Bowery NYC Early 19th Century
New York City….The Big Apple….a city bigger than others with a reputation of grandiose proportions. The city boasts skyscrapers that are lost in the clouds, man made parks, and bridges of epic importance. But the true insight into this magnificent city lies in the streets of the city; with its people. Joseph Mitchell ‘s compilation of stories in Up In The Old Hotel takes one to the very heart of the city. The stories of which he writes are raw, compelling, somewhat crass, but always filled with the vividly colorful characters that make up the city. Saloon keepers, gypsies, Mohawks, fisherman, rats, and novelists are but a few of his protagonists and famous bars like McSorley’s are the scenes of his writing. New York City comes alive in a truly unique flavor in Mitchell’s stories.
The history of the famous and wealthy of New York is well known. The grand manses of the Gilded Age still stand as testimony to the grandeur of New York’s standing on the world stage. Mitchell paints vivid pictures of the underclass, the downtrodden, and the everyday citizen with broad strokes and such dramatic depiction that the eccentricities of the characters become believable. One needs but to walk into McSorley’s bar and be served a beer to see the characters in Mitchell’s “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon.”
McSorley’s is the perfect stage for the characters of Mitchell’s writing on NYC life. From patrons to owners, the compelling tales of the lives of the people are so much more interesting than any fiction. McSorley’s is filled with the locals, who are most definitely the underclass of NY society. They are real. They are NYC. From the opening of the bar at 8 AM until closing these men would spend their day swirling in the ale that was served and the stories of their lives. Closing time, however, was not as routine as opening or the people that frequented the place. Bill McSorley opened on time and closed when he felt like it. He was known to say, ““I’m under no obligoddamnation to stand here all night while you hold on to them drinks” (p. 11) to any patron who lingered over their beer. Men were his patrons, not women, and when a woman dared dress as a man, drink a beer and then show her true identity, there was scandal in McSorley’s! This bastion of the commoner became so renowned that McSorley’s was the place that tourists frequented to see what life was really like on the Bowery.
Joseph Mitchell told the stories of the people that nice society wanted to forget; as well as the stories of NYC that people couldn’t believe. Gypsies engaged the reader with stories most foreign. The life and reputation of the gypsy often paralled theft and Mitchell readily pointed out his conversation with just such a man, “To a gypsy feller, there ain’t but two kinds of merchandise. Lost and unlost. Anything that ain’t nailed down is lost.” (p. 146) The stories of theft, evasion of authority, and life on the road, while abhorrent to the law abiding citizen, are curiously interesting. Along with the gypsies were the stories of the carnies. One specific story of Mitchell’s deals with Madame Olga, the bearded woman. Madame Olga experienced the same life as most carnies with the exception of the face that Mitchell puts on her life. She moved in the circle of the carnival for decades, but still felt the sting of pain when cruel comments were made of her appearance. As the bearded lady, she was a freak on the road but a loving member of her carnie family. Finally experiencing peace in a NYC apartment with her 3rd husband and cats, she finally lived with family that cared for her and who she truly was.
One of Mitchell’s most intriguing characters is Professor Sea Gull, Joe Gould. Joe Gould was a self-professed bum, informing his mother after completing his A.B. that his intent at this point was “to stroll and ponder.” (p. 66) A bohemian in his demeanor, plagued by what he called the “three H’s – homelessness, hunger, and hangovers” (p. 52), he developed a reputation for a wanderer with a literary style that was “easy and uncluttered”. (p. 61) He spoke of his Oral History which he was writing and was to be found in manuscript form in thousands of notebooks saved and stored in various places all around NYC. Joe Gould lived the life of a vagrant while he watched life in NYC through a scholar’s eye. In some ways, Joe Gould’s cock-eyed examination of NYC in the Oral History was much like Mitchell’s writings. He explained a unique view of statistics through a chapter named, The Dread Tomato Habit (p. 658) and Mitchell exposed the realities of NYC rat infestation in “The Rats on the Waterfront”. These rats surely inhabit the world of Gould, Mitchell, and the millions of NYC denizens. In a bizarre discussion, somewhat reminiscent of Gould, Mitchell discusses the origin, characteristics, and living habits of the three main types of rat in NYC. Once one has read Mitchell’s writings, you can not help imagining Joe Gould, Professor Sea Gull, sitting on a park bench in the middle of the night, writing in his Oral History a chapter on the rats of NYC.
New York City as icons that the outsider thinks of upon hearing “The Big Apple”, such as Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, and Times Square. However, the unique stories of Joseph Mitchell tell the realities of the street. The people and events that he chronicles expose the raw nature of mid 19th Century NYC to the outsider’s eye. Mitchell tells the stories of the ne’er do wells, the bums, and the outcasts of society. However, the lives of these people are the true NYC; every city needs some warts along with some bright lights.
