Nonplussed As Ever and Loving It:

New York, NY - Peter - Sunday, April 14th, 2002 : goo

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So, its almost 11pm and I've been sitting out on my stoop for the past hour, just relaxing; I suppose some neighborhoods are better than others for stoop-relaxing, and it luckily happens that mine is one. I'm having a Chupa-Chups that looks like neapolitan ice-cream, but tastes oddly like orange, somehow. Its warm, and just barely sprinkling; rain light enough that you never get wet because the rain evaporates as quickly as it falls.

But, I digress.

When I'm sitting on my stoop relaxing, looking straight across the street, my peripheral view hazes enough that I feel like I'm in a really nice neighborhood; as hip as any East Village spot, or anywhere on the Lower East Side. It seems that I live in the dead-center of that brackish neighborhood mix, that populated flux that always separates the good and bad neighborhoods.

A few avenues east, to my right, lie the fringes of Spanish Harlem, the land of perpetual salsa and endless outbursts between the non-symbiotic Puerto Ricans and the less-dominant Dominicans. On my left, west, just an avenue away is that warm upper-crust that cordons itself snugly between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. These are the subtle rich folks; not as glamorous as the Upper East Side high society, classier, and much more introverted; self-made money as opposed to that which is inherited. I live smack in the middle, on Broadway; my street is mostly grad-students and the uptown-minded set of various hipsters and gen-x'ers; the observers.

Sitting on my stoop watching traffic, this topology is verified; yellow cabs and valets, car-men and private cars drive uptown, discharging evening-dressed passengers; stylish middle-aged men drive luxury cars into parking buildings that cost more per month than my apartment. Those cars head west off of my street, 108th Street.

From the other direction come the gypsy cabs, their old pay-per-ride automotive hulks merely shadows of the once-great cars they were. Here come the hoopties, ghetto-gold'ed out Hondas, and old low-slung detroit classics grown rusty. Here lie the Projects, their subsidized lots nestled up off of Manhattan Avenue, near Central Park. Here, not so many people own cars; the ones that do do more parking on the sidewalk, playing music for the domino players.

And here I am in the middle, just sitting on my stoop, watching. I smirk when I consider thinking of neighborhood differences in terms of traffic, but it works somehow. Its raining harder now, so I stand up and come in, and write this.

The View from my Stoop:

The Front of my Place:

My Stoop:

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BZZZP: and the words 'brackish' and 'befuddled'.

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