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walking across the East River
Saturday, June 15 2002Today I went on another of my solo adventures around New York. First I rode the subway through Manhattan to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg to get a sense of how the place looks on a Saturday afternoon. I also wanted to see if Jessika was correct when she relayed something Morgan Anarchy had told her: that non-ironic mullets are becoming fashionable amongst Williamsburg hipsters.
I climbed up out of the L station on Bedford Avenue and proceeded to walk north to McCarren Park, keeping an eye peeled for mullets amongst the people on the street. Nearly all of them were hip white 20-somethings, though the closest things I saw to mullets were two stringy quasi-rattails.
Looking around at the layers of graffiti, blowing street garbage, vacant industrial lots, and hipsters again comfortable (if not financially) in their post-dotcom slackerdom, I realized that gentrification in Williamsburg is likely to unravel. You can't support a community of 20-something slackers with coffeeshops and hip boutiques; short of an aberration like the dotcom bubble, you need something to bring in the real money, the parental money: something like a university. Unlike Park Slope, I can't really imagine Williamsburg being gentrified by parents hoping to raise children; the unkempt residences just don't seem particularly parent-friendly, at least not in the parts I've seen. (I've walked through the Hasidic neighborhoods in the past.)
After I'd been through McCarren Park I headed south again, this time on Driggs Avenue (pronounced, I'm sure, the way I used to pronounce "drugs" when affecting a 1970s-era gangsta accent). Cutting over to Bedford again, I continued all the way to the Williamsburg Bridge, and then proceeded to cross the East River to Manhattan via its pedestrian walkway. As I did so, I ran across multiple parties of Hasidic or otherwise Orthodox Jews going to or coming from the Lower East Side of Manhattan (though Gretchen tells me that few distinctly Jewish things remain there).
Looking at the structure of the Williamsburg Bridge close up, I was struck by the thinness of the vertical supporting cables that reached straight up to grab onto the long, thick, curving suspension cable. For all that iron - the eight lanes of highway and two sets of track, it just didn't seem like enough cable. But then again, I've never really figured out how a bicycle wheel can keep its shape with the seemingly-meager support of its spokes.
Once in the Lower East Side, I headed west to Bowery and then north as far as Union Square, where I sat for a time reading the Village Voice and watching some students trying to film a young woman "actress" interacting with a fountain. They kept shooting one take after another, some involving the spraying of water, and she was becoming increasingly drenched. It couldn't have been too comfortable, given the overcast and unseasonable chill in the air (it was definitely sweater weather, reminiscent of San Diego's June Gloom).
[REDACTED]
Eventually I walked down into the East Village, bought a 40 of Colt 45 (or is that actually 45 ounces?), and continued on to Tompkins Square Park. There I came upon an unexpected festival centered around a DJ and his sound system pumping extremely repetitive dance music into the dreary grey afternoon air. A substantial crowd of people had gathered there, some dancing, others just standing or sitting around. I quickly found a bench and filled my plastic coffee mug with malt liquor, kicked back, and enjoyed the scene. Before long I noticed that the guy sitting to my right was enjoying a can a Budweiser, telling shrouded as it was within a small brown paper bag.
The fact that Tompkins Square Park had a festive atmosphere conducive to drinking did not pass the notice of the men in blue. Since the mayorship of Rudolf Giuliani, the police have enforced public drinking ordinances in New York despite a long tradition of tolerance for the practice. Not long after one of their white vans rolled up, a cop came up to the guy to my right and ordered him and at least two other people to come with him. Though I had my plastic mug full of malt liquor right there in my hand, he completely ignored me. This was my best proof yet of the value of coffee paraphernalia in the pastime of successful public drinking.
After dealing with the cop, the guy came back and told me and his girlfriend that he'd received a summons and might have to end up paying ten dollars for his crime. "Oh, so it's really nothing more than a hassle," I observed. Though my thoughts were flowing clearly, I found it somewhat difficult to formulate proper sentences when speaking.
Later as the DJ wound down his show, I went up near the stage and took a few pictures with the casual matter-of-factness of a genuine photographer. People were unexpectedly nonchalant about someone snapping pictures so aggressively. Indeed, some took it as an opportunity to chat with me, and I told them truthfully that it was for a web thing.
Later on I went to the Holiday Cocktail lounge and had two Budweisers while talking to some random guy at the bar about nothing in particular. From there I relocated to a posh bar near Union Square called The Belmont Lounge, which is adjacent to that dark divey place that Gretchen and I like, the one with the pool tables that plays whole CDs of rock and roll. I've been calling the divey place "the Belmont Lounge," but I guess I've been wrong, because the real Belmont Lounge is this snooty place geared to the tavern needs of young professional Manhattanites. Anyway, after two Jack Daniels on the rocks, I was starting to piss people off. There was a girl having a birthday party back in the back room and she kept asking me if I knew anyone there and of course I didn't, but this fact wasn't making me feel even the slightest bit sheepish. [REDACTED]
What got me kicked out of the bar was my accidentally knocking a pane of glass out of a framed photograph hanging on the wall. I leaned against it and could feel it come loose, and when I stepped out of the way it crashed to the floor. Some woman screamed and started cursing at me as two Hispanic guys immediately swooped in to sweep up the shards. Seconds later a bouncer told me to come with him, and that was that. I tried to go into the dark divey place next door, but the bouncer wouldn't let me. This made me furious, because I hadn't really done anything wrong. "Why do you have to go and make this a police state?" I asked. Despite being rather intoxicated, I was fully aware that I was experiencing trouble expressing myself verbally. At that point the bouncer said the police had been called, so I figured I should just scoot on home.
For some reason the Q train was acting more like an N train, but I didn't figure this out until it got all the way to 17th Street on 4th Avenue, the diagonal ass-end of Park Slope from where I needed to be. I walked all the way home from there, having no idea that it was already four in the morning. Gretchen had been worried sick about me and was understandably pissed off.[REDACTED]I will say one thing about getting drunk and causing trouble in Manhattan; it's a lot better to do it there than it is to do it in, say, Charlottesville, Virginia. In a small town, it takes no time at all to earn a reputation as a drunk and find oneself banned from every bar in town (just ask Phil Ginini). In New York, on the other hand, there will always be more bars than any one person could ever be banned from, and those witnessing your embarrassing antics will, on the whole, be complete strangers, particularly when one is given to undertaking solo drinking adventure of one's own. Nonetheless, I'm coming around to the opinion that getting trashed by oneself isn't just sociopathic, it's pathetic as well. 
Some sort of Eastern Orthodox church in Williamsburg, viewed across an abandoned industrial site.
Bicycles on the roofs of homes in Williamsburg just south of the Williamsburg Bridge.
The distant Whilliamsburgh Clock Tower (the tallest building in Brooklyn)
viewed from the Williamsburg Bridge. Note that Williamsburg is spelled two different ways.
Graffiti viewed from the Williamsburg Bridge.
The docks of Brooklyn (including rotting former docks).
A sign outside a poultry processing plant in the Lower East Village just north of Delancey Street.
A cop prowls the audience at the Tompkins Square Park DJ performance,
looking for people drinking beer.
Someone with a mohawk dances at the Tompkins Square Park DJ performance.
Up in the audience at the Tompkins Square Park DJ performance.
Turntables at the Tompkins Square Park DJ performance.
Up in the audience, down near the ground, at the Tompkins Square Park DJ performance.
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