It’s the Junkyards, a.k.a., the Iron Triangle, a completely unique and endemic neighborhood, that the city used to have loads of, and is now rarer than ever. Even the Junkyards have been hit hard in a rapidly changing city, and the city just shut down a third of it for complete remidation and redevelopment.
The situation has squeezed the large population of street mechanics, scrappers and vendors who ply the streets of Willet’s Point every day, like a job, into an ever smaller area. Now the competition is at its highest point, and only the veterans with the most on the ball, survive.
Already a tough place, where there has been no maintanence, until recently, of city streets and sewers, it’s a dried out toxic badland in summer, and often flooded to ridiculous levels during other seasons. There are no sidewalks, parking spaces, paved roads or streets and the potholes were the worst around. Its atmosphere an open air cooperatives of chaos.
Pushing and dragging a cart with food and goods for sale is made really difficult by the Willets Point badlands, but Mariachi and his partner, were out here every day. Although with the constant closing of shops, and the squeezing of street vendors and mechanics into a smaller area to operate in, has resulted in their disappearence from the Junkyards.
I just got word that they went back to Mexico in 2020. Imagine coming all the way to the Tri-State, make a good living, get shot, go blind and happily go out to the Junktards and make a living as street vendors, only to have the place half wiped-out from redevelopment, squeezing desparate workers into smaller and tighter spaces, and, basically, killing their business.
One thing about Mariachi, if he sensed your presence, he would immediately greet you, even singing, thus, his name.
