For the last few weeks I have been playing at “open microphone” sessions at various places in Brooklyn and Manhattan. One thing I am struck with as I travel around New York City is how much it has changed since I was last living there forty years ago.

In those days New York was a dangerous place and you couldn’t ride the subways late at night.  I’ve been coming back from the open mic sessions at 12:00 midnight without problems and lots of people are out late enjoying themselves. The East Village (on Manhattan’s Lower East Side) is now a pleasant residential area and I enjoyed playing Banjo Jim’s on Avenue C and 9th Street this past Saturday. Avenue C and D just near the river used to be quite dangerous areas but now they are nice streets.
New York was always aninteresting place, but it is a lot more fun now and a pleasant place to be.

Another landmark that has changed for the better is Tomkins Square Park in the East Village. This is the park where the Hare Krishna movement began, but in the late 1960s it was a scruffy place.  Once I met Abbie Hoffman (the revolutionary) in Tomkins Square Park. He was a visionary in a sense. He looked around at the park and insisted to me “This place is beautiful.” Well, in November 1968, it was definitely not beautiful. It was kind of bare and there was dog excrement everywhere, but he just closed his eyes and insisted that it was beautiful. I guess he was trying to be very positive and to bring about a new reality just by the power of his thought.

Well, if he were still living he would be happy to know that Tomkins Square Park is indeed a beautiful place these days with a great playground for kids and good landscaping.  It looked beautiful in the snow this past Saturday and in the summer a lot of people like to sit in the sun.

I hope that all the other troubled spots on this planet will be healed in a similar way.