HIGH ON THE SUBWAY TRAIN

A tourist rides the subway.  A New York resident takes the train.  If you live in New York you learn that the subway system runs underground in Manhattan, but predominantly above-ground in the boroughs.  

The trains are lettered A-B-C-D-F-G-L-J-M-N-Q-R-S-W and numbered 1-2-3-4-5-6-7.with no particular rhyme or reason, and MTA occasionally changes out the routes and letters – particularly the M and J trains.  There’s usually a subway map in every station so it’s difficult to get lost  Not so difficult to get confused..

The most famous train – the A train – runs from Rockaway Beach in Brooklyn to Harlem.  Billy Strayhorn wrote Take the A Train in the time it took for him to ride from Brooklyn to Duke Ellington’s home in Harlem (Ellington added his name to the composition). You take the A train to get to Kennedy Airport and Aqueduct Racetrack. 

The F train, the one you can see in the opening of a 1970’s sitcom called Welcome Back Kotter,  runs from Queens through Manhattan then crosses under the East River to run above-ground in Brooklyn to Coney Island.  It’s a great way to see Brooklyn by train, because the F train has the highest trestle of any train in the NYC Transit system.  From that vantage you can see the rusty jungle of Brooklyn with its dozens of church spires and the infamous Gawanus Canal. 

My favorite train is/was the B train which is an express train (meaning it doesn’t stop at every stop along its route) and it only runs Monday thru Friday.  Its route is from Brighton Beach in Brooklyn to the Upper West Side in Manhattan.  Usually the cars are older – instead of the yellow bucket seats facing forward/backward like the newer train cars, the cars of the B train have benches along the walls, leaving a lot more standing room in the middle.

For a while I used to meet friends in Manhattan for dinner on Thursdays.  I’d leave Brooklyn around 3 o’clock in the afternoon so I could get any errands and shopping done in Chinatown before dinner.  I always caught B train.

A few times I was on the B train at that hour on Thursday, a middle-aged, somewhat beefy, nicely-dressed couple boarded the train at the 7^th Avenue stop.  And they were high.  Very high.  So high that it took them until the next stop to get themselves from the train door to a bench where they stood weaving until reaching a further stop where they finally sat down with a bit of a thump.  Which I’m sure they didn’t feel.

One day I was fascinated as the woman began a slow-motion search of her purse.  Eventually, she pulled out a lipstick case.  It took a long while for her to open it and wind out the lipstick part with her eyes almost closed the entire time.  Then she brought the lipstick to her open mouth, missed her upper lip entirely, so that the lipstick came to rest on her tongue where it lay until I got off the train in Manhattan.

I was filled with the question:  Where in the world were they going in that state?   

I have to admit, I tried to find them every Thursday afternoon, but it was hit and miss.  They may have skipped some Thursdays, taken an earlier or later train, or gotten into a different car than I was riding.  Too bad.

Post by Alana Cash

BRIGHTON BEACH - LITTLE RUSSIA

Brighton Beach is a community in Brooklyn just east of Coney Island.  It was made famous and romanticized in a Woody Allen movie [Brighton Beach Memoirs]. Because of the movie I visited Brighton Beach a long time ago.  I found it to be a rundown area with lots of junky close-out and second-hand stores. 

All that changed after the USSR collapsed and Russians made a mass immigration into New York, taking this area over.  All the signs in Brighton Beach are now in English and Russian, including the post office.  Far more upscale than it used to be, the avenue is lined with produce stalls and bakeries, a few clothing stores, a furrier, and stores selling international foods.  

It’s quite interesting to wander the food stores, but it can be tricky because sometimes the labels are written entirely in Russian.  The tea selections are phenomenal.  One store has a wall of teas in different types of containers and a large table covered with loose teas in jars.  But the aisles in all the stores are very narrow - not room for two people to pass without one giving way.

The subway train is elevated in Brighton Beach, running along Brighton Beach Avenue.  This creates a very loud noise whenever a trains runs overhead, but provides nice shade in the summer.  There’s no elevator to the train, so you have to drag your shopping bags up the stairs.  I bought a little cart for shopping, but still, getting up the subway stairs was a chore.   

There’s a restaurant in Brighton Beach that makes a beautiful, 3-layered cappucino (there were probably many places in Brighton who made cappucino this way, but once I found this one, I stuck to it).  I used to go there once a week to write.  Afterwards, I shopped at the various stores, but after a while, I had to stop shopping in Bright because I found some of the populace a bit too hard to bear.

Many citizens in Brighton Beach emigrated from Russia at an advanced age.  From what I understand, they live in New York subsidized housing and received other types of government assistance, which stands to reason since they lived under Communist Russia where the government controlled so many aspects of living. They were probably used to shortages, needing to get to the head of the line quickly, or at least that’s how I excused their physical aggressiveness when shopping.

The lines in the stores were always long, although, whenever men entered the stores, they never waited in line.   They simply stepped to the front of the line and got waited on.  No one ever objected.  I was afraid to, because the few times a guy stepped in front of me, I smelled liquor.  I wasn’t going to push my luck.

The women didn’t mind being aggressive with each other and had no qualms about putting their hands on me and pushing if I didn’t move forward as  soon as someone in front of me moved forward.    One day, a very large, old woman pushed me down in order to get past me, claiming she had been in line before me.  I got the manager and made a bit of a fuss – really wishing I had a cattle prod with me – but I knew I wasn’t going to change this type of mentality.  

After that, I decided not to return to Brighton Beach to shop.

Post by Alana Cash

THE BOARDWALK

Every Sunday near the pier, there was a group that set up a stereo system to play salsa, merengue, and other Latin music.  The first time I found them, I just watched, like everyone else.  I asked someone next to me why the people weren’t dancing and he said they didn’t know how.  The second time I went, I asked someone to dance and that got the group dancing.  I was wearing flipflops and I took them off. I dance for an hour before I realized the balls of my feet were blistered.  It was really painful getting home.  Maybe that’s why they didn’t dance.

If you walk east along the boardwalk from the pier at Coney Island, you’ll find loads of different types of people.  Most are there for the sea and sand, but some of them just want to walk around, some are there to fish on the pier, some just want to cool off.  There are bike riders, skateboarders, and roller-skaters.  And sandcastle builders. 

After you pass the Aquarium and the handball courts, you’re in Brighton Beach.  This is Russian territory and apartment houses line the boardwalk with a few expensive restaurants sprinkled in. I ate at one of them that had a glass floor with an aquarium underneath so you can watch the fish, but at some point, it burned down or blew up or something and I don’t know if the aquarium was replaced. 

 

On the boardwalk and sand at Brighton Beach, the older Russian women are not shy about their bodies and very often you can find them wearing their panties and bras as a two-piece bathing suit. 

Post by Alana Cash

THE MERMAID PARADE - CONEY ISLAND

Photo by Matthew Stanton (Flickr: Mermaid Parade 2009) 

Every year in Coney Island there is a freakishly fun parade known as the Mermaid Parade.  It's a celebration of the Summer Solstice created by artists and all are invited to participate. 

People with outgoing personalities or those wanting to live out an alter-ego don costumes representing sea creatures.  Women put on wigs and long fishtail skirts or tights, covering their upper region with coconut shells, clam shells, bikini tops, green paint, or little bits of nothing.  There are also mermen, and they can be pretty outlandish.  There are crabs, lobsters, clams, pirates, and other characters decked out in geegaws. 

The parade starts at Surf Avenue and 21^st Street and strolls down Surf Avenue.  It’s hot.  It’s loud.  It’s fun.  There are cars and floats, marching bands and one-man bands.  And you’ll never see anything like it anywhere else.  If you want to plant a chair on the curb, you’ll need to arrive a few hours early.

By Joe Mazzola (Flickr: Mermaid Parade 2008) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Okay, it’s already happened in 2014, but for next year’s parade, get more information here: http://www.coneyisland.com/programs/mermaid-parade

Post by Alana Cash

BROOKLYN CYCLONES BASEBALL TEAM

In the city of baseball, I attended one game at Yankee stadium and several Mets games at Citi Park in Queens where I sat in the nosebleed seats trying to keep track of the game while people wandered back and forth getting their refreshments for most of the game.

And I found that, by far, the best place to watch baseball in New York City is at MCU Stadium in Coney Island, home of the Brooklyn Cyclones.

http://www.brooklyncyclones.com/splash/  

There isn’t a bad seat at MCU Stadium so you can clearly see all the action, and it’s right at the beach so you have the sea breeze with seagulls flying overhead.  Farther down the boardwalk, as it gets dark, the colored lights on the Wonder Wheel and Cyclone rollercoaster come on like a promise of more fun.  The stadium is family oriented with lots of games for the kids to win prizes and tickets are very affordable.    

The Cyclones are one of the New York Mets’ farm teams, and while player performance may be uneven on different days, these are still some of the best baseball players in the country [including major league players, there are about 6,000 pro baseball players in the US].  MCU Park is where major-league Mets players on the disabled list work their way back to Citi Field in Queens.  So there’s a possibility of seeing some legends up close [I saw a Mets player every time I went to a Cyclones game].

The pleasure here is in watching skilled players play the game.  There aren’t a lot of loud drunks carrying on and blocking your view.  There won’t be fights in the parking lot after the game either.  It’s just baseball.

Post by Alana Cash

NATHAN'S HOTDOGS - CONEY ISLAND

Congratulations to Joey “Jaws” Chestnut who proposed marriage to his girlfriend and then won his 8^th Mustard Belt title by eating 61 hotdogs in 10 minutes at the Nathan’s Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Championship. 

Nathan’s is a landmark on the southwest corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues, a block from the beach, and right across the street from the Coney Island subway terminal [You can get to Coney Island on the B, D, F, Q, or R train]. The terminal is a little Coney Island museum -- the hallway is lined with giant photographs and artifacts of the history of the various amusement parks of Coney Island.  The train station was rebuilt in 2004-2005 and is probably the cleanest and nicest subway station in Brooklyn.

Nathan’s used to be just down the block from the carnival rides at Coney Island – the bumper cars, Tilt-a-Whirl – a whole feast of fun.  But New York realtors tore all that down to build condos on the beach.  Before they could get a permit for building, the local populace fought the development and stalled it.  So what used to be a fun-land is now an empty lot.

But Nathan’s is rarely empty.  In the summer the fold-back doors are opened to lines of people that stretch around the block.  They serve more than a variety of hot dogs – they serve a variety of smothered French fries as well as fried clams, chicken tenders, Philly cheesesteaks.  That sort of thing.

Nathan’s started out as a mom and pop hotdog cart in 1916 owned and operated by Nathan and Ida Handwerker.  Nathan worked as for restaurateur Charles Feltman [buried in Green-Wood Cemetery btw] who is credited with inventing the hot dog. When Nathan had fully  learned how to make hot dogs, he and Ida created their own recipe and went into business. They cut the price to a nickel.
 Feltman had charged a dime.

Nathan's was kept in the family for decades, but finally they sold out to a corporation, and sadly they’ve franchised, which tells you the food isn’t that good.

In the winter, the folding doors are kept closed and there are a handful of tables and chairs and few people. About mid-morning, you can usually find a few members of the Polar Bear Club drinking coffee before and after taking a dip in the frosty Atlantic Ocean.  

Post by Alana Cash

GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY'S BATTLE HILL

In a little alcove at the front entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery is a computer where you can enter the name of a person whose grave you would like to visit and you will get a print-out map showing that location.  There are walking tours regularly, but you can buy a guide books and take your own tour.  One book is a guide for walking the south side of the cemetery and the other book covers the north side.  

When I offered to teach a writing class at Green-Wood, I was treated to a private tour by Lisa Alpert and we went inside the Receiving Tomb.  This is a huge barn-like structure with shelving.  In the winter when the ground was too hard for digging, the deceased were stored there in their coffins until spring.  As I recall it would hold 1500 coffins.  

We also went inside the chapel.

From the chapel, we traveled to an area on the north side of the cemetery called Battle Hill.  This is the highest natural point in Brooklyn and was another site of the Battle of Brooklyn during the Revolutionary War.  

Charles Higgins, who was successful at manufacturing India ink, bought a large plot of land there for his tomb. Higgins also commissioned and an Altar of Liberty to commemorate the Battle of Brooklyn as well as a statue of Minerva, the Roman goddess of war.  The statue of Minerva has a raised arm pointing toward the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Buried a few feet from Higgins is my favorite person in Green-Wood Cemetery. Her grave market states simply, “Grandmother,” and her name is Elizabeth Tilton.  She figured in a very disastrous scandal along with her husband, Theodore Tilton, and Henry Ward Beecher.

The Tilton’s were members of the Plymouth Church in downtown Brooklyn where Beecher served as minister.  Theodore and Beecher were very close friends and worked together on a newspaper, “The Independent,” with Theodore acting as editorial assistant to Beecher who was editor.

Theodore was an abolitionist, an advocate of free love, and a bit of a bully to his fragile wife.  Apparently, he dallied in free love when he was away on his lengthy lecture tours.  The charismatic Beecher, who claimed to more than one woman that he had no marital relations with his own wife, visited and comforted Elizabeth while Theodore was away. 

Elizabeth was a Sunday school teacher and, apparently out of guilt, confessed to Theodore about the affair.  At first, Theodore and Beecher convinced Elizabeth to stifle herself.  But Victoria Woodhull heard the rumor and published that news in her paper.  Out of vanity, Theodore sued Beecher for “criminal conversation,” a polite term for adultery.  Elizabeth gave a statement to the court, but did not testify.

There was a trial and a hung jury.  Afterward, Beecher was awarded a raise in salary by the (all-male) church board - $100,000 a year.  Quite a sum in the 19^th century.  Elizabeth confessed the affair again, this time to the church, and was ostracized from the church and community.  Her husband left for Paris, and she lived in poverty to her death.

Post by Alana Cash

GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY ON HALLOWEEN

In the heart of Brooklyn there is one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world.Brooklyn and all its culture, and quiet sanctuary.  The supposed father of baseball, as well as many politicians, a famous minister, his mistress, Mafioso, celebrities, one of whom is the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, all rest here.    There’s a chapel where they not only hold funeral services, but weddings.

  It’s a sculpture garden – Steinway’s tomb has a grand piano – a history of the people of

Green-wood was created in 1838 as a rural cemetery – meaning that it was not a church-yard cemetery.  The churches in Manhattan were running out of space and Green-Wood was built to accommodate the need for burying the population.  It is 478 acres and has more than a half a million residents – some unknown (more about that later).

There’s a pond at the cemetery that is part of a glacial lake.  The glacier covered most of Brooklyn, but stopped at that point.  It was used as a park for picnicking in the 19^th century before it became popular as a graveyard.

I visited Green-Wood Cemetery quite a few times.  I even taught a writing class there that I called Cemetery Plots.  Green-Wood hosts a lot of events including dance recitals and play, and they sell books and memorabilia. 

One of the most interesting events is the Halloween Night Tour.  Of course, it takes place on October 31.  There is a tour guide taking you around to various tombs that are open and lit with candles, although you are requested to bring your own flashlight.    

The scariest place on the tour was the crypt.  It is underground with only a brick façade showing at the end.  The crypt opens through a wrought iron gate so that you can always see inside even when the gate is locked.  Of course, it’s very dark as you enter a long hallway and smells moldy. 

On either side of the hall, there are doorways open to small rooms.  The rooms each have about a dozen places for coffins.  The ones that have coffins in them are sealed.  The others, are completely empty and dark.  [You can see something similar in the walls of the cemeteries near the French Quarter in New Orleans.  Homeless people climb the fences and sleep in those open crypts.]

When the tour is over, the crypt is locked for the rest of the year.

Post by Alana Cash

http://www.green-wood.com  

LEFFERTS GARDENS

The neighborhood behind the house was called Lefferts Gardens.  It used to be part of Flatbush, but the realtors carved up Brooklyn into ever smaller neighborhoods because they could only gentrify so much at a time.

In this part of Brooklyn, like most others, there were lots of row houses and pre-war apartment buildings (this term is used to delineate apartments built before World War II. They have bigger rooms, bigger casement windows, solid wood doors and oak floors.

Originally settled by Native Americans, then the Dutch, this area had also been an Italian and Jewish neighborhood where Rudy Guliani, Barbra Streisand, and Lanie Kazan grew up.  When I moved there, it was 90% black - populated African Americans and Caribbean and African immigrants.

It was kind of “me and them” at first  A few times I got called derogatory names, usually preceded by the word “white,” until I finally explained that no one had to tell me that because I already knew I was white.  I was sticking-out-like-a-sore-thumb white.  Everyone settled down after a while, or maybe it was just me.  

I found that young black men were the most polite and respectful people I ever met in any part of Brooklyn, or Manhattan either for that matter..  The subway clerks, behind those bulletproof glass windows, set the tone for rudeness in the City or anywhere in the world in my opinion.  And the Brooklyn US Postal employees (also behind bulletproof glass) can be distinctly rude.  But I digress.

The sidewalks were crowded and people in that neighborhood liked to walk side by side with their friends – stretching five or six people across  – so that sometimes I had to step into the street to get around.  The streets were very dirty and noisy, too, because a lot of the stores played music for their customers and some stores sold music and were particularly loud.  When I say stores, some of these places were 4 feet wide and 6 or 8 feet deep – like a walk-in closet. 

The roads were not what you would find in Manhattan.  Some potholes were the size of a bathtub and half as deep.  Bad news if you are on a bike.  And the tar in the streets was melted and pushed into waves in the street.  There were “gypsy cabs” – these were private cars and vans that had not obtained a hack license from the city.  They transported people around the neighborhood and people recognized and flagged them down. 

There were also disguised police vehicles – beat-up vans or old Toyotas with mismatched doors.  I’d be at a corner waiting for the signal to change and all of a sudden one of those crappy looking vehicles would pull out a flashing cherry light, hit the hammer (siren), and take off after someone.  It was funny.

Most of the stores were built into the ground floor of old houses that you wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t looking.  The two upper floors were rented out as apartments or used for storage and some of them still had the painted brick advertisements from the 1950s.  To me, Flatbush Avenue was for exploring history and architecture, but not the best place for that in Brooklyn.

Post by Alana Cash

THE NEIGHBORHOOD CHURCH - 350 years old

After getting somewhat settled -- unpacking all the boxes -- I decided to explore my new neighborhood.  I walked around to Flatbush Avenue, the only street I had ever associated with Brookyn.  It was the first behind the house (across the subway ditch) and down a block.

I walked down Flatbush Avenue the length of two subway stops (about 3/4 of a mile from

the house to Church Avenue where I saw a banner advertising the anniversary of the Dutch Reform Church which was established in 1654.  I learned that this church was built by order of Peter Stuyvesant, first Director General of "New Amsterdam."  He even gave the dimensions for the church -- 60 feet by 28 feet. It was originally built of wood and rebuilt a few years later out of stone. 

The Dutch Reform Church on Flatbush Ave. is not the oldest church ever built in Brooklyn.  That honor goes to another Dutch Reform Church that has since been razed.  The building that houses Macy's in downtown Brooklyn was built over that church site and cemetery.

Original Dutch Reform Church in Flatbush Village

There was a graveyard in back of the Dutch Reform Church on Flatbush Ave.  It was surrounded by a chain-link fence, but since it was Sunday, the gate was unlocked and I went inside and wandered around.  The gravestones were very weathered from age, general pollution, and acid rain.  

The oldest grave that I could find belonged to Adam Peterse Brouwen who died in 1693.  Doing some research later, I found out that Brouwen had originally worked for the Dutch West India Company, as did many of the first immigrants to Brooklyn, and he built the first flour mill in North America called the "Old Gowanus Mill."  

Gravestone in Dutch Reform Church Cemetery

Another grave in the cemetery belonged to Hendrick Lefferts who gave his name to Lefferts Gardens, the section of Brooklyn I had traveled through to get to the church.  The old Lefferts house is still standing in Prospect Park and is an example of an old Dutch farmhouse. [They host tours and events there.]  

I never attended a service at the Dutch Reform Church, although I did attend services at the the Society of Friends (Quaker Church) in downtown Brooklyn. Their building was much more modern -- built in 1851.

Brooklyn is called the borough of churches because it has more churches than any other borough of New York City.  The "F" train (the one used in the opening of "Welcome Back Kotter") has the highest tressle of any of the subway trains and gives a great view of Brooklyn.  Looking out the train window you can see dozens of church spires.

Post by Alana Cash