Latin lovers flash in and out of the doorways in open shirts and Cuban heels. The place reeks of food and bad-girl perfume and when the sun sets everything just gets more pungent. The subtle messages here now resound against the colors of the neon and the setting sun. Love and hate, the staccato stutter of the signage, and the glint of stiletto metal. Someone calls across the gangway in a stifled moan. Not a victim of violence, it is the ache of longing, across the ages. The Italians and Puerto Ricans that live here understand it without regard to language. It is the lament of existence borne of the choices we all make and the ones we don’t. You love who you love. Can’t stop that. Love and hate beckon from opposite sides of the avenue and yet we ride up the middle, in the danger zone, where we’ll likely be run over.

At night the windows open and the moaning continues,  in chorus now – those who chose to deny their love, and those who chose not to. A concert choir’s nightly rendition of dissonant voices, finding harmony, somehow, in the space between love and hate.

-Danny Grosso

Instagram @artispolitics

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