Hello friends.

Monday was an extraordinary day. It began at around 6am with fruit and coffee and a nice wait for the sun to make the sky blue and the leaves yellow. I noticed a gull, a pensive, reflective, lone gull that has been out here all week. He (or she) didn't look sick or sad, but I had, and still do, the curious feeling that he was of a serious and relaxed mind. I also looked sadly at the tip of Frank's boat, visible only at low tide that capsized a week before under a "rogue wave from the west in storm seas from the south east." Frank saw it happen and can't afford to rescue it. Maybe I could just swim out there and drag it in. How hard could it be? Anyway, I then packed up a box containing a Galaxie 500 7" -- Galaxie 500's first 7" -- and also the first release on Aurora records. That makes it one of those rare record nerd delicacies, a double first for two greats!

I'd gotten in touch some months back with an old college friend who now lives in northern Michigan with his wife (also from our college in central Michigan) and three gorgeous children. Arend, as he's called and Andy, my first great love, and I spent our last semester of college listening to Galaxie 500, playing Frisbee in open fields, and wandering forests night and day. I never felt so close or free with people before. I deeply loved them both and miss them and wonder how I let it slip away. Anyway, I hadn't listened to the record in years and it seemed like he should have it, that I should reach for something that was once so special. So I went to the post office.

After the post office I walked through my idyllic little town (that had a huge drug bust last week and regularly sees pedestrians hit and even killed by drunk drivers). Also local kids have taken to writing their names on local walls, much to the chagrin of the increasingly elderly population out here. They are so disturbed they got a grant from the Bronx police department to buy a security camera that rotates around the island hoping to catch the young vandals, this reported in the Island Current, our monthly newspaper which I've subscribed to for $10 a year. Despite this seedy underbelly of coke heads and bored kids, it *looks* beautiful. The low rise architecture sports American flags, the garden club plants flowers and trees, and some random artist left what looked to be a Teletubbie alter, with rose petals and candles in an empty electrical box on City Island Avenue. (A future friend no doubt!) As if all this weren't dreamy enough I hopped on the Bx29 and rode through Pelham Park. Since I've returned from Italy/Malta the trees are all colors of fire and morning light has a way with drama. I lost my breath.

I was headed for the bank and on the subway decided I needed an adventure. It was such a gorgeous day and I'd lived in the Bronx for seven months and have been nowhere outside the route of the bus or 6 train. It was time! So after the bank (in a neighborhood I'd never visited five subway stops away) I started walking. And walking. I was near Castle Hill a neighborhood of cheap food, some auto body shops, and few stores. I headed in what I thought was generally the direction of the Botanical gardens. If Pelham Park was so inspiring just imagine what the gardens might look like with fall flowers and pretty stone paths! On premonition, and the realization that most city things like museums and great spaces are closed on Mondays I phoned the gardens and confirmed my only real disappointment of the day. Oh well.

I made it to Parkchester and the site of one of New York City's first planned communities (developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company as a "whites only" project). They built schools and libraries and churches and great shopping areas, all walkable between little parks and picturesque first home condominiums. A friend's parents lived there for a time. Today Parkchester is not so white and not so small town in the big city as it had been designed. But oh well, I got a slice of pizza and found a bus stop. I remembered that Veronica, who grew up near or on Arthur Avenue told me she loved the Grand Concourse and the Island Current ran a special this month on the Concourse noting its special buildings, museums, and history -- which includes Edgar Allen Poe's last residence. The Bus I'd found, the Bx36, headed past the zoo and Arthur Avenue to the Concourse. Cool.

The Bronx is vast. And there are hills. And all sorts of people. And it's fun to ride the bus when you lack any serious agenda. I mean I was headed for the concourse but was ready to hop off at the first sight of something unexpected and compelling. And frankly a lot was compelling -- there are a fair number of outdoor thifty-like markets of cheap sunglasses and wholesale paper plates, incredible art deco buildings, and skinny alleys oozing with Italian history. "No matter how hard you beat a donkey it will never turn into a racehorse." This is apparently an old "Italian" proverb as handed from grandparent to kid on Arthur Avenue. Suspiciously the Italians tend to think they invented everything worthwhile (mainly food and morality), but so it goes.

I got off at Grand Concourse (technically "The Grand Boulevard and Concourse") and noticed, yes, as everyone told me, it's huge! It was designed in the late 1800's and at one point there were like 11 lanes for various transportation alternatives -- horses, buggies, pedestrians, and later cars and busses. The buildings are all giant squares of bricks and stone, decorated al la Deco and Moderne, once guarded by doormen with little caps and shined shoes. These doormen greeted fancy people in elaborate hats and shinier shoes and also yarmulkes. Apparently many Jewish people lived there. It's changed since the burned slums in the south pushed the homeless north and 170,000 other displaced people from Manhattan's own slums also "relocated" to the Bronx, no doubt under the gentle hand of the cities bureaucrats and fire department... All this movement combined with the newly opened Co-op city in the early 70's, which is on my bus line and where Dave Saradin grew up, stole the last of the middle class from Grand Concourse. Anyway, it's changed, yet still feels kind of elegant.

I met the Concourse at Tremont Avenue, went down to 165th street, past the Freedman house (a palatial manor turned old folks home) to the Bronx Museum of Art (also closed). Outside I noticed a man spray painting the windows of the museum, and I just stopped and stared for a minute. Should I say something? No one else seemed to care and I was a little afraid. Excuse me sir, why are you spray painting abstract squiggles (not even a name or political statement!) on the windows on this very nice building? I walked a bit more, and finally got nerve enough to turn around and head back. Of course now he was wiping off the "paint" which turned out to be aerosol window cleaner. He was just playing at his job and I'm a presumptuous jerk, or more generously, I made a mistake.

I walked back up, the numbers increased (Grand Concourse runs from 138th street to Van Cortland Park), hopped a bus, and figured I would get off at Fordham (around 190th street?). Fordham street (and neighborhood) is New York City's most densely populated commercial shopping district. It's like Fulton Street in Brooklyn times a thousand. What crazy suits in the windows! Look at all those sweatpants with sparkly designs on the butts! Features and fur and sneakers oh my! I wondered for a moment how many dollar stores a city could reasonably support... Wow. I also saw the Loews Theater, at once the largest in New York which I would guess also means the world, but I've no proof of that. It's pretty spectacular, at least from the outside and I heard it was or had recently been restored. I want to go. I guess some hours passed, like six since I left the house, and I was kind of tired, had to pee, and hungry. I stopped at a taqueria at Fordham plaza, the bus station across from the university which sported its own outdoor mini-mall of velcro wallets and cell phone accessories and yum, great tacos! With fresh tasty salsa fresca (pico de gallo) San Francisco style.

Another bus. The Bx12 took me down Pelham Parkway, which by now isn't new to me and remains, so far, my favorite street in the Bronx -- though admittedly I haven't seen much yet. It's another wide avenue but mostly residential, with a few office buildings, Jacobi Hospital, a wide green center island, and massive trees. It's the kind of street that makes me want kids and a Christmas tree. It ends at Bay plaza where I catch my bus home. And so I did, I went home though the beautiful park, with sun beginning to rest, also nice for drama, and again lost my breath... These trees. Lordy.

Now, why this story? I mean it wasn't really to document an abridged history of a few spots in the Bronx, though that I did, or wax poetically about fall leaves and old friends. I tell it because it just felt great. Not like happy, awe "I'm so inspired" great, though at times I was inspired. In general I was more afraid than inspired. It was pretty scary not knowing where I was, feeling touristy, shy, and out of place. It was also lonely. I didn't really talk to anyone except the woman in the taqueria. It was an awkward foray that didn't seem to have much of a point -- in the moment I didn't really understand the point. But I figured it out before it was over.

I guess I got tired of living in a place I didn't know. I had a free day and I took full advantage to not know something and learn. I survived the fear of looking stupid, getting lost, asking basic directions, and that fatal feeling of not-belonging to try and at least pretend to belong, or make steps to belong. It's harder than one thinks -- at least for me. I love my silent recluse perch on the edge of the sea. I like that pensive gull who I saw again this morning amid the backdrop of Frank's still sunk boat and the mom with two kids picking up shells just now outside my window is kind of precious. But it's time to peek out of my safety and see what else is going on out there. Maybe even participate a little. Next week I'll see about joining civic association or volunteering at the community center. Maybe I can think of something more interesting for kids to do besides spray-painting their names. Maybe I can teach them how to wheat paste or make more impromptu shrines!

Love and civic pride,


P.S. Arend loved the record!





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