Springasm, Brooklyn

Last Thursday four separate strangers smiled at me in the street.

The only time this happens in New York is on the first day of spring. When it's suddenly pushing 70 degrees in mid March everyone leaves their cynicism at home and hits the streets with those smiles. Mother nature sprinkling a taste of sweet spring sugar into our open and ready mouths.

It came just in time-after an endless winter where I believed I may actually be living in Russia. I was spiralling head long into a chronic and debilitating case of S.A.D. the main symptom of which was watching illegally downloaded award season movies with a fleece blanket over my head while wearing pajamas with polar bears on.

On the day when spring prematurely sprung I was in Brooklyn, so it's hard to tell if I would have got less stranger smiles if I had been in Manhattan.  I was there to meet The Teenager, who's doing a once weekly internship at an independent jewelery maker in Williamsburg. It's an area I hadn't made it to until now and when I arrive I am kicking myself for not coming sooner.  I get off the L train at Bedford Avenue and step out of the station. It's instant: I'm in love. Love, love, love.  At first sight.

"Well hello there." I say.
The streets smile back too and we're flirt with each other straight off the bat.

I know. Williamsburg. It sounds like a bit of a New York cliche. I'm years late with this one. Does that matter?  I don't think so. Don't we find people and places at the exact time we're supposed to?

I meet The Teen for lunch and we eat in the garden of Aurora. The sun comes through the trees and throws a dappled light on the courtyard. It's a bit blissful say what.

Afterwards I stroll around, get lost, people watch for a while on a stoop, get even more lost and then sit on a bench watch some locals playing basketball in the park and coo over loads of cute doggies.

I feel the sun on my cheeks, warm. This is a place I could call home. I can see myself slotting into life there and being happy. It's likely no co-incidence that the day I come here the place is bathed in it's most flattering light.

I get up to take some more pictures and have a massive Springasm.

 

*

There's a price on my head in Brooklyn

The last piece of advice I had before going to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, was "Don't upset the locals."
               
"Viiiiie you take my peecture vivout permission?" snarls an old Russian lady, after cursing me in her native tongue. The only Russian I know is 'Glasnost', 'Perestroika' and 'Double Vod-ka' and by her tone I guess she doesn't want to discuss any of those.

I also am pretty sure she won't appreciate a diatribe on how photojournalism relies on catching your subject unaware, so I lie and say I was taking a picture of the building behind her. She stares are me so intently I feel a piece of my soul breaking off and crumbling into dust.

From there on, it is not just my imagination that every other old lady on the beach is giving me stinking looks-The Teenager notices too. There is a price on my head with the elderly women of Brighton beach and I'm scared as they all have big umbrellas.

I continue to document our day at Little Odessa with my camera though. Hey, I've been chased out of town before, it's no big deal, especially when you've done the dreaded death knocks as a reporter. Sometimes then, there was Alsatians involved and I was on The Gurnos estate in Merthyr, so I am pretty robust. 

After what seems like about three minutes tanning on the beach, The Teenager announces she is bored. I thought at 16, we had moved on from this hyper attention deficit problem, yet we enter into a bartering phrase about what time we can leave.

"Can we go at 3 p.m. Mum?"
"No."
"Can we leave at 3.30?
"No."
"3.15?"
"Huh?"
 "I would go sooner that later if I was you."
"And why is that?"
"Cos there is another old Russian lady coming towards us and she's giving you like, proper evil stares."

So we pack up swiftly and make our way down to Coney Island by walking down the shoreline.

On the way a man is practising Yoga and he's doing the crab. On the beach. I am fighting to find the pun.

A mile down the coast and we arrive at Coney. The Russians are replaced by a motely crew of ghetto unfabulous, freaks, schoolkids, tourists and Manhattanites enjoying the 'irony'.

The Teenager and I wander up the boardwalk in the searing sunshine, burgers and doughnuts smoke in the air. We stop and stare at attractions like 'Shoot the freak' with it's real human target. I buy a cowboy hat and get the feeling I should be drunk or on hallucinagenics to fully appreciate the place. Everyone else apparently is-all sipping on what looks like giant plastic bongs full of Margarita. Maybe If I got wrecked I would wear a g-string in public?

We sit down by a seafood stall and watch the colour and craziness go by. I snap away with the camera and The Teenager threatens to get the train home on her own if I don't stop.

"Mother. For god's sake! Why won't you put the camera down?"
I pause thoughtfully and look wistfully at the sky and say: "I guess...it's because...you know,  I want to document life wherever I go."
She says "Ugghhh. Because you are a *rolls eyes* bloody journalist?
And I say "Nah. Just because I'm a nosey cow."

And we both laugh until snowcone comes out of our noses.

And because nice moments are rare when your children are Teenagers,  I take another picture, but this time in my head.

It's the best one of the day.


*

Figging hell

Today while on a bus in Brooklyn I watched a woman eat a whole pack of Fig Newtons.

She devoured them in quick succession, not pausing between biscuits. Because I was wearing sunglasses, I was able to stare at her with a mixture of fascination and disgust whilst simultaneously observing her technique.

The Fig Newton box perched on her lap she took out one at a time. She bit each Fig Newton in half, turned it 90 degrees and then bit it in half again. She finished the two bits of Fig Newton in her mouth before popping the third bit in. She did the same thing, each time, with absolute precision.

Each time she reached for another, I was screaming inside:

''For the love of God woman, put the Fig Newtons down! What kind of insanity is this? They don't even taste good! Do you know what you could have for the same calories? Do you know? Do you?"

This woman was neither old nor fat yet she munched on those hybrid biscuit/cakes like her very lifeblood depended on it.

Then when I thought I couldn't take anymore craziness she slid one Fig Newton back into the box, placed the box into a red suitcase at her feet and got off at the next stop.