Dirty Blvd. Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Pedro lives out of the Wilshire Hotel
He looks out a window without glass
And the walls are made of cardboard, newspapers on his feet
And his father beats him because he's too tired to beg

[Verse 2]
He's got 9 brothers and sisters, they're brought up on their knees
It's hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs
Pedro dreams of being older and killing the old man
But that's a slim chance, he's going to the boulevard

[Chorus]
He's going to end up on the dirty boulevard
He's going out to the dirty boulevard
He's going down to the dirty boulevard

[Verse 3]
This room cost 2,000 dollars a month, you can believe it man, it's true
Somewhere a landlord's laughing till he wets his pants
No one dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything
They dream of dealing on the dirty boulevard

[Verse 4]
Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor - I'll piss on 'em
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
And get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard

[Chorus]
Get 'em out on the dirty boulevard
Going out to the dirty boulevard
They're going down on the dirty boulevard
Going out

[Verse 5]
Outside it's a bright night, there's an opera at Lincoln Center
Movie stars arrive by limousine
The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan
But the lights are out on the mean streets

[Verse 6]
A small kid stands by the Lincoln Tunnel
He's selling plastic roses for a buck
The traffic's backed up to 39th Street
The TV whores are calling the cops out for a suck

[Verse 7]
And back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming
He's found a book on magic in a garbage can
He looks at the pictures and stares up at the cracked ceiling
"At the count of 3," he says, "I hope I can disappear"

[Chorus]
"And fly, fly away, from this dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from the dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from the dirty boulevard
I want to fly, fly, fly, fly, from the dirty boulevard"
[Outro]
"I want to fly away
I want to fly
Fly, fly away
I want to fly
Fly, fly away (Fly, fly, fly away)
Fly, fly, fly (Fly, fly, fly away)
Fly, fly away (Fly, fly, fly away) (I want to fly, fly away)
Fly away" (Fly, fly, fly away) (I want to fly, woah-woah, gonna fly away)

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About

Genius Annotation

Dirty Blvd is the 3rd of 14 tracks on Lou Reed’s 15th solo album, New York, released in 1989 to broad critical acclaim. In New York, Reed builds upon on his longtime theme of documenting New York City’s underbelly and its most stigmatized and downtrodden residents. It is regarded as one of his most conceptual albums, and in the liner notes Reed himself instructs listeners to take in the whole album in one sitting, “as though it were a book or a movie.” Apologies to Lou for breaking it down song-by-song.

Dirty Blvd describes the life of Pedro, a boy living and hustling in seedy areas of Manhattan. Pedro’s wish to magically disappear is his only respite from an abusive father, abysmal living conditions, and a bleak future that Reed portrays as near-inevitable. Reed’s deadpan delivery implies that he’s seen many unfortunate youth like Pedro end up “dealing on the dirty boulevard.”

More broadly, Dirty Blvd is a lament for the poor and vulnerable in a New York that, in the late 1980s, was beginning its obsession with “cleaning up” its most notorious districts of crime and vice. Longtime NYC mayor Ed Koch was leaving office and future mayor Rudy Giuliani was beginning to rear his ugly head. The NYPD was growing in power, and police-inflicted violence against the homeless was becoming commonplace:
“Your poor huddled masses, let’s club ‘em to death
And get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard.”

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