New York, New York
Observations: Bleecker St. Park
New York is exceptionally warm right now, especially for Spring. Weekends are spent napping outside, reading on the stoop, or watching people sweat. ROSECRANS BALDWIN reports from a park on Bleecker while the West Village busies itself with relaxing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- 2008 (Of Recent Note)
- Guilty Reading (Of Recent Note)
- Fall Food (Of Recent Note)
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In a corner, it’s warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it’s dwelt on.
Water is glass’s most public form.
– Joseph Brodsky, ‘A list of some observation’
The Bleecker St. Park on 11th St. is split between a large, modern playground and a small park, guarded by a dozen linden trees. On a warm Saturday, the playground’s overrun with children being chased by their parents or nannies as they race from one slide to another, the adults shouting in tow. On the other side, under the trees, couples take a few minutes to stop and relax, then stand, tuck in their shirts, and walk off. Some eat cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery catty-corner to the park, some sit and read, like me, others smoke. In one corner two drag queens bicker, one singing, with six hangers-on stewing around them, passing beers in paper bags. Behind me a white-haired older man—in pressed khakis, Oxford blue shirt, and tennis shoes—has his feet up on the table and a blank pad on his knees. Every so often he takes his pen from his mouth and taps his papers.
The park, named for its street, was once part of the Bleecker family farm, owned by Anthony and Mary Bleecker, who ceded a great deal of land to the city in 1809, including Houston, Mercer, and Sullivan streets. The Bleeckers had a son named Anthony, a writer and also the founder of the New York Historical Society, a man supposedly clever enough for William Cullen Bryant to once describe how a young woman had, ‘gone to the country to take refuge from Anthony Bleecker’s puns.’
Though the park now has few memories of farmland, it feels spacious. For the West Village, a neighborhood well known for its dense planning, any empty seat in the shade is a Godsend. I found a bench facing away from the park; my girlfriend was in a spa nearby, giving me time to start a Joseph Brodsky collection I’d just bought.
Five British tourists squat by a bench outside the Magnolia Bakery, fighting for the last bites from a cup of banana pudding. A cook from the bakery comes outside for a cigarette, and stands on the other side of the door. One of the Brits watches him for a second, then looks at his friends, his face suggesting he’s seen time reverse direction, rebuild the world as a colony of red-faced gremlins with him as their eternal servant, then right itself.
‘What is it,’ asks a girl in a large hooded sweatshirt.
‘Look at him,’ he says, coughing while trying to keep his voice down. His friends look, and the girl looks back.
‘What? I don’t see anything.’
‘He’s wearing a fucking skirt!’
‘So?’
‘Well it’s weird, innit?’
The cook finishes his cigarette and goes back in the restaurant. A few minutes later a car, turning south on Bleecker, hits the back of an Isuzu Trooper. The Trooper’s driver looks up in the mirror, frowns, then looks down and back up again. Behind him the driver waves nervously each time, unsure if he’ll have to get out. The Trooper driver, a tall, tan guy in shorts with sunglasses hanging from his neck, leaves his car and walks around to the back.
‘Sorry sir.’
Trooper-driver nods.
‘Look it’s nothing.’ The driver responsible for the crash is apologetic, nearly bowing, an accomplishment for a man as wide as he is tall. He points to the spot in question—a wrinkle in the rear panel—where his bumper tapped the Trooper.
‘Sir, I’m very sorry.’
They shake hands and part ways. The Trooper-driver, pain-faced, scans the sidewalk for sympathy as he steps up into his car, and grins at two Asian girls eating Oreo cookies by the bakery.
‘They always get you with the bumper,’ he says loudly as he climbs back into the truck. ‘Always.’ I watch the girls ignore him and turn away, then see him mutter to himself, Always the bumper, as he sits in traffic.
Later, a young girl, trailing her father, walks by slowly with her shoulders pushed forward. She’s skinny and already tall, though she can’t be more than ten. Her hair has been cut like a shoebox fitted around her head and a flap of bangs, trimmed evenly, rests on the top of her glasses. Her father walks ahead a little faster but doesn’t look back but once to check on her progress. A patch of hair is missing from behind his right ear, suggesting he’s just had surgery.
The girl wears a librarian’s party outfit: brown cardigan, cream-colored blouse, crimson skirt, knee-high gray socks, and pink Reeboks. She carries an obviously dead and quickly browning pink rose in her hands. Every few steps she picks a petal off the rose, examines it carefully under her nose, then drops it on the ground. I watch her do this once, twice, five, six times before she’s farther west off 11th Street and out of view.
A few minutes later I look up and see the brown petals sitting still on the ground, undisturbed. I see the girl and her father walking past; I hear a silvery tear while she slowly rips off a petal. He loves me, she thinks, he loves me not.
—Published April 18, 2002
