The alley was the space between two buildings where the city stopped pretending. Out front was the sidewalk and the storefronts and the faces people showed the world. The alley was the back. The garbage cans and the fire escapes and the puddles that never dried and the cats that owned the whole operation. Nobody walked through an alley unless they had a reason. And the reason was usually that nobody else was watching.

I played guitar in an alley on Ludlow Street in 1968 because a cop told me I could not play on the sidewalk. So I went around the corner and into the alley and I played for the garbage cans and the brick walls and the pigeons and the sound bounced off both buildings and came back twice as loud as it went out. The alley was the best acoustic space in the Lower East Side. Two walls six feet apart and a sky overhead like a cathedral with no roof.

Every alley had its own economy. The restaurant kitchen backed onto it. The dishwasher took a smoke break there. The delivery guy parked his truck blocking the entrance and somebody yelled and somebody honked and the truck moved six inches and that was the compromise. The alley was where deals happened. Not the kind on Wall Street. The kind where a man sells you a watch for ten dollars and you know the watch did not start out belonging to that man but you buy it anyway because ten dollars is ten dollars.

Kids played in alleys when the street was too dangerous. Which was most of the time in the seventies. The alley was fenced at one end and open at the other and that made it a fort. You could defend a position in an alley. Two kids at the open end with garbage can lids and nobody was getting through. We played war in the alley and stickball in the alley and spin the bottle in the alley and every game was better because it was secret. A game in a park is a game. A game in an alley is an event.

They are closing the alleys now. Gates at both ends. No trespassing. Private property. The alley between two buildings belongs to one of the buildings or the other or both and neither one wants you in there because liability. The garbage cans are behind a locked gate. The fire escape ladders are pulled up. The cats are gone because the rats are gone because the garbage is in a sealed container inside a locked cage inside a gated alley. The city is getting cleaner and quieter and safer and less interesting one locked gate at a time.