I'm returning to the lower east side today, to see some more of the tenement museum and this very interesting neighbourhood. I have been thinking alot about my last visit to the museum thanks to the news story about the horrific building collapse in Bangladesh that killed all those garment workers who were working in very unsafe conditions. The garment industry was what the lower east side was known for, and at the turn of the century a fire broke out in a large garment factory that killed hundreds of young immigrant women, and brought about a whole raft of reforms to safety codes in New York. I wonder if the same thing will happen in Bangladesh. It also raises questions about the waste culture of the first world and corporate responsibility....

I book two tours today at the tenement museum - the first is called Irish outsiders and starts almost immediately on my arrival. We start at the back of the tenement building and discuss the implications of living with an outdoor water source and shared privys and rubbish and disease. We lift a bucket of water and imaging carrying it up 5 floors. The Irish were outsiders in this predominantly German protestant neighbourhood, and the family of the restored apartment had a tough life. Only half their eight children survived to adulthood, and work was very difficult to come by. The apartment is set up to reflect the family's simple and transient lifestyle, and the parlor has a simulated wake for one of the children who died in the tenement. Very interesting.

I have a break between the next tour that allows enough time for a really good bowl of bun at a Vietnamese restaurant! Gotta love the ethnically diverse neighbourhoods!

The next tour is called hard times, and it is a combined tour and discussion for something different. We went to a classroom and had a round table discussion about immigration and our past. The person with the best story was sitting next to me, Annie Lennox (singer with eurythmics) who grew up poor in Scotland actually in a tenement building. Hard times takes you into the apartment of Natalia, a Prussian woman who moved in when the building was only 6 years old, but the family fell on hard times in 1873 and her husband deserted the family. She had the last laugh as she actually died quite well off, whereas he was pretty much destitute. In contrast the next apartment was set up for the 1920s when the last occupants, an Italian family, were in the process of being evicted. They weren't bad tenants, new laws requiring radical changes to the building meant many tenements were boarded up from this time on and operated as shops only. The museum was particularly lucky to have the support of a living daughter who has left many interview recordings of her recollections plus many family artifacts. Another very interesting experience, and much more interactive than the other tours due to its two hour format and classroom talk.

The day had cleared so I went for a walk around the neighbourhood, looked at vintage Chanel, saw a bunny in a hairdresser shop eat the flower display in the window, and saw some of new Yorks finest firemen posing with their truck! It seemed an ideal time to stop and have a cocktail at an Internet enabled bar!