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Nathan Smith, manager of the Sunshine Hotel, wrote the following update on March 13, 2001. You can listen to Nate reading an excerpt of this letter in RealAudio or see the actual letter that Nate sent in.

Naturally things have changed since the broadcast of The Sunshine Hotel in 1998. The Bowery has changed, the Sunshine among the final six of the remaining flophouses on the Bowery. Renovation is the name of the game in SoHo. The mayor envisions a huge apartment complex and sports plaza from Confucius Plaza to 6th Street. The pending invisible memory of the Sunshine, located some two thirds of the way between the two streets along Third Avenue, the trolley and el gone with everything else of yesterday's memories.

The hotel has changed as to its population: Vinny and his birds are gone. L.A.'s gone. The guy on the tape who says he doesn't want to die in the hotel was found sitting up in bed, dead, looking straight ahead through sightless eyes. Here you witness the ignominy of death -- Vinny dropped dead in the street that morning; L.A., grotesque in the dim light, a look of shock on his face; Anthony, all 425 pounds of him, died from diabetes in Beth Israel Hospital.

Yeah, they're all gone. But there are some success stories, like a former porter becoming a social worker and car owner. Another of our car owners had his stolen three weeks after he bought it. It wasn't new anyway, even if it was a Cadillac. Prince Street is becoming very trendy. The wise guys are gone but in keeping up the flavor of the former neighborhood, they shot and killed the manager of Connecticut Muffin. You're hard pressed to see winos anymore, but you will see a smattering of the emotionally distressed, like "One Can" Kerry raving in the street harmlessly, closing in of the day somebody will beat him up. But he proves the adage that God protects drunks and babies, though sometimes that seems little more than a charming statement.

Yes, the Bowery and the hotel have changed. Fast coming are the days when all of this will be no more than a chapter in someone's book of memories of days gone by.

Nathan Smith
March 13, 2001

This piece is available in the following audio formats [23:31 min]:
		56 kbps Real Audio
		ISDN Real Audio

		intro
		transcript

		The Sunshine Hotel on CD
		"Remembering Nathan Smith," a page honoring the Sunshine Hotel's manager, who passed away in 2002
		Update on the Sunshine Hotel by hotel manager Nathan Smith [posted Mar 13, 2001]
		CD Liner notes, by producer David Isay
		Charlie's Story, a Sound Portraits documentary about a flophouse resident
		Flophouse, a book based on the documentary
		Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories, the book that inspired this documentary

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