Free Floating City by Sudhir Venkatesh Page B

coexisted with big Puerto Rican families and urban hipsters. Cheap hotels and adult video parlors sat next to gleaming new condos andrenovated brownstones. In this sense, Hell’s Kitchen had become a sort of postmodern neighborhood, stuck between genres—just like the world music my more artsy academic colleagues admired.
    Once again, all this would have been a rare sight in Chicago. Gentrification and urban development took place there, to be sure. Indeed, the national program of “urban renewal” was first developed in Chicago in an effort to reclaim seedy areas. But Chicago mayors typically sent bulldozers into down-and-out neighborhoods and then resold the land for private development—sports stadiums, universities, highways. It was a rapid-fire form of social bleaching. Gentrification in New York was like an IV drip. As old buildings came down, property changed hands, creating new neighborhoods in a more organic way. As a result, transitional communities cropped up where ethnics and social classes mixed with one another, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes less so. This was now happening in Chelsea, where the number of artists and gay families was growing every day. It was happening all over Brooklyn, where hipsters were tearing down the aluminum siding put up by working-class Poles and Italians and reinventing the neighborhoods for a new century. I wondered how the original residents adapted when they discovered that their borders were so permeable.
    Shine pulled up in front of a porn shop. The plastic sign read “Ninth Avenue Family Video.” A woman waved at us through the store window.
    â€œAngela,” Shine said. “She’s cool. You’ll like her.”
    We walked in and Angela gave Shine a big hug. She started speaking in Spanish, joking with Shine that his hair was turning gray. Still caught in her embrace, Shine reached over the counter to shake the clerk’s hand. “Jun, my brother, what’s happening?”
    Jun was a small, gentle-looking South Asian man in a blue plaid shirt. He had wispy black hair that scraggled about his head as if it was lost. “Not much, not much,” he said.
    Shine introduced me. I reached my hand across the counter.
    â€œManjun,” he responded, grasping my hand in both of his. “It is my honor to meet you.”
    Angela took my hand next, her eyes so soft and comforting she could have been taking in a long-lost relative. I immediately felt relaxed.
    But Shine was already standing near the doorway to the back room. “Come on back here for a minute, Angela,” he said.
    She gave me another melting smile and turned away.
    â€œJun, come too,” Shine said. “I need to talk with both of you. Sudhir, just watch the cash register for a few minutes.”
    â€œWhat if people want something?”
    â€œJust take their money,” Shine said.
    I stepped behind the counter, feeling nervous and ridiculous. I had no idea how to open up the register.
    The floor behind the counter was raised so the clerks could see better down the aisles—four aisles, eight walls, probably a thousand videotapes and DVDs on each wall. I’d never been surrounded by so much pornography. And I had no idea what I was doing here. Who was this Indian clerk and why was he in business with this amiable Latina woman? What did they have to do with Shine? What did they have to do with me?
    â€œYo—you guys got
Prison Girls Five
?”
    A heavyset Latino man was calling up from aisle two, not even bothering to cross to the counter.
    â€œUm, let me check,” I said.
    I could see Shine speaking with Angela and Manjun in the far corner. They were all nodding their heads and interrupting one another, but I could only catch snatches of the conversation. Judging by the hand gestures, they were upset about something and feeling overwhelmed by life. Whatever it was, they seemed to be taking forever.
    â€œI got to see those