NEIGHBORHOODS: New York/Chelsea

I live on the weirdest street in New York City. I don’t mean hip weird or arty weird or even touristy weird: I mean just plain w-e-i-r-d. For example, there is a nice bed-and-breakfast inn about 2 doors down that is frequented by Europeans (mostly Germans, judging by their guttural remarks when consulting their Baedekers on the sidewalk in front of the B&B). There are French windows facing the street, and (when the curtains aren’t drawn) you can look into a cozy lobby, featuring plush chairs and people reading in the ones by the window. However, in the chair closest to the left-hand window, there is a body sagging limp-armed and apparently dead, with its head touching its shoes. No one seems to notice or even mind; the Germans come and go without commenting on it, and the passersby don’t even seem to ever react. On closer inspection, one can lean over the flower boxes on the sidewalk outside the windows (concrete bunker-like planters to keep people like us at bay) and see that it is a sort of scarecrow: a stuffed dead person in an armchair. The first time I saw it I started to dial 911, before my companion realized it was a fake and stopped me in time. Why would anyone want such a lobby ornament? And why are their customers so blasé—indeed comfortable—with it? It’s just one of those Mysteries on 23rd Street that never seem to stop unfolding.

It’s even weirder when you consider that the B&B is cheek-by-jowl with a soup kitchen entrance in the basement of St. Vincent de Paul next door. The ragged old winos stagger out after a meal and hang out in front of the B&B door pretending to be tourists. It’s all a bit sad and funny at the same time. But that’s my block. Sometimes they wander over to my door and sit on the standpipe next to it, so I bump into them (literally) as I go in my door, exchanging pleasantries with the less comatose.

Some of these guys seem to have all their marbles and are polite, and even those that aren’t quite there are (mostly) tidy and mind their own business and their manners. Once in awhile I’ll encounter a fellow (they are usually men) who just seems a bit down on his luck and doesn’t appear to belong with the others. We’ll enjoy a nice one-sided conversation about his temporary predicament, and the next time I pass him, he won’t recognize me because he is engaged in a furious fight (over some real or imagined slight) with a lamppost. Then I remember that people like him can’t get their medication any more because the recently-sainted (former) Mayor Guiliani closed all the mental hospitals.

Once, back in 1997, I saw a fight between a lamppost and a talking car (remember talking cars?). I was with a friend who was on a cigarette break from a café which was then located across the street from me. It was a warm night and we were watching the passing parade when suddenly an SUV parked at the curb shouted “Back off!!!” After verifying that no one was near—or even in—it, we carried on with our conversation, unimpressed by the car’s outburst, as most Manhattanites would have been. Then it began in earnest: the shouting of repeated “back offs” until we realized that they were addressed to a lamppost next to it, and not to any pedestrians. This was more interesting, and a bit of crowd gathered, most of them putting their money on the lamppost, which was maintaining an admirably aloof composure throughout the entire episode. After about 20 minutes or so, the van subsided into a sulky silence, and the crowd melted away, looking for other entertainment. We straightened up, recovered our composure (after thumping each other on the back awhile), and pretended nothing had happened, which is what one does here on a regular basis.

In the middle of my block is a huge concrete block edifice that would arguably put most of Bucharest to shame. For reasons no one can explain, it boasts a smell that could fell an ox, a combination of unwashed and rotting flesh that makes walking down the sidewalk a real chore on a hot summer day. Once the sidewalk is hosed down in the morning, the smell subsides a bit for a few more hours. On a canopy that crosses the sidewalk it announces itself as the Associated Blind building, whatever that means. Yes, a lot of blind people live here, as well as the halt, the deaf and the seriously disabled on every imaginable front. But the blind—who can’t glory in the sign on account of their disability—somehow got top billing.

It makes you think.

I remember a neighbor (who also has a wife and daughter) telling me a few years ago that he almost didn’t move into our building because he saw so many blind people on our street that he had the overwhelming impression there must be something “in the water”. “I have a daughter ...” he recalled thinking, before he looked up and saw the sign on the canopy.

They moved in the next day, and his daughter promptly dyed her hair green to match that of the transvestite across the hall.