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Dominican Republican: our man up north in Manhattan.

Article Excerpt
I MUST confess to a sin, although among NATIONAL REVIEW readers it is probably more like a heresy: I have been, as recently as this year, a ward of the welfare state.

It wasn't my fault. I slipped onto the dole without even realizing it, and I am happy to report that the experience had a reforming effect. That is, it convinced me once and for all that "public assistance" is a generally rotten idea, encouraging people to do generally rotten things.

There is, in Manhattan, a neighborhood called Inwood, and until recently it was my misfortune to live there. Inwood is the northernmost tip of the island, a stone's throw from Albany and a quick stroll to the Arctic Circle. But in temperament it is southern, the majority of its population being composed of immigrants from the Dominican Republic (a relatively recent phenomenon; for much of the 20th century, it was predominately Irish).

Inwood is a reasonably safe place, but its residents have embraced the culture of the Latin ghetto, making it well nigh uninhabitable. I doubt there is any Manhattan neighborhood where you can find more trash on the street of a Monday morning, or where you must endure louder blastings of reggaeton "music" in those nigrescent hours before the cock crows, than in Inwood. I once had occasion to eat lunch with a woman who worked for an outfit...