Dear L,
I read through your April 16-25, 2005 issue with your brief histories of various immigrant groups in New York and you conspicuously forgot to mention any Black immigrant groups. OK, so you may say Black people aren’t immigrants, but there are many Black immigrants in NYC and not even recent arrivals from Africa.

New York City has the largest population of West Indians in the United States. Today, there are approximately some 500,000 Jamaicans and 200,000 Haitians in NYC, not to mention people from other Islands — and that is probably only first generation Jamaicans and Haitians. West Indians have been arriving since at least the 1920s. Marcus Garvey was a notable Jamaican immigrant of the 1920s and there have been other notable West Indian New Yorkers since then.

According to a 2000 Census Summary by the NYC Department of City Planning, Black non-Hispanics make up some 24.5% of the city or 1.96 million people out of some 8 million (www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/dcp/html/census/pop2000.html). The approximately 700,000 Jamaicans and Haitians alone make up some 30-35% of the total Black population in NYC. That most definitely warrants some mention. You could have done a profile on West Indians instead of on the Dutch or the Germans.
Then again, perhaps The L is just white New York City’s event guide and not all of New York City’s event guide.
Malaika Martin

At first I thought the L Magazine was just another annoying publication aimed at hipsters who doesn’t know jack about New York and act like they were to discover Brooklyn. I read a few issues and realized that I can learn something from it myself, being an immigrant but a native of the five boroughs for the past 13 [years] qualifies me as a New Yorker. Now I’m looking forward to this new cultural issue and you guys DON’T EVEN MENTION POLAND AT ALL!!!!! Hello! Greenpoint! The East village is NOT all Ukranian. We have a shit load of vodkas. Hell, if vodka was a religion Poland NOT Russia would be a temple. The food and all the culture that is so prevalent to New York has been omitted from this issue. You included Russia and the Czech Republic. While the Czechs are technically our brothers (to us Poles) the extremely huge wave of immigrants that is apparent in New York is mainly from Poland. You better recognize bizatches next time you set foot off the Bedford Avenue stop on the L or the Manhattan Ave. stop off of the G.
Dominik Zakrzewski

Lonely in Gramercy
Dear Sir,
I would like to register my dissatisfaction with the [previous] issue’s back cover. Over the past few months I have become accustomed to “meeting” the fine young ladies of American Apparel. With all due respect to “Glen,” he is is not a very attractive and somewhat sexually enticing female model. I had been looking forward to “meeting” a new girl this past week, and was very disappointed (and somewhat shocked) to find Glen on the back cover of The L Magazine. Please register my complaint with the appropriate persons and attempt to convince A.A. to continue showing very fine female models.
Thank you very much.
Cordially,
Michel S. Foret, Gramercy Park

Lonely in Pelham Bay
Dear L,
The Sociopath Next Door by Dr. Stout, reviewed by Paul Kiel (Vol III, issue 06), explains a lot of things. It is common knowledge that, compared to other countries, our crime figures are surprisingly high. Filmmaker Michael Moore has even observed that the U.S. has “a shared mental illness.” The Patron Poet of Pelham Bay, Haldorn Flamergushen (1818), also has made an interesting observation:

Delinquent Infusion
Some call it vision, others greed,
The tepid lure of golden dreams;
Rich easy lives from gilded seed;
Distant sirens of that which gleams.

Notice, mostly that certain type,
Drawn away to these distant shores;
Notably the type drawn to hype
Who call the home folk “cold, old bores”.

With them neither hearts nor souls;
They left the Old World much better;
With them, crime and devious goals
For a new land’s gleaming fetter.

The reason, they say they’ve fled-
Hoards of adventurers so bold-
Now, even today it is said,
“The streets, you see, are paved with gold.”

So come you murders and thieves,
Con-artists, tired and bleary;
Reality: what one believes.
Starry eyed masses so weary…

We’re all in some way offended,
By those with a talent to confound;
The Brave New World’s been up-ended,
While burgeoning prisons abound.

Thankfully there isn’t a strong genetic correlation, but picking up on the “forg(ing) emotional attachments” aspect, the divorce rate and its affect on children’s attachment ability, certainly figures into the equation. It seems both the lengthening educational process, having pushed the marriage age from puberty to the mid 20s, and parental attitudes like, “I got married too young, you’re going to wait until you’re old enough to make wise decisions,” (well beyond the relationship latency bonding window), may have a compounding negative affect. Perhaps W. B. Yeats (Easter, 1916) said it best, “Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.”
It also seems to make sociopaths.
Bonding to The L,
Elliot Siemon