Welcome back to If You Can Make It Here, a diary about New York and new beginnings.
Hello from Variety Coffee (Forest Ave. branch) in Ridgewood. Take a seat and excuse the flakes of pastry; they do something called a morning roll here, which was sold as “a croissant forced into the shape of a cupcake”, which is what it was. We are 93 but don’t worry, there’s room: the Variety on Forest is a spatial marvel, an isosceles literally wedged onto a wedge of land where the grid system breaks down. Inside, the neon ceiling light and smooth central table cut exactly the same angle as the building. Here, they make it work — and then they show off how they made it work.
It’s a wet, nothing day, but nothing leaves room for somethings. I messaged my one Ridgewood friend, Tom - we first met at Fuerza, and I’ve patronised >his cheese popup<, and if that’s not the grit of a friendship pearl then put me back in the sea. He stopped by and for two hours, we drank coffee and chatted about nothing in a way I thought I wouldn’t do before I was 60. He’d just turned 30 and the substance of time was on his mind; the clocks change tonight, he said: you lose an hour of sleep.
People always worry about that night’s sleep, I’ve noticed, not the shape of the days to come. So we tried to work out what it actually meant.
“So tomorrow, at 7PM, we will have the light we would have had at 6PM.” He smiled. “Lighter in the evening, that makes sense. The morning sun can take care of itself.”
We let that idea hang in the air for a moment.
From some of the response I got last time, >I might have painted the New York subway system as a kind of Tartarus<. It’s not, but it is an underworld of sorts. Everyone, no matter their station, must end up there sooner or later. And once passed through, you emerge forever changed.
Everyone takes the same horrible train as everyone else and while they are on it, they largely tolerate each other, for what else is there to do? For almost everyone, the system is something to literally be *got through*, as quickly as possible, without fuss, and in the course of doing so you see people weave around each other with balletic grace, give up space and seats to those who need it more, pull feet and suitcases close when others pass, as naturally as breathing in. *I’m walkin’ eeyah!* is for the street: down here, we ride, and we abide.
If I’d asked for help two weeks ago, I probably would have got it. I’ve given it; carrying a suitcase or sharing what little knowledge I have. I’ve even had it when I wasn’t expecting it: in my first week I stood, lost, on the concourse at Hoyt-Schermerhorn. A stocky man in a suit bulldozed past, swearing into his phone. As he drew level with me he jabbed his thumb over his right shoulder — “that way” — and then swore off into the distance behind me.
Even if people don’t help, they don’t punish each other for needing help and doing what they can. The first thing visitors from London notice is how easy it is for people to vault the ticket barriers. Those who need to, do, and we trust for our sanity that everyone who does it needs it. (Even though that’s certainly not true. You know who you are, but sadly none of you are reading this.) Every station has a big emergency exit, locked by a push bar, and it’s common to see someone about to leave a stop through the barriers, notice somebody in need on the other side, and push the Emergency Exit to give that person an Emergency Entrance.
And people are truly in need. We can talk about the humans talking to themselves. We can talk about people who have the desperate courage to stand in a car of commuters, sing Amazing Grace, and ask a whole train for a dollar. We can talk about people who ride on the interstitial, sometimes lethal shifting platforms between cars for reasons of their own. We can talk about the mothers selling fruit rollups from a basket round their necks - and getting their children to do the same.
When I know more, we can talk about those things. I should.
We can talk about my Mum, visiting for the first time. On her first day it rained in sheets, but what are you going to do, *not* live? We braved Fifth Ave anyway, darting south across the streets, sheltering in Uniqlo and Macy’s. When it was too much to bear, we took the L train home from Union Square, holding the shreds of our paper shopping bags to us. Somewhere under the East River, the bags regressed to their pulp state. A *haul* was now: an armful of stuff we bought. A woman next to us saw this unfold, and gave Mum her tote bag. Her Bag For Life.
And we can talk about the architectural quirk of the subway car that means there is a hollow space under every seat, visible to everyone opposite you, invisible to you. I was riding the M home, 2am. One of the sketchier trains, when it gets past Essex Avenue and over the bridge, out of Manhattan. A man sat opposite me, alone, transcendentally drunk. Listening to music on his AirPods, wirelessly - and therefore, completely unaware that between his feet, on the sticky floor, lay his phone.
There’s nothing alarming and... taboo? technologically body-horrorish? - quite like a phone on the floor. In a tipsy state myself, I was still trying to process this, when a man next to me jumped up, leaned across and shook our phoneless friend from his reverie. It took him a while to unplug and catch up to the situation but when he looked down his soul nearly left his body. By the time he’d fumbled his phone off the floor, his guardian angel had sat down and started talking to his friend again.
The man didn’t put his phone away; he held it close, looked at it. Then he stared at his saviour - you know that film cliché where someone does a backflip or whatever, and a drunk observer looks at his bottle, shakes his head, and throws the bottle away? It was that. For a full minute he alternately shook his head, smiled, gazed in disbelief that he’d been visited by an angel. It was as though he wanted to get up, to say *thank you* in a more articulate manner than he’d managed in the moment, but he couldn’t. So he sat there, advertising his gratitude to... me? I don’t think so. To whatever subway Hades watches over us all.
We can talk about how, three days later, I spotted someone’s phone in exactly the same place, got down, and handed it back. The guy nodded, and then he left. And next to me, a homeless guy said, “How’s that for thanks?”
It was enough. Someone was watching.
Final Stop
☞ We should also talk about the killing of Jordan Neely. Neely was 30, Black, homeless, and had been repeatedly dropped or slipped free of whatever frail safety nets exist in this city. By varying accounts he was in distress, and some interpreted that distress as threatening. Daniel Penny, a 24 year-old former Marine, restrained him in a chokehold of multiple minutes that killed Neely. The subway did not kill him — but the subway, by forcing all life together, was the stage for him to be killed upon. And the city failed him. People say they won’t ride the subway, and I don’t blame them. >You can learn more here.<
☞ I continue to be so grateful to everyone who’s stopped by. As I said in issue #1, I’m doing this for me but I’m also doing this for you, and any sense that what I’m doing is helping? or reaching? That keeps it going. There are some people reading now who I *don’t* already know me. That feels special.
☞ I’m also aware that so far, it’s been a bit of a monologue. Don’t worry, I won’t run out of stuff to say - but is there anything you want to hear - especially the folks at home? I’ve written about what interests me, so far. But I’m happy to go on assignment.
That’s me for now. Issue #7: the 25th of March.
A sleepy weekend is no bad thing. The rain falls, we let it fall, and we remember: the morning sun can take care of itself.
James
from Ridgewood, Queens.