OK. Now I am going to tell you about the life change which I’d been hinting about during the past couple of weeks.
As you might have guessed, it’s a move: my first since December 2009. And, for the first time since August 2002, I am not living in Astoria.
This photo from my 13 March post is one view from my new apartment: the Conservatory of the New York Botanical Gardens.
I am now living up the block from the Gardens’ Bedford Park Gate. If I look in another direction, I see the Fordham University and Prep School campuses and, in the distance, the Manhattan skyline.
The neighborhood seems to be a racially and ethnically mixed working-to-middle-class area, There are stores and restaurants nearby. Although they carry different items and serve different foods, they remind me of what I encountered when I first moved to Astoria.
I must say, though, that I haven’t seen nearly as many cyclists—and, thankfully, motor scooters—as I would encounter on Crescent Street. That, I think, is a lesson in the sociology of urban cycling: Astoria, like nearly Greenpoint and Williamsburg, has grown younger, whiter and more self-consciously hip. Perhaps I will—consciously or not—plant seeds of cycling culture as I pedal in and out of, and around, the neighborhood.
So why have I moved to Bedford Park, Bronx? Do you promise not to tell anyone?
I am now in a senior citizens’ apartment.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might’ve guessed that I was in or near the age range for such a thing. For several years,’I’ve been applying for one and my name finally came up.
Whatever my housing situation, I do not plan to change the name of this blog. As I’ve said in earlier posts, whatever my age, I am in the middle of my life as long as I don’t know when it will end. And, as long as I keep on cycling, I don’t think I’ll be anywhere near the end of my journey.
