Alphabet City is the region east of 1st avenue, West of the East River, south of 14th street and north of Houston in New York where the avenue names are letters. They go from Avenue A to Avenue D. The area used to be meadowlands and then was built up in the late 1800s and extended with landfill.

Strangely enough the area was owned and farmed by Peter Stuyvesant in the 1600s who sold the bottom half of it to my 14 greats Grandfather, Gerrit Hendrickszen (who changed his name to Blauvelt and moved to the area where I live now). Gerrit sold the land around 1700 and bought the tract of land in the township of Orangeburg, NY where the family has lived ever since. I am one of an estimated 40,000 Blauvelt cousins. It was a successful family.

John B wrote to me:

Keith, I had just wanted to say that I read your blog (yours is the only one I read) and to respond to your remarks about Alphabet city: I was walking around it recently pretty extensively and was shocked to discover it doesn’t seem to be dangerous anymore. It’s gentrified, dude. I could be wrong, but it seems that everything below Harlem is now gentrified.

This is a bit different than I remember from 35 years ago.

I had an apartment at Avenue A and 11th street around 1970.

I can remember seeing some bad stuff. On summer nights I slept on the fire escape and often people would run down from the roof carrying TV sets or stereo systems. They had to step over me. I did not keep anything in the apartment except some food and a bed. I kept my textbooks in a locker at school or I carried them with me. I did not have a TV and never even got a phone.

I watched several people shoot up heroin down in the windowsill below the fire escape. I came out one morning and there was blood all over the sidewalk – lots of blood. I saw a woman attack another woman with a knife and things got very bloody that time. In the summer, with the windows open, you could hear at least one gunshot an hour, all night long.

The other people in the apartment building were other students, prostitutes and the terminally weird. I hated living there. My room mate was mugged twice. Burglars broke down my door three times, but never took anything because I had nothing. Erica had her car broken into twice when she came down to see me.

The only reason that I lived there was it was better than the two hour commute from Nyack and when you added up all the bus and subway fares, it was a little cheaper.

I can’t believe that it has changed that much. There were always some good restaurants there and there was a Russian community that kept their little area safe. Mostly, though, if you went to Alphabet City, you took your chances.