New York City Randoms…
Shot in Brooklyn…. june 2009
When I was 4 or 5, I lived in New York City, and went to a one of the public schools who’s name simply started with P.S. and then the number, I think mine was P.S. 26, public school 26. I am not completely certain that was the number, but It had partitions in huge rooms, that made them smaller rooms, for more classes. I would also travel on the subways with my mom, who was from Brooklyn, and fairly city-smart, border-lining on paranoid of what could happen in the big apple.
This was years years before Guiliani shipped all the Ne’er do wells to Yonkers and Newburgh, and cleaned the city up, and it was also when the Bronx looked like Beirut, and was referred to as Fort Apache. Anyrate, the subways had bathrooms, where street people would dwell in homemade apartment/padded cells, and I was constantly warned to stay away from them, as I would wander the subway car, as children do, on long rides to who knows where. One Day, i stood in front of the bathroom door, which opened like a telephone booth, and I decided to see what was on the other side. Not the best 5 year old decision I had made, and when I opened the door, a distraught, confused, and angry grown up, in layers of winter clothes, and newspaper shrapnel, lunged at me in a rage defending his domain. I was 5, it totally freaked me out. My mom Saved me, although I don’t remember much of the aftermath.
30 years later, give or take, I am in the city again, hanging with friends, and making plans to meet up with some more, to catch up over drinks. It seems like NYC has remnants from every chapter of my life, scattered throughout the Lower East side, Williamsburgh, Bed Stuy, Flatbushand beyond…this particular time, I had entered a cross walk, amidst texting someone on my cell phone, with half a buzz, like Many New Yorkers, I wasn’t paying attention to the world that surrounded me. I must have entered the crosswalk, just prior to the lights changing, because as I was 3 steps from the sidewalk, I was hit by a truck, that stepped on it. with a lead foot, as soon as the light changed. It was like I was body checked by a huge hockey player, and it sent my phone flailing in several pieces, and me, into a daze. I got the shit knocked out of me, while my friend chased the vehicle down, we noticed it was covered in one of those ridiculous graphic wraps, the promotional kind, where the whole truck is one giant advertisement. This one was for IBS treatment…. How Ironic.
