Appalling Place

Gravesend Bay (Wikimedia Commons)

"I find it an appalling place, rich for making money, poor for living. I despise its graft, its crime, its dirt, its accents, its utilitarian ugliness, its opportunistic cheapness, its parvenu swank, its swelling army of epicenes—even its philosophy of toleration, which is less a virtue than a confession of weakness, a lack of a way of life."

Earl Sparling, quoted in Supreme City