From a conversation with Raul, a resident of Manhattan, included in The Edge Becomes the Center, an oral history of gentrification in New York City, by D. W. Gibson, out in May from Overlook Press.

It was a good neighborhood, the East Village. It was bugged out, rich people, poor people, everybody on top of each other. I was like eight, seven, and I had this friend, his name was Richard, black kid — we’d go all the way to the West Side Highway, when the West Side Highway was still up high, and I used to look at the graffiti…