Bushwick Avenue Sunset

Seen on an end-of-day bike ride:

 

Sleepless As What's Under Them

The other day I got out for a bit of a ride.  On my way home, I passed through the Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill neighborhoods of Brooklyn.  

The Heights abuts the waterfront and the Hill is next door.  Both neighborhoods have been the home of a number of writers, especially poets--including the ones everyone's heard of like Walt Whitman, Hart Crane and Marianne Moore and ones only readers of this blog have heard of, like yours truly.

Anyway, much of the Heights gentrified decades ago--in fact, one of the first landmarked districts in the United States lies within the neighborhood.  Cobble Hill is also turning into an enclave of young professionals and families.  

One result of those demographic changes--and shifts in the city's, nation's and world's economy--is that much of the city's maritime history is disappearing.  I know about those developments firsthand:  Two of my uncles were maritime workers and their union headquarters once occupied an entire square block, and a good part of another, in South Brooklyn.  One of my early birthdays was celebrated in its reception hall; so were milestones in the lives of other family members of longshoremen and other workers.  Now that square-block sized building is occupied by the largest Muslim elementary school in America and the maritime workers are relegated only to a couple of offices in the other building.

One of the last remaining vestiges of the work those men (almost all of them were male) did is seen on this building I passed on Atlantic Avenue, near Clinton Street:

The former headquarters and workshop of John Curtin's sail-making operation is now condominums, with a restaurant and Urban Outfitters store in its street-level studios. 

Riding through the neighborhood made me think of this passage from Hart Crane's masterwork The Bridge:

 Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

Always The Same: Revelations And Changes

Parisians and psychotherapists disappear for the month of August.  Sometimes I think of myself as a Parisian in spirit,even though I haven't been in eight years, but I have no illusions of being a psychotherapist.  So what's my excuse for being somewhat conspicuously absent this month?

Well, I've managed to be busy with other things, including writing projects.  Hopefully they'll remunerate me; for now I find them rewarding.  And, frankly, when I haven't been doing those things--or riding or playing with my cats--I've felt drained, spiritually and emotionally exhausted.  The pastor of the church I started attending a few months ago says I'm healing. She's right.

Still, I've managed, in the past week, to ride to Point Lookout (Nothing like a few hours riding Arielle to make me feel lithe!) and to take a few shorter rides--and to record a few things along the way.

I'll start with something I saw on my way home from some volunteer work:

Sometimes I think archaeology is the step between destruction and forgetfulness.  At least, that's how things seem to work in New York. Sometimes, when a building is torn down, a long-concealed sign,  like the one in the photo, is revealed.  

What particularly intrigued me was the bottom inscription:  "Separate Waiting room for women."  Talk about a relic!  My undergraduate college went co-ed only four years before I enrolled in it.  And, boys and girls entered my Catholic elementary school through separate entrances:  a practice that was abandoned a couple of years after my family moved away.

Given that I lived as a male until ten years ago, it's hard for me not to wonder and imagine what my life would have been like had I entered through the girls' and women's doors.  Of course, had I lived in such a world, I would not have attended the college from which I graduated.  In fact, I might not have attended any college at all.

In those times, I probably would not have witnessed this:

The stretch of Brooklyn waterfront between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges has been turned into a lovely park.  Not long ago, it was off-limits, as the neighborhood around it--DUMBO--still consisted of functioning and recently-ceased manufacturing and warehousing.  This stretch of waterfront, like so much of the rest of New York's shorelines, was used in various ways by those industries.  In fact, most New Yorkers had little or no inclination to spend any time by the water, as it was associated with rough trades and characters.  Fifth Avenue became Manhattan's most-desired address in part because, of all of the island's avenues, it is furthest from the East and Hudson Rivers.

Ah, but some things don't change:

That's one reason why I--and Arielle and, on occasion, Tosca--like to take a spin to Point Lookout.

Fundraising Party For Trans-Inclusive Women's Cycling Group

If you're here in New York next Wednesday, you'll want to trek over to The Grand Victory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

There, at 7:00 pm on the 10th of October, the doors will open on WE Bike's end-of-season party.

Don't worry:  I won't do karaoke.  And I definitely won't take off my WE Bike T-shirt!

But I do promise a good time.  There will be live music, bike videos and hourly raffles, among other things.

And you'll get to meet all of the interesting women who are WE Bike.  

I've mentioned WE Bike in a previous post on my other blog.  Briefly, it's a New York City-based bicycle group open to all women and transgender people who enjoy biking, or believe they might.   WE Bike seeks to break down barriers by offering social and training rides, and mechanics' workshops.  It also plans to offer scholarships.

You can learn more about it at     www.facebook.com/WEBikeNYC.

Oh, and by the way, the cover charge is $8.00.  Not bad for a night out in Williamsburg, eh?

Lost With Memory

Today I did about two hours of bike riding. I made a couple of stops along the way, including one at a park in Red Hook, Brooklyn. En route, I rode for a bit down Fourth Avenue. Let's just say it ain't le Boulevard des Champs-Elysees. But now it runs the risk of going from merely drab or ugly to truly grotesque. The Atlantic Terminal Mall, where Fourth Avenue dead-ends on Flatbush Avenue, looks like something from the deck of a baroquely cheesy (Or is it cheesily baroque?) cruise ship with an almost-apocalyptic post-industrial background. In that background, some developer wants to build some humongous sports arena where the Nets will play. Just what New York needs: another terrible NBA team!


A few blocks further down Fourth, at the corner of Carroll, a multi-story condo building has been erected since the last time I was in that area, which was probably a year ago. It was just as gaudily sterile as the Atlantic Center Mall.

From there, I zigged and zagged along streets where my mother and uncles played as children, and where an aunt and uncle lived for many years. It was only a few blocks from where Tammy and I lived together and and even less than that from the place where I lived by myself before I met Tammy.


After buying a bag of white cheddar popcorn in a deli, I rode toward the Red Hook waterfront. It's a strange combination of maritime bucolic and early-industrial grittiness. There's an upscale food market just a couple of blocks from splintered tenements abandoned from the deaths of dock workers who once loaded and unloaded the ships that came and went to and from New York Harbor. There is an IKEA store only a few hundred feet from a lot that, not long ago, was full of rotting couches and chairs.


From that IKEA, from the upscale foodstore, from the abandoned cement plant, from the warehouses that have been turned into artists' studios, one has the best views of Miss Liberty to be found anywhere. In fact, about ten or twelve years ago, realtors tried to make the area--much of which was abandoned--more appealing by calling it "Liberty Heights." Of course, they didn't fool any born or bred Brooklynites.


Anyway, on my way home, I stayed within a block or two of the water. Near the old Brooklyn Navy Yard, I saw a man who was probably my age, or close to it, fixing a flat on the bike of a younger gay (or possibly genderqueer) woman. They looked like they were having trouble, so I stopped to see whether they needed hlep.


It seemed that the man had the situation in hand, but the three of us got to talking. The young woman was very nice. The man was rather charming and reminded me of someone, though I wasn't quite sure of whom. Finally, he mentioned his name. His last name is, from what I have seen, uncommon. In fact, I have known only one other person who had it. So, I asked whether he had a sister whose first name was X.

Turns out, he did. That name is one most people wouldn't associate with their last name, or a person of their ethnic background. And I described his sister a bit, at least as I remember her. He was flabbergasted and wondered how I could have known her.

Turns out...Well, I didn't tell him the real way I got to know her. And let's just say that now I'm very different from the man she knew, albeit breifly, back in the day.

He said that she's married: No surprise there. She was possibly the most beautiful woman I ever dated, or with whom I had an affair or relationship. (Can anyone define the differences between them?) She was born in India to a black Jamaican mother and a father whose parents hailed from India, so she had that wonderful skin tone that was somewhere between copper and mahogany. She also had a long, lean body with gentle curves, an almost perfectly aquiline nose and lips that were plush but not plump. The only parts of her body that weren't exquisitely beautiful were her eyes: They had a nice almond shape but, in spite of their deep brown hue, felt lifeless.

Still, I tried to keep the relationship going even after I knew full well that we had nothing in common.

I don't know what, if anything, she recalls of me. It may be just as well if she doesn't remember me.

By the way: When he asked how I knew her, I said she was a student of mine. She was in fact a student at the time I dated her; she just wasn't my student or even in a college in which I was teaching. And she was about my age--mid '30's--at the time.

As we parted, he said, "Small world!"