The Bowery block that was its home is now grayer, bleaker, and a lot quieter. And as it regularly does, New York City is getting ready to destroy another corner of a neighborhood along with many of its voices. This is no surprise. It happens every twenty or thirty years, and each area goes on to re-invent itself over and over. The uneasy ’home’ of punk rock is no more; and the street that gave it life gets ready for its next incarnation.
The Bowery today is a long way from that ancient path that led to Peter Stuyvesant‘s farm-in-the-woods in the 17th century. That path led to the country home of the last Dutch governor of New Amsterdam. No remnant of that bucolic time lingered into the hurly-burly, gritty era that saw a transformation of the Bowery from woodland path, to farmland, to low-level popular entertainment spot.
