My neighbor in #8 when I first moved in was Mary Deane, a young mother who was very protective of me, which I was amused by given that I had hitchhiked all over the country by myself & felt extremely capable. She was right, though, that I had no clue about the Lower East Side (which was what we called the East Village back then). She had a beautiful sister named Gloria & lots of other relatives in the area. I once or twice went to the beach with a bunch of them & they really did the cliché Puerto Rican thing of setting up their blankets & grills on the median near the parking lot not the sand. When Mary moved out, she was afraid I'd be helpless so she gave me a metal bar with a metal chunk on the end to protect myself. My apartment got broken into while I was away, & my neighbors thought it was some kind of maniac because they found my weapon lying on the bed. They were so relieved to find out it was mine. Years later I ran into Mary & asked what Gloria was doing. "Twenty to life," she said, I think for drugs.
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