sound of live music would fill our home.

“I also remember, on a more serious note, the grownups discussing the war in Vietnam and it’s ramifications in our neighborhood. The grownups were always talking about whose son was drafted or how some one else’s son was able to get out of it. I remember my parents saying that they were grateful that they only had daughters or they’d move us to Canada when we were older. (How ironic, as I live in Toronto now, an immigrant for the sake of love, not war). Our good friend Terry went to war and came back in a wheel chair, which saddened us all so deeply and made the tragedy of war real for us basically over-protected kids.

“My neighborhood was also the home, or at least a solid base, for many very vocal and influential politicians. I went to school with a boy, whose brother Chucky Schumer (Yes, N.Y. Sen. Charles Schumer) would tease us little kids and always had a smart answer for everything. Old Chucky hasn’t changed much, he still has the same intonations and body language he had as a teenager, but now has a little less hair. I remember seeing the likes of Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm and Herbert Humphrey come to local political rallies in our neighborhood and that it was deeply ingrained in us kids that it was a shandeh (a disgrace) to miss an election or throw away your vote … a belief that I still hold true.

“I was educated in the New York City public school system and went to PS 197, JHS (middle school) 234. Instead of going to my local high school, I went to the High School of Art and Design in NYC. Going to a specialty magnet school for art enabled me to get professional “vocational” training in graphic design and to meet a diverse population of other art students, several of whom I’m friends with even now. I was also able to hang out in and experience the world beyond my insulated Brooklyn neighborhood. My training and education at A&D resulted in my getting a scholarship to Pratt University, a private art college in Fort Green, Brooklyn, where I majored in Communication Design.

“Life in Fort Green was rough, as downtown Flatbush Avenue was on one side of us and the grim ghetto of Bed-Stuy was on the other. It was sometimes dangerous for a young lady to walk alone, especially at night, but I hung out and partied with a lot of local neighborhood kids and my apartment was under the protection of the local “Italian-American Social Club.” I came and went about the local neighborhoods, only getting mugged twice the entire time I was going to college.

“My college years ushered in the beginning of the Punk scene, and I was enthralled with the energy of the music and the lifestyle that went with the music. Having started out as a folk kid and then being a hippie kid who survived the disco era, I embraced the Punk scene. In 1977-78 I lived in the East Village in NYC, on 13th Street and 2nd Ave., with my boyfriend and my tribe mates, all of them still my friends today. This era in my life was also the start of my Magical training and started me on the Pagan path that I presently walk. Five of us paid $200 a month ($40 each!) for a five-room railroad flat apartment on the first floor, with steel gates across the front window and many locks on the front door. Most of the time we had enough food, hot water and heat to share with fellow musicians, magicians, artists and other folks in the scene. I didn’t hang as much as the “Bridge and Tunnel” crowd at CBGBs, as we always had punk bands and other musicians living and rehearsing in our midst and we didn’t have to pay for live music.

“We went to the Waverly Movie Theater every week to participate in the Rocky Horror Picture Show scene and we played lots of pinball and pre-Pac Man video games at the Night Owl, a wonderful arcade/headshop on West 4th Street. I spent a lot of time in Washington Square Park and even slept there on occasion, when it was too, um, difficult to walk home. A lot of that time is now a blur to me, but I managed to do my schoolwork and maintain my scholarship in spite of the craziness. My last years of college were a bit more sedate, as I moved back to Fort Greene and graduated from Pratt in 1980.

“My ex and I moved to El Paso in 1987. He was a country kid and after trying to stay sane in the big city, he wanted a calmer existence. I was an art director for a private company, but I was ready to get away from a loving, but smothering family and have some new adventures. We visited friends in many places around the country, but decided on El Paso when we came to visit. We feel in love with the beautiful mountains, the huge blue sky, starry nights and the sunny, dry weather. El Paso was smaller and less crowded in those times and the people were friendly and laid back.

“I worked for a while at a small design studio and then at The Art Center, a great art supply store. I decided to go back to school to get a second degree in education, as the design business and other jobs weren’t paying enough. My inspiration was to teach art at El Paso Technical Center, which was in the neighborhood. Imagine my surprise when I applied for extra work as a substitute teacher and was told there was an opening for an Advertising Design teacher at Tech, which I could start right away with my vocational education and college background and my experience in the graphics field.

“That first year of teaching was the hardest job I ever had, but this tough New Yorker wasn’t going to let a bunch of teenaged brats run her off. After finishing teaching certification I decided to go all the way and get my Masters in Career and Technology Education from Texas A&M, so I had the dubious honor of being a Yankee and an Aggie in El Paso. When I left El Paso after this last school year, I had spent 20 years as an Advertising Design teacher at what is now The Center for Career and Technology Education.

“My favorite thing about El Paso, besides the great weather and food, is the friendly nature of the people. I enjoyed the respect that the Mexican traditions bestowed upon teachers and I enjoyed being included as a member of the families of many of my students. I also was able to see many of my students go on to higher education and become happy and successful in the design field, both in and away from El Paso. My least favorite aspect of El Paso is the conservative nature of this big city with a small town attitude. What worries me about the future of El Paso is the lack of more opportunity and higher pay that would keep more talent in El Paso, instead of losing so many of our bright and talented kids to other cities that can offer them more. I’m also worried about the nature of the planned development in Downtown El Paso, the more conservative vision of what 'the powers that be' think El Paso should represent.

“A case in point is my beloved hometown of New York. While many things have improved there, the quirky, creative and unpredictable nature of many neighborhoods has been lost to gentrification. A while back, many years before the Towers fell and changed New York even more completely, I was visiting my family and friends and decided to visit the old East Village street where I spent some my college years. I was horrified to see the new version of my street as unrecognizable. Shiny white facades had masked the old stone buildings and fake streetlights adorned the sidewalks.

“Uniformed doormen stood in front of the doors of the old tenements and the street lacked all the character it once had. I knew that there was no way I could afford the rent and felt like I had dreamed the whole experience of living there. There was no evidence of the old mix of people who once lived there, including a 19-year-old Punk Pagan who had once walked those streets with a sketchpad and a T-Square for self-defense.

“These days I’m reliving the dream in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada; attending college as a digital media art major and sharing a factory loft apartment with wood floors, brick walls and 14 foot ceilings with my new husband, who is a musician. Still, I see new condos going up all around us in thriving artsy, exciting neighborhoods. Even here, in a few short years, this building will become one of those shiny new condos as well. The only thing that is constant is change, and I’m going to keep my happy memories and see what the new changes bring in a new country. Hopefully the planners here have learned from the mistakes of our southern neighbors and are able to strike a happy balance of old and new.”