#16:: francie nolan + "in our old colonial home, we drank our bitters while the empire fell"

east haarlem, nyc


"they ambled along, stopping now and then to breathe deeply of the smell of newtown creek which flowed its narrow tormented way a few blocks up grand street. ::'god, she stinks,' commented the big boy. ::'yeah!' neeley sounded deeply satisfied. ::'I bet that's the worst stink in the world,' bragged another boy. ::'yeah.' ::and francie whispered yeah in agreement. she was proud of that smell. it let her know that nearby was a waterway, which dirty though it was, joined a river that flowed out to the sea. to her, the stupendous stench suggested far-sailing ships + adventure + she was pleased with the smell." A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [1943]

:: I recall a hot august night + the ruddy glint of a unravelled sinatra tape fluttering in the briny breeze off of the east river, while carrying late-night tonic water--for a gin + tonic--from hama on metropolitan. union, bedford, guernsey {with the canopy of trees filtering the sodium light}, messerole, banker, calyer.

::the night was spitting in a semi-tropical circumstance. I surfaced at carroll, through what seemed a nice neighborhood which gave way to an industrial zone. I crossed gowanus canal on union + thought of its toxic infamy. I arrived early at an event--a winsome, artsy type at the door started to talk to me, as if we sort of knew each other. she gushed about how gowanus was changing for the better + encouraged me to check out the quirky installations in the galleryspace before the talk. I thought of how greenpoint + williamsburg were dead to me at that moment. I thought of colonialism along the L--the beachhead now being bushwick, forlorn since the unrest of '77. I thought of the numbers of stops into this brooklyn: york, jay, bergen, carroll; high, jay-borough hall, hoyt-schermerhorn; clark, jay-borough hall, nevins. the far rockaway a-train to jfk. ::later I would head to a wonderful winebar in flatbush with my friend I met up with at the gowanus gallery. we talked--mostly I listened, as she {the coolest architect/writer in the world w/ a kick-aß taste in music} + another friend of her's {an urbanist} talked about architecture + nyc, 'space & the city.' ::at midnight, I had to wend my way back up to haarlem, as in a few hours I had to stuff myself into a jetblue flight back to the land of the lotus eaters. the next time I would see nieuw amsterdaam, it was gloriously frozen.