From Rat of the World by Eugene Marten

 

    If you worked for the state in the State Office building downtown, also known as District, named for a former governor no one seemed to remember, in the Department of Commerce or the Department of Mental Health, the Department of Public Safety or the Board of Cosmetology, or in one of the offices not housed in the building but still within the boundaries of the district, like the Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Office of Professional Standards; if you worked in one of these offices or departments and you needed a form and needed it in short order, you would be advised to go to the Forms warehouse, and you would be advised to take Eagle Street to the Eagle Street bridge, which is a vertical lift bridge, and if the center span wasn’t closed for repairs or raised to allow for the passage of a tugboat or barge or freighter, you would cross the bridge and at the other end take a steep and winding road down to the west bank of the river. If you turned right at the bottom of the road you would soon find yourself in that part of town called the Flats, where the transformation of standing property into entertainment establishments was what passed for an urban renaissance, and you would pass the bars and dance clubs and comedy clubs and restaurants with their nine-dollar hamburgers and be reminded that you lived not only in the self-proclaimed Comeback City, but also in a four-time All-America City, and you would also know you had taken the wrong turn, because the road you should have been on would be cracked and potholed and sutured with railroad tracks, the buildings on either side devoted not to the nightlife of young professionals but to the manufacture of cap and set screws, wood and metal products, products of limestone and asphalt; to welding, folding, grinding, dry ice-cleaning--however that worked--stripping, casting, corrugating, stamping, powder-coating, to recycling glass of all colors in a place where the clamor of breaking bottles never stopped.

New York Tyrant Vol. I No. III