Walk #3
Direction: North up Broadway
Some people who regularly work from home say that it’s important to put on “real clothes” when you’re ready to start your day. I’ve always understood the psychology behind it, but never thought it would ever apply to me- after all, I’ve created some of my best work while drinking whiskey in one of the three onesies that I own.
But when the days begin to blur together like one long roll of thick, suffocating fabric, taking a shower and putting on a pair of jeans and a real shirt really does help cut up the days into manageable pieces.
Another thing I’ve started back up this week is intermittent fasting- mostly for variety/health, but also so I don’t eat through my food stores as quickly.
I’m pondering the challenge of doing my walk with low blood sugar and practicing a bit on Otto* when my phone rings.
Rob Neill is one of those people who still calls you out of the blue, a rare thing these days. Rarer still, I don’t mind it at all. I put down Otto and answer.
I’ve known Rob for a little over five years now- first as a member of a strange theatre company I was helping with sound design, then as a colleague when I officially joined that company, then as the Artistic Director of that company when he stepped into that role last summer, and always as a friend. He is a man who, having resided in this city for over twenty years, has somehow resisted that thin layer of bitter grit that settles onto most creatives here. Maybe it’s his sensible Wisconsin roots. Maybe it’s because he is pure of heart. Or maybe he’s just found a way to live in New York that doesn’t drain your soul and leave you for dead. Doesn’t really matter. I love the guy.
We chat about how each of us has been dealing with our current situation- the films we now have time to watch, and how far away the boroughs now seem. He gives me some wonderful album recommendations for my walks- Big Thief, John Lee Hooker, Perfume Genius. He might get the gang together for an online hangout this week. Just to be together.
We hang up after about 25 minutes, and I get ready for my walk. It’s nearly five by now, and the longer days of spring and summer have not yet arrived.
Weather: Cold. Cloudy. The sun practicing social distance like a good citizen. Perfect conditions for John Lee Hooker. Thanks, Rob.
I start Track 1, “The Healer”, as I turn north, cutting across 172nd Street to reach Broadway. The surprising amount of bustle, matching the energy of Santana’s dope-ass guitar solos, flows around me as I join the foot traffic. Maybe some last-minute efforts to stock up- I see a lot of toilet paper.
(Real-time note from author: Oh god, *Papa Johns* is making me drool? Maybe I should’ve eaten after all.)
A few blocks up and I’m walking by one of the landmarks of Washington Heights- United Palace. United Palace is your weird aunt who partied when she was young and then had a cancer scare and got Hippie Religious™. Built in 1930 to be one of the five “Loew’s Wonder Theatres” of the NYC area (all of which still standing- one of them is now the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn), this place began life as Loew’s 175th Street Theatre- a huge, lavishly decorated movie palace that also hosted vaudeville performances. Both the inside and outside of the theatre are an absolute field day for architects and designers alike- the architect Thomas W. Lamb borrowed from more cultures than I care to list here in my walking essay (but the Wikipedia article is worth a peek if you’re curious). As the movie boom began to die down, Loew’s dumped your aunt in 1969 like an old wet can. Luckily, the United Church Science of Living Institute needed a new headquarters, and an televangelist named Reverend Ike bought her up later that same year. She’s been a church and a concert venue ever since, looking basically the same as she did when she was built (with maybe a few wrinkles here and there). I do notice on this walk that she looks prettier when the sun is gone. Less competition maybe.
Uptown Broadway seems to have some of the last vestiges of small independent shops that aren’t just bodegas, “quirky”, or the product of gentrification. Utilitarian establishments for the community at hand- pharmacies, groceries, restaurants. I do wonder, once the world makes it past this current situation, how much longer it will be before this area sees more empty storefronts, followed by more banks and franchises.
Not that uptown hasn’t already seen its share of changes over the decades. In fact, in the 1930s the neighborhood went by the name “Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson”, because so many German Jewish refugees from specifically Frankfurt settled here. In the decades after WWII, the neighborhood’s population transitioned from Jewish to Cuban and Puerto Rican, then Dominican.
“Oh baby, please don’t do me wrong,”
John crooned in my ear.
One of my favorite parts about living uptown is navigating its dramatic topography. Elevations for the first handful of blocks north of my apartment are about the same, but once you pass the George Washington Bridge at 179th Street, you begin to notice the difference. Broadway begins a long gentle slope downward, and hills rise up to your right and left. A big mistake you can make as a newbie up here is trying to get to 183rd and Broadway via Fort Washington. You can, but it’s not as simple as the street grids farther south. Ancient bedrock- Manhattan mica schist, the stuff of Pangea- forms those hills: massive chunks of metamorphic rock peering out from trees, brush, buildings. In order to traverse the sheer cliffs and escarpments (my new favorite word), city planners built a number of stair streets. If you’ve ever encountered one, your legs are probably still sore.
The architectural solutions for the apartment buildings on the cliffs east and west of this part of Broadway are both fascinating and terrifying. Entire sections of people’s homes jutting out over the hills, held up by a series of tall steel stilts. I liken it to a version of San Francisco that is simultaneously more chill and more chaotic.
“Cuttin’ out this morning / Won’t be back no more”
Reality cuts back in as I pass a shuttered bar, their cheerful St. Patrick’s Day banner still hanging on the scaffolding outside. I’d forgotten the holiday was even this week.
And a couple of blocks farther north, a new restaurant on 183rd that’s been under construction for some months now was looking just about ready to open. Damn.
A mural on one of their outside walls reads: “I wanna be as human as possible. To not hide, run, destroy or prove anything, to see and be seen.”
“Stop cryin’, stop cryin’, stop cryin’, stop cryin’ / Takin’ you away from here, down the line”
I don’t realize how fast my thoughts are running with observations, anxieties, notes, and fears, until “My Dream” starts playing. John Lee Hooker wraps me up in his coffee-colored cadence, slowing my feet, my mind, my heart. Everything suddenly seems both bigger and smaller than before.
“Dream of you, in the past, me and you / I dream we’re back together again.”
A lot of dreams put on hold lately, or torn apart completely. A lot of waiting in the dark, wondering what to do. A lot of waiting in the dark, weaving new dreams to wear.
At this point in my walk I begin to feel sorry for Future Me, who will have to walk back up the long big hill of Broadway. But John Lee Hooker doesn’t have much more to say. His last track, “No Substitute,” drops me off just shy of 196th, across the street from a counseling office and a beautiful old red brick building (4580 Broadway). I look it up later and find out it was built in 1937- a Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson building.
“Lookin’ for a love / I couldn’t find a substitute / For love, for love, I cried I cried / I cried, cried but just wasn’t there / Just wasn’t there.”
Sometimes the truth is just the truth. I turn for home.
-ks-
*Otto is my French horn. I do that! I do French horn. Here’s a recent thing I did that you can listen to.
