Upon landing at LaGuardia Airport, I took a cab to Bushwick, a Puerto Rican/ Dominican neighborhood in Brooklyn where Thad lives. I immediately noticed a change in the cabs from last year; They now have TV's blaring ads to you while you are in the car! You can turn it off, but in my cab it kept restarting every 60 seconds. It's the end of days. I felt like I was in Bladerunner.
I met Thad at his place, and after a couple hours of me asking him about his art (he is a apprentice glass blower for the famous artist Josiah McElheny) and he asking about my science, we decided the most appropriate action would be to find a place to rent a bicycle for me so I could explore NYC without the confines of a cab or subway car.
We went to the local bike shop where Thad gets his service done and espanol is the lingua franca. The owner, a nice short South American looking dude, told me he didn't rent bikes. I explained to him that the weather was just so nice I wanted to bike around NYC the weekend, and I would even buy one from him and sell it back if necessary and was there something that could be worked out? and so on. It didn't take much; he took me downstairs to a storage area full of old bikes and offered to give me an older, but working, racing bike for a $60 deposit and $20 to rent for four days.
Oh yeah! New York City in the summertime! Now, I've always felt I am a pretty good biker, given that I bike anywhere from 3-10 miles a day for work and use a bicycle as my principal mode of transportation, but navigating the traffic of Ann Arbor is child's play compared to New York. I just couldn't believe how fast, and how reckless, Thad was in weaving around the traffic. He would literally cut cars off, and with no helmet either. His bike was also faster than mine (he had a light single speed with freewheel), so he was always way ahead of me. I took some videos with my camera; they don't really show our biking in NYC in full glory, as the most exciting, hairiest spots I couldn't film because I enjoy being alive.
(By the way Thad, The East River is technically a strait, not an estuary.) But anyway, unless you are an Olympic Athlete or a Nobel Prize Winning scientist, there's always someone better than you. Check out this link of Bike Messengers in NYC. They make Thad look like he still is using training wheels.
Last summer when I visited, we happened upon a community hang out bar behind a deli in Bushwick, and we ended up spending all night drinking beers and hanging out with the locals. It was the cheapest bar in town; you go inside the deli, buy some beer, and then go out into the back yard to hang out and listen to Cuban/Puerto Rican music on the large speakers. Last year they said we were first white people there in a long time (they also said we were cool, but don't bring any more friends into the neighborhood and jack rent up). We came back this year after getting the bike, and they actually remembered us. One of the dudes, Pablo, actually asked me if I had finished my PhD yet! Per last year, the other people who didn't know us gave us weird looks, but as the night progressed, and we began playing dominoes with some of patrons, pretty soon we were just part of the noise. I asked Pablo to take a picture of us, and he, half-jokingly and half-seriously, said, "Sure I can. Now you can show all your friends at home you were slumming it." Ouch.
Thad had to go to work the next day, so we called it a night fairly early. Thad doesn't have a couch, so I slept on a small sleeping pad in the studio room of his apartment. It was so hot that week (late July Brooklyn) that this minimal sleeping arrangement was actually pleasant compared to a bed that would have gotten soaked in my sweat.
When I woke up, Thad was gone, so I hopped on my bike to Williamsburg to do some reading and work on papers. And, yes, all you skeptics out there, I actually did get some work done editing some drafts of my manuscripts (one of which I just recently submitted!). The change of scenery was refreshing, and sitting outside at Verb Cafe, idly people-watching and thinking, was downright lovely and relaxing.
After a few hours I had done all I could do with pen and paper, and I went to a nearby internet cafe to begin editing my documents. After a few hours of that, Thad got off work, all flustered from God knows what, so I suggested we get something to eat at a nearby Italian restaurant...Ahhh....Our waitress actually had an Italian accent. Who knew?
Turns out Thad was flustered because multiple other Toledo (our hometown) friends were in Brooklyn that weekend, and he was getting overwhelmed because his cell phone kept blowing up. After dinner, we saw, quite randomly, a friend's band who was in town at a local overcrowded venue full of hipsters quite younger and more beautiful than us. I was getting a little bored, so I suggested to Thad and the random Toledo friends that we go the Ear, one of the oldest bars in NYC, and a nice biking distance away on the west side of Manhattan. After a brief silly "Who's doing what?" conversation...
We made it out to the Ear around 1 AM in the morning, and stayed, like we did three years ago, until it closed at 4 AM in the morning (I don't know if I could handle living in New York City year round. The city would tempt and swallow me whole with its seductive vices; I would never get anything creative done and would simply waste away financially and spiritually).
Before we left, we took a picture next to the "Ear" of the Ear bar, similar to previous years. Thad and I then rode our bikes back to Brooklyn, and I had to withstand Thad's verbal onslaught of how badly I was riding my bike. Ugggg,,,,
Coming up: The postcard that restored faith in humankind.
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