2 Bridges

So. I did it. After three and a half months of biking all over the streets of Brooklyn, I am proud to announce that I popped my biking-from-Brooklyn-to-Manhattan cherry last night, on the day of the NYC Naked Bike Ride, no less. (I did not participate, but had the pleasure of crossing paths with the crew returning from their Manhattan invasion as I biked into the city across the Williamsburg Bridge. As I passed them, I remembered that a girl had given me a flyer about the Ride at a party the night before.) Before I rolled up onto the steep, wide pedestrian/bike walkway, I rode through the heart of Hasidic Jewish Williamsburg, where the stares from the post-shabaat crowd made me think perhaps I should have worn a longer skirt and other footwear besides my knee-high black boots. But. Well. I guess I kinda stare at their clothes too.


Returned to Brooklyn via the Manhattan Bridge, where I looped under the bridge through a scrappy piece of Chinatown at least twice before finding the elusive entrance to the bike lane - which is not to be confused with the pedestrian lane on the other side, or the actual driving lanes, which I learned were not made for cyclists from the symphony of taxi horns that greeted me upon my quickly-aborted initial climb onto the bridge.


It was about 12:45 AM. Silent. Two bikers passed me from the opposite direction, one overtook me from behind. That was it. Just a narrow two-lane strip of bridge enclosed by tight chain-link fence, with subway rails on one side and the Hudson on the other. I thought the water would scare me so I tried not to look at it. But when I did (I couldn't help it), I felt only calm. And that was strange. I'm afraid of heights and (as living in the mountains forced me to admit) a little afraid of nature. Buildings, buses, and subways relax me in ways that trees and pretty views never can. Or so I think. But it was different last night, as the bay's shifting waters soothed me, echoing my movement as I pedaled toward home.


*
About halfway across the bridge I hear a chuckle, a few words. Not from a biker; from the narrow space on the other side of the chain link. The water side. I see a flash of movement, of blankets piled in the 5-foot-wide strip of bridge between the bike lane and oblivion. Someone is staying there. Living on the edge. Literally. Pushed by circumstance or driven by daring, someone who may have very little to lose is planted along this solitary span of concrete, chuckling about some hidden joke as lone bikers push their way past in the night. 


The black waters didn't scare me. But that - yeah. That kinda did. I'm gonna take another bridge home from now on.

When the past is really Past

You know your past is really Past when, within the same month, one of your former places of employment is the subject of a radio story and various articles because it is finally becoming defunct; and the other, which ceased operations 6 years ago, is the subject of a graduate thesis. I'll write more about this later, I think, but right now I'm just noting it as something to note.

Basil Pizza

OK, I'm back. Lowering my expectations once again so I can get back in the habit of writing every day. Today I'm writing about Basil Pizza, a new-ish (in the past 3 months) kosher pizza joint at the corner of Kingston and Albany in Crown Heights. It's one block off of Eastern Parkway, the Olmsted-designed main drag that cut through the neighborhood when it was called Crow Hill and inhabited mostly by free blacks, cutting the heart out of that community (an all-too-common story, as the residents of so many big cities will tell you). Around the same time the neighborhood's name was changed to Crown Heights and buildings like the one I live in now started cropping up to house affluent Anglo-Saxons - buildings with names like the Excelsior and Concord Hall, their rooflines adorned with fake castle turrets and their lobbies filled with strange details intended to give an old-world feel - a plaster lion and unicorn carved over a massive fireplace, a rotunda with carved flowers running up and down the walls.

But I'm not writing about all of that though. Not now. I am keeping it short, I am writing a snapshot. I am writing about Basil Pizza, the kosher pizza joint that also sells espresso and pastry and unbelievable-sounding $24.00 Italian entrees and is owned by a couple of old Hasidic guys and is just on Kingston Ave off Eastern Parkway, which is now the central boulevard not only of the neighborhood but of Hasidic Jewish community. I'd heard of the restaurant but never been, and this morning a woman had one of their coffee cups with "basil" in pale grey lowercase letters printed on it, and I knew I had to take a walk there on this mercifully cool summer night. What a place. Open windows, high ceilings, glass globe lights, bright music. I sat on an outdoor stool with my dog, ordered pizza, and felt like I was in Paris. Talked to a black guy from NC about his big mama pit bull while the 2 Hasidic owners looked on and hipsters in yarmulkes kept drifting up. Mushroom and goat cheese pizza with truffle oil. They also have espresso. They are in walking distance of my apt. Be still my heart!


Just another one of the thousands of reasons I just can't help loving my 'hood. Good night.