Navigation

Archive | City Matters

Take a Bite Out of This Crazy Apple

August 4, 2014 in City Matters, Snapshot

Crossing Williamsburg’s Meeker Ave at Metropolitan last night, I looked around for a cop. There’s always one lurking at that corner since there’s so much precarious traffic pouring in from the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and the Williamsburg Bridge. Sure enough, I spotted a patrol car lurking beneath the underpass and stopped before walking against the light: The police have been super into handing out jaywalking tickets lately. Just then a cab came hurtling toward the intersection at approximately 800 mph, hooking an illegal left at the light and nearly swiping a bearded boy on a Vespa in the process. The “don’t walk” sign still lit, I sailed into the street, grinning at the cop as he pulled out past me, siren already wailing. Sorry, NYC’s Finest, but this isn’t Portland. The residents of this city will always give you bigger fish to fry than poky ole pedestrians.

Mourning Becomes Electric Boogaloo

July 12, 2014 in City Matters, Language Matters, Weather Matters

And so, I suppose, my Summer of Reckoning continues. Woke with the sun and the birds and my cat with the great gimlet eyes. Meditated, plaited my hair, and hightailed it to the Grand Army Greenmarket, where my friend and I oohed and aaahed over big bushy fennel and chard and sweet bumpkin lettuces before buying as many as could fit in our earnest canvas bags. Over avocado toast and iced almond espressos we counted our blessings and sins even if he’d eschew such Christian-derived language, never mind the neotheist intent. I got back to my car just in time: I’d read those pesky Brownstone Brooklyn parking signs incorrectly—it’d take a law degree to master their myriad mastipulations—and the tow truck was already digging its talons into my Sadie’s fender when I arrived. (So No-Park Slope to tow when it wasn’t even a tow zone; can their officials find nothing else to do?) I cajoled, I cried, I bribed, I prevailed. And thus Sadie and I ducked back home together, howling along to Aretha as the city came to its inevitable boil.

Dog Day Afternoon

July 5, 2014 in Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Snapshot

I just spent an hour in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park hugging an enormous golden retriever—soft and gentle and boundlessly sweet—who’d mosied over to my blanket from his mom and dad’s. When I first noticed him he was wriggling in the grass, cycling his legs in the air, and I thought: that guy really knows how to enjoy a summer afternoon. They were a couple about ten years older than me, and something about the way he planted himself between them after he was done rolling around suggested they’d had him instead of kids. When the dog–honest to God, his name was Wrigley–approached me, I asked if it’d be ok to say hi and they said so long as I could “handle a snuggler.” I could, and the two of us sat together for a while, his torso leaning into mine until I just went ahead and wrapped my arms around his neck. Both of our noses twitched as we inhaled the good smells of 5 pm sunshine in the July grass, the barbecue the Korean family was cooking on the other side of the trees, and after a beat we began to match our breaths. Finally he nudged me with his head, and I took the hint and buried myself in his neck.

I love my cat beyond measure but there’s something so wonderful about a visit with the right dog. As the three of them were leaving, I said, “Oh, he’s such a nice person,” and the woman replied, a little conspicuously, “Well, he did used to work as a therapy dog.”  Okay, lady.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy