THE CITY: Part 2

Having not been in lower west side in 5 or 6 years, I have to say I was a tad surprised by all the new names floating around. I mean: Staples in Greenwich Village? 

I was happy to see the Blue Note still there. But it seemed like a lonely holdout in what some natives must feel is the malling of New York City. The Little Lebowski was closed - a bummer for this huge fan. Ground Zero was what it is - a mixture of emotions, politics, crowds, history, construction. The huge and compromised Freedom Tower spoke little to me. Rather, Doe and I were taken by the old Episcopal Church across the street. How - we wondered - did the trees surrounding the chapel and gravestone survive the tremendous destruction of the falling towers? We sat there for a while and as we walked out of there we saw a boy hugging his mother, his face buried in her chest. He was crying. 

THE CITY: Part 1

My partner and I went this weekend to Brooklyn. Not by ourselves. Her daughter and son-in-law were in a U-Haul truck not too far behind us with all of their stuff packed inside. They were moving to Brooklyn. We helped. Her son-in-law arranged for us to stay in the B&B he'd been living in the past few months, while he worked a new university job and looked for apartments. This BedandBreakfast was sweet, on a fine street in Flatbush. 
We arrived Sunday behind the truck, in spite of a car-crash right in front of us, at their new home - a large place with crazy, shaped shrubs and a giant inflated chick-in-an-easter-egg thing. Third floor walk-up. The neighborhood a nutty mix of odd houses and mad chrome-plated fences with bling appeal, alongside sad structures long ignored or homes added on to like brick and wood quilts.
Three of us huffed and puffed up and down the three flights while my gal watched over the truck. Finally, Brian and I attempted the couch. The handed-down old, long, wide couch. Two dinged-up walls later, we brought it outside and worked feverishly to remove the squat legs. Then, another attempt. Fruitless. Doe and I left and found out the next day that Brian spent 90 minutes taking the damn couch apart, armed only with a hammer and screwdriver, then tossed the pieces into the garbage.
Doe and I returned to our lovely accommodations and headed out later to find dinner. We found rain and grayness and streets crammed with ethnic grocery stores, a chain-store pizza joint, an odd Jewish cafeteria, an even stranger Russian restaurant with a sunken dance floor and DJ playing ear-splitting music. We finally fell into a Bangladeshi-Indian place lined with mirrors and no-one speaking English. A young rather cool kid behind the counter helped take our order and we sat and dried off and enjoyed extremely spicy but delicious food. 
Then "home" and to bed.