NYCares

Back in Brooklyn, this time for good. Tonight we go to see Les Savy Fav at the park by our house and Thursday we move into our two month sublet. I’ve been working the job angle and have a few interviews I’m lining up this week so like it or not, Brooklyn is stuck with us. It’s really amazing how living here, every day you can just walk out your front door with no intentions or plans and get caught up in a great adventure. Yesterday we got up late as usual and went out to get some lunch. G train south to Park Slope where we meet up with some friends then sit in Guitar Center trying to ignore the burnout employee next to me playing Steve Vai licks unnecessarily loud and then it’s the N train north to Manhattan, crossing over the Manhattan Bridge and descending into the city like Batman once across the river. Walk through Lower East Side and find street fair going on then Sri Lankan food and over to Williamsburg, where bands are playing Northside Festival and they’ve got 8 blocks of Bedford blocked off to cars, full of art installations we wander through before getting a bottle of wine and heading up to see the band Liars play. Then afterward we walk to a 19th century bar with saloon doors on every booth and a button you can push for service, and after wine we meet Tom and Tina at Papacito’s, a mexican spot with a patio where we sit at large table and talk until we wander back home and crash. Today it’s a free show in Central Park by Gil Scott-Heron followed by a ride on the carousel from the end of Catcher in the Rye, then off to and all you can eat and drink barbecue at a bar known for having hammocks as their primary form of seating, then Les Savy Fav concert in the park. There’s so much going on here at all times it’s impossible to keep a running log of all of our adventures. I’m working on a novel and making sketches and notes for the New York portion which I’ll post excerpts of from time to time on here. What follows is not anything from the novel but rather a rough and incomplete sketch of the first day we arrived here almost a month ago until I get a chance to share some of the high and low lites from this last leg of our trip so far:

6/3/10 6:18 PM
“All things flow according to the whims of the Great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy it.” – HST

Got in to NY Monday afternoon. Monday night we find an apt., Wednesday morning we’re homeless again and now, Thursday evening we have an apt. again. Monday morning we get up and I’m already giddy as a school girl at the thought I’ll soon be in NY. Take a cab to the parking lot in already-oppressive DC humid heat and stand on a long concourse of Astroturf, melting with everyone else waiting for the 10:30 bus. It comes early and all Steph’s fears of a crowded, sweaty Hell-box are extinguished when we hop up to the second floor and plop into air conditioned seats. I spend the 4.5 hour ride writing our DC blog and then we start watching Easy Rider, which leaves Steph unimpressed until Jack Nicholson’s character is introduced. Watching the film again for the first time in years (and not stoned out of my skull) I have to say I would wonder what all the fuss was about too if I wasn’t already initiated. But Dennis Hopper just died so it was only right. Then suddenly we can see the city sprouting up to the east yawning ever larger and I’m impatient to finally arrive, like a Christmas present waiting to be ripped open by my greedy hands. Under the Lincoln tunnel which is like going through a wormhole that twists the Jersey highway reality into the magnificent jeweled mouth of the wolf. We get off the bus and I feel like Axl Rose at the beginning of the “Welcome to the Jungle” video, completely disoriented. I had a strange feeling upon standing at the corner looking for the subway. Almost intimidation, which I’ve never felt in any large city before. I guess it’s more of a respect for this ultimate summation of our strange country. We hit Brooklyn and in the subway Steph voices my inner monologue that the city is a dirty one, a quality we both like in a metropolis. Reminds me of Berlin a lot (and later in the coffee shop reading an interview with some German DJs they talk about how they moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan because “Brooklyn is too much like Berlin.”), Brooklyn especially. Once in the subway I’m looking for a map and I’m overwhelmed by the different lines spidering in and out and how there are multiple letters and numbers next to each line. We’re trying to figure out how to get to Brooklyn and finally I ask the subway attendant “How do we get to Greenpoint?” and she crackles and booms through her broken microphone “CAN YOU HEAR ME?” “YES!” “SPEAK UP!” “How do we get to Greenpoint?!” “WHERE?!” “GREENPOINT!!!” She sighs and moves her Soap Opera Digest off of a free subway map and spends a good two minutes pouring over it before rapid firing a series of letters and numbers and stops at me. Finally I just ask if I can take a copy of the map and at last we’re on our way. Almost, because first we go through the turnstiles for a train going the wrong direction. Back up the stairs, cross the street and down into the correct subway tunnel. I was surprised at how unimpressive the tunnel and stations are. I’ve always imagined they’d be like the metro in Paris but even larger and more embellished, but the reality is they’re filthy, hard to spot on a street and plain. I’ve spotted two rats so far waiting for trains and the trains themselves vary in quality from hot plastic 70′s boxes with no apparent maps, to modern steel bullets with LED maps that change with each stop. So we take the L train over to Brooklyn and find that the G train which we need to take North to Nassau Ave. is closed and instead a “Shuttle” is running the line. One look at the bus and it looks like the last train to Auschwitz, packed with sorrowful, filthy faces. We decide to walk to the apartment and I’m still trying to understand my environment and the flavor of the place as we walk past filthy mid-day automotive repair shops, empty parks and a highway bridge. But soon we get near the Southern edge of McCarren park and there are throngs of Memorial Day people laid out on the grass, barbecuing and painting the air with enough rich food smells to drive my empty stomach insane with desire. Cut through the park and Greenpoint opens wide before us. Suddenly we’re in a real, vibrant neighborhood with flocks of people crossing streets and an infinite kaleidoscope of shops catering to every need; all the homogeny of the United States in this 21st century shattered into a million suns each evolved into their own specific place and purpose. It seems impossible to take in and catalogue and understand the vast array of shops so one-after-another as if compacted and hardened. This is the Polish neighborhood and the streets crash and recede again with Poles, Hipsters, Latinos. I’m wide-eyed that here I am, after all this time, in our country’s most absolute expression of the principles it was founded on. It has the feeling of a frontier, accepting everyone but excepting no one from having to fight to stake their claim. Finally we get to 745 Manhattan and call William, the French kid renting the place to us for 5 days. I see a hipster standing outside smoking a cigarette and looking around as if he’d just lost his dog so I hang up and figure this lanky kid must be the guy. He is and stomps out his cigarette taking us upstairs past the monoliths of pizza boxes in the hall since the ground floor is a pizza joint (although William recommends we go to one around the corner since it’s better). The apartment is a Railroad-style 1-bedroom that belongs to his girlfriend who’s in France at the moment. It’s sweltering and our hearts sink when we realize there’s no air conditioning. William leaves and we’re hot and starving so we go around the corner and get pizza. My first slice of NY pizza doesn’t disappoint and afterward we walk across Manhattan Ave. to Cup, a small coffee shop and get coffee since we have time to kill before meeting Damaras and Eric. There are two benches for seating and I read Time Out New York and revel at all of the opportunities in this city. Page after page of new restaurants, shows, bars; enough to fill a whole country. I look at my phone and realize we’ve got to go so we finish and walk up a few blocks to the apartment we may be subletting on Franklin and Java streets. We’re amazed that right next door to where we’ll be living is a wine shop and across the street is a huge restaurant and cafe. I call Damaris and she comes bounding down the stairs, gives us both handshakes and as we’re walking up the stairs we see her landlord, an old Polish lady. She tries to introduce us, but the old Polish lady doesn’t speak English so nothing is gained. Up the stairs to the third floor and Eric is in the place which is a small studio with a separate kitchen but some charming touches like a marble fireplace and a skylight in the bathroom with an inexplicable 12 ft. rubber handle hanging from it. I make note of the Rosy Crucifixion on his bookshelf and Damaris hands us each a glass of champagne. We chat for a bit; she’s a performance artist and he’s a TV editor. Good kids and we offer them half the rent as a deposit and get the keys. They accept, we down our champagne and suddenly we live in New York! As we’re walking out Steph realizes she’s left her umbrella upstairs so we ring them and this time Eric comes down, even though he had sprained his ankle the previous night which was his birthday. Steph goes up and he shows me the trick to open the door then goes rushing out, much like the guy we bought the Lolli from. Steph comes down the stairs and we walk home with stars in our eyes and high-five each other that we were able to become New Yorkers within two hours of being in the city. How naive we were. The plan was to meet Tom and Tony at a Polish home cooking restaurant that’s BYOB, but by the time he shows up it’s 8:45. Since we both had bottles of wine it didn’t matter that we wouldn’t make it to the restaurant which closed at 9. They came upstairs, we put on the Stooges Funhouse on the record player and started catching up. Tom has short hair now and is wearing a button up shirt which catches me off guard, since all I can think of is the last time we saw each other on the boardwalk in PB and as we sat at the table over mimosas he railed against my corporate life. “You sold out Joel. Just look at you, the preppie haircut, married, working 9 to 5…” and now years later here we are: I’m unemployed, tattooed, in a band with long hair and a beautiful girlfriend living the good life according to my beliefs. It’s bizarre how things work out as the years go by. We have a good time, if awkward since all of us are burned out (they being at the end of a long holiday weekend) and when they leave we’re both hungry from drinking our dinners, so Steph raids the French Fridge and finds eggs, bell pepper and cheese and when she says “I wish we had bread for toast” I consider it a challenge to New York City at 11:15 pm on a holiday night. So I put my shoes on, head downstairs and lo, the Polish market right across the street is glowing neon up and down Manhattan Ave. I go in and I’m hypnotized by all of the fresh artisinal wonders packed in this unassuming facade. Fresh coffee beans, glistening produce,polish wonders, dark wood, beers of every variety. I pick up kava tea (my favorite) and a loaf of bread labelled “Health Bread” and as I pay and walk out I start laughing like a maniac. I’m finally living in a real city and it’s everything I always imagined it would be! I bound back in and we scarf down our late night Brooklyn apartment meal, and after much cursing of the humid heat, finally fall asleep.

-J

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