A New American City: Building hope amidst urban decay

by Dan Grinthal (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown USA

When I was offered a service year position in a struggling Rust Belt city on the shores of Lake Ontario, I was 100,000 words into my first novel and flat broke. Once the corporate kingdom of Eastman Kodak, Rochester, New York was busy forging a new reputation as a modern-day American melting pot—a city of opportunity for people of all cultures. To that end, I’d be helping an old professor of mine build a soft goods manufacturing shop providing skilled work to a growing population of UN refugees. I knew very little about soft goods and less about refugees. And after growing up on a farm in New Jersey, I was more than a little scared of a city that still boasted one of the best heroin markets on the East Coast. But I did need a break from writing. Plus, this was my chance to try my hand at saving the world, to fight on behalf of those unfortunate souls sentenced to life in the urban jungle. I was in for an education. When I started at Rochester Refugee Sewing and Repair in January 2019, the operation consisted of a crop of antique sewing machines crammed into a converted garage attached to a Frankenstein house in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Over the course of the next year, we refurbished the house, acquired better machines, and learned how to turn donated t-shirts into high-end products. We rallied community partners, put on art shows, and expanded our line. We made a lot of mistakes, but we learned on our feet. The women at the shop constantly fed us, especially our lead seamstress, Jamuna. I gnawed on cubes of dried yak cheese called churpi; sampled Nepali donuts with sugar sauce; and tried a tough cut of beef the women would only refer to as “bull.” It was pretty tasty, honestly. Much better than the yak cheese. More important than the food, though, were the stories. It’s hard to complain about your utility bill after listening to a former rice farmer tell you about dodging the police in order to cut wood for her cooking fire. "Every day, forest going. Looking, looking. No police? Cut-cut-cut. Police? No cut. No fire." Still, I was having trouble making ends meet on my six-dollar-an-hour stipend, until my girlfriend’s dad offered me a great rate on an apartment attached to his construction warehouse in exchange for some renovation work. When I moved in, I had no stove or fridge, and no furniture except my writing desk and a chair I’d pilfered from somebody’s trash. I slept on a camping pad. The shower worked, but the handle had been replaced by a pair of vise-grips. Living there felt very much like squatting. I got adopted immediately by Boone, the retired roofer across the street, who introduced me once as “his blue-eyed soul-brother.” He and his wife Peggy fed me a regular diet of homecooked soulfood in exchange for a few simple chores. Boone told me our neighbor Kenny “the rapper,” who spent his time marching around the block chanting obscenities, had seen his cousin shot on the corner years ago and had been schizophrenic ever since. There were others like him. Casualties of civilization. I made friends with “Old School,” “Batman” and others at nearby crackhouses. I could always tell when they’d been using. Usually they’d wave from down the block, but sometimes they’d just shuffle by without a glance. That was always sad. I’m glad I met those guys, and Jamuna, and Boone. They did more for me than I ever did for them. For most of my life, I loathed the idea of living in a place where you couldn’t see the stars. But by the time my service year ended, I had a much better understanding of what a city is, and what it isn’t. A city is not peaceful like the woods and fields I grew up with, where everything is green and simple and quiet. There’s tragedy and decay. No denying that. But there’s also hope, and growth, and vibrant life—because there are people in cities, and it’s the people who make dead streets come alive.