"The intersection of Fifth Avenue and Union Street is the unofficial town square of Park Slope, a bustling baby factory where expensive puppies idle beside a store that sells $28 Brooklyn T-Shirts and a wine shop called Red, White & Bubbly."
Fifth Avenue and Union Street is also the intersection where, in 1973, Raphi Allini, an eighteen-year old neighborhood kid opened fire on a crowd of people. An intersection that reeks of overpriced shit ($28 dollar Brooklyn T-Shirts) and random acts of senseless violence (1973 shooting). Park Slope is that blend of history and urban renewal that happens when Puerto Rican’s pump “Drop it like its hot” out the window of their rent controlled apartments, and hot mom’s with tattoos and good hair push Bugaboo strollers to Tasti-D-Lite on the sidewalks below. I know it well. The intersection of 5th Avenue and Union Street is a stone's throw from where I live.
My studio apartment on 5th Avenue can best be described as the size of a nice hotel room. The kind of room that you’d find at a Marriot or a Holiday Inn, in say, Phoenix. Not a room you’d rent if you were traveling alone but the kind you’d opt for if you were with your husband and kids or a friend you did not want to have sex with. The hotel room my studio apartment is the same size as has the square footage to accommodate two queen size beds of which I have one.
I rent my studio apartment from The Chinese. I don’t believe this is a politically correct way to refer to Asian Americans, or if, for that matter, they are Americans, but I do refer to them as The Chinese. Sometimes in my head they’re My Chinese.
My Chinese did not warn me about the crazy people that hang out directly in front of my apartment before I moved in. Evidently, the intersection of 5th Avenue and 9th Street is the unofficial town square of the Community House at the Prospect Park YMCA.
Before I went online and figured out what the Community House was, (a vital program offered by the Prospect Park YMCA to provide needed housing and social programs for low-income New Yorkers) I started to sense its presence in my neighborhood.
The first time I met one of these low-income New Yorkers, a category I like to put myself in, was while doing a series of crunches in the stretching room at the Prospect Park YMCA. While listening to Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” which my iPod is fond of playing when on shuffle mode, and not, I might add, a particularly great song to do crunches to, a 6’7” black man with a wallet chain, wearing a pair of dress shoes, a bowler hat and a suit jacket paced back and forth outside the door, eyeing my ab curls lustfully.
Now, if a man a good foot taller than you and two hundred pounds larger than you was eyeing you’re ab curls while swinging a wallet chain back and forth you’d return to the cardio room to finish your set on one of those ab balls behind the Treadmills and not because he was black. More to the point, what the fuck was this dude wearing a bowler hat and dress shoes doing at the gym?
Second point of interest was “cigar man” who stood on my corner asking anyone who walked by between the hours of six am and midnight if he could have a sip of whatever beverage, (a favorite being coffee) they were drinking. He was always in the same place, on the corner of 5th and 9th outside the 24-hour bodega with a cigar, rocking on his heels. Until one night, coming home from my boyfriend's, I saw him go into the gym. Curious …»
Case in point three were the two heroine addicts who sat on the corner, on milk crates, eating candy and reading the sports page. How did I know that they were heroin addicts? Funny you should ask. I figured it out on my own after watching a VH1 special called “Elvis: The Final Days,” where a drug expert explained part of the reason Elvis was so fat is because if you’re on lots and lots of uppers like Elvis, you only like sweets. Apply that logic to two middle-aged men eating Italian ices at nine am and pouring vodka into bottles of Welch’s Grape Juice and you arrive at the same conclusion as me, heroin-addict alcoholics. Who I saw entering my gym later that week. But where were they going?
The Prospect Park YMCA has dedicated its top four floors to 138 housing units run by its non-profit partner, Community House HDFC Inc. The fully furnished rooms include 94 singles and 44 studios. The studios have private baths and cooking facilities and the single rooms have full access to two lounges and kitchens as well as laundry facilities. Twelve rooms on the fourth floor's south wing have been designated the Seafarer's Safe Haven, reserved for retired seafarers.
Now that’s different. What pray tell, is the Seafarer’s Safe Haven?
The Seamen’s House is one of the most venerable programs offered by the Prospect Park YMCA providing housing and social services to retired and active seafarers. In addition to affordable housing, the Seamen’s House offers a book club featuring books of the sea and visits to Mystic Seaport.
What this means in a practical sense is that while I’m learning about Elvis’s last days and shedding a few calories, one of my guys is glueing his toes together while another is eating Hebrew Choice salami and smoking a mentholated cigarette just upstairs.
It makes me think of an idea I had when I was a kid. When I was growing up in Minnesota I was always really interested in the Model Home Tour that happened every year in the more affluent suburbs. After a new “community” was planned and built, the fanciest house on the block was furnished by a swank downtown interior design firm and those lucky locals who signed up for the Model Home Tour got to drive around the ‘burbs for a week “oohing” and “ahhing” new carpeting and stainless steel appliances.
I like to think this would be a great thing to do in New York. But instead of calling it the Model Home Tour, call it the Check Out Your Neighbor’s Porn Collecting Tour or the Bet You Didn’t Know The Guy In 4F Had Real Bad OCD Tour. Basically, a week once a year when you get to tour every apartment in your building and neighborhood just to check out all your neighbor’s shit.
Who would have thought some of the weirdest homes to tour were right above the elliptical machines? Maybe Bowler hat man likes that new Pussycat Dolls video, too. I should ask him next time he looks like he’s going to fuck my shit up in the weight room.
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