The City & the Country no.14 – August 7 2014

One of my pals on the all black armed college security squad is talking to a friend. As I greet them, the friend says, “I figure you for a former hippie.” How so? I enquire. My beard is trimmed, I’m wearing black slacks, business shirt. “I don’t know,” he muses, “but I see you… you know, Woodstock and all that…” “I live in Woodstock,” I tell him. “You see?” he cries. “Hire this man,” I tell the armed guard. “He’s psychic.” Out in Flatbush I find a new story on the bench I’ve been chronicling (see previous updates). The building behind it used to be a bank; it’s being renovated for some other service industry, using non-union labor. Hence the protest.

A lot of things seem dead or dying, here outside the campus as elsewhere in America. Dead bookstore, once a big part of campus life (I went in there last year, puzzled by the absence of customers; a store assistant said the students come in, puzzled, say “Is this a library?” Goodbye bookstores. Goodbye libraries, soon.) Dead Starbucks? Yikes! Let’s hope they’re just renovating. In the background, note our pretty college campanile.

One thing can’t be replaced: need for cash. Give blood. Get cash. Out on Flatbush Ave, there’s my favorite bus, the 103, as weird in its ways as the ghost bus in Harry Potter. It comes from Canarsie, and then leaps onto the Expressway to downtown Brooklyn without stopping. If it ever arrives in the first place. Plenty of tales about waiting in freezing weather for 103s that never come.