Street Fair

Orchard Street's windows have enticed Manhattan strivers for decades, from the days when Jewish immigrants sold dry goods to today, when fashion designers sell $150 jeans. My grandmother recalled pausing outside an Orchard Street window in 1915, at age six, to admire a charlotte russe in a bakery. She never expected to taste it, but her brother secretly bought her one the next day. Into her nineties, after diabetes barred sucrose from her diet, she held onto the surprise of the rich strawberry cream swirl.Today, I can pick from a slate of sweet shops between that spot and my apartment ten blocks away: There's BabyCakes and Happy Happy Happy and the Sunshine Factory Cafe and Sugar Sweet Sunshine, and soon there'll be the Sugar Cafe. But my fellow arrivistes no longer buy and sell surprises. These Lower East Side storefronts now display a predictable mix of lattes, body washes, and other staples of the urban elite. But, at a recent Orchard Street event, I glimpsed how surprise could return. Several one-story buildings vanished from Orchard Street this fall to make way for a glassy tower with condos and a hotel. Construction scaffolding drove foot traffic from the surviving shops. So, one bright Sunday, the Lower East Side Business Improvement District (BID), a merchants' and landlords' association, invited local artists to paint the scaffolding. Painters adorned its wood planks with icons (the Katz's Deli sign) and images (a seal tipping a sewing machine on its nose) evocative of the area's history. Dara Lehon of the BID called this "LES Paint Out" the artists' chance to bridge the neighborhood's heritage and its future. But some neighbors branded it a cover- up. That charge comes from Rebecca Moore, a musician who has lived on the corner since 1985. Moore decries the BID's insistence on preapproving the artists' work. "It looked like a movie poster," she says of the murals. And she questions any celebration of the condo-hotel--whose design, she says, features a gratuitous deck from which residents will peer over (and maybe even flick cigarette ashes on) nearby tenements. Moore, 37, cherished the Lower East Side when it offered only one latte shop and a few galleries. She says her building's multilingual tenants forged ties over the years, learning one another's traditions and watching one another's backs. But, as liquor licenses and rents burgeoned, most of Moore's neighbors moved out. These days, her LudlowOrchard Community Organization resists a barrage of bars. She says impromptu contact with her new neighbors is largely limited to leaning out her sixth-floor window after 3 a.m. and shushing drunks. Moore invokes a grotesque vision of Manhattan: a juvenile city of homogenous chichi towers and nightlife corridors. "Every postcard about New York City was always about the mixing of people," says Moore. "I fear for New York now." But the Paint Out struck a modest blow against this nightmare. The BID could have just dished out discount cards for the boutiques. Instead, it tried to draw swells to interact with locals. If Moore did the same, she might be surprised. For instance, I have a financial-exec friend whose tailored suits and precise bangs suggest he'd puff a cigar on a parapet. But he grew up on a farm in India and volunteered his time to redesign a downtown Mexican restaurant after September 11. Its owners named their "hangover cure" chilaquiles after him and helped him start a side business designing lamps. Notably, my friend likes looking in the window of an art gallery on his street. Like my grandmother, he treasures the sidewalk. Another friend's street hockey league convenes on blacktops along the East River. One player is a movie star. Another is a public housing resident who discovered hockey when he walked up to the yuppies in ironic t-shirts playing below his building. League founders recently attended his child's christening. City policies, like rent-stabilization and new zoning laws that earmark high- rise units for lower-income families, preserve economic diversity. But it takes chance encounters to bring that diversity to life. Unfortunately, in their efforts to woo the rich, cities too often downplay such encounters. From Orchard Street to prefab "walkable" L.A. megablocks, mayors champion projects that disrupt the habits of city life. In response, earlier gentrifiers like Moore try to freeze demographics by opposing certain types of buildings. They would do better to focus on the way in which the street is used. In New York, neighborhood institutions can press developers to provide parkland or affordable apartments. They can also get a little public money for events and outreach. Moore knows this: She's seeking to mitigate the hotel's adverse effects via block associations and the city-sponsored community board. But she seems to see dialogue as a dead end. "I doubt I'll ever pass the developer on the street," she says. Maybe not. But maybe she already has, and neither deigned to talk to the other. What drew Moore to the neighborhood keeps me hopeful about it: exposure. My 500-foot walk to the supermarket bathes me in Dominican reggaeton, Fujianese slang, Orthodox Jewish ritual, and hipster fashion. But just absorbing street sensations is as noble as scarfing a cupcake. Artists and civic groups can make the street an enlightening zone. Artist Daniel Greenfeld caught a nice surprise at the Paint Out: a 30-minute assist from a "very polite" eight-year-old named Atulya. "I paint in a messy way and expected he would just grab a brush," says Greenfeld. "But he painted very well." Culture lacks the force of law, but it can train condo buyers to know the value of street life beyond the scaffolds. Blocking the wealthy from vibrant neighborhoods isn't an option. It would deprive those places of some amazing people, anyway. Opening windows onto the street, however, can bring surprises that ripen over time.

By alec appelbaum; Alec Appelbaum is a writer in New York City.