Hebrew School

I write often about the community I live in because it will inevitably reach the light of day somehow in my music. Not because of choice or ideology, but because it’s simply where I am.

So there are a couple of houses across the street that have had for sale signs in front of them, one for maybe six months. That one finally changed its sign to “sold,” but I was indifferent.

Then in the corner store I overhear a conversation between two middle-aged men. Man 1 mentions that he noticed that Man 2’s house’s sign now says “sold.” Man 2 confirms this, and that the “last [he] heard” it was going for $750k.

“But it’s a shithole,” he says to Man 1. “It’s going to be another 150 after that,” he continues, adding that anyone who moves into this neighborhood will settle for a three-quarter-million-dollar shithole. People are buying. It doesn’t matter.

There didn’t seem too be any cynicism. Someone had just stated a fact.

The Jewish artists, all four of us or however many, are getting forced out of Sunset Park and I want my money back. I would like that money in cash shekels as a bulwark against the dollar. I will move somewhere where I might need to survive peak matzo.

But I probably won’t.

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