While recently reading some perceptive, crystalline “Maigret” novels by Georges Simenon, I was struck again by how much he focuses on observing the daily. He pays special attention to the way passengers look and behave on a Paris bus, how customers act in a café, and the appearance of the many people taking the waters at Vichy, a French spa town.
With much less skill, I have tried to write over the years in a similar vein. As always, the city engages my modest powers of seeing and noticing. During the last week or so, I have been trying to look more closely at the people I encounter on my walks, from the window of a bus, and while sitting in various parks.
I caught the tail end of the Gay Pride Parade and was hit by how young and multi-ethnic and multi-racial the participants were. At least in New York City, people were coming out and asserting their identity without fear or inhibition. Family and communal controls probably still exist, but one feels that—at least in the realm of sexual behavior and gender roles—we are going through a process of genuine transformation. It is not to say some of it doubtless isn’t mere posturing or a callow adoption of what is trendy—but I am speculating. It is hard to discern the motivation of each marcher, and excesses aside, the Parade was a moving event.
On another day, I go with my wife to visit an eye doctor at Columbia Presbyterian in Washington Heights. On our return trip by bus, I look closely at streets I remember from the years I lived in the neighborhood in the mid 1960s and the years visiting my parents who lived there for three decades. The area has seen changes, but it doesn’t seem that different in physical texture and atmosphere than it was when my parents lived there—though probably safer and more stable. The rents may have risen, but there are only a few visible signs of gentrification—a new building here, two more upscale restaurants there, and Columbia University’s large new Manhattanville campus north of 125th Street on its way to completion. Still, the neighborhood remains predominantly Dominican and working class, and the signage of many of its stores is in Spanish. And Broadway is filled with fast food restaurants (e.g., Taco Bell and Wendy’s), farmacias, smoke and barber shops, and—of course—bodegas. It’s good to see that functioning, vibrant New York City ethnic neighborhoods survive without being gentrified out of existence and turned into another Nolita—no matter how chic and seductive it is.
My last attempt at close observation involves going to Washington Square Park, to read and watch its daily life. In the early mornings, it is serene, and if far from bucolic, its large trees provide a protective canopy and breeze from the heat. Dog walkers; students with knapsacks going to NYU; the odd, melancholy bird feeder; and tourists taking banal photos of squirrels usually dominate the park mornings. The part of the park I sit in sees few homeless men begging, but some younger, healthy men show up at times telling their sad stories (cons?) to young, gullible women sitting alone on the park’s hard benches. There is one older man (a painter?) who makes the rounds each morning half-heartedly selling a bad painting. Rarely does anything dramatic or revelatory occur in the morning, but that suits me fine.
