The health of the city is measured in turds. I will not use the three- and four-letter words beginning with “p.” That is tabloid/kindergarten talk; I am neither a hack nor a five-year-old. The four-letter word beginning with “s” is what comes most readily to mind, and it leads a vigorous life in compounds (chicken-, -head), but it is unsuited to this magazine. “Turds” has the sanction of Chaucer. Turds it is.
The three urban stigmata of the Seventies were dog turds on horizontal surfaces, graffiti on vertical ones, and blasting music in the ether. Academics made the broken window the symbol of indifference and loss of social control, but these were the symptoms one saw every day. Parking Fido to do his business in a gutter or in the bed of a street tree or in the middle of a sidewalk showed unconcern for others conjoined with too much concern for oneself (what, you want me to pick it up?). The universal dog toilet encouraged the human unfortunate to use it as well. I remember the day when a friend, an English professor, resident of the Upper West Side, encountered a man on a street corner who was relieving himself and then turned 90 degrees in the other direction to find a second man doing the same. My friend nominated it for the Worst Street Corner in the city.
Comments