I wake up late on Saturday morning, around noon, after having been up late the night before working on my website. My plan for the day is to head to the Upper East Side of Manhattan from my apartment in Astoria, Queens. I need a haircut, so I’m heading to Supercuts on 85th Street and 2nd Avenue.
I shower, shave, dress, feed my awesome cat Copper and clean her poop, and head out around 1:30 p.m. My local train station, 30th Avenue, is closed until the spring for renovations, so I make the 12-minute walk to Astoria Boulevard. It’s a pretty dreary day out, chilly, in the forties and overcast, but I don’t mind, I’m just happy to get out of Queens for the day. I board an N Train heading into Manhattan, and 20 minutes minutes later we arrive at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue.
I’ve been really stressed lately due to my struggling writing career, so I’m working extra hard to write, as well as to build my website and my brand.
When I exit the N Train, I mistakenly head down the stairs to the 4 and 5 trains going downtown. I’m about to board the 4 train when I hear the conductor say the next stop will be Grand Central Station. Oops! This train is going downtown. I stop one pace short of boarding the train, turn around, head back up the stairs, walk along the corridor and head down the opposite staircase for the 4 and 5 heading uptown.
I’m hoping for a fairly quick and peaceful ride, because it’s only one stop to 86th Street, but just to make sure I pop my headphones in my ears as I sit down. Right before the doors close a young African-American guy, maybe 17 or 18, jumps into my car carrying a boombox.
Shit! For those of you not from New York, in NYC we have a lot of subway break dancers, who blast hip hop in the car in between stations and perform aerial acrobatics that involve almost hitting everyone in the freaking face as they perform. Some people like it, but it’s not for me. The subway is stressful enough for me, I don’t want a circus performing in front of my face.
So he hits play, the music blasts, and he starts swinging around the bars. He’s very skillful, I can’t take that away from him, but I just don’t want this in my space. Whenever he swings near me I give him a hard stare that lets him know he better not swing too close to me. I also very demonstrably put my hands over my ears to block out the music, just to reinforce to him how much he’s pissing me off.
After he’s finished he asks for tips, and a few scattered people oblige. All in all it’s a tough way to make a living, and I’m sure he’d rather be doing something else, but I have my own problems to worry about, so I keep it rolling.
When we pull into 86th Street, he exits the car before me, and I hear him muttering about how times are hard and he’s not getting a lot of tips. I hear you brother, I really do. I hope things turn around for both of us, preferably before we’re 80.
******
I exit at 86th and make the three block walk to Supercuts at 85th and 2nd. The place is pretty empty when I walk in, and a nice, slightly older, probably Dominican lady seats me and asks how I’d like my hair done. I tell her I don’t want it to hang over the ears, but not too short in the front either. She smiles and says okay honey, that’s no problem, however you like it.
I zone out for most of the haircut, and awaken from my musings when she asks how it looks. I tell her it looks fine, nice, thank you very much. I tip her $5 and head out of Supercuts around 3 p.m.
For some reason, even though the Upper East Side is a little less congested than Astoria, my stress level begins to rise as I walk the streets of the neighborhood. I stop on the corner of 84th and 2nd and ponder where to go next.
Central Park immediately pops into my mind. I grew up on the Upper West Side, and I went to Central Park regularly during my childhood,. I’ve always loved the park, and I feel like maybe if I spend some time there now it’ll help take my chill level down a notch.
I head west on 84th Street, passing 3rd Avenue, then Lexington, then Park. The people traffic begins to thin out, and after a nice-looking couple passes me, I pull a ziplock out of my jacket pocket, remove my glass pipe and a plastic cube container of Gorilla Glue weed, which is the crazy name the delivery service people, or whoever makes up the names, have given this particular strain. It’s a sativa, which means it’s a cerebral, energizing high. I pull a small bud out of the cube and insert it in the pipe. Then I pull out a cube of Northern Lights weed, which is an indica. That means it provides a chill, relaxing body high. I take a small bud and insert it into the pipe. I’m essentially making my own hybrid weed, and it works to great effect. It’s nice the way the two strains meld together to create a chill yet robust high.
I take a toke as I walk down the street, exhale, put the pipe back in my pocket, and keep the train rollin’. I cross Madison Ave, then reach 5th Avenue and enter the park at 83rd and 5th.
By now I’m nicely high but in a really good way, and I’m starting to feel a chill come over me as I walk along the entryway path. There’s a few people here and there, a couple with a young child, a man jogging, but it’s already 4pm and it’s starting to get dark, so most people have left the park.
I amble along the path in a southern direction, with the plan being to catch the N train back to Queens at 60th Street and 5th Avenue. I pass the northern part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and decide to take a seat on a bench. The bench is dotted with water from the recent rain, so I remove my water bottle from my backpack and turn the backpack into a seat cushion.
I sit for a few minutes looking at trees, staring up at the sky, and just generally chilling the hell out. A few people pass here and there, but mostly I have about 1/8th of a mile of pathway around me in either direction all to myself.
Within fifteen minutes I can feel that my blood pressure has dropped, my heart rate has slowed, and my mind has cleared itself of stressful thoughts. Wow! Thank you weed, thank you nature, and in this case thank you urban nature.
But the truth is, and I say this as a native New Yorker, Central Park is not urban at all. It occupies 840 prime acres of real estate in the heart of central Manhattan, and those 840 acres are literally an oasis of calm, soothing, soul-restoring peace. When you’re in the park, you really don’t feel like you’re in New York City. I mean there are a couple of roads, and you see the occasional car, but for the most part it’s lush walking paths, lakes and reservoirs, and sprawling fields. For those of us who grew up in Manhattan, Central Park was our getaway, our day at the beach, our chance to escape from the craziness of the city and just chill. Basically what I’m saying is that I really dig the park.
******
It’s getting dark now, and we’re in the gloaming, which means twilight or dusk. I actually only know this because there was a 90’s made-for-TV movie called In the Gloaming. It starred Robert Sean Leonard and Glenn Close, and it was a terribly sad story about a young man who returns home dying of AIDS and shares his last months in intimate scenes of bonding with his mother.
It’s all pretty boring and cliche, but I distinctly remember a scene where Glenn Close and Robert Sean Leonard are sitting on a porch outside the family home in a lush setting in the South, and it’s getting dark. Glenn Close turns to Robert Sean Leonard and says something like, “we’re in the gloaming now.” And he, rightly so, asks what the fuck that means. So she explains to him that it’s twilight or sunset. And for some reason that scene, and that expression, always stuck with me. Who knows why the mind retains what it does.
So now that we’re in the gloaming, I start thinking about heading south on the path toward 60th street and 5th. But just then a squirrel, an eastern gray squirrel, to be precise, which is the kind that populate the park, walks along the top of my bench toward me.
Whoa now, little guy! I mean he’s kinda cute, in an urban ferret kind of way. But he’s also a city critter, and he could be full of diseases and shit. So I turn my head and give him a look that says, back off, chief, just take a few steps back, ya know?
And he does. Which is crazy. I mean we’re completely different species, and there’s very little research or academic whatever on human-squirrel relationships, but when I give him my hard stare, he looks at me, sits up on his haunches, flexes his huge four front teeth a couple times, and turns around, making his way off the bench.
I have no freaking idea what just happened, but I’m glad it turned out the way it did, and I have the bench to myself once again.
A couple minutes later another squirrel appears, this one on the grass below me, and stops about eight feet away. He raises up on his haunches like my other friend, but this time he has a friendly expression on his face, and I finally realize that he wants me to feed him.
I have a protein bar and a Cliff bar in my backpack, and I briefly consider giving my little friend a piece. But then I remember that once you feed one squirrel, a hundred more appear all around you, and I don’t want to become another crazy squirrel man in the park. Still, I smile back at him and let him know I appreciate his enthusiasm, and I wish him well.
I pull out my 50 oz. bottle of Poland Spring water and drink about 20 ounces, because I’m suddenly madly thirsty. Then I realize it’s getting a little chilly, and I decide to start making my way south to the train station.
*****
I head west, but I decide to take a more central path through the park. There are more people around, from bikers to night joggers to teenagers just looking to enjoy themselves.
I feel my pulse begin to quicken a little as I walk along what amounts to the park’s main thoroughfare. There are more street lights here, and I can hear muffled honking noises from the cars on 5th avenue.
I head further west and take a small path that’s not very well lit. It’s also completely deserted, as far as I can tell.
Now I grew up in NYC in the 70’s and 80’s, and we had a fear of isolated, dark places ingrained in our minds and hearts. It was a crime-ridden, crack and heroin-infused, chaotic time. It wasn’t Beirut by any stretch of the imagination, but you had to be just a little bit more aware of your surroundings, and who else was occupying those surroundings, than you do today.
Despite my childhood fears, I follow this dimly lit path as it snakes southward toward the southern end of the park. There are street lights every 300 yards or so, but strangely a lot of them are out. I say strangely because Central Park is one of the most well-funded, and politically well-positioned, urban parks in the United States. It has a $67 million annual budget, and it’s incredibly manicured and maintained.
So when I notice 3, 4, then 5 lights in a row that are out, I start to get a little nervous. Because it’s dark, and I can’t see very far in front of me, and even though it’s a gentler time, this is still an urban park in a giant city.
But then another thought strikes me. Which is that it’s also beautiful. There are trees on both sides of the path, I can see the lights of the luxury buildings on Central Park South off in the distance, and most importantly, there’s no one else around. I mean like, literally, I can look North, South, East and West, and for at least ¼ mile or more I can’t see another person. Which absolutely rocks. For a city boy who’s lived most of his life here, this is Nirvana. It’s a slice of peace in the heart of Manhattan.
So I sit down on a bench and take a moment to savor it. Man, is it quiet. It’s like I’m in the country. I feel completely relaxed. I lean back on the bench, pull out the water bottle, and swig about another 20 ounces. Because once again I’m super thirsty. I’m not sure what’s causing this, but I speculate that maybe all this communing with nature is energizing my soul, but also draining it, and the water helps to replenish the energy.
Soon enough nature calls, and since there’s no one around and it’s pretty darn dark, I avail myself of the nearest tree and let nature take its course.
Bodily needs attended to, I make my way south once again along this dark path. In another couple minutes I come to a four path crossroads, and there are street lights illuminating each direction, which creates a beautiful, luminescent effect. So I whip out my Samsung Galaxy and snap a few pics, figuring I’ll post them on Facebook or IG later.
Around what I guess to be 70th street or so, I start to get a little tired. I do a quick assessment of my options. I can walk another ten blocks or so, then catch the N train at 60th and 5th, then take it to Astoria Boulevard, and then walk 12 minutes or so to my apartment. Oh, and I forgot to mention, it’s also starting to rain.
My other option is to head east immediately and get the hell out of the park and the rain, order a Lyft on 5th ave, and get freakin’ door to door service to my home. The Lyft costs more, of course, but it saves me about 1000 terabytes of aggravation.
Can you guess which one I choose? I you said Lyft, you’re right, and if you said subway, you’re thinking too small and you have to remember to make exceptions in extreme situations and be nice to yourself.
****
I exit the park at 68th and 5th, and I’m immediately assaulted by sirens and flashing red lights, There’s a police car of some sort parked right there on 5th Avenue, and a construction vehicle too. Oy. This is not how I imagined my chill Lyft escape to my home would be.
I quickly cross the street and head south, passing 67th street and stopping in front of what looks to be an elegant building. There’s a large gold plaque on the wall, and I vaguely remember that this is one of the foreign embassies to the UN. I walk up to the plaque and see it’s the Embassy of the Republic of Serbia.
In another life, years ago, I got a master’s degree from Columbia in International Relations, and I worked at the United Nations for a few years. Those days are long gone now, but I’m still intrigued by being on Serbian Embassy property. I reflect on all the debates I had with fellow students in school and colleagues at work about the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990’s. I briefly imagine myself being invited in to the embassy for cocktails and pljeskavica (a ground beef/pork patty), cevapi (grilled minced meat), and sljivovica (plum brandy). We would discuss the Dayton Accords, the state of the Balkans, and perhaps I’d catch the eye of a Serbian beauty.
Just then the Lyft pulls up, so I open the door and hop in. The driver’s name is Sassee, and I think he’s probably West African. We head east along 59th street and take the Queensboro Bridge to Astoria. Once in Queens we follow the road directly under the N train at 31st street. We stop at a light at 39th Avenue, and I hear a Hispanic mother scolding her daughter loudly. My chill lessens a bit more.
I resolve to myself to stay relaxed though. I pull out my Samsung and open the Seamless app, because I’m only 15 minutes from home, so I might as well order dinner now. I scan the restaurants, bored with all the same options, and settle on a grilled pork banh mi from Lotus 1, a fairly excellent mom and pop Vietnamese restaurant in Astoria. Seamless tells me it will arrive in 29 to 39 minutes, so I feel good about the time coordination.
Ten minutes later Sassee pulls up in front of my apartment. I thank him, hop out, and walk the three flights of stairs to my apartment. I make a whiskey on the rocks and collapse on my bed, exhausted, but feeling content and more chill than I have in a long time. I zone out for about fifteen minutes enjoying my whiskey, and then the buzzer wakes me from my dreamlike state. It’s the delivery guy.
Once I get the sandwiches from him, I face a vexing dilemma. Do I start with the grilled chicken, or the grilled pork? The chicken is healthier, we all know this, but I’m not feeling in a healthy mood, I’m feeling in more of a let it rip mood.
So I tear into the pork sandwich, and man is it delicious. I try to savor it, but I’m so hungry I polish off half the sandwich in a couple minutes. Next I eat half of the grilled chicken sandwich. It’s pretty freaking delicious too.
Once I’m done, I push my chair away from the kitchen table and exhale.
Man. Wow. What a day.
When I got the idea of heading to the Upper East Side to get a haircut, Central Park hadn’t factored into my thinking. But I’m so happy I ended up going there. It chilled me out, relaxed me, and did wonders for my soul. I feel lucky that we have such a great park in the heart of the city, and I make a mental note to go there more often.
Then I head into the living room, turn on some music, and settle in for the night.
*********
