Hipster Girls And The Black Hat Hole

“Very well then, I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes)”

Walt Whitman may have given us one of the best definitions of good mental health. A corollary to that might be that maturity is understanding that we all have our contradictions:  After all, who tries to live by any book or idea, to the letter, once he or she has had to hold down a job

Anyway, I won’t try to assess whether, or how well, some Hasidic men in Brooklyn understand their own internal (and sometimes external) juxtapositions.  I do, however, find it interesting that when Citibike went online just over a decade ago, the Ultra-Orthodox community of South Williamsburg included some of the bike-share program’s most enthusiastic users—and some of its fiercest opponents.

While “Williamsburg” became synonymous with “hipster” and “gentrification,” the area south of the eponymous bridge to Manhattan remained one of this city’s two major Hasidic enclaves. (Borough Park is the other. East Williamsburg is, arguably, the heart of the Big Apple’s Puerto Rican community.) One notable difference between Hasidim and the hipsters and Nuyoricans is family size.  That leaves little, if any room, for a bicycle in their living quarters.

Another visible difference is that from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, streets on Hasidic neighborhoods are deserted, except when people are walking to or from shul. And, of course, there is sartorial style: It, shall we say, leaves much to the imagination.

That last point was an argument against installing Citibike ports in the neighborhood. Some Hasidic rabbis and other community leaders complained that those blue bikes streamed “immodest” riders—or, in thr words of one Reddit commenter “sexy ass hipster girls” —down their neighborhood’s streets.

A result of this tension was the “Hasidic hole” or, as one wag put it, “black hat hole” of Citibike availability. Hasidim were walking as much as a mile to access the bikes.

The map on the left reflects Citi Bike last year. The map on the right is the current coverage. (The green zone is the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is not a public area)

Recently, freshman City Council member Lincoln Restler, who is Jewish but not Hasidic or even Orthodox, has been doing what his predecessor Stephen Levin (also Jewish but not Orthodox) couldn’t. He has negotiated with Hasidic leaders to shrink that “hole” and make Citibike—which now includes eBikes—more accessible. He is also working to bring more bicycle infrastructure to a part of the city that is better-served than most.

His efforts might allow a community to accept its contradictions:  People might profess shock and dismay over “sexy ass Hipster girls” (who, I assure them, don’t include me!) but they appreciate the convenience and fun of cycling.

Reflection

 One way this blog has changed in its 13+ years is that I post fewer photos of myself.  At least, that’s my impression.

So, I am sharing an image I captured during a recent ride in Brooklyn:

Late Day Ride In January

 I sometimes take an early morning or late afternoon ride down through Sunnyside and Maspeth and cross the Kosciusko Bridge into Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

The entrance to the bridge flanks a cemetery and offers one of the more foreboding views of the skyline, especially in winter.

Before, After Or Between Storms?

 Have you ever quipped, “I’ll pedal between the raindrops?”

Some of us gave that response when asked whether we’ll ride in the rain.  I will, to a point:  I won’t set out if it’s cold and raining or if I can’t see more than a couple of bicycle lengths ahead of me because the rain is falling so hard or it’s getting blown sideways.

This week, I haven’t been pedaling between raindrops.  Since taking a ride to Point Lookout on Monday I have, however been riding between storms.  In four days, we’ve had three incidents of flooding rains. The first, on Tuesday, began with a combination of rain, sleet and snow that didn’t accumulate.

So when I rode Negrosa, my vintage Mercian Olympic, to Coney Island

I wasn’t sure of whether this was the end of a storm—or the calm before a storm or between storms.

Turns out, it was the latter:  We had two more inches (5cm) of rain last night.

When A Local Ride Turns Into A Journey

The other day, before I wrote my 9/11 commemorative piece, I took a ride:  a ramble through Queens and Brooklyn on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear.

My ride included some familiar streets and sights.  But I also took in some streets--or, more precisely, segments of them--I hadn't ridden before.

One of those thoroughfares, Carroll Street, spans the breadth of Brooklyn in two sections.  The first begins at Hoyt Street, near the borough's downtown hub and cuts through the brownstone neighborhoods of Carroll Gardens and Park Slope on its way to Prospect Park.  On the other side of the Park, Carroll continues along through neighborhoods less known to tourists:  Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Crown Heights and Ocean Hill-Brownsville.  It was along that second section, in Crown Heights, that I chanced upon these houses: 

They combine the brownstone facades one sees on the other side of the park with Victorian-style cornices--and rounded, almost turret-like fronts I've seen only in Ridgewood and a couple of other Queens neighborhoods.  That block of Carroll--between Kingston and Albany Avenues--lies in the heart of the Hasidic neighborhood of the Heights.

After I took the photos, I walked Tosca (Carroll is a one-way street) to check out a store where I didn't think I'd buy anything but I wanted to see because it's unlike any in my neighborhood of Astoria, or in most other places.

Turns out, the place moved around the corner, to Kingston Avenue.  I peeked in; the young man working in it knew full well that I wasn't from the community and therefore wouldn't buy the mezuzahs (Star of David medallions found on the doorways of homes), prayer shawls or other items ultra-Orthodox Jews use in their daily lives and worship.  But he didn't seem to mind my being there and we exchanged greetings of "shalom" on my way in and out.

As I turned to my left, I noticed an alleyway in the middle of the block.  

The first painting, closest to the street, seems like a conventional representation of a Torah lesson--until you look closely.  But the sky-blue background gives the scene an almost ethereal feel and the rabbi's expression makes him seem, simultaneously, like a relative and an ancestor, as if the kids might be in a room with him or that he might have come to them in a dream or vision.

To their left were two other murals.  Is the girl--woman?--in awe or fear?  I couldn't help but to think about Edvard Munch's "The Scream"--which, I'm sure, the artist intended.  But is it a scream of ecstasy or terror, or something else?  I might've asked the same questions about the man in the other mural which, of course, evokes Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

Even though the compositions echo (pun intended) Munch and Van Gogh, I felt that the artist's real inspiration may have been one of the greatest Jewish modern artists:  Marc Chagall.  At least, the colors--themselves and the way they play off, with and against each other--reminded me of his paintings and the stained-glass windows he created for the cathedral of Reims, France, to replace the ones blown out during World War II.  In fact, in walking past the murals with Tosca, I felt as if I were in an open-air temple or synagogue.

On the other side of Kingston is another alley, with this portrait by the same artist:

I thought it was interesting how that artist used blue differently from the way it's used in the painting of the Torah lesson.  Here, it makes the man--whom I assume to be, if not a rabbi, then at least some sort of elder in the community.  

It never ceases to amaze me how taking a random turn during a ride in my city can take me on a journey!

Sunrise Ride Before The Heat

I've been busy during the last two days.

This morning, however, I was able to take a "beat the heat" ride.  Today, yesterday and Monday were "90/90 days, with temperatures (in Fahrenheit) and humidity exceeding those numbers.  

But, even with such summer-like weather, the days are becoming more autumnal in that every day, there's a bit less daylight than the day before.  A few weeks ago, the sky would have been in full-daylight mode at 6:30 am.  This morning, at that hour, I crossed Greenpoint Avenue in Brooklyn and, as I glanced to my left--back toward Queens--I saw this:

Beating the heat was just one benefit of such an early ride:  Rarely do I see a sunrise so filling an urban canyon!  

  

Pedaling In Smoke

Two months ago, Canadian wildfires singed the sky orange in my hometown of New York City.  At times, you could actually smell—and see—smoke from the burning trees.

Such sights and smells didn’t enshroud the ride I took yesterday. I pedaled Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear, along familiar streets from my neighborhood to Brooklyn.  While my nose didn’t detect the scent of incinerated wood and my eyes didn’t pick up ash or unusual hues on the horizon, I could sense the aftermath of a fire before I literally encountered it.

On Sunday, a fire destroyed a row of stores at the intersection of Lee Avenue and Hooper Street, by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Most of the stores were closed, which is probably the reason why no one was hurt even as the stores and their contents were destroyed.

Still, such a disaster is particularly devastating for the Hasidic enclave of South Williamsburg. For one thing, the stores and the spaces they occupied were owned by members of the community, who were also nearly all of those establishments’ customers. For another, some of those stores sold the clothing and supplies kids will need as they return to school,  But most important, those stores catered to the specific needs and religious mandates of the community, particularly in food and clothing. (As an example, Halakhic law forbids the mixing of fabrics.) Those needs and requirements are sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to meet in other stores.

Anyway, I continued my ride. Sometimes it’s seemed as if I’ve been pedaling through smoke all summer.

A Surprise During A Ride Without A Plan

Errands and things that weren’t so complicated that a politician or lawyer couldn’t further complicate them took up my morning.  

So, by afternoon, I wanted—and needed—to ride  I had no destination or route in mind.  I didn’t even know which bike I’d ride.  For some reason, Marlee sniffed around La-Vande, my King of Mercia. For some other reason, that was the reason I wheeled her out my door.

I zigged and zagged along waterfront promenades and side streets from my Astoria neighborhood to Williamsburg. From there, a detour led me into industrial areas of East Williamsburg and Bushwick where I found myself following a string of graffiti murals that seemed to unfurl like a videographic collage along my ride and led me to this:

The word “truck” over the window hints at the building’s former role as a tire shop.  Given the location, drivers or owners of those hulking industrial vehicles were no doubt most of their customers.

The new clientele, I imagine, are more likely to be fixing or fueling their psyches and, perhaps, accompanying friends, dates or partners than to be hauling steel stock or power tools.  The Bushwick Triangle—where Johnson and Scott Avenues intersect with Flushing Avenue—is a lounge.

Even with its new look and purpose, its shape reminds me of a much larger and more famous structure:  the Flatiron Building, often cited as New York City’s first skyscraper  Somehow, though, I can’t imagine it adorned with a mural like the one on the Bushwick Triangle—even if the Flatiron’s owners were inclined to, and the city allowed, it.

I am glad, however, to have encountered a fun and interesting visual surprise during a ride for which I had no plan.

A Ghost In The Morning

After a perfect summer weekend, another heat wave has swept over this city.

 Now, those of you who live in places like western Texas or southern Arizona might chuckle when folks like me complain about the heat in New York. I’ll concede that we don’t know (at least not yet) what it’s like when your nighttime temperatures are like ours in the afternoon.  But our hot days come with humidity that turn our streets into saunas.

Anyway, knowing that we are heading for The Nineties (in Fahrenheit temperature and humidity), I went for a morning ride that took me back and forth between Queens and Brooklyn.  

 Street destruction (Why do they call it construction?) detoured me onto Hewes Street, one of the narrow, warrenlike thoroughfares in the part of this city that most closely resembles a pre-war stetl: the Hasidic part of Williamsburg, where it borders Bushwick.

One way you know a neighborhood is changing: You see “ghosts.” I can’t help but to imagine the lives that filled and voices that echo walls of bubbling, flaking bricks and shingles. But I also notice another kind of “ghost”:  a long-concealed sign or banner from a business that served as past residents whom current residents will never know.

“Ghost” signs like the one I saw today on Hewes Street have led me down a rabbit hole or two. What kinds of “beauty preparations” did Nutrine make or sell? Who used them, and what image of “beauty” were they trying to achieve.

That image, I imagine, might have burned as brightly and hazily as a heat-wave afternoon in the imaginations of those in whom it was inculcated it—and those who inculcated it.

More Blue Heat And A Big Lunch

 Another “beat the heat” ride.  I must admit that I did something the nutritionists tell you not to do:  I skipped breakfast.  I rationalized it to myself because I wasn’t hungry and wanted to get on my bike early.  I did, however, have a quick cup of coffee before taking off.

My ride took me into Brooklyn, through the quiet side streets of Greenpoint, some brownstone blocks of the Pratt Institute neighborhood and Park Slope—and a neighborhood just south of Prospect where the Victorian houses have wide porches and the streets have names that are even more English than anything the English could ever come up with.

From there, I rode down past Brooklyn College into a neighborhood with bigger, but more modern (1930s-1950s) houses that were once home to the children of Jewish and Italian immigrants who’d “made it” but are now occupied by Orthodox Jewish families who, no doubt, are prosperous even if their wealth has to be spread across large families.

From there, I pedaled to Sheepshead Bay and Coney Island where I saw the same blue heat I saw yesterday from Fort Totten Park.

Yesterday I recalled the long-ago science lesson about blue stars being hotter than red or yellow ones.  Today I though about the oceans—including the Atlantic that churns under the Coney Island Pier getting hotter.  Perhaps I will reveal my ignorance of science when I tell you, dear reader, that I wondered whether the ocean will turn bluer as it heats up.

Then more riding along the water—the Verrazano Narrows, under the eponymous bridge —and up to my apartment.

In spite of not having eaten, I didn’t “bonk.” I did, however, start to feel peckish after I crossed the Pulaski Bridge back into Queens. Even if my hunger was psychologically induced, I felt I’d “earned” the big lunch of asparagus, peppers, radishes and mushrooms in a vinaigrette dressing with baby Swiss (Emmental) cheese and corn (maize) tostadas.

Riding Under Smoke From Canada and France

About two kilometers into my ride today, I had this view of the Manhattan skyline:

Everywhere I rode, the sort of heavy gray haze you normally see before a summer thunderstorm enveloped the sky.  But there is no rain in the weather forecast until, perhaps, late tonight.  

As I rode, however, I convinced myself that it "wasn't as bad" as what we had earlier this month:  those blood-orange skies you saw in news images of this city.  I asked myself, "How bad could it be?" if I could see this so clearly:

at Schenectady and East New York Avenues in Crown Heights.  The mural depicts a the three main communities in the neighborhood:  Hasidim, Blacks (Caribbean and American) and hipsters/gentrifiers. 

I rode happily with such a belief or in such ignorance, depending on your point of view, to the Canarsie Pier where, not surprisingly, I saw about half as many people fishing, picnicking or simply hanging out as Tone would normally encounter at this time of year.

Still, "It isn't so bad," I told myself.

Then, as I pedaled away from the pier and was trying to decide whether to continue along the shore, west to Coney Island or east to Howard Beach, or to ride north in a more direct route home, I started to think, "something's not right."

I stopped at a Key Food supermarket for a bottle of water.  When I stepped back outside and mounted Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear (which was doing better than I was!), I felt my eyes stinging, even though I'd worn my wraparound glasses.  It occurred to me that whatever got to my eyes had to be in the air and smaller than a mosquito, gnat or other insect.

I splashed some water into my eyes and on my face and waited a couple of minutes.  Another block of riding, and the stinging returned.  I heard, from a radio of a passing car, that the health authorities declared the air quality "unhealthy."  I didn't think it would "pass" like an afternoon thundershower, so I pedaled a couple of more blocks to the Rockaway Parkway station of the L train.

During the ride, I thought about the young man a police officer shot in Nanterre, just west of Paris.  Not surprisingly, people protested, sometimes violently, in the City of Light and other French cities.  In places like Nanterre, groups of people seemingly as disparate an the ones depicted in the mural I saw.  I won't say there's more or less unity in one city or country than in another, but there always needs to be more.

If there was any good news in my taking the train home, it might be this: For about half of my ride, I was the only white person--and the only person with a bicycle.  No one seemed to care except a little girl with whom we exchanged wide eyes and funny faces.  Her mother smiled on my way out:  She looked tired and, I think, was happy that someone relieved her, for a few moments, from having to keep her kid occupied.  I guess taking the train home wasn't such a bad thing for somebody!

When Is It A Motorcycle?

The other day, during a ride in Queens and Brooklyn, I detoured to the Ridgewood Reservoir.  Because the loop around it is flat, I can ride around it a few time and add a few kilometers/miles to my ride without trying.  (I recently learned that the loop is 1.2 miles, or about .7 kilometers:  longer than I thought it is!) I was enjoying myself on a sunny, breezy afternoon when I made the turn near the Brooklyn side.  There, two young men on ebikes without pedal assists whipped around the curve.  One of them popped a wheelie and veered to his left-my right.  I had almost no room to maneuver:  I was well near the right edge of the lane and, even if I could have cut in front of him without colliding, I almost surely would have hit, or been hit by, the other guy on eBike, a cyclist riding in the opposite direction, or a group of people walking with a dog.

The guys on eBikes were going as fast, it seemed, as the car traffic on the nearby Jackie Robinson Parkway. Lately, I've wondered whether those bikes seem faster because I'm getting older and slower.  But that experience--and a couple of reports that have come my way--show me that those machines are indeed getting faster and because prohibitions against them on bike and pedestrian lanes and speed limits are never enforced (if indeed they exist), too many riders seem to feel no compunction about endangering other people.

Folks like David Rennie in Park City,Utah are having similar experiences to mine on bike lanes and hiking trails. In a letter to the Park Record,  he says that allowing such bikes on trails is "an accident waiting to happen" and can "see no reason why throttle-controlled e-bikes should not be treated exactly the same as a petrol-driven bike, and subject to the same licensing and use rules."

From Electric Bike Action

In another Park Record letter to the editor, Mike Miller echoed his concerns and concluded that throttle-driven bikes without pedal assists are really "motorcycles" and should be treated as such.

Voices Of My Rides

In "Sounds of Silence," Paul Simon wrote, "the words of the prophets are written the on the subway walls."

I've been riding daily and haven't been on the subway.  But I have seen, if not the words of the prophets, then at least expressions of the zeitgeist, if from different points of view.

During my Saturday ride to Point Lookout, I chanced upon this in Lido Beach:

I don't think I've seen such a large US flag anywhere else, let alone in front of a suburban house.  When I stopped to take the photo, I talked to a man walking his dog.  He said the house is "outsize for this neighborhood" and that he's seen "the flag more than the people who live there."  I quipped that I've lived in apartments smaller than that flag.

Not only is its size overwhelming:  It's placed so that in whichever direction you walk, ride or drive, you can't not see it.

As I've said in earlier posts, ostentatious displays of outsized flags--often seen on the back of "coal rollers"--seem less like expressions of patriotism and more like acts of aggression.

In contrast, during yesterday afternoon's ride down the waterfront, from my Astoria apartment to Red Hook, I saw something more inclusive on one of the last ungentrified blocks of Long Island City.

The author of that bit of graffiti, I suspect, also gave us this:

That person is not the enemy of the flag-flaunters and coal-rollers--and would surely know that I'm not, either. 

Across The Bridge, 140 Years Later

Photo by Kevin Duggan, AM New York

On this date 140 years ago, the Brooklyn Bridge opened.

I recently overcame my skepticism and rode across its bike lane.  It’s better than I expected, though the Williamsburg is, if out of habit, my East River crossing of choice.

Traffic on that opening day did not, of course, consist of motor vehicles. From the images and accounts I could find, most of those who crossed on that first day were dignitaries. 

Among them were Emily Roebling.  Her husband was its architect and chief engineer until he was killed in an accident.  Then her son took over until caisson disease (commonly called “the bends) incapacitated him. Without her, the bridge might not have been completed.

I suspect that at least some of the traffic in the bridge’s early years included high-wheeled bicycles.  Today, of course, one encounters all manner of bikes—just as every kind of person imaginable has crossed the Bridge that has given all of us with access to the sun, sky and the city.

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights

With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene

Never disclosed, but hastened to again,

Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver paced

As though the sun took step of thee yet left

Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,—

Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

—Hart Crane, from “To Brooklyn Bridge”

What Color Are Their Burgers?

 An after-work ride took me through some familiar areas of Queens and Brooklyn.

When I say “familiar,” I don’t mean only that I know which streets go where.  I’ve seen some of those neighborhoods when you lived in them when you had no other choice—or where the people in them were, well, like me and my family when I was growing up and less like the person I am now. Indeed, I don’t think any of us could have imagined a woman in, ahem, middle age riding a bicycle—and writing a blog about it. 

(Of course, we didn’t know about blogs because they didn’t exist!)

Anyway, I can remember when Cobble Hill was an enclave of blue-collar Italian-Americans, like some of my relatives.  Court Street was a corridor of stores, cafes and bakeries, some of which served and sold the sorts of things what the proprietors’ families made and ate themselves.  

In other words, whether it was American, Italian or Italian-American, it was rich but unpretentious: No one tries to make the pastas, pastries, pizzas and parmigianas (chicken, eggplant or otherwise) seem like anything other than what they were. 

So all I could say was, “There went the neighborhood “ when I saw this:

There was an old joke that people like me didn’t know we came from working-class or blue-collar backgrounds until we went to college and encountered those terms in a sociology class—or people who didn’t come from those classes.

Likewise, only people  who comes from privilege can go to a place like that because it’s their idea of “blue-collar,” just as they choose to go to “dive bars” (or even call them such) if they have the monetary or social capital to go to a place people are chauffeured into.

I wonder whether those “blue collar” burgers are made from organic New Zealand grass-fed beef—and served on avocado toast and washed down with a triple IPA aged in an oak barrel previously used for a vintage wine or single-malt whiskey.

What Would They Have Seen?

In the Hollywood version of the immigrant's story, a poor young person emerges--his coat, but not his spirit, tattered--from the dark, dank steerage section of a ship to a deck, just as the sun breaks through clouds over the Statue of Liberty.

I can't help but to wonder how many actually had snow swirling around them, or were soaked in a downpour or struck by sleet, as they gazed out onto the harbor.  Or, perhaps, their first glimpse of Lady Liberty was shrouded in mist.

For a couple of days, we had an early taste of summer:  the temperature reached 33C (91F) in Central Park on Friday.  Then the clouds rolled in and and fog enveloped the city--especially the waterfront--late on Saturday and Sunday, interrupted by rain on Sunday morning.

I pedaled through a bunch of Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods, from my western Queens abode to East New York, and zig-zagged along the waterfront.  I stopped for a mini-picnic (some pistachios and Lindt's 85 percent dark chocolate) in Red Hook. 

I have ridden to the Hook a number of times and still can't get over the irony of my riding--or people from all over the city, and from outside it--to it for pleasure.  I mean, what would the relatives of mine who worked on the docks or the nearby factories have thought of people whose "Sunday best" are airbrushed, more expensive versions of the clothes my relatives wore to work. Or of the three young men munching on matching artisan chocolate-coated Key Lime ice cream pops as they sauntered along the pier.  Or, for that matter, of the fancy wedding taking place inside a warehouse turned into an "event space."

 

My relatives walked and took streetcars to those piers and never went anywhere near them after they clocked out, let alone on Sunday.  And, of course, the folks who arrived from further away--as my relatives or, at least, their parents--came by boat.  What would they have thought of someone like me arriving by bike--Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear, to be exact--on her day off, just because she could?

Or, for that matter, that I am a she?  What could they have seen through the mist?

Delivering Hate And A Death Threat

Yesterday afternoon, I hopped onto Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear bicycle, and pedaled with no particular destination in mind.  I simply wanted to spend an hour or two riding before the rain came and I had to get back to work.

After zigging, zagging and looping through "Hipster Hook" and eastward to the closest thing this city has to a stetl--the Hasidic enclave in Williamsburg--I found myself riding down the unprotected bike lane on the left side of Tompkins Avenue, a one-way southbound street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.  Although the lane is nothing more than lines painted on pavement, I'd had no issues during previous rides along its length.  In fact, I rather enjoyed it because it passes a park and some of the most colorfully-decorated stores and cafes you'll see in this city.  

Note my use of the past tense.  It doesn't mean I'll never go back; it means only that the string of pleasurable rides was broken.

Between Madison Street and Putnam Avenue, a USPS truck parked in the lane, on the left side of Tompkins, probably to make a delivery.  Those trucks often take up more than the width of a lane so, perhaps not surprisingly, there was a traffic "bottleneck."  In that queue was another USPS truck, just a couple of vehicles behind me to my right.  The driver seemed to lean on her horn as she shouted out the window--at me, it turned out, even though I waited behind the parked truck so she could pass.

Well, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.  She veered her truck toward me and yelled racist, "Fuckin' white tranny bitch!"  (Hey, she scored a trifecta:  racism, sexism and transphobia, all in one!)  At the next intersection--Jefferson Avenue--she pulled over to retrieve mail from a box.  I stopped and yelled, "What was that all about?"

"Mind your own fuckin' business."

"I am.  When someone tries to kill me, it's my business."

"Fuck you, white tranny bitch!".

Since USPS trucks don't have license plates, I snapped this photo of the truck number.  Then I took a photo of her, from the side, as she came out of the truck.  Proud of herself, she posed for me.

I have filed complaints with the USPS and the local NYPD Precinct.

Riding Among Pink And Yellow Under A Gray Sky

 I didn't stop for this:

But I did stop for this:

I can't recall seeing cherry blossoms bloom so early in any year before this one.  These trees in Greenpoint, Brooklyn aren't at "peak" yet, but they will be very soon.

Normally, the cherry blossoms here in New York bud and flower a week or two later than the more famous ones in Washington, DC, which put on their show in late March and early April.  I am not a scientist, but something tells me that what I'm seeing isn't just a symptom of a mild winter:  This has hardly been the first in recent years.  I can't help but to think that it's a harbinger of more fundamental changes.

Don't get me wrong:  I am always happy to see the cherry blossoms, whenever they blossom.  But even if the weather was still cold, those lovely pink flowers were a sure sign that Spring had indeed arrived.  So...Does this mean that Spring is indeed arriving earlier?  Or will they become another precursor, like snowdrops and winter jasmine, of a season that is on its way, but has not quite arrived?

I went looking for answers.  Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike, led me to this:

A psychic reader under new management?  Does that mean readings will be less vague and more detailed?  That they'll be done faster?  Or that you get your money back if what the reader predicts doesn't come true?

At least my trip to the reader's storefront--which was closed--took me through some interesting vistas.  The block leading to it, (66th Street from Cooper to Myrtle Avenues) looked like a valley of "Ridgewood Yellow:"

Not surprisingly, I saw a couple of pro-police banners.  Not so long ago, Ridgewood was home to many officers.  I'll bet that some worked here:

The former headquarters of the eight-three (police parlance for the 83rd Precinct) is now a command station for that precinct, and several others in Brooklyn.  That doesn't surprise me, though on first glance, I would've thought it was an armory.

A desk officer saw me wandering around and came to the door.  "Can I help you?"  I explained that I simply had to stop and look at the building.  He then explained its history to me and told me the part of the building in which he was posted had been a horse stable.  

I tried to imagine it when the neighborhood--Bushwick--was home to German and Italian immigrants who probably would've been dressed in their "Sunday best" for church.  Apparently, the  young woman with pink hair and they young man in a long yellow paisley coat had no such thought:  It was just another building they passed on their way to the Cal-Mex cafe.

I guess pink and yellow, wherever they're seen under a gray sky, are signs that the season--whatever it is-- is here, or on its way.