The herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1893-1900, 1895-01-13


Its Most Interesting Spectacles-A nile
of Variety Rot Surpassed Anywhere On
Earth.
The Bowery, New York's famous
down town highway of the poor and low
ly, is but one of a score of streets where
plebeians of Manhattan resort for bust
ness by day and for pleasure by night,
and it is not more than mile long,
from Chatham square to the Cooper in
stitute. Because of its variety; because
it is tho main stream into which pour
such diverse tributaries as Chinese Pell
and Doyers streets, Hebraic Hester and
Baxter streets, Italian Mulberry street;
because it is SO broad and busy by day,
SO big and brilliant by night; because
its name has come to stand for the whole
section of which it is the chief artery,
that cosmopolitan section of poverty
and crime, Of appalling distress and
garish gayety, the most thickly popula-
ted area of ground on earth, has the
Bowery become place of interest to the
sociologist as well as to the mere curl
osity seeker.
The Bowery, once less cosmopolitan
than now, was chiefly celebrated for its
haunts of pleasure and for the perils
that attended the unsophisticated out
slider who sought it's joys In the old
days its most conspicuous feature was
the dance hall. Those days have passed.
The Bowery has its dance halls, where
cracked pianos and wheezy violins and
ear splitting human voices outrage har-
mony, and ingenious fancy steps are
executed by grocers' clerks and jaunty
girls Of whom most were born in the
country; where sailors dispose Of their
pay, and where much bad liquor is
drunk. But these are few, and the cur
rent reforms are likely to make them
fewer
Now, the great feature of the Bowery
is the multiplicity Of elements that
compose the spectacle which it presents.
Most of these elements exhibit one thing
in commons struggle for existence a
striving to get bread The Hebrew ''ro-
per in, keeping up in front of his shop
the kind of walk that lion maintains
tain the passerby. The shop window,
with its offer Of trousers for GO cents a
pair, betrays eagerness to get your coin.
The "bum" waylays you and gives you
10 cents worth of talk in the wistful
and unhopeful effort to get 5. The He
brew theaters, with their hieroglyphic
bills yawn for the patronage Of their
own race, and not in vain. The long,
narrow, cheap saloon, with its sawdust
laid floor, invites your attention to the
largest glass of beer in the world, which
is to be had for cents The glass is as
big as small keg. A normal man call
not empty it, try as he may, i'll less than
five minutes. They call it working
mans friend" More men of leisure
street Migrants and beggars-than work
ingmen avail themselves Of its friend
ship. You can get whisky, too, in one
of these saloons of the cheaper class,
rather so called whisky, to stand up
against drink of which is feat re-
quiring about as great power Of resist
ance as is employed in the circus by the
gentleman who catches a cannon ball.
Right next door to where the cheap
est liquor on earth is to be had you may
sit down at table with one of tho la
dies who, between drinks, sing popular
songs on the stage at tho end of the
place, and for the two drinks Of execra-
BILE whisky that the formidable waiter
sets before you you may have the pleas
ure of paying 81.
Bright spots on the Bowery are tho
German concert hall, the huge Atlantic
Garten, tho Voll1sgarten and others,
where good singers are TO be heard, and
where the language, the drink and the
eatables are German, mostly Viennese.
Then there are the American variety
theaters and the wonderfully prosperous
Peoples theater.
AS numerous as the concert halls sa-
looms, Hebrew stores a.nd theaters are
the pawnshops and cheap lodging
houses. The "bum" who tours the coun-
try by freight i'll summer abides in Bow
cry lodging houses i'll winter, soliciting
on the street by day the means Of OBJ
tanning shelter by night. These men
fight or plot for existence hour by hour.
Their shifts to get drink or a free
hand at free lunch counter are some
times pathetic, sometimes amusing.
OF the girls one sees on the Bowery
at night some are employed in factories
by day, and some have no means of live
lihood apparent to the casual observer.
Most of the former are Of New York
birth, the latter from the country. All
have certain jimpness and finish, how
ever cheap their attire may be.
With its evidences of human distress
and poverty, the Bowery yet has some
fine stores and some splendid saloons.
Not all the liquor imbibed on the street
is of the cheap kind.
There are certain places on the Bow
cry where one may go and be as safe at
midnight as he would be OH Broadway
at noon. There are other places, next
door, where knockout ball and
touch," drugged drink and pocket
picking, if nothing moro violent, are to
be expected as matters of course. The
Bowery with its environing section will
always be more or less dangerous as long
as it remains the final place Of resort
for starving men. When friendless
man loses everything in New York and
has no hope of recuperating his fortunes,
he feels naturally drawn toward the
Bowery. He seems more in his place
there and not as much in contrast with