All posts by Matthew Callan

NYC, Stories

Service Road, 6:08am

This morning’s run takes me down a service road of the Long Island Expressway as it soars toward Queens Boulevard. Here I pass by guys just stumbling home from third shift, or blindly feeling their way toward their cars to start their day. I also see the Can People in their true element. You probably only know the daytime Can People, deferential, quiet, slightly ashamed. But if you wake up this early, you will see the Can People brazenly fording front yards and alleyways, unlatching gates to make their raids and move on to the next plunder.

Along this service road stand a few little concrete triangles, formed when the street grid hit the arc of the highway’s shadow. These little spots are too small to build or plant anything on, so they just sit there, serving no function but to provide yet another parking space.

On one such triangle, someone has parked a brand new cherry-red Corvette. It would gleam if there was any sun to bounce off of it. I marvel at the thought of the man who owns this thing and think to myself, “Man, I wish I was him.”

I do not think this because I want a Corvette, or because I want some fabulously wealthy life I imagine he has. For all I know, this guy’s eyes are bigger than his wallet and the payments are more than he can afford. Considering the neighborhood, this is more than likely.

I feel this envy because this man was able to park his brand new sports car on a service road, mere feet from the highway on-ramp. It’s a spot where the car could easily be sideswiped by a semi, or keyed by late-night vandals, or broken into, hotwired, and zipped out onto the highway in 10 seconds flat, and no one who perpetrated any of these crimes would ever be caught.

I once parked my car on a service road just like this, on a late night when I tired of circling the neighborhood for parking. When I went to check on the car the next day, it was long gone. And my car was an ancient Oldsmobile, not some high octane muscle car.

And yet, this man parked his car on the service road anyway, and he is surely sleeping like a baby right now. I can barely conceive of a soul so unworried. What I wouldn’t give to live my life so free of concern, just for a day or two.

Another little triangle sits one block away from the Corvette. This one is seeded with some sickly grass and demarcated with a wobbly chainlink fence, an entrance padlocked. Within its confines, a baby blue car of early 80s vintage. It is dented all over with covered in stickers, with a huge 13 plastered to the driver’s side door. A cinder block rests on the hood.

It’s a demolition derby car. Another complete lack of worry on display here, albeit of a different stripe. A man who would ping-pong a dirt track in vintage Bonneville is a man who thinks injury and pain will never touch him. I can’t imagine what such a life must be like.

Stories

Canarsie, 1997

When I was in college, I’d take myself on trips to random neighborhoods. Pick a spot on the subway map, ride the train there, and wander around. I wanted to see the entire city, not just a tiny patch between 14th and Houston. When I went on these trips, I invariably went by myself.

This may have been a genetic affliction. My grandfather told me he used to work as a messenger, and when he’d be given a nickel for the subway, he’d pocket it so he could walk the distance. He preferred to take the messages above ground, where he could wander, explore, people-watch.

So this is why I’ve taken the L train to its end, to wander around Canarsie. A few years from now, I’ll spend a few Christmas Eves in the neighborhood, but at the moment there is no particular reason for me to be here, no landmark or great restaurant I must see in person. The idea to come here was first planted in my head by a sociology book about the neighborhood, which studied the flight of the white working class from places like Williamsburg and Brownsville out to Canarsie and points east. But more than anything, I want to check off this plot of the city in the mental ledger of places I’ve been. The sooner I check one off, the sooner I can travel to another one.

I stroll down Rockaway Parkway. It’s a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in the early fall, the sun low and orange. Every little glimpse I get of the neighborhood seems important to me because I’m here to witness it. A little old lady shuffles out of an ancient Italian pasticceria with flamingo-colored lettering. At the local high school, a football coach chews out his players for a lack of hustle. A strip mall appears charmless except for the large Burger King at its northern extremity, which never received a rebranding and still looks like the Burger Kings of my youth.

I keep wandering down Rockaway, under the Belt Parkway, and into Canarsie Pier. It has an arched welcoming sign that suggests amusement, but there are no rides or attractions here. Just a pier, really, where a few lone fisherman have cast out lines. There are also a few running paths carved out of the grass. I follow one.

Fifty feet down the path, the grass becomes wild, uncontrollable, taller than me. Then weeds emerge among the blades, huge cattails and snarling jagged things, and soon there are more of these monsters than the grass. The path seems to narrow with each step. The noise of the highway recedes into nothingness. I feel the vague unease that only surfaces in October, just when the leaves begin to change and the chill in the air first stings you. But I don’t dare turn back. I want to see all of New York.

The weeds give way, and I find myself on a dune tumbling away from me into Paedergat Basin, which separates Canarsie from Bergen Beach and Mill Basin. Across the basin, another dune, and more weeds beyond that. There are no waves here. The water tugs weakly at the sand, recedes, and tries again. The Belt Parkway is visible in the distance but only as an outline against the sun.

I am alone. But the array of trash in the sand—beer cans, Coke bottles—suggests this is a destination for somebody. So do the remnants of a badly constructed campfire, planks of mealy wood laid across each other and burnt to char, still smoldering, maybe. At times I swear I can hear music, faintly, as if it were trailing from a radio on someone’s windowsill a block away.

It suddenly occurred to me that I told no one where I was going before I left for Canarsie. I could be killed right at this moment by these campfire setters, who were surely lying in wait for saps like me to wander along, and I might never be found again. No one would know what became of me.

This is the most basic fear humans have. Not the fear of dying, but the fear of leaving no trace. We can deal, abstractly, with the thought of not existing. What terrifies us is the thought of a day when no one knows we ever existed.

I was not dressed for jogging, but I ran back on that path, past the weeds, past the grass, back onto the pier. I slowed myself down once I hit Rockaway again just so I wouldn’t look like a maniac, but I still wanted to run, past the high school and the old timey Burger King and the pasticceria, back to the L train, back to my school where I had to show my ID to enter every building and there was no doubt people were recording my existence.

Stories

Grand Street, 5:02pm

I get off the train early enough to take my time and walk to my daughter’s school. It is glorious, almost balmy afternoon, and the thought of packing myself into the Q58 on such a glorious afternoon is blasphemy.

At Grand near Queens Boulevard, a deli spelling out all of its wares bilingually. They apparently sell, among other things, FORMULA POWER and 99¢ AND UP. Also, to avoid any confusion, a listing promising SNAKE has been hastily covered over to correct itself to SNACK.

20130913_165753Near 80th Street, a trio of people talk to a Buddhist monk arrayed in saffron robe. He nods and looks loving and beneficent. His hands are clasped behind his back in the manner of a teacher or scholar. I pass behind him and see those hands are clutching an iPhone. Right behind him a repair shop’s front window promises in huge letters WE DO EVERYTHING ON COMPUTERS.

Near 74th Street, a kid pedals down the main drag, running lights with abandon. A girl is squeezed onto the seat right behind him, her arms laid down on his shoulders like a queen being carried by her royal litter. The sun catches her hair, a bright red. Not ginger, but red. She smiles, not a care in the world at the moment.

Just beyond them, a kid in a mohawk and studded leather jacket, adorned with patches bearing the standard punk logos: Crass, Subhumans, Misfits. He could have stepped out of 1982. There’s something comforting in knowing this type of kid still exists, and that he will continue to exist until kingdom come.

This is why it is best, if you can help it, to avoid the bus at all costs.