I’m Not a Cat Lady

Sonia Sotomayor is a Lahd-TIIIIIIIIna!

Go ahead a call me petty, but this has been catching my ear a lot lately. As I've been listening to news updates on NPR over the last couple of days, Sonia Sotomayor's nomination as associate justice of the Supreme Court has been continually mentioned. She is, as we all know by now, the first Latina to ever win the post. And listening to the announcements, I am once again struck by the way newsreaders pronounce the word Latina. Doesn't matter if they're of actual Latin-American heritage themselves or direct descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims—they all seem to go out of their way to infuse the word with every ounce of Latin flair they can muster, pronouncing it: Lahd-dtiiiiiiinah!

It's one thing to honor a person's preferred pronunciation of their family name—in this case, Soto-mai-yohr—but is it necessary to put on such a performance when merely stating an ethnonym? Take Lakshmi Singh. Have you ever heard her introducing her weekly show? "From National Public Radio, it's Lahd-dtiiiiiiino USA!" Up to "it's," she sounds like any standard American-accented NPR-style newsreader. And then, just like that, she's Charo. She should go the whole hog and say "Lahd-dtiiiiiiino Oo-ess-ah!"

Okay, so her mother is Puerto Rican. (And with a name like Lakshmi Singh, who knew?) But I've heard newsreaders and announcers who don't have a drop of Hispanic blood in their veins make a meal out of Latino and Latina. Or the names of Latinos and Latinas. Like Gasia Mickaelian, on KTVU Channel 2. In the promo for her News at 5, the voiceover guy practically bursts an artery when he says her name: "Gaaaaaa-theeya Meee-kaiii-YAAAAYAAY-yian!" Why is that?

I don't hear people do this for names of people in other ethnic groups. Nobody suddenly lapses into Chinese tonal inflections when reporting about Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Perhaps it's in deference to the fact that the Hispanic population is the fastest-growing sector in the country right now. Who knows: One of these days Spanish will be the majority language, so it's probably a good idea to start brushing up. Si?

Chelsea Neighborhood Watch

 

Sometime late last year I started noticing that every time I left my house, I got a new shock. Yet another establishment that had been in my neighborhood since way before I moved here nearly a decade ago--restaurant, bodega, stationers, florist--was gone. Establishments come and go in neighborhoods, that's New York, but this was something else. Places started disappearing in entire blocks, domino-like, beginning on one corner and sweeping all the way along to the next.

It wasn't hard to figure out what was going on: I mean, it's going on all over town. Longtime leases on rows of storefronts collectively reach their expiry dates, rents are jacked up by 30 percent, Starbucks and Jamba Juice and Duane Reade move in, crumbling pre-war tenements are torn down en masse, replaced by cookie-cutter glass-box condos, yada yada. Yes, the whole of Manhattan is turning into midtown.

It started to bother me on so many levels. My local hardware store disappeared, forcing me to walk an extra few blocks out of my way for some nails. If I need any special stationery items, I have to go to a Staples. Places that had served as personal landmarks vanished overnight, disrupting my sense of order; I began mourning for them even if I'd never once set foot inside.

Even worse, once signage on a former gift shop/picture framer/laundromat is removed and reconstruction underway, I'm struck with instant amnesia. I'm not alone--just yesterday I was walking past the relatively new Chelsea Custom Kitchens, on the southeast corner of Eighth Avenue and 18th Street, and I overheard a guy say to his friend, "What used to be there again?"

I happen to remember what used to be there: A perky little home decor shop called Details. It had all kinds of lovely things for the bathroom and the kitchen: glasses, Japanese teapots, shaggy bathroom mats, candles, toiletries, curtains, you name it. It seemed perfect for Chelsea--I mean, it stocked designer dog dishes! What was the problem?

I guess it says everything about what this neighborhood is turning into if a place that sells kitchenware is replaced by a place that sells entire kitchens.

Here's a now-expired Chelsea stalwart, LightForms, whose demise made way for two new friendly neighborhood essentials: Some men's clothing emporium and a Twatberry!*

* only twats frequent Pinkberry, ergo...

Anyway, since last October I've been keeping a little photo journal of a couple of stretches on Eighth Avenue between 14th and 23rd, just to track and marvel at (and lament over) their metamorphoses.

Here's the view of the west side block of Eighth Avenue between 16th & 17th Streets last October, the bottom half of which was decimated in one fell swoop. It had a sketchy nightclub on the corner; a bar/restaurant that featured cajun food and live New Orleans jazz; Angelo's pizzeria, a tobacco store; the Chelsea Grill; and beauty/ grooming salon The Station, complete with sad relocation notices. Click thumbnails to enlarge.

Then:

A few weeks ago:

Now:

Watch this space.