Bastille Day ’77

Although it was Bastille Day it was not a classy revolution. A visit to the burning ghats of the South Bronx the morning after New York’s dive into darkness revealed the ominous syndrome of daytime looting. The Grand Concourse, Fordham Road, 167th Street, 149th Street, all had their marauding bands, but the worst hits occurred on 138th Street, near the intersection of Brook Avenue, the old St. Ann’s area—settled by Irish immigrants in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Acres of burnt America met the eye. From the sadistically gutted Woolworth’s (a large, insured enterprise) to the little family clothing stores, picked clean by swarms of driver ants (not an inch of textile anywhere), to the many “bargain” stores that were now “free” stores, to the shelled “credit” jewelers—shelled and then burnt—the looters moved easily, skillfully, knowledgeably, through ponds of broken glass. In a relaxed fashion they completed their strange inventory. Joyous depredators, they were too many to disgrace a neighborhood—they were a neighborhood, on an odd shopping spree.

ME

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Mark Edelson

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Although it was Bastille Day it was not a classy revolution. A visit to the burning ghats of the South Bronx the morning after New York’s dive into darkness revealed the ominous syndrome of daytime looting. The Grand Concourse, Fordham Road, 167th Street, 149th Street, all had their marauding bands, but the worst hits occurred on 138th Street, near the intersection of Brook Avenue, the old St. Ann’s area—settled by Irish immigrants in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Acres of burnt America met the eye. From the sadistically gutted Woolworth’s (a large, insured enterprise) to the little family clothing stores, picked clean by swarms of driver ants (not an inch of textile anywhere), to the many “bargain” stores that were now “free” stores, to the shelled “credit” jewelers—shelled and then burnt—the looters moved easily, skillfully, knowledgeably, through ponds of broken glass. In a relaxed fashion they completed their strange inventory. Joyous depredators, they were too many to disgrace a neighborhood—they were a neighborhood, on an odd shopping spree.