I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
Cade and I were at White Horse Tavern in The Village on Friday night to celebrate my friend Julia’s birthday. On his way to the bar, Cade spotted Malcolm Gladwell, who Cade only knows as “that guy who was on iTunes talking about chunky pasta sauce.” I quickly walked over and stared at him, trying to match the picture on the back of Blink with the skinny afro’d guy at the nearest table.
It wasn’t so long ago that I wrote about all the older people living in the nice two bedroom apartments in my building with slight resentment. They pay $200 for apartments I won’t be able to afford once they pass on and the building owners spruce them up.
2:33 a.m.
How do you go from the kind of sleep that forgets your existence to complete wakefulness? This morning, I startled from sleep. The apartment was enveloped in the thick darkness that is between 2:00-6:45 on a weekday. On a weekend, this darkness might be full of laughter, last calls, whispers, and even light. The day before work, it is unfamiliar and uncomfortable as a distant relative.
Tonight my window’s open wide as the golden-petaled daffodils that line the sidewalks. It was a beautiful weekend in NYC. The spring fashions were finally unhindered by jackets and sweaters. Flip flops revealed pale, boot-distressed feet. My freckles square-danced in the sunlight.
Today the Brooklyn Bridge is rain-slickened and cold, the pedestrian and bike area abandoned. When I went yesterday, it was sunny and crowded. Tourists walked so slowly that Cade and I kept stepping into the bike lane to quickly bypass the families loaded down with cameras and knapsacks. One surly cyclist asked, “You do know you’re in the bike lane, right?” as he whizzed off. “You do know I could easily push you over, right?” I retorted to Cade. Someday I want to be a cyclist over the bridge, but I’ll go easy on those traveling afoot. Foot traffic is slow and frequently interrupted across the wooden-planked bridge. Sometimes walkers have to stray in the bike lane.
Saturday morning, and the upstairs neighbors are at it again, though I’m not sure what “it” is. Maybe they’re getting ready for an upcoming audition for “Stomp” and training in heavy combat boots for the added workout. Maybe they’re throwing those huge ten-pound bags of dog food one buys at Costco in order to tease - or flatten - that Twinkie-shaped terrier I’ve see peeing outside. Or maybe this apartment building’s ceilings and walls are as brittle as an octogenarian woman’s bones, but I don’t remember the neighbors being this noisy when I first moved in.
You can visit a foreign country for $2. Or at least, you can feel like you’re in a foreign country for $2. After exiting the B train at the Brighton Beach, you’re thrust into a world of Cyrillic signs, pulsing techno from passing cars, borsch, and the ostentatious spandex clothes of the early nineties. (Apparently, always en vogue in Russia). I don’t understand why tourists opt for Chinatown instead of Little Odessa during their visits. Sure, I haven’t see any stern-visaged former Communists peddling knockoff bags. But I truly feel steeped in otherness there, and not in a hey-other-come-buy-sunglasses-I-make-special-deal-for-you-only kind of way.
Cade and I went to Brighton Beach to take pictures, because Brighton Beach is not beautiful. It’s a village that lives under the dirty roar of elevated subway tracks. Paint peels in huge, rusty chunks that shake off into the open-air veggie stands, onto the large meat-filled pastries sold for $1. The beach is riddled with the detritus of vagrants that lap at malt liquor like waves at the shore. Still, it sustains more wildlife than the significantly cleaner beaches where I’m from. When Cade and I visited over the summer and went swimming (I’ve accepted that now my kids will probably be mutants), we encountered a live horseshoe crab and multiple fiddler crabs. I was delighted, because 1) I’m easily amused and haven’t seen much of the world and 2) I’m a science geek at heart.
The fog hovered over Astroland, the amusement park on Coney Island, and Cade agreed to walk over with me. Its last season of operation has just started. Coney Island, as a whole, is a kind of oceanic ghost town. The only association my generation has with it is Requiem for a Dream, which is pretty damn disturbing. Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” on the contrary, makes me all warm and fuzzy. Oh, and didn’t Alvy from Annie Hall grow up on Coney Island? I digress.
The host of the comedy show takes the stage to introduce the next comic. He scans the room, looking for something to say, and sees an elderly woman has joined the group of people on the front right side of the room.
Host: Yeah… Oh, hey! You’re new here, aren’t you?
God(s)/Allah/Whom or Whatever must read my blog, for the weather was beautiful today. Thanks for that, dude(s). I always knew I’d move to New York someday and become a sort of Northeastern elitist, but I never thought I’d become a Northeastern pansy. Seventy-seven degrees outside now, and I’m walking around in a sweater, thinking, “It’s hot! Oh, jolly! Too bad I forgot to put on deodorant this morning!” (I did. Sometimes I do that when I remember other things, like wiping all the crust out of my eyes).
*Cade took these last weekend. I love how they look like colorized black and white photos.
