By NYTimes reporter Dan Barry:
On the Bow’ry, The Long Story of the Building at 104-106 Bowery. (nytimes.com)
About New York; Last in Flophouse, Alone With Bowery Ghosts. (nytimes.com)
I remember walking by the Stevenson hotel. Bowery is still a street with two homeless shelters where the homeless sit in front of the entrance on the sidewalk, sipping from plastic cups of warm coffee, after they are probably required to leave the shelter in the early morning. In the winter morning they would huddle together as New York’s poor masses like puppies in a nest.
Only a free individual can live in the unbound state of community where property is not the defining factor in social relations. But how often can one see youthful aspirations and ideals be transformed to a pity state of mind in which the private sphere defines the limits of one’s tolerance and of one’s social place. Proudhon stated that property is theft, and the bourgeois ownership and family are the greatest thieves of hearts.