a New Yorker and an immigrant

You mean your family never took you to Coney Island? I ask Ed.
Not that I recall...

Not to the amusement park? Or the beach?

No, I don’t think so...
Or Brighton Beach? (Brighton Beach of Brooklyn is home to a significant number of Russian Jews and though I wouldn’t exactly identify Ed’s family with this very recent population of immigrants, I thought maybe they had stumbled down to visit. If only for the pickles. Ed’s family had a particular fondness for kosher dill pickles.)
No, no real New Yorker would have any reason to visit Brighton Beach.

I was a real New Yorker.

No you weren’t and anyway, you didn't regularly go to Brighton Beach.
I was a New Yorker! You left New York to go to college and never came back. I finished college in New York. Formative years! And when I was a kid, we went to Coney Island.
You were born in Poland. I was born in here. It’s in my blood!

We are, of course, bantering for the hell of it. We do that a lot here. In Madison, Ed can be very quiet. When he does banter with store clerks back home, I'm often squirming because I know they don't see it coming. In New York, they see it coming. Ed is in his element. His accent comes back, his hands are alive, he delivers the lines and then roars with laughter.

I often wonder why he has hated New York for so long (he doesn’t now, not on our visits here this year and the year before). He is the genuine article. Even though I carry a camera, people assume I live here, just because I walk next to him. They ask us directions. They ask us questions about real estate in the Village. And Ed plays the role of the friendly New Yorker very very well. It's a mistake to say New Yorkers are rude, he tells me more than once.



My last trip to Coney Island was in March of 2005 (yes, I blogged about it then). I went alone and it was perhaps for that reason that I found it a haunting experience. My childhood memories were or vast crowds having a wonderful time escaping the stifling air of the city. Coney Island had rides and food stands and a sprawling beach, with the cooling waters of the Atlantic. It’s an easy place to travel to – the last stop on the Q, D, F or B. But on my 2005 visit, the place was cold and empty.


Let’s go, real New Yorker, I tell Ed. Brighton Beach, before it gets discovered. Then Coney Island.


It’s a beautiful May day. Sunshine and a warm breeze. Short sleeve weather, even for me.





On our way to the subway, We pass a group of musicians with an energetic doo wop sound.






We pause to listen. They call themselves Spank and they’re superb. And they have a small, but tremendously appreciative audience.





We play cruises. The lead singer tells us. We’ve been all over the globe. He looks at his watch. Now I gotta go meet my girlfriend in Macy’s. Macy’s, on a nice day like this. She wants me to buy her perfume. Sweet smell, but it’s $130! I throw Ed a “see what men do for their girlfriends or traveling companions” look.



At the station we wait for the B train.

The D comes and goes. (That one only goes to Coney Island, I tell Ed. I thought we’d start with Brighton Beach. You might enjoy a swim there.)

The second D comes and goes. (That’s strange, Nina. You sure this is the right platform? Of course it is. I retort. See? The sign does say D and B.)

The third D comes and goes. (Maybe we should just take the Coney Island train... No, we’ve waited this long, just one more and if it’s not B, we’ll take it.)

I glance at my subway map and notice the fine print: B runs only on weekdays. Oh dear.
New Yorker, huh? Ed grins. What I like about Ed is that he always chooses to laugh at me rather than getting annoyed. Because we have now wasted half an hour waiting for a train that was not to be. And the ride on the local D to Coney Island is a 45 minute affair. In all, we’ll have spent a good part of the sunny May day enmeshed in the subway system.





Never mind. The day is fresh and brilliant as we alight in Coney Island. Ed asks – do they still have the original Nathan’s there?

Of course! (Nathan's Deli has been around since 1916, and in case you want to know where the idea of a hot dog eating champion arose, it was here. Record thus far: 68 hot dogs and buns in twelve minutes )

Let’s split a hot dog. With the works! (This from Ed, who does not eat red meat out of respect  for the feelings of cows. Me, I avoid hot dogs because my imagination puts all sorts of gross things into that orange toned cylinder of whatever.)
Of course! I say. New York, New York, you are messing with our principles.

The best shot of the day would have been one of us starting in on the same hot dog with sauerkraut and onions and mustard from the two ends. No such shot was taken, but I at least offer you this.






The boardwalk is reasonably busy. But the beach is nearly empty. And we understand why: it’s still closed for the season (official opening: next week). You risk getting zapped with a fine if you swim. No one is swimming.

But Coney Island is as good as any road carnival that comes to the county fairs in Wisconsin. At the end of May, a new amusement park is scheduled to open here. For now, it’s completely charming to watch the wee ones have their wild moment on a kiddie ride.










Further down along the boardwalk we come to handball courts. I never see handball in Wisconsin. I say to Ed. How come? It’s a game for places without much space. In Wisconsin, we can afford to have tennis courts.





Still further down is the community of Brighton Beach. As you walk along the boardwalk, at some point you notice that the language around you has become almost entirely Russian. And even if I didn't notice the language change, I’d have guessed the heritage of these people. You don’t grow up in Poland without knowing what a Russian or Ukrainian face looks like.





At the Brighton Beach playground we watch men play cards and dominoes. They speak no English and my Russian is too weak to carry on a sensible conversation. They're a friendly bunch and I'm sure they think they have a soul mate in Ed. Indeed, they're eating the pickles he loves. Still, we are useless onlookers. Communications falter. We move on.





We pass the eateries that spill out tables onto the boardwalk. Volna, Tatiana... Coiffed women, men with big bellies – this is the older generation. Or is it my generation? Strains of Moscow Nights, menus with old world standards.





The boardwalk ends here and we move inland, away from the ocean and the still empty beaches.










In the shadow of the elevated subway, Brighton Beach Avenue has the stores that draw the crowds. Green grocers and aptekas (pharmacies, where I hear you can get knock off pharmaceuticals), stores with glitzy  clothes -- so beloved by immigrants who haven't the money, but who want the symbols that are the immigrant's idea of American success. Cold storage for furs, shops renting Russian movies, small law offices advertising immigration services. The writing is in Russian, the clerks speak Russian, the language on the street is Russian.They say only Moscow has more Russians than Brighton Beach.













We buy some baked goods – poppyseed cake and walnut pastries.





At the diary counter, the woman wears lipstick that is as bright as the roses of June, carefully outlining her full lips. Blouses with flashy, sparkling designs are not uncommon. Counters have smoked fish and sweetened cherry juices. I haven’t felt so immersed in the world to the east of Poland since I visited the Soviet Union in 1969.











We ride the Q train back. Over the Manhattan Bridge, with views of the Brooklyn Bridge to the south.







You think I’ll end with this shot of a city scape? No, our day actually ends with a very late night meal at Suzie’s – a Chinese place just up the block on Bleecker. With okay spring rolls and a wonderful Hunan stirfry.





But I want to end with the walk from the Q train back to our Bleecker Street apartment for the week. Because you’d think New York couldn’t possibly offer you garden space to grow the perennials I love to see in Madison gardens. So wrong. Just two blocks from our brownstone, there is this plot, where neighbors have created a magnificent flowering landscape.





With an apple tree and a birdhouse and a young one, still needing help with her food. It's such a non-New York moment that for me, it is as essential to the story of the day as Nathan's hot dogs and Brighton Beach kolbasa.

distraction

We have a day of no court proceedings. The witnesses for the respondent (the respondents being the bad guys) aren’t available until next week and so there you have it. A hush settles in. It’s as if it’s a snow day, only without the snow.


It’s our walking up and down Manhattan day. I can’t remember a visit to New York that doesn’t include it.

Fortified with a Bruno breakfast of lotsa eggs and breads and butter, we set out. From Bleecker Street...





...and, well, a few steps later, we stop. There is a display of photos of West Village homes (including a number of Bleecker Street brownstones) where artists lived and died at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

It would be a somber way to begin our walk, but for the posted quotes from the men and women, commenting in their final months on the worth of life and their pleasure at having lived it. (I am unfairly generalizing here, but the messages are quite beautiful and positive, without the bitterness that surely at some level these artists must have felt.)


And now our walk takes us to Washington Square. And we realize, as do others, that this is going to be a very warm day.









We continue north on Broadway. At 32nd street we stop for a couple of hours. I visit a friend who is recuperating at the Hope Lodge after a difficult medical procedure. She’s doing well and expecting to be back in Madison at the end of June. It's greatly reassuring to have this chat with her, as if it were any noon chat that we are likely to have on Bascom Hill.


Ed and I continue on Broadway, to the newly jazzed up Herald Square. You have to have somewhat mixed feelings here. Broadway becomes partly pedestrian and then almost fully pedestrian at Times Square.





Having lived with the Times Square of taxis and traffic nightmares, I should be thrilled to see this freshly created communal space. And yet, it’s only partly that. The cross streets still have traffic and the pedestrians still must pay attention to streetlights and cars. But the boundaries between sidewalk and street are fluid now. A bike path, weaving its way through the nightmare of people, cross streets and food vendors is trampled over by unseeing pedestrians, at the same time that brazen cyclists will give perhaps one warning, if that, and then speed into the crowd.

And so it feels like a loud and brutal place, at the same time, as so many have pointed out, it has also the aura of a mall.





Still, I appreciate the freedom of movement. The walk across Broadway, the easy access to better vantage points.

But it is also true that we are quite happy to move on. Many a stronger person succumbs to the exhaustion of merely being here, on Times Square.





We ramble on. And it is not necessarily a speedy ramble. Occasionally I stop with my camera... (I mean, who can resist recording ads referencing New York’s current plague?)





And very often Ed pauses to make a note. Because he’s not really taking a day off at all. He’s thinking of what still needs to be said at the trial. I know he wants to fill in gaps, his good narrative at the cross exam notwithstanding.


We’re at Lincoln Center now and I want to spend time at the fountain. I’ve read a lot about its recent installation (think Peter Kopik, fountain genius of the world, the man who gave us, on a smaller scale, the fountain at the Detroit airport). I watch its varying streams of water. Ed takes notes. His mind is now officially elsewhere.









Across the street from Lincoln Center, several dozen cooks and chefs are congregating on the sidewalk. A convention? No, actually a bomb scare, emptying out a local restaurant. This, too, is New York in the spring of 2010.






We walk up Amsterdam, and I pause for a coffee and cupcake at Magnolia Cupcakes. Expensive Magnolia cupcakes.





I’m surprised they don’t offer what I am used to seeing at (expensive) cupcake places in DC – fresh ingredients in strawberry cupcakes, or lemon cupcakes, or coconut cupcakes. I ask about the pink creamed one. Oh, that’s just our standard topping, but in pink. Ah. I settle for the blueberry crumble.



We’re ready for the park. It is so warm now that I am down to an undershirt. I’m hesitant, because I know it is an undershirt. Ed walks up to two women – brassy looking women, I have to add. Listen, this lady here – he points to me – thinks maybe she should not be parading in that undershirt. What do you think? Ed knows how to make me blush. Not because of the shirt, but because of the question.
Oh for God’s sake, this is New York! Wear what you like! -- they respond. Predictably.






I tell Ed that I think Central Park has changed. For the better. It’s greener, fresher, less trampled down. Attention is paid to directing people toward spaces that wont be smothered by their presence.










It’s a lovely afternoon. For dogs, men, women, children. For those who speak and look like they just stepped off the plane from the old country. For those (like me once, here in NY) who walk home from school with a book that needs to be worked on at home but who prefer, instead, to dally and eat a pretzel.










We are weaving south now. Past the dazzling and energetic street show of gymnastic movement.





Past crowds of Fifth Avenue tourists (and there are a lot of them), but we are hurrying a little now, because we want to get to the Museum of Modern Art's Friday evening special: free entrance.





Because we are there during the no fee hours, the museum is packed. But we don’t mind. It’s always cool to see people enjoying a museum and there is so much to love now about MoMA.





I had wanted to split our time between the special exhibitions (the photography of my absolute travel-with-camera hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and the live art of Marina Abramovic) and the paintings of the early twentieth century, but the special exhibitions were far too wonderful to walk through quickly.

The photos – what can I say, photojournalism doesn’t get much better than that. And the live art, too is fully mesmerizing – much of it is bold, even by New York standards. Take the two very naked and very still women standing less than a foot apart, facing each other, inviting you with their presence in the doorway to squeeze through (a guard is at the side and discourages big people from attempting this). Or the artist herself inviting anyone to sit on a chair facing her, for as long as you want.





Most of this can’t be photographed. By the time we reached the regular collections (where you can take photos), we are spent. A few (far less crowded) rooms, and we are done.





We cheat after the museum. It’s not that we’re tired of walking, even though we’ve been more or less steadily on our feet for some six hours. But it’s Friday and we want to get back to the Village before the week-end crowds make eating dinner difficult. We take two stops on the subway and then walk to the bar at Fish.





For the oyster and wine deal. And for one small lobster roll. Because it looked so good on the plates of others.





In our Bleecker Street apartment, Ed goes back to reviewing court transcripts and taking notes. It’s not time for us to talk about the trial yet. I leave him to his work and take a midnight stroll around the Village.

his day in court

The trial starts earlier. 10:00 a.m. It’s an important day, because Ed is on the stand again, to be cross-examined by opposing counsel. The attack comes, of course, during this part of the drama.

In stark contrast to Wednesday, the day is brilliant. One of those moments when the wind blew away all upper air disturbances and left behind deep blue skies and sunshine.

We arrive a few minutes early. I know Ed is well prepared, and I also know he wants to do more than just give the correct answers. He wants badly to squeeze in a narrative – that forest – and there may or may not be questions that’ll permit it.

Five minutes. I have time to run up to the 6th floor bathroom. I hurry. And once again, the ladies’ room door is locked. Women in the court? Maybe, but the bathroom rights remain very oddly stacked against them, here in the court house of New York City. Never mind, the men’s room door is wide open. No one is there, no one is even on this upper floor, in I go.

No sooner do I close the door to the stall than I hear the tap tap tap of a cane. Oh God! I know that cane! It’s the respondent – the man behind all the litigation. I make not a sound. I think – he cannot find me here. Tap tap tap. I feel as if I am in a scene from the Godfather. That there will be blood on the walls soon in this ancient bathroom with the small tiles and the heavy wooden gates to the stalls.

I peer below the gate. He’s still there. Washing his hands. Drying them. And then washing them again. Loud running water, paper towel dispenser lets out more towels... How long, for God’s sake? And what if a stream of others comes in?

The door bangs, he’s gone.



The cross exam begins. From the start, Ed is slammed with questions intended to throw him off. We talked about taking time with answers and he does. I am hoping he is not unnerved. I know he is very goal directed. I know he can get back into his own words.

He does. Brilliantly. The opposing counsel, a litigation expert at a top NY firm, thinking that he may weave in uncomfortable issues long forgotten, actually opens the door and invites the very narrative Ed was hoping to work in.

After, Ed catches my eye and grins.

His lawyers beam.

We break for lunch.


There are other facets of the proceeding that I’ll leave aside. But I’ll say this much – it really helps to have good counsel, a good client, and to be on the side of right.


Ed is too full of adrenaline for a sit down meal and so we take a walk – to the park across the street...





...then up the Brooklyn Bridge, and back again.





He is going through the cool down period. You know how it is after the exam. Thoughts of phrasing you may have used, other details you should have mentioned. We walk and intermittently talk of the cross, and of the bridges around us. Of previous trips to New York, of being here as kids. Same years – the 1960s, he, up on 68th street, me down on 46th street, but of such different worlds! And still, traveling companions now, of sorts.






In the evening, we take the subway up to another bridge – the George Washington. Ed’s friends are meeting us there and taking us across the Hudson...





...to a Jersey restaurant. A small, neighborhood Turkish place with excellent salads and spinach pie and a warm, honeyed cheese desert.





We ride the subway back to the Village. Tired, but in a good way. Not in the New York life is a hassle way. Not like this mom I saw earlier, with three little girls, frustrated with their inability to get a cab, even though the little girls wont stop trying...





... and not like the tired faces I see all the time on the subway. Closed eyes to shut away the screaming noise of the cars, the crowds, the bills, the missed opportunities.






The mattress is low. Ed blows it up again.

bubbles and eating establishments of lower Manhattan

Ed suggests we apply suds to the air mattress. Standard way to find a leak – he tells me. I’ve seen him do this with bicycle inner tubes. But we’re looking at a big mattress with a very small leak. Though perhaps not so small. The air loss is considerably faster now. We can’t even make it halfway through the night without feeling the floor.

He sponges over the surfaces and we watch for bubbles. Nothing. I feel for the trickle of air with my hand. Nothing.

Where’s the closest Walmart? Target? Sears? Kohl’s? The thing about Manhattan is that it has none of the above.

It’s been a long day...



On the up side, on this miserably cold and wet Wednesday, I met the last of the missing Ed brothers. They haven’t been missing really, but what’s been missing is the opportunity to see them all in the same room at the same time. The last such occasion was before my time and I doubt that another will happen in my lifetime.



And here’s another upside: I found Bruno’s for breakfast: a place of great Italian pastry just three blocks from the Bleecker Street apartment, of great espresso, and of great New York attitude. (They wont crack a smile if you paid them for it.)





The trial continues...

We pause for lunch as always, and as always that pause is long enough to accommodate a sit-down meal at any number of the restaurants within walking distance of the courthouse. The attorneys like the old Italian establishment -- Forlini’s. I’ve sat with them there (Tuesday, for example) and watched them put away plate-loads of comforting food among the comforting presence of other similarly situated attorneys and judges whose adrenaline needs to settle down and take break.

Today, however, we are eating with a brother and without attorneys so we head in the opposite direction – to the Odeon, which is a pleasant cross between French bistro and New American food. I have a very good warm goat cheese salad and think how after this week, the white table cloth is again going to disappear from my dining experiences.


It continues to be an unpleasantly drizzly day. My camera stays mostly in my bag. I concentrate in getting from point A to point B in a timely fashion.





The wheels turn, the day moves gracefully along. The answers are solid. The vulnerabilities diminish.




By evening, I make a miscalculation. Last week, I had read in the NYTimes a fairly good review of a new, hip pizza/Italian place in the Village – Pulino’s. Everything about it sounded right for a meal with my occasional traveling companion: fresh, reasonably priced food in a casual space. I glossed over the restaurant critic’s one line that should have given me pause: Pulino’s can be punishingly loud.

Ed hates loud. Especially restaurant loud. The wince never leaves his face until the check is paid and we are out the door.

Or maybe it was a good thing that we ate there. I let him drift in his own thoughts.





...and allowed him to run out with my cell phone to take scheduling calls from the attorneys. And only at the end does the unrelenting speed of the day manifest itself as I pounce on Ed for waving a credit card sky high to get the waiters attention.  

Rude! I scream at him (screaming is a way to be heard).
Ed shakes his head. No. Not here it isn’t, right? This to the waiter who is trying to figure out whom he needs to appease in this one.  
No, not here. The waiter takes Ed’s card.  
You lose! Ha! Loser! Ed roars.  
Bullshit! I shout back.

The two tables to our sides stare at us. Ed and I, the quiet duo with cell phone attachment disorder, have come alive, the adversarial blood ripping through the veins, pushing us to a level of explosive excitement over... something stupid.

We’ve been enmeshed in this courtroom saga too long.


We return to the sagging mattress to quietly mull over what we can expect from the cross exam on the next day.