I’m trying to figure out exactly what aspect of the old Lincoln Park Carlos Flores is nostalgic about (“Puerto Rican Days,” July 12). A place with peeling paint, boarded-up windows, For Rent signs, and garbage in the streets? A place where “a shove, a step on a sneaker, or a sideways look could provoke a fight”? With illegal drag racing and apartments with rickety, dangerous back porches and walls defaced with graffiti? A place where the author was lucky to survive past his early 20s, to hear him tell his story?
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Mr. Flores’s words speak of a neighborhood that was paradise on earth. His photos speak much louder, and they speak of a fading, sagging place where “outsiders” would have been wise to drive through quickly, with the windows up. Funny thing. His mother’s memories of the old Lincoln Park match almost exactly what his pictures show.
