On This Block It's Business As Usual

This place of business isn’t always so cushy. Someone down the street tossed out that remnant of shag carpeting and the chair appeared from someone else’s trash pile. The deluxe set-up lasted a day. When I came home the next night there was a “new” chair, an office chair with one arm missing. That bit of carpeting was also missing.

People make do.

Where I live, there’s a lot of making do. Most days over by the two shiny new rows of CitiBikes™ there’s a decent selection of laundry detergents and various shampoos and hair conditioners for sale. I’ve never inquired about what they cost. I already know. I pay it every time I want to buy toothpaste and a Duane Reade clerk has to come over and unlock the plexiglass that is meant to thwart shoplifters.

But, what the hey, I can get and - so far - keep a little part-time job so that I can afford to buy toothpaste from Duane Reade.

Many of my neighbors have given up hope of that being part of their lives.

We call the wide bit of sidewalk that runs between where we get off the subway and the grocery store on the corner “The Living Room”. In pretty much any kind of weather, it’s where folks hang out. In summer it gets very active with little kids chasing each other and several sound systems competing for dominance.

When I got off the train one day last week I was surprised to see it deserted. Except for two of New York’s Finest.

That lasted a day. Now it’s back to business as usual.

A key mystery of this city — and maybe others, but I don’t remember it being like this in Cleveland — is how completely the climate of one street can differ from the one a block away. The street that runs parallel to the one I live on is positively sedate. The buildings are mostly brownstones, however, whereas over here the street is lined with heavy, old six-story apartment buildings built over a hundred years ago and gut-renovated in the ‘80s.

I prefer walking home by way of that parallel street even though it’s not the most direct route.

Now, mind you, I’m not saying we haven’t seen rats over there. There are rats everywhere in this city except possibly Hudson Yards (even rats have better taste than to live there). But the rats over on that neighboring street behave like proper rats. They zip out of sight as soon as they hear footsteps.

Not on our street. Although one night a rat did zip…right smack into my partner’s leg as it seemed we were in its immediate trajectory.

The business of our street is best ignored by those of us with jobs. And until our management company figured out that the lights on the front of the building needed to be set high enough so they couldn’t be bashed out, much of that business happened on our stoop. Now half the block is more brightly lit than Yankee Stadium.

Still, when we come home after dark we need to make our way through a small gathering of buyers and sellers on the corner where the lights aren't quite so bright. I will say that they’re usually quite polite. They’ll often excuse themselves and move aside. Occasionally, one of them will scold anyone who doesn’t move out of the way quickly enough. At times, they even try to be jolly and friendly.

I’ve noticed that a couple of the newer people in the building will hang out while they’re having an outdoor cigarette break, chatting away with the business people. I don’t do that. They have work to do and they don’t need to get any work-related ideas about me. I’m not unfriendly or anything. Just minding my own business here.

Friends talk about how scary it’s getting after dark. They drop their voices when they share about the latest thing that made them consider staying off the subway.

It’s true that the energy is even darker than it was last year. I’m still ok coming home by myself after dark but I don’t know as I’d be so comfortable waltzing in at 3 am by myself like I did eighteen years ago. And, yes, it sucks to find people smoking on the subway or starting fights. We’re all a little threadbare and it has to be said that this pandemic has been much harder on people who were already going under.

Two days later there was no chair at all at that place of business a couple of doors down. But that doesn’t mean business isn’t happening out there right now. People will do what they have to. It’s good old American free-market economics.

You know. Business as usual.

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