Something In The Air

It all started when I was walking down Hudson Street in Manhattan around 7:00 this evening after an all-day meeting and business dinner to retrieve my car when I began to feel something strange. Like something just wasn't right. It was a gloomy night, unseasonably warm, but gloomy nonetheless in the aftermath of yesterday's snow and sleet and today's earlier downpours.

It just felt bleak in an indescribable way. Then I approached the parking lot that my car had been resting in for the past 10 hours. It was closed. Locked up, no one answering the phone. Fuck me; nothing ever goes right. Since when did parking lots close? Then I realized that I left all my keys with the attendant leaving me no way to get into my apartment.

I wandered around the chain-link fence for a while irritated as hell when I saw a hole just big enough for me to climb through to see if my car was unlocked and possibly contained keys. Instead of jumping through and risking a night in New York County Jail, I crossed the street towards the entry of the Holland Tunnel and asked a police officer if it would be okay if I broke into the parking lot and tried to break into my own car. I explained my predicament and after a suspicious glare, he said, "Go for it." There I was standing near the entrance of the Holland Tunnel asking a police officer for permission to break into a closed parking lot.

So I went through but found my doors locked and no keys in sight and walked to the the Spring Street C train heading downtown. The subway ride was normal enough, but when I got out at Jay Street in Brooklyn, the ominous feeling was back. I walked toward the bus stop and waited for the B61 with an intense urge to relieve my bladder. Finally the bus arrived and I entered and sat near the most gentrified passengers I could find. A black mother, most likely a resident of the Red Hook Houses, and her two little boys sat behind me. D'Shawn* was misbehaving himself and beating up his little brother. They, too, wanted to sit near the gentry.

The bus didn't move for about 10 minutes and I realized there were ambulances, police cars and fire trucks blocking the intersection. Meanwhile my urge to urinate is increasing and my need for a Xanax is getting more intense.

Finally the bus moved along its merry way and I exited at the intersection of Columbia Street and Carroll Street and walked into the bar that my roommate works at. (D'Shawn and his brother had to be separated from each other by this point in the ride.) Yes! She was there and gave me keys. The patrons in the bar seemed very rough looking and unkempt, swilling cans of PBR and High Life from buckets and downing shots of Jameson. If rednecks existed in Brooklyn, these people would be as close as it gets.

She offered me a drink but I looked around and decided that I needed to get the fuck out of there. I used the water closet, drank a cup of water and took the keys and started walking to my apartment.

I felt an overwhelming sense of vulnerability the entire walk home (a total of about 11 blocks). Along Van Brunt Street, there was an unusual amount of police activity, but I still didn't feel safe. I seldom feel threatened even in the sketchiest locations, often feeling invincible, but tonight I felt uncomfortable in my own neighborhood. Red Hook in and of itself is a pretty ominous place to be even on sunny afternoons. Tonight, the feeling was unbearable. It got me thinking my first visit to this odd little waterfront enclave. It was a rainy night in the autumn of 2005 and I was in the comfort of my old Passat and driving through thinking to myself, "How the fuck could anyone live here?" and "How the fuck do I get back to Park Slope?"

Tonight, just like that rainy September evening nearly three years ago, I didn't feel safe until I entered my apartment. In fact, I still don't.


*Yes, I did hear her call him D'Shawn - I'm not stereotyping.