Piss Politics

The forceful assimilationist Bennie (in the musical Rent) asks his former friends if they "really want a neighborhood where people piss on your stoop every night." It doesn't seem to be much of a wager to guess that the answer, for most, is no. I would prefer a neighborhood where people do not piss on my stoop.

All sorts of dizzying policies, social movements, monetary exchanges, and physical force(s) have led to many neighborhoods especially in Manhattan, parts of Brooklyn, and the Bronx becoming safe from human excrement in most places where it used to be quite common (of course exception can be made for partying young people on weekend nights especially on the Lower East Side).

To many people's unabashed delight, a new piss politics has taken over; human piss has been replaced with the piss and shit-smears of countless shih-tzus, labra-doodles, french bulldogs, cocka-poos, and pomeranians. Forget homeless queer youth of color on the piers and in the streets in the West Village and Chelsea, we now have countless pugs and pekignese to walk and clean up after. It's one way you know that these neighborhoods have changed for the better in just a few short decades. Dogs, after all, with a few notable exceptions, are a sign of wealth, comfort, and predominantly white segregated neighborhoods.

For the record, it isn't the dogs' fault. It's is just an observation of what we make room for when we "clean" our streets and what kind of values it betrays. I don't think sanitation can explain why we have literally removed people from the streets who we think piss and shit on them to make room for our dogs to do so.