New York, New York

Suddenly, in the middle of a direct examination of an expert witness for the bad guys, I’m struck by how exhausted I am with paying attention to the detail. And how terribly difficult it is to remain sharp and keep the juices flowing during hours and hours of this kind of proceeding. The attorneys for the good side never falter. I think yet again, amidst all the snarky put downs of lawyers, how undervalued the work of a good lawyer can be.


I’m starting to type my post for Ocean in the heavy cloud of a tired mind. (The rose? Oh, Ed would say that at $3, it’s an awfully cheap way of getting days worth of goodwill from me.)





And it was a rush of a day. Straight out of the shower, we did our usual walk to the courthouse. Yes, wet hair and all. Both of us.





We search for a quick bite to eat, find nothing good and settle for a standup muffin. Greasy and sweet. Bleh.

At the trial, things proceed with a certain degree of sanity. I find myself wishing for the moment where everyone would stand up and say – let’s all go home. We know this entire proceeding should not have come to pass, we’re sorry that we let it go this far. Not surprisingly, the judge does not say that. She admits evidence, even unnecessary evidence, because it’s better to err on the side of having a complete record than to make hasty pronouncements that later will be appealed by the party who sure as hell loves to appeal everything, even though he has never won (known here as “the bad guys”).


Walking home, I notice, as ususal, the traffic lining up to get into the Holland Tunnel. It’s rush hour, and the cars are clamoring to get in, or rather out of the city.





The cars stand frozen and you can do a dance between them and not get hurt. I am always surprised the next morning when we pass this way, that nothing of their mess remains. They do eventually get into that tunnel. People reunite with families, sleep and the next day it all repeats itself.

We stop at Bruno's Italian bakery for cookies. It's our aperitif. To help maintain the pace for the closing hours of the day.





Ed has a quick meeting with the attorneys in the evening. We’re really on the last stretch. Everyone expects tomorrow to be the final day of the trial.

I take a walk, weaving my way through the Village, taking it all in, sometimes mesmerized by the hyper crowdedness of it all, sometimes confused by it all, watching people hang out in the neighborhood that has made a cult of hanging out, so long as it includes lots of late night food, late night drinking, and in between, things I can’t really give a label to. Colorful? Sure, with insanely dizzying color.





Again I think back to when I was a kid here. After Warsaw, New York’s frenetic buzz was a stunning distraction. But I missed even then the quiet of empty spaces. Now, too, I’m starting to itch for an espresso in the stillness of a flowering garden. Or a walk where the birdsong isn’t that of a pigeon.


Ed comes back and we head out to dinner. Not far. Sammy’s Noodle Shop and Grill. Ed wants Chinese. Sammy’s, he later tells me, served up the best egg roll ever.

waiting in New York

...for the rain to stop. I know it wont, but I want an excuse to go outside, to walk and stretch myself, after a day of work while sitting on a rapidly deflating mattress.

Earlier, we did go out for breakfast. It was noon and when I reported this late start to my daughter she said – you’re becoming like me! Without a schedule, mealtimes get pushed around. Without a schedule and with Ed, they become random.

Our breakfast was at Café Borgia, a place noted for having daylong breakfast. Fine and hearty and very honest...





...but my eyes kept wandering to the store across the street.





It was one of those unusual moments when you know more about a place or person than what the world imagines you to know. I happen to have heard small details about the Vesuvio Bakery in these last weeks. A movie could well be made about the secrets of the spot. (Ed tells me that movies have been made, where the Bakery appears as a fleeting backdrop where a director needed a shot of Village life, but that’s not the same.)



Before I saw that we were in for a rainy (and therefore work-filled) day, I thought of going one last time on a circuit of childhood paths. But it would be like walking through a rebuilt city and trying to remember what was once there. So little remains of what I knew here as a child. My yellow brick apartment building, sure, there’s that. But my school building has been demolished (it had been condemned during all the six years I went there, so it’s good that they finally moved), the pizza place with the great take out pies closed decades ago. A&P, where I bought my first American powdered sugar doughnut is gone, Woolworth’s is gone, even the dreadful Korvette’s -- the place that spearheaded the drive to keep stores open on Sundays in America, the place where my mother sent us for replacement underwear, closed and eventually filed for bankruptcy.

New York doesn’t hold on to the inconsequential. And most places are terribly inconsequential.

There is of course, the consequential: I could spin around and visit the family for whom I au paired while in college. They still live in the same place they did when I was with them in the early 1970s. What’s left of them, anyway. The mother of my charge died a while back and the new wife of the father also just recently passed away.

But the thing about being an au pair is that you are just a tad more connected to your employer than the cook, no matter how much the family likes you and how well they treat you and no matter where you wind up down the road in life’s patchwork of interesting places. Once you leave, you leave.





The rain continues and I stay in my half reclining position.

Until I can stand it no more.

Outside, it is raining hard.





But isn’t it the case that in the city, you go about your business and ignore the weather?





I stay within the neighborhood. I wrestle with the umbrella, the camera, and occasionally I dart into a store to catch my breath. When Ed is with me, I almost never buy anything. We practice the religion of nonacquisition pretty steadfastly. I’m not as rigorous about it as he is, but I’m getting close. When I lost my watch last week, we studied every cheap replacement imaginable. My footwear is nearly as pathetic as his. My TV is the size of a cereal box.

But Ed is not with me today. He’s with attorneys and later with his aunt. And so I relax a little. I think about the graduation, a wedding, the foreign lectures I’m to give – all coming up, all requiring proper dress. I try on things. The familiar and unwelcome feeling of want creeps in.

New York is indeed a dangerous place. Even as it looks so childishly benign.






I finish the stroll with a return to a place Ed and I ate at back in October – Pearle’s Oyster Bar. Soft shell crab just started the season. Pan fried, with a glass of white wine, at the counter.





On the way home, I pick up Ed’s favorite cookies at the Italian bakery. Why do you like rainbow colored cookies? I once asked him. They have jam in between the layers.





The rain is quietly retreating. By tomorrow the sidewalks should be dry.

men

Some of them can be quite persuasive.

You have your law text with you. (I do.)
You can call and find out about postponing your meeting. (I can.)
Do you want to stay until the conclusion of the trial? (This from Ed, and the answer is yes, I do.)

We’re at a critical juncture in the proceedings and things are at an explosive stage. There is a trial within a trial as various parties are scrambling to throw in their version of what they would like you to believe before the whole thing shuts down. In other words, a circus!


We eat an attorney’s lunch at the place just around the corner from the courthouse (Allbella). The waiter is happy to tell me that I can have an espresso. As of this spring, we have the machine!

Okay. Thanks. Make it a double.

We walk back from the courthouse and think to the days ahead. Tomorrow there is another pause in the proceedings, giving me time to catch up with work. Wednesday, the drama resumes, but only briefly. We expect to be home Thursday or Friday.



On our walk back to Bleecker, we pass the well tended these days world of SoHo. A guy is giving his point of view and it strikes me that everything about him exudes confidence.





...and, north of Houston, enter the more quirky world of the Village. I’m so used to seeing younger adults here – maybe because older types can’t handle the constant stair climbing in the elevator-less buildings. But, there are the exceptions.





There’s a grocery store here and I suggest we pick up a few essentials so that we can cut back on snacking on the run. The store is predictably expensive, but we get the bananas and the tasteless crackers that’ll work well with the $6 bottle of Cava we hauled in earlier.

A few steps before our entrance to the walk-up, we pass a pizza joint. New York style pizza, eaten at a narrow counter, on the run. Thin crust and light marinara. A slice with mushrooms, Ed says.





I think to myself – I’m glad I’m here. Even an occasional traveling companion needs a helping hand, or a person with whom he can share a pizza slice. And of course, the trial is at this point riveting. Speeding along to a brilliant (I hope) denouement. In the alternative, I’m picking up a truck load of observations on trying a complicated family/property case and enjoying feeling just a little like a New Yorker again.


Late, very late, we cross Bleecker and eat supper at a table on the sidewalk. Spanish rice on a warm spring evening.





But why is it that the half dozen photos I took today are all of men?

Sunday in New York

What would you do with it? I can’t think of a block of Manhattan left undiscovered. Yet here we are – another beautiful warm day, telling us to get up and get moving.

It’s not easy to get up from a deflated mattress – to push aside the computers, to put away anything when the only place to rest things on is a radiator cover that we carried over to serve as a shelf.





But by noon, we have a plan. Pickles. We’ll chase down the pickle place that Ed has proclaimed as the only good pickle place left in the city. Except that it’s not in Manhattan anymore. This March, it closed its doors on Orchard Street and moved to Brooklyn. We’ll find it. Inferior Brooklyn map in hand, we set out on foot. Starting in the West Village...





... with a pause for a nutritious breakfast. We’ve not paid attention to food during the daytime here. Sometimes it comes at us in large quantities (attorney lunches), sometimes in junky batches of scones and cookies, until a late dinner attempts to correct the imbalance. But on Sunday, we do it right: a simple egg and avocado sandwich on seven grain bread. There is such beauty in the ordinary!






Wanting to avoid the standard trek toward the court buildings, we cut in toward the east and pick up Mulberry Street in Little Italy. And what a surprise – the street has gone pedestrian and here it works! The sidewalks are taken over by people eating, the street belongs to the ramblers. Little Italy has turned into a lovely place for a Sunday stroll.





We cross Canal Street and, of course, everything changes. The Chinese fruit and vegetable stalls are squeezed into small spaces along the curb. I note that the exotic fruits are taken from crates that are from Vietnam.





But not only. Cherries from Florida are a steal at $4 for two pounds. And mangos – 75 cents each, most likely from Mexico or Guatemala. We buy two mangos and cover our hands with sticky mango juice as we peel the sweet fruit and eat it on the crowded street. I need a sink with running water.

On Chinatown’s Mott Street, we pass restaurants and food shops, but we’re not eating here. I can’t see us barging in with mango on our hands asking for bathroom privileges.

Ed pulls me into a building that announces itself as the Chinese Community Center. Downstairs, in a packed auditorium, two singers are performing.





We watch with clean hands, after making good use of their restrooms.


Sunday. We’re near the courthouse now and of course the area is completely shut down. The financial district of lower Manhattan on a week-end looks as if an eraser has taken out every New Yorker from the streets. But we’re also at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge and here, you see again the comfortable mix of tourists and city folk. We make our way across the bridge to Brooklyn.





So now we're in Brooklyn. Oh course, I could do a search on my iPhone and I would get some sense as to where the pickle store is. But it seems so pleasant just to walk, vaguely in the direction of the store. We continue past the Brooklyn courthouse buildings, past parks where joggers run and children kick soccer balls. But after a while, I falter.

Okay, Ed, I’m lost and I don’t know where we’re going.

You have an address?
Yes, even a subway stop, were we to take the subway. I thought we would walk. (We’d been walking for a couple of hours already, but in my mind, no walk is uninteresting or too long.

We ask a police officer to assess the distance to our final destination – 39th, around the Church Avenue stop.
You need to take a bus there. That’s really far.
No no, walking is okay. I count the subway stops. Eight. Eh, what’s eight stops on a beautiful day.
There’s a free shuttle from here to Church Street.
Free? – this from Ed.
Yes, because they’re working on the F line tracks. So we’re shuttling people between stops.

I give in. It’s already late in the afternoon and we have pickles to buy.

The bus takes us just to the edge of Borough Park: home to the highest concentration of Hasidic Jews outside Israel.





It hard for me to digest this abrupt change in neighborhoods. New York, to me, has always felt looser in its religious boundaries. Of course, there are conservative Jews and conservative Christians in every urban center of the country. But in Borough Park, there are nearly 100,000 people who appear, at least to the casual observer, to be as traditional in their lifestyle as the Amish in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.





Indeed, I read later that they maintain the highest birthrate in the city: nearly seven children per family. The children are quite beautiful and they seem to be dressed in the same way as their siblings – perhaps to distinguish them from the children of others?





We go into a bakery and pick out a handful of very tasty in a bland sort of way cookies.





Ed is the Jewish boy who stands out: no head cover, no traditional attire. I stand out in all ways. But unlike the Amish communities, the people here are not especially shy or suspicious of strangers (even as they like to protect their children from the bad influences of the outside world). They are, more than anything, oblivious to us.





And, unlike other insular communities, they are not opposed to the use of modern technologies.





We find the pickle lady. They calls themselves Ess-a-Pickle now.

So, you like it here?

Yes, it’s good for us to be here. I didn’t think I’d still see a camera once I left Manhattan! She laughs.

We buy a gallon and talk abut transporting the pickles back to Madison in a carry-on.
Drain the brine and make new brine once you get there – she tells us.
We also buy a quart for now. I know Ed will finish those by the time the day is done.
Please, the newer ones for me! (I like them to be new, not even half sour yet.)
Throw in a few for her, Ed sighs. Every pickle for him is a treasure.


We walk back to the bus that will take us to Brooklyn Heights. And once we cross an empty street with closed warehouses, we are crossing a great divide, as if crossing Canal Street, or any other street that manages to completely transform a neighborhood.

We’re in Bangladesh now.





And there is a street fair. Crowded, fragrant with grilled meats and the sweet smell of mango milk, colorful and almost exotic, particularly to us, having just spent an hour in a completely different environment.





I want to know what the festival is about. I ask the policeman, standing out as the only other non-Bengali in the crowd (besides us). He shrugs his shoulders. There’s another one coming up at the end of June – he points to a sign announcing this.
What’s that one about? I ask.
I don’t know. I don’t read their writing.

We stroll a little longer, but the music is loud and the day is quickly ebbing away from us and we still have quite the walk...

...back across the Brooklyn Bridge, back to Manhattan.


It’s late by the time we feel ready for dinner. For an hour or two we discuss the trial of the week ahead. Ed is staying and he has some small points that he wants to pay attention to. I’ll be leaving Monday evening. I haven’t enough of my work with me to continue doing it in New York.

But for this night we go back to an Ed family favorite – Katz’s Deli in the East Village area.










We buy a pastrami sandwich for me, a turkey one for him, on rye, with cole slaw and more pickles. Beers are sold late in grocery stores. We pick up those as well and head back for a picnic at our deflating mattress on Bleecker Street.

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.