S-P-R-I-N-G

Spring has sprung in New York, when the weather is above 50 degrees and the little portable vestibules outside the doors of restaurants, come down and get stored away for next year.  Until then, there are still bitter cold nights and lots griping about how long winter has lasted.  And then, expected, yet always surprising, the long, beautiful spring starts in March and travels thru July – week-by-week different flowers appearing in gardens and bursting out on the trees before the leaves unfold.  The little portable vestibules are replaced by outdoor tables and chairs on the sidewalks.  

During the winter, the front and back garden of the house where I lived were flat and brown with naked bushes and trees, but in March the shoots began rising green from the earth and there were buds on the trees.  And then for months the flowers came in waves – tulips, daffodils, irises, daisies, zinnias, gladiolas, daylilies, sweet potato flowers – the clematis vines and the passion flower vines flowered – the huge peony and hydrangea bushes flowered like fireworks and the Datona Trumpet tree grew drooping orange flowers.  A grape vine came back to live as well as a wisteria with that intoxicating scent.  The blank dirt back yard became overgrown with just a little winding path to the back where the mulch container was kept.  Every warm day, I set a chair in the middle of the path and worked there, invisible surrounded by nature.  Who would think that living in New York could be like that.

It’s grand weather until August, when there are two or three weeks of high temperatures – meaning somewhere about 95 degrees and heavy humidity that Texans live with eight months out of the year.  And then comes fall, another beautiful, shorter season.  This time, the colors of the leaves replace the beauty of the flowers in the spring.

THE QUIETNESS OF SNOW

Brooklyn is a noisy city.  There are sounds of car engines and music blaring from the open windows of cars (why drivers open their windows to allow for their blasting music to carry into the neighborhood in freezing weather is inexplicable).  There is the racket of trucks bouncing their heavy loads, grinding their gears, and making those beeping sounds when they are backing up.  There is the roar of buses and the sound of trains rattling over the tracks, the screeching of their brakes, the announcements made by the conductors while the doors are open.  There are the sounds of people talking and shouting, dogs barking, cats meowing, children playing.  The sounds geese calling, birds twittering, and helicopters – so many helicopters fly over Brooklyn, you’d think there was some kind of reenactment of the Vietnam War going on.  Sirens.  Constant sirens in the distance or near.  Ambulances, fire engines, police vehicles.  And most annoying is the ridiculous, useless sound of car alarms.

Honking, although illegal in New York City, unless necessary to alert for danger, is constant.  Drivers honk to say hello, to discharge frustration, and just out of habit.  There are areas – near hospitals and a few blocks on some other streets – which are labeled no-honking zones.  No one seems to care.  I lobbied the traffic department to label our 7-block stretch across from the park as a no-honking zone.  The signs were put up on lamp posts and the genius of the department, or perhaps it was a passive aggressive action, was to put them near the top so that no driver who wasn’t driving a convertible with the top down and looking up at the sky would ever see them.  It did no good. Traffic driving into Manhattan at 6 a.m. liked to start their day with incessant honking.

But when it snowed, the City calmed down, especially when it snowed the first time in the season.

The first snowfall I experienced in Brooklyn was absolutely magical. I was on Flatbush Avenue in Park Slope when huge 1” snowflakes began descending in slow motion, like leaves falling gently from a tree.  I stood there catching the snow on my gloves, amazed at the size of the flakes, looking at their patterns.  I raised my face to the clouds and saw the snow coming down so slowly it was like I was inside a snow globe.  

At first, the snow melted on the sidewalk.  Then it started to accumulate in small patches.  I stood there enjoying the experience until the sidewalk was covered in a light dusting of snow.  As I walked home, I passed the 7^th Avenue subway stop and saw the expressions on people’s faces change as they ascended onto the avenue.  “It’s snowing.”  More than one person said it reverently.  Probably recent transplants like me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN7LW0Y00kE (Dean Martin "Let It Snow")

By the time I got home, there was an inch of snow on the sidewalk and I sat in the window near the radiator watching as the benches across the street looked padded with snow. 

The snow acted as sound-proofing for the general noise of the City.  And, there was little traffic.  The snowploughs wouldn’t arrive until much later and people didn’t want to be skidding around.  There were few people out.  Folks generally wouldn’t be wearing their snow boots before that first snow, so their feet get wet and they want to get home.

That night, after I had been asleep for a while, I was awakened by the sounds outside the window.  I looked out and saw a car was doubled parked, the engine running, steamy exhaust rising from the muffler like incense smoke.  The passenger side door was wide open.  On the snow-covered curb, I saw a man chasing around a little boy 2 or 3 years old.  The boy kept falling down and laughing, positively gleeful.     

When they left, I looked at the clock.  It was 2 a.m.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had enjoyed myself so much at that hour of the morning.  

The next morning, I built a snowman.

Post by Alana Cash

THAT FIRST NOVEMBER IN BROOKLYN

A couple of weeks into November, leaves were blowing off the trees in en masse and those that remained shivered in the wind.  Skeletal branches looked lonely, especially in the late afternoons as they were outlined against a darkening sky.  Sunset was at 4:30 and getting earlier every day.  The air was cold.  At night the temperature was in the 40s.  The high temperature during the day was maybe 58° degrees.  It was 81° when I had left Austin just a few weeks before.  Ironically, four years later, these Brooklyn temperatures would seem warm to me and I could go outside without a jacket on a 55° day.  But not that first year. 

Parking on the street in front of the house was alternate-side morning and afternoon.  That meant, if I was parked on the side of the street with traffic flowing toward Manhattan, I had to throw a coat over my pajamas and go outside at 7 a.m. and move the car.  I wasn’t alone those mornings, double parked, as I sat in my cold vehicle waiting for someone to move out of a parking space, headed for work.  There were always half a dozen other people waiting along with me to grab up a spot and get back inside our warm homes.  At 4 p.m., I had to move the car again for the traffic returning after the workday, which put a weekday curfew on my excursions away from home. 

Parking issues got old in a hurry, especially since I rarely drove the car, although I did make a couple of visits to Red Hook and drove to Coney Island once or twice – no way would I drive into Manhattan.  On Sunday mornings, the people attending the church up the block  had the right to double park on our side of the street, blocking every car from exiting until noon. 

I decided to park the car in Park Slope where I could leave it for a week at a time, moving it only for street-cleaning.  It now seems so strange to think about parking a mile from home, having to take a train or walk over to move the car, but that’s the City.  Unfortunately, because I had to drive around for a while in Park Slope looking for an open spot on streets crowded bumper to bumper with parked cars, 

I sometimes got confused about the location where I left my car.  When it was time to move it, I had to stroll the streets looking for it.  Once, I completely forgot to move the car for street cleaning and got a ticket – called a “summons” in New York.  This was one of the two summons I would receive during my tenure in Brooklyn.

The last straw for parking was the day of a blizzard in December.  It was 10º and windy.  The locks on my car froze and I couldn’t open the door.  I stood there for about an hour, trying to unlock the car.  Parking Control drove by not offering any help (or a summons either, thankfully).  Finally, a man loaned me a cigarette lighter to warm up my car key.  After about five tries with the heated key, the car door opened and I got inside where it felt like a refrigerator freezer, but not windy.  I moved the car across the street and went home.  Immediately, I put an ad online to sell the car.  I never missed it. 

But in November, something was happening in Brooklyn and the rest of the City in November. There was something in the air. Expectations.  Animation. A slightly more positive attitude.  Because the holidays were coming…

Post by Alana Cash

AUGUST IN BROOKLYN

Photo by David Reilly

I loved the weather in New York City because, first of all, it’s predictable.  You know what to wear because there are four seasons and they pretty much meet their deadlines.  Summer gets rolling in June and fall hits in September.  Winter can drag on, but spring is long and beautiful.

There are only about four weeks that cause any suffering – two weeks in winter when it's so cold you go outside and feel the liquid in your eyeballs freezing and two weeks in the month of August when it’s hard to breathe because the air is so hot and thick.  New Yorkers call it “muggy” and it is a bit like being mugged by the weather.  I had moved to Brooklyn from Austin where 100 days of 100 degrees was not uncommon, so four weeks of hard weather...pish tosh.

Brooklynites spend a lot of time outside in the neighborhood at night in August.  Neighbors in the apartment buildings along the walk set up card tables and played dominoes after dark.  Girls skipped double rope.  People sat talking on the benches across the street in front of the park or on chairs in front of the apartments.  It was like a quiet block party.

A lot of New Yorkers take vacation in August or crowd the beach.  I shut the windows and turned on the air conditioner because all that humidity trapped the smoky air and I could see it and smell it.  And that’s not all I could smell. 

Garbage is picked up three times a week in Brooklyn and the bags sit overnight in the heat so that by morning, after the street people have opened bags and picked through them, there’s a distinct odor.  I quickly passed the dumpsters too.  I can only imagine what a garbage strike in New York would be like in August. 

Traveling by subway can be a problem in August as well.  Sometimes the air conditioning breaks down in a subway car making the trip, even a short one, feel like you're with the Donner Party.  Or an entire train is delayed because someone got arrested or had a heart attack in the train doorway two stations up. MTA isn't all that efficient about getting you that kind of news so you would know to go to another platform and train.  So there you stay, in the train station that's getting more and more crowded with hundreds people radiating like space heaters.  The stations are not air conditioned.  Dripping sweat and roasting, you might have to go outside for air and take a later train.

August in Brooklyn has the kind of weather you might feel in Austin right before a heavy summer rain.  But there's no rain.  In two or three weeks, the New York weather just breaks.  And it’s fall.  Cool, dry (drier anyway), and spectacular as the leaves begin to change.