Last Night
So here it is - my last night in Brooklyn Heights, my stuff mostly moved into the new place, and I figure I’d better make the most of it. So I decide to walk home, of course – through the dingy retail opportunities of Nassau Street, where all the black guys walk around making their yo look at me noises, past the electrical discounts at J&R (I’ll have to pick up one of those CD recorders, I think to myself) and the third Starbucks in as many minutes, across the road and past the park and City Hall, and over to the Brooklyn Bridge.
In the time I’ve been here I’ve come to love the Brooklyn Bridge – it represents all that is good about the city that is my new home. It’s a massively impressive structure, as well as beautiful to look at, with those huge stone towers, the spider webs of steel ropes criss crossing down to the wooden walkway, which seems to be permanently in use by joggers, locals, the useless tourists walking on the wrong side and the guys on bikes who always snap at them, and the lanes of traffic flowing past and below on either side, with all those yellow cabs full of suits who don’t know the delight of walking home across this amazing thing.
It seems a bit poignant to me today, though – it’s not as if I can’t ever walk across the bridge again, but given that I’m moving a bit further inland there doesn’t seem to be much chance of it. Maybe I should make a point of it though I think as I stroll past the ugly brown identikit apartment blocks on the left and the wish I lived there rooftop gardens on the right – once a fortnight or so I should walk across anyway, enjoy the view and then catch the subway the next couple of stops home.
There’s no smell to New York here, and that’s a good thing – when you can smell New York you don’t want to – but there’s plenty of weather. I look back at Downtown and the clouds are low enough to cover the tops of most of the buildings there, and I start to wonder if this is a brilliant idea, and the wind is picking up off the East River too, blowing everyone around. But what the hell – if I get wet I get wet. There’s noise here too – noise from the rush hour traffic below – the cab horns, the omni-present sirens, the trucks, the noise that is New York. And there’s noise above too – the weather is pushing the helicopters lower, closer to the plebs at ground level than usual. Plus there are weather choppers and traffic choppers reporting back to their stations – Americans are obsessed with knowing how long it will take to get somewhere, and what the weather will be like when they finally do. And I realise I’d forgotten how loud it is to live here – you tend to blot it out eventually, like those people who live near airports but no longer hear the planes.
And it starts lightly spitting, and it feels good. I wasn’t thrilled about moving to the new place – I only had a couple of days to find somewhere, and my boss told me it was okay, it’s a good area, you should take it even though I wasn’t sure – but moving the stuff on the weekend showed me it was a nice enough area – it’s not Brooklyn Heights, but not much is. And it feels like I’m changing my life again, leaving something behind and moving to another level, and I feel happy. And, for a second, I even thought about doing one of those cheesy 70s sitcom things like tearing my tie off and throwing it in the river. But then I figured, with my luck, it wouldn’t make it and would fall on some guys windscreen below, freaking him out and making him swerve and cause a multi car pile up, and everyone would stop and point at me, and the City of New York would file a multi-million dollar lawsuit against me, and Giuliani would name me Public Enemy No.1. Which has a certain appeal, sure, but still. Plus, I kind of like this tie – it’s fairly new. I loosened it, though.
And, finally, I get across and over to Henry St, and I get a haircut on the way home. I never seem to manage to find the time to do this, and I always end up looking like a shaggy dog, or at the very least with a mid bike tour 88 look (which is not a great look – ask Eyman). So I head into the salon and, as usual, I get the guy with the great hair no English (Israeli this time: “where you from?” “Australia” “huh? I go travel soon – go Sydney” “that’s where I’m from” “huh?”) And, as usual, he would rather play with my hair than actually cut it (“actually I want it very short” “huh?”). But, after extensive negotiations, I get him to cut it off – hairdressers generally seem to think that if they cut your hair off you won’t come back or something – they haven’t seemed to grasp the concept that it actually grows back eventually. And I get that anti-Samson thing happening – the more that comes off, the better I feel. And when it’s finished he looks as though he can’t believe what he’s done – he looks so happy I think he’s going to hug me. It’s almost worth all the hair he forced down my back with the blow dryer. So I buy some Fudge (“it’s Australian – I like to support my local products” “huh?”) and run away.
And I figure I’ll have a stroll around the neighbourhood for old time’s sake, and I’m glad I did. I’ll miss living in Brooklyn Heights – it’s very beautiful with the old brownstones and their stairs (“it looks just like Sesame Street” as a wise person once said to me), the little mews’ with their cottages all in a row like a mixed bunch of old people at a bus stop, the converted fire stations, the trees. I’ll have to show you around if you come over here. And I head down to Fatoosh for a kafta platter for a perfect meal on my last night here. And I watch everyone out walking – the guys all seem to have dogs that jump up on girls as they walk past, and the girls all bend down and play with them and stroke their heads and do the hullo baby thing – that trick never fails. I’ll definitely miss this neighbourhood, but then I’m only going to be a couple of kilometres away at most at Prospect Heights / Park Slopes (or miles – I hate the bloody imperial system), and I think I’ll like it there too, with the park and the museum just around the corner and everything else I can discover – I think I’m really growing to like the whole of Brooklyn itself.
And I go home and have a beer (Brooklyn Brewery’s Pennant Pale Ale – remarkably, for here, a bloody good beer) and play one of my new CDs (the one with all the remixes of Underworld, Moby, Aphrodite and the rest – shut up James, I’m going old skool house tonight) and dance around in my undies and shirt (and don’t tell me you’ve never done it – I know you have. Anyway, all my clothes are at the new place). And I figure that I’ll write some notes for a little story, maybe have another beer and finish off those Kalamata olives that didn’t all end up in the pasta sauce for the gnocchi last night after all, and maybe one of those little cigars that I like. And I do. And maybe I’ll go for a stroll and check out the view of Downtown at night from the promenade around the corner.
Better find some pants, though.
(August 2000)
In the time I’ve been here I’ve come to love the Brooklyn Bridge – it represents all that is good about the city that is my new home. It’s a massively impressive structure, as well as beautiful to look at, with those huge stone towers, the spider webs of steel ropes criss crossing down to the wooden walkway, which seems to be permanently in use by joggers, locals, the useless tourists walking on the wrong side and the guys on bikes who always snap at them, and the lanes of traffic flowing past and below on either side, with all those yellow cabs full of suits who don’t know the delight of walking home across this amazing thing.
It seems a bit poignant to me today, though – it’s not as if I can’t ever walk across the bridge again, but given that I’m moving a bit further inland there doesn’t seem to be much chance of it. Maybe I should make a point of it though I think as I stroll past the ugly brown identikit apartment blocks on the left and the wish I lived there rooftop gardens on the right – once a fortnight or so I should walk across anyway, enjoy the view and then catch the subway the next couple of stops home.
There’s no smell to New York here, and that’s a good thing – when you can smell New York you don’t want to – but there’s plenty of weather. I look back at Downtown and the clouds are low enough to cover the tops of most of the buildings there, and I start to wonder if this is a brilliant idea, and the wind is picking up off the East River too, blowing everyone around. But what the hell – if I get wet I get wet. There’s noise here too – noise from the rush hour traffic below – the cab horns, the omni-present sirens, the trucks, the noise that is New York. And there’s noise above too – the weather is pushing the helicopters lower, closer to the plebs at ground level than usual. Plus there are weather choppers and traffic choppers reporting back to their stations – Americans are obsessed with knowing how long it will take to get somewhere, and what the weather will be like when they finally do. And I realise I’d forgotten how loud it is to live here – you tend to blot it out eventually, like those people who live near airports but no longer hear the planes.
And it starts lightly spitting, and it feels good. I wasn’t thrilled about moving to the new place – I only had a couple of days to find somewhere, and my boss told me it was okay, it’s a good area, you should take it even though I wasn’t sure – but moving the stuff on the weekend showed me it was a nice enough area – it’s not Brooklyn Heights, but not much is. And it feels like I’m changing my life again, leaving something behind and moving to another level, and I feel happy. And, for a second, I even thought about doing one of those cheesy 70s sitcom things like tearing my tie off and throwing it in the river. But then I figured, with my luck, it wouldn’t make it and would fall on some guys windscreen below, freaking him out and making him swerve and cause a multi car pile up, and everyone would stop and point at me, and the City of New York would file a multi-million dollar lawsuit against me, and Giuliani would name me Public Enemy No.1. Which has a certain appeal, sure, but still. Plus, I kind of like this tie – it’s fairly new. I loosened it, though.
And, finally, I get across and over to Henry St, and I get a haircut on the way home. I never seem to manage to find the time to do this, and I always end up looking like a shaggy dog, or at the very least with a mid bike tour 88 look (which is not a great look – ask Eyman). So I head into the salon and, as usual, I get the guy with the great hair no English (Israeli this time: “where you from?” “Australia” “huh? I go travel soon – go Sydney” “that’s where I’m from” “huh?”) And, as usual, he would rather play with my hair than actually cut it (“actually I want it very short” “huh?”). But, after extensive negotiations, I get him to cut it off – hairdressers generally seem to think that if they cut your hair off you won’t come back or something – they haven’t seemed to grasp the concept that it actually grows back eventually. And I get that anti-Samson thing happening – the more that comes off, the better I feel. And when it’s finished he looks as though he can’t believe what he’s done – he looks so happy I think he’s going to hug me. It’s almost worth all the hair he forced down my back with the blow dryer. So I buy some Fudge (“it’s Australian – I like to support my local products” “huh?”) and run away.
And I figure I’ll have a stroll around the neighbourhood for old time’s sake, and I’m glad I did. I’ll miss living in Brooklyn Heights – it’s very beautiful with the old brownstones and their stairs (“it looks just like Sesame Street” as a wise person once said to me), the little mews’ with their cottages all in a row like a mixed bunch of old people at a bus stop, the converted fire stations, the trees. I’ll have to show you around if you come over here. And I head down to Fatoosh for a kafta platter for a perfect meal on my last night here. And I watch everyone out walking – the guys all seem to have dogs that jump up on girls as they walk past, and the girls all bend down and play with them and stroke their heads and do the hullo baby thing – that trick never fails. I’ll definitely miss this neighbourhood, but then I’m only going to be a couple of kilometres away at most at Prospect Heights / Park Slopes (or miles – I hate the bloody imperial system), and I think I’ll like it there too, with the park and the museum just around the corner and everything else I can discover – I think I’m really growing to like the whole of Brooklyn itself.
And I go home and have a beer (Brooklyn Brewery’s Pennant Pale Ale – remarkably, for here, a bloody good beer) and play one of my new CDs (the one with all the remixes of Underworld, Moby, Aphrodite and the rest – shut up James, I’m going old skool house tonight) and dance around in my undies and shirt (and don’t tell me you’ve never done it – I know you have. Anyway, all my clothes are at the new place). And I figure that I’ll write some notes for a little story, maybe have another beer and finish off those Kalamata olives that didn’t all end up in the pasta sauce for the gnocchi last night after all, and maybe one of those little cigars that I like. And I do. And maybe I’ll go for a stroll and check out the view of Downtown at night from the promenade around the corner.
Better find some pants, though.
(August 2000)