The Meat Packing District doesn’t have much meat unless your a chauvinist referring to women

Two rides later, wearing my satin black heels, the girls and I got to the cobblestone streets of the Meat Packing District. Trying to copy a Sex and the City episode, we trotted through the crowds of nightlife aiming to get out of the cold street into a club. All we wanted was to get in somewhere and dance, an activity that would redeem the disappointments of our current relationship status. Not much to ask, but to the bouncers it seemed so. Frustrated and cold we walked through the trendy nightlife for only 21 plus, with only one goal that being to get into some place warm. I stepped in a puddle of icy brown water when we were trying to escape a peddler trying to take our photograph for money. Alas, we settled for the warmth of a diner, two hamburgers and a plate of macaroni and cheese. Feet hurting, still slightly wet, we caught a cab and made the trek back to Brooklyn, to the Pratt bubble. Now the Meat Packing District wasn’t always home to the young fashionable New York trendsetters but to 250 slaughter houses and packing plants in the 1900s. Nowadays New York is more catered towards real-estate and the service industry then to manufacturing as it was during the industrial revolution. But during the 1930s those that filled the warehouses that have been reciently converted into nightclubs and boutiques produced the nation’s third-largest volume of dressed meats. So what happen?  During the 1990s there was a sudden switch in the crowds that would file down the streets. It started with the restaurants who moved in hoping to attract customers who would appreciate seeing a butcher hand deliver his slaughter to their cooks. It worked because once people started seeing the freshness of the restaurants quality the crowds started coming. It wasn’t long before the clubs and bars moved in and then the Gap and other commercial establishments. Those that once ruled the streets at 3 Am loading carcasses into delivery trucks still exist but in less an less numbers. Most of the plants moved to Jersey, like most of New York’s factories have. About 35 remain, dominating the streets during the day, allowing the pleasure-seekers to run and play during the night.

~ by britapplegirl on February 18, 2008.