Sense & the City

MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE: Sensory Deprivation Tank

2012-01-03T09:04:00.000-08:00

For the new year, I decided to cleanse my city senses by spending an hour in a sensory deprivation tank: basically, a large, soundproof, lightproof closet containing a bathtub in which one thousand pounds of Epsom salts have been dissolved in skin-temperature water. Once immersed, you float weightlessly, escaping from almost all sensory input. There is nothing to process apart from your thoughts, and even those, like your own physicality, dissolve.

Blue Light Flotation, the oldest flotation center in New York City, is located behind an unmarked door in a residential building in the Flatiron District, and shares its immaculate space with its hale, middle-aged proprietor Sam Zeiger’s living quarters. After debriefing me on the finer points of flotation in his living room, whose shelves are lined with Buddhist self-help books, Sam pulls out a wooden screen to separate my end of the apartment from his. I take a shower with special soaps that won’t taint the water, then tiptoe past his kitchen to the float room. I pull back the door to the tank and, as instructed, lower myself into the water slowly, to reduce water motion. After I’ve reclined, I hit the light switch and am immersed in darkness almost as buoyant as the bathwater. I can’t tell where the surface ends and the space above begins.

The saltwater, which feels more viscous than regular bathwater, immediately brings all my bodily imperfections to the foreground: my senses actually become more acute. Tiny cuts, scratches, and tight muscles throb and tingle. I can hear a hum in my ears and some sort of grinding (is that my mind?). It takes a while for the waves to subside and for me to trust the water to support the weight of my head.

Eventually, though, I relax into stillness. In fact, I hardly move for the duration of the hour. The edges of my body began to melt; after about ten minutes, I feel like I’m lying on a Tempur-Pedic mattress, supported by a depression perfectly conforming to my body’s contours. When I experimentally wiggle a finger under water, I am reassured to find it is still there. It’s so dark I have to blink to figure out if my eyes are closed or open. There is a faint smell of humid chlorine (though I had thought the only antibacterial agent in the water was salt), and I detect a muffled thumping overhead, which I’m able to ignore. There’s no taste (I decide against tasting the saltwater for fear of creating more disruptive waves). After about half an hour (though I’ve lost track of time), I feel like I am levitating, and my thoughts have been lulled. The only time I am aware of my senses is when I swallow.

Out on Twenty-third Street, the city itself seems revived: gyro carts, the graceful thrust of the Flatiron Building, my wet hair turning crisp in the cold air, erhu players on the subway platform. I discretely lick my hand, and the salty taste is a wink of acknowledgment: job done.

SMELL: Sidewalk Christmas-tree stands

2011-12-06T06:45:00.000-08:00

Few things make me happier at holiday time than, in the midst of my frenzied errands, passing through a sidewalk Christmas-tree stall and being enveloped for a few moments in the tingly, prickly, resinous redolence of a pine forest.

Vendors—many seasonal immigrants from Europe and Canada—make the stalls their own despite the similarity of their wares. There are seats made from folding chairs or upturned buckets; sawhorse footrests; shelters ranging from plywood-and-tarp lean-tos to heated RVs parked curbside; ornaments as elaborate as inflatable Santa Clauses and carols fizzling from a portable tape deck to a simple string of lights; and offerings from just trees to handcrafts fashioned by the vendors themselves: twig reindeer, candleholders made of tree stumps, homemade ornaments, even the obligatory menorah.

Every stand has the magical steel tree-wrapper, which cloaks the tree in a straitjacket of nylon mesh for its trip home on woolen shoulders or on the roof of a car or alongside red-cheeked children in a little red wagon. At night, and even sometimes during the day, strands of Christmas lights glow from street corners, and the red bows of wreaths hang from chain-link fences alongside tables of tinsel icicles, spray snow, simple tree balls and tree-top stars, small potted fir trees and poinsettias, Santa hats, boxes of lights, and, of course, tree-disposal bags (despite a prohibition from the Department of Sanitation).

During one of the most crowded and frantic seasons in the city, these momentary, fragrant winter wonderlands—just a few squares of city sidewalk--offer a welcome respite.

SOUND: The wild parrots of Flatbush, Brooklyn

2011-11-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

One recent Saturday morning, twelve people gathered outside the gates of Brooklyn College, in Flatbush. Some carried coffee cups. Some carried cameras with telephoto lenses. Others carried bags of millet. Wild parrots, they had been told, love millet, and the wild parrots of Brooklyn were what they hoped to see.

So what are tropical birds doing in Brooklyn? In the 1960s and ’70s, parrots became popular household pets in the United States. Quaker parrots (also called monk parrots) were imported from South America to meet this trend. It is believed that a number escaped from their crates on their way through JFK Airport, flew away, and landed in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where they found the temperate climate to their liking, as well as plenty of twigs for their several-hundred-pound nests, and the stadium lights of the college sports fields in which to build them. They began families, and they decided to stay. Today, a Brooklynite named Stephen C. Baldwin, who is fascinated by the birds’ presence in his borough, leads regular, free “wild Brooklyn parrot safaris.”

On this Saturday, the first sign of the parrots was their song, which alternated between prrree! and prrrah!: a hoarse, squeaky twitter, rather like a plastic doll being squeezed repeatedly. We looked up toward the sound and saw the parrots flitting in and out of masses of twigs mounded in the stadium lights. It was a brisk day, and the dense nests maintain the birds’ native temperature.

We passed by a pocket park whose fence had been adorned with metal parrot silhouettes. Then we cut through a suburban enclave to a tree that was home to an enormous parrot nest about five feet overhead; Steve swore us to secrecy about its location. We heard a racket of cackling as we approached, and, once we were beneath the tree, contented chuckling and a faint clattering of twigs as the parrots worked on their nest, deftly snapping branches with their beaks and rearranging them in the structure. Bursts of green feathers darted among the branches, and orange beaks and bright wings poked out of cavelike holes in the sides of the nest. The parrots, seen closer, are smaller than pigeons, with light green hoods and darker green wings.

The safari group twisted their telephoto lenses up into the tree, scattered their millet on the sidewalk, circled the tree like so many eager cats as cars whished by, a jackhammer thundered in the distance, and a wind chime on a neighboring house tinkled in the breeze.

TASTE: Contraband Raw Milk

2011-10-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

My first encounter with New York City’s raw-milk counterculture took place in a Bushwick church basement in 2003. Directed there by a series of hush-hush emails from an undercover milk group, I found dour, suspendered Amish farmers doling out unmarked containers from coolers on folding tables. My fellow pasteurization dissenters slipped in and out with bulging bags and refused to make eye contact.

Raw milk—that is, straight from the udder, unpasteurized, unhomogenized, no vitamin D added—is illegal to sell in New York State unless it’s purchased on the premises of a certified farm. Some say it is risky to drink because it can contain E. coli and other harmful bacteria. But its fans credit it with improving immunity and curing digestive and skin disorders. The first time I tried it—on a farm upstate—I was won over by the grassy, sweet, unctuous taste, the golden color, and the head of cream so thick I had to slice it with a knife to let the milk pour through.

My second encounter was a year later, at a potluck supper in an East Village tenement apartment. There was no doorbell so the host, an herbalist, threw down the key from her window in a baby sock. She served nettle tea to the group, which included a man who claimed raw organ meat had done wonders for his health. As we filled our plates, someone revealed that you could buy raw milk at a local holistic pet-food store. Admittedly, it was dyed green to make it unappealing for human consumption but legal to buy for your shih tzu. Everyone nodded as he insisted that it tasted every bit as good.

It was only a matter of time before the raw-milk crowd moved from basements and tenements to the Internet. I was thrilled to find a site where I could order my raw milk delivered fresh to my doorstep on Sundays, C.O.D. As a neat, smiling deliveryman handed me a plastic bag of very cold milk, he said, “Next time try the 6.8” (6.8 percent fat, that is), and I felt I was joining the ranks. The following Sunday his call came after midnight, and I waited in pajamas in my building vestibule, clutching a wad of cash, as the unmarked van pulled up to the curb and he handed me my stash, which was, unfortunately, warm. Concerned about bacteria, I called to complain, and a cheerful woman reassured me that raw milk tastes even better warm and is perfectly safe. “I learned it from the Russian people!” she said, adding, “They leave their milk out all day and, to tell you the truth, it looks like vomit, but they stir it up and pop it in the fridge and, well, it’s not to my taste, but—son of a gun! I’ve got to get this other call.”

I decided to try moderated Russian-style and let a glass of the 6.8 sit out for half an hour. Without the chill, the sweetness dominated, and a layer of cream solids marbleized the surface. The cream slipped into my mouth ahead of the rush of milk, and I could taste a bouquet of the grass and flowers the cows had eaten. I don’t know if it was the undercover, conspiratorial purchase or the contented Amish cows or some combination of the two, but this milk was the real deal.

SIGHT: THE HOLE

2011-09-07T13:09:00.001-07:00

The Hole, I had been told, is the Wild West of the Brooklyn-Queens border. It’s a no-man’s-land. There are cowboys on horseback, boarded-up houses, brand-new condos, pond-size puddles, no public sewers, buried mobsters, vacant lots.

As I found out, the Hole is all of these things (well, I’ll keep quiet about the corpses). It’s a five-block wedge of land, straddling East New York, Brooklyn, and Ozone Park, Queens, but claimed by none. It earned its moniker because it’s thirty feet below grade—in other words, the land is too sunken to be connected to the city sewer system. The neighborhood around the Hole isn’t bad: brick houses with lawns, a Rite-Aid, a diner. You might pass right by the Hole on a drive to JFK—unless you happen to pause at a YIELD sign and notice the miniature Conestoga wagon, horse trailers, and Western-wear shop just off the shoulder of South Conduit Avenue. The Federation of Black Cowboys stables its horses at the edge of the Hole, where they teach Western-style equestrian skills to inner-city children.

But if, rather than proceed to the airport, you hang a sharp right, and a sharp right again, you’ll find yourself in the Hole, and there will be no doubt that you are there. Stop signs, sidewalks, and stoplights abruptly disappear. Boarded-up houses with smashed windows abut brick condos with perky FOR SALE signs, lampposts, and lion statuary. Sewer- and drain-cleaning companies have found their niche market in local phone-pole signs. Deeper in, I spotted a cornfield in one resident’s backyard and a motorboat in the driveway (apparently, boats are handy for evacuation in the likely event of a flood). One blue home has a neat paint job and bright, flowering shrubs. A busted-in car wallows in a deep puddle that takes over most of a block, shaded by a magnificent weeping willow tree. Houses are gap-toothed, more window-and-door than house. Streets (named “Ruby,” “Emerald,” “Amber,” “Dumont”) are edged in trash bags and upturned appliances. Outside Hosanah Christian Daycare, plastic tricycles blister in the sun. Men hunker under car hoods. Construction workers trundle wheelbarrows of fresh cement. Like the houses, everyone has hooded eyes. In between the puddles and the fresh mailboxes lie vast tracts of cornflowered reeds tall enough to hide just about anything.

The Hole is urban abandonment and renewal thrown into stark relief: hope and despair in adjacent lots, crawling with graffiti and flowering weeds. A vacant lot houses a decrepit tour bus. On the front, in the spot for the destination city name, scroll the words GOD BLESS AMERICA and BLESSED—SAVED BY GRACE.

TOUCH: Water balloons

2011-08-01T12:04:00.000-07:00

At the height of an urban summer, playgrounds and public water fountains throughout the five boroughs become freckled with snippets of colored rubber, the fallout from a hot-weather city-kid game: water balloons.

Here’s the ritual. Stretch the open end of the balloon over the brass mouth of a drinking fountain, and hold it with a pinch it so it stays put. The lip of the balloon curls up against your thumb and forefinger with rippling tension. Make sure the pinching grasp is out of the way of the balloon so it doesn’t get trapped as it fills up. Press the metal button with your free hand and watch the limp balloon swell into a luminous orb, blooming from the brass fountain tip. Watch the water bubbles rising through the now-sheer rubber, the color fading from neon to pastel as it expands. Now pinch the rubber at the base of the balloon bulb, just above the fountain nozzle, and give it a few twists before releasing your other hand. Tie a stretchy knot.

Take a moment to cradle the filled water balloon in your cupped palms. Feel the cool, smooth weight, shifting as the water moves. It’s impossibly delicate, like an unhatched egg; it has an inner life of its own restless energy. Now raise it over your head… and smash it onto the ground! Or simply open your hands and let it drop. Or step on it! Or throw it to a friend—or at him. Kersploosh! Smack! An instant puddle spattered with two ends of broken balloon, now shrunken to colored glimmers. (Don’t forget to pick up the scraps.)

Another option is to arrive pre-armed, like stashing a snow fort with snowballs before a fight. Plastic shopping bags of prefilled water balloons sag from bike handlebars, or fill the upturned hem of a T-shirt like a basket.

Regardless, nothing says summer like the roughness of a gaggle of kids of all ages and background clambering around a public water fountain, the gentleness with which they fill and protect their ammunition, and the joy of a burst of water, sudden in the sun, and soon to disappear.

SIGHT: Seven Random Delights

2011-07-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

This month, I offer a smattering of small sights around the city that make me happy every time I see them.

1. 167 Concord Street, Brooklyn

White picket fence, white “clapboard,” white birch tree; red shutters, red car, and red no standing sign: perfection.

2. Clothesline poles at sunset, Carroll Gardens

Few people use these poles—or clotheslines—anymore, but still they climb into the sky, rusty pulleys and scraps of rope still clinging to them.

3. PUSH door handle

On art deco building on Fifth Avenue in the Forties, the letters nestle so neatly.

4. Old subway-line names

On the platform at the Dekalb Avenue station in Brooklyn is an illuminated sign (which still works) listing these old names: recite them out loud and they roll off your tongue like poetry: “Fourth Avenue Brighton Sea Beach West End.”

5. “Brown”stones on St. Felix Street, Fort Greene

Colors like a box of macaroons.

6. Arrow-theme wrought-iron fencing

Complete with fletching.

7. Construction workers’ breakfast orders

Scribbled on a two-by-four scrap: “Bagel Jelly Iced Cup French Vanilla Bagel Butter” for these hardworking men.

MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE: The Franklin Avenue Shuttle

2011-06-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

The Times Square–Grand Central Shuttle train may have two major New York City landmarks as its termini, but the lesser-known Franklin Avenue Shuttle, which cuts across Crown Heights from Franklin Avenue to the eastern edge of Prospect Park, carries local commuters and offers a brief but idyllic, train trip along its five-mile, mostly outdoor track.

I board the train on a drizzly Wednesday morning, just pass rush hour, at the Franklin Avenue station. In front of the turnstiles, a man plays slow jazz on an electric guitar. A breeze greets me at the top of the escalator, and I step off onto the outdoor platform. A wall of stained-glass windows leads from an elevator bank onto the platform and creates a dancing rainbow path as the tree branches filter light through the colored panes. Through an opening in the platform fence, I can see a row of townhouses whose rain-darkened brownstone sets their painted lintels into bright relief.

Soon I feel a quickening of the breeze and hear the hiss of wheels on wet tracks. I am pleased to see the shuttle has orange seats and a dark speckled floor, my favorite combination. As we wait, I watch through the open doors as a Verizon employee empties the quarters from a platform pay phone with a rich, heavy rattle.

The last passenger squeezes in and the train lurches into motion. Leaves of passing trees brush the windows, making wet streaks. We pass an industrial linen laundry, a girl in red on a bike moving down a rain-slicked street, a roof with a folding chair set on it, apartment buildings with windows propped open with bottles of shampoo, walls of graffiti. The wheels make the crun-a-crun sound that trains make only on outdoor tracks. We pass over one bridge and under others, through tunnels and around bends. At the final stop, Prospect Park, an MTA employee boards and mops the train, refreshing its antiseptic cinnamony smell. Every eight minutes, another ending and another beginning.

TASTE: Reben Luncheonette’s morir soñando

2011-05-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

From the door of Reben Luncheonette, you can watch the JMZ train catch the light as it rounds the bend in the elevated tracks and soars over the East River, hissing and clacking and clanging across the Williamsburg Bridge. Beneath, traffic jostles, fruit stands spill, nail salons reek through smudged doors. But it all seems like one harmonious urban symphony, because you’re holding a morir soñando, a drink whose name means “to die dreaming.”

The morir soñando is a Dominican version of the American orange Julius, and at Reben it consists of fresh-squeezed orange juice, milk, and sweetened condensed milk blended together into a frothy shake and poured over ice. The cheerful, aproned counter staff slap it down on the counter in a fluted ice-cream-soda glass, with a straw alongside. You can wedge yourself in between the mirror and the counter (the whole place is only about twelve feet wide) or, better, sip your drink just outside the door and take in the view.

It’s creamy, sweet, milky, with a faint fizz and acidic bite. Flakes of orange pulp drift up through the straw and offer discrete tangy bursts in the syrupy sweetness. The chilling clack of ice against the teeth only adds to the flavor, as the froth from the blender limns the cubes in a lacy foam. It must be consumed right away—and then, perhaps, immediately again, like a good novel. Last time I was there I had two or three in a row.

The Reben is not shy about advertising its house drink: the awning boasts Morir Sonañdo #1” beneath the luncheonette’s name. The name glows in neon in the window. Inside, a hand-painted sign above the counter offers: Morir Sonañdo: You taste it: If you don’t like it, don’t pay, and this sign abuts a painting of a man and a woman touching foreheads, gazing into each other’s eyes, and sipping a morir soñando from twin straws. Just beneath is a row of cardboard Advil and Tylenol dispensers—in case the dream doesn’t kick in right away, I suppose.

MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE: Laughter yoga

2011-04-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

First, let me make clear that I seldom laugh. Jokes, comedians, movies all fail even to make my lips twitch. So when I heard about laughter yoga, I thought I would put it to the test. That it was taught by a chiropractor in a basement office in Midtown only added to the appeal—and to my skepticism.

On a Monday evening, I arrived at Better Health Chiropractic, on the tails of two elderly women who were having trouble navigating the door buzzer. This confusion elicited the first laughter of the evening—the kind of nervous, conspiratorial chuckling that mitigates awkward urban encounters. As I waited for the class to begin, surrounded by brochures about back pain, I eavesdropped on my fellow laughter yogis. “So I’ll be laughing at the U.N. at noon tomorrow….” “I’m always happy to meet anyone who laughs.” “Oh, he’s a natural!” “Do you know Laughing Laura? She was on the World Laughter Tour.” There was talk of people named “Vishwa” and “Kitaria.” One man spontaneously stripped down to his LAUGHTER YOGA T-shirt and gave me an encouraging grin.

The chiropractor, a cheerful gray-haired man in a white lab coat, ushered about a dozen of us into a small exercise room. We stood in a circle and introduced ourselves. Most were white professionals in their mid-thirties. There were three rules: (1) make eye contact, (2) go with the flow, and (3) “fake it till you make it.”

After an introductory speech, the class began. We were set loose in the room to interact with our fellow yogis. The exercises involved building from a giggle to a full-blown laugh, producing a snort-laugh, pretending to laugh and then pretending to suppress it, walking like a penguin, and speaking gibberish. I tried to avoid looking at myself in the mirror. At the end of each exercise we chanted, “Ho ho ho, ha ha ha!” in unison and returned to the circle to receive instructions on the next exercise and information on the health benefits of laughter—which kind of killed any levity the exercises may have kindled.

I definitely felt self-conscious and was happy to be able to resort to the common vocabulary of fake-laughter gestures to ease my path around the room: raised eyebrows, sidelong knowing looks, throwing back the head in a “gale” of laughter, leaning forward conspiratorially, clapping each other on the shoulder, holding one’s stomach or slapping one’s knee, jabbing an elbow. At first it was hard to tell whether my classmates were “faking it” or “making it.” But then I noticed heads turning toward one woman, who was obviously overcome with real laughter: tears streamed down her cheeks, she had to lean against the wall to stay upright, and she couldn’t suppress her giggles even during the statistics. The sight of her was the only thing that brought a genuine smile to my lips.

I was relieved when the class was over. Laughter is indeed a full-body workout. My neck and stomach ached, my cheeks hurt, I felt a quiver in my chest, and my throat was raw. But I didn’t feel the adrenaline rush that comes with exercise or that follows a bout of real laughter. Instead, I felt the exhaustion of insincerity—and relief at being free to shrug on my coat and return to my usual, humorless self.

N.B. A few weeks later, I read a column in the New York Times: A FAKE SMILE CAN BE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH.

SIGHT & SOUND: Plane View Park

2011-03-01T05:11:00.001-08:00

It was one of those startlingly bright winter days when metal gleams and everything in the city seems hard and sharp: the perfect day for plane-viewing.

Plane View Park, in Astoria, overlooks the takeoff runway at LaGuardia Airport. It consists of a curved path of cracked asphalt, a semicircle of parched grass, and a few benches affording a view of the airport through a chain-link fence; next door is Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology, and close by is the airport control tower. The air is heady with the smell of jet fuel, and the BQE roars past between the park and the tarmac.

Looming over the highway, through the diamonds of the chain-link fence, I saw the gleaming hulks of American planes queuing up for takeoff, their tailfins lurking above the sound-barrier wall like a line of hungry sharks. One Delta 747 inched forward, then rounded the bend at the end of the runway, near a red and white striped wall. The heat waves from its exhaust pipes blurred the low-slung Queens skyline in the distance. It waited again, wings spread, and a few moments later came the roar as the wheels spun, burning rubber, and it was off—into the startling blue day, with a high-pitched whine.

The planes didn’t seem to be moving as fast as it feels when you are a passenger. In fact, from the vantage of Plane View Park, it seemed improbable that the plane would actually make it off the ground. As I stood in the frostbitten snow at the edge of the park, I thought of the passengers encased in these planes and that feeling of no-going-back that you get as your plane taxis up the runway. There they all were, just meters before me, buckled into their seats by their scratched plastic windows, screens glowing in the seatbacks before them, perhaps pretending to relax or read, but really thinking about the impending rise into the air, the lurch, the sucking back into the seat, the impossible speed, the captive feeling of fatalism—and then the sudden silence as the wheels leave the ground and there is just tilted blue sky: a violent departure for a more peaceful place.

As I walked back to my car, a flock of winter birds swooped over my head and scattered into the day.

N.B.: I later realized that a much better “plane view park” is just feet from the park proper, parked alongside the chain-link fence on Ditmars Boulevard, where the view of the runway is closer and less obstructed. Apparently, the livery cabs knew this already, as I took my place in the queue of napping drivers.

SIGHT: City Hall Park in the snow at dusk

2011-02-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

City Hall Park is always a magical place, but somehow a fresh snowfall brings its Old New York charm into relief. I made two trips to the park during the recent blizzard. Standing by the fountain and looking north toward the lit windows of City Hall, I felt like I’d stepped into another era. I could almost hear the clop of horse hooves on cobblestones and smell wood smoke in the air. The park’s combination of spindly bushes and bushy pine trees created a lattice of white. The snow coated each branch and needle and thorn, each park-bench rail and each bird-shaped finial. The gilt paint of the lampposts gleamed like candlelight against the black iron and the white snow. On my first trip, a group of teenagers was having a snowball fight, and their laughter rang through the park as their snowballs smattered against bright wool coats.

My second trip was later in the evening, when I hoped the gas lamps would be turned on. I could almost hear the hush of the flames whispering within the lanterns as the snow hissed against the glass, and could imagine their flickering golden glow on the white drifts. To my disappointment, however, most of the gas fittings have been replaced by fluorescent bulbs, which hummed and cast a lifeless blue light. The lamps on the fountain were turned off entirely. Still, I circled the park and came across a snowman, with a thorn necklace, bushy pine-sprig eyebrows, and even a carrot nose. Someone had impaled a Starbucks cup on his twig fingers, and crowned him with a cardboard java jacket. I replaced my romantic vision of an old-world park with its modern incarnation.

TOUCH: The crystal chair at Magic Jewelry

2011-01-04T04:51:00.001-08:00

I’ve been spending some time lately in a chair in the corner of a hole-in-the-wall shop on Centre Street, just south of Canal. Despite its hectic location and cramped quarters, the crystal chair at Magic Jewelry has given me enough positive energy to drift out the doors and up lower Broadway on a cloud of relaxation, dodging tourists and taxis with hardly a trace of stress.

The first time I went to Magic Jewelry, I had my aura read by a beatific Chinese woman dressed almost entirely in pale pink. After she’d deciphered the colored blobs of my energy fields from a Polaroid snapshot, she suggested I try out the “crystal chair,” an unassuming wooden chair under a canopy in the corner of the shop, flanked by a large, pointed crystals, one black and one white, both resting in plastic boxes at waist height. I sat and, as instructed, placed my hands on top of the crystals. They were so cold I flinched at first, but also smooth and dense, and I could feel the rougher edges tapering toward the pointed tops.

Bird music was playing, and I closed my eyes to the room: the fake Christmas tree hung with red good-luck envelopes, the traffic through the neon-lit window, and a takeout clamshell heating up on the radiator. Almost instantly I felt calmed, and somehow (magically?) all distracting thoughts dissolved as soon as they entered my mind. I found I was sitting completely still, and my tense grip on the crystals relaxed as the stones began to warm a little beneath my palms, without losing their charge. There seemed to be a surge of energy traveling from the depths of the stones into my hands and arms, and permeating my core.

I waited for my instincts to tell me when to open my eyes and tune in to the chatter in the shop. Someone handed me a Styrofoam cup of black tea, which I sipped as I eavesdropped, still enveloped in a haze. A tourist had stepped in, and the rose-colored woman was explaining to him how the crystal chair realigns your energy: good energy enters through the white crystal and bad energy is sucked out through the black one. A Chinese man with a hennaed ponytail was pulling his cell phone from his briefcase, trailed by a long chain of crystals and stones, and placed the whole thing on a cloth to be “cleansed,” another of the shop’s specialties, along with the aura readings and special teas, incense, massage oils, and of course crystals and crystal jewelry, all purported to change your energy.

“Who’s that girl who always comes in here, that acupuncturist girl?” the cell-phone man was saying. “Every time I see her I feel like I’m getting a headache. I mean, I have nothing against her, but I think she’s cursing me. Maybe she’s practicing witchcraft on me or something. I mean, I have nothing against her, but last time after I saw her I felt so sick I couldn’t eat.” He rubbed his temples. “Just thinking about her, I’m starting to get a headache.” The women behind the counter laughed and teased him about all his good energy, and the tourist took a sip of his tea and looked around the shop in wonder. “Magic Jewelry, huh? I’ve never been in this place. You guys are so nice!”

MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE: Newtown Creek Sewage Treatment Plant Nature Walk

2010-12-07T10:46:00.000-08:00

The day before Thanksgiving, I decided to whet my appetite by going on the “nature walk” at the Newtown Creek Sewage Treatment Plant. Newtown Creek separates Brooklyn from Queens, and is one of the most polluted industrial sites in America, containing raw sewage, toxins, and oil that has seeped into the waterway from a massive oil spill beneath Greenpoint.

This fact apparently inspired artist George Trakas, who designed the trail, but navigating the quarter-mile of cement and steel made me sad more than anything else. Trakas put so much tenderness into his design: handicapped accessibility, plaques beneath each plant detailing its historical uses, plenty of spots for silent contemplation, graceful and sturdy construction echoing the themes of boats and water, even a fragrance garden and an etched path for raindrops to simulate the creek’s flow. But these details were so overwhelmed by the stench, the sludge, and the inescapable sound track of industrial churnings that I couldn’t help but wonder if Mr. Trakas’s elegant vision wasn’t really a giant wink at the prospect of such a polluted waterway ever becoming a nature sanctuary.

The trail begins at the corner of Paige Avenue and Provost Street in Greenpoint, otherwise an industrial no-man’s-land. Two boulders mark the entrance, and painted fish on the sidewalk lead you past a Time Warner Cable facility to a steel gate, which “has a wave shape to mimic the movement of water.” (A wink here, surely, as Newtown Creek is notoriously stagnant.) Once through the gate, there’s a choice: to a “fragrance garden,” or to the trail. It being November, there were no fragrant plants to mask the sewage reek. On the bridge, made to mimic a ship’s hull, portholes offered views of pipes and helmeted workers, and a distant church steeple. A loudspeaker bleated, “Time out! Time out!”

A walkway with jaillike cement and steel-bar walls abutted an asphalt factory, where I detected my first glimpse of nature in some scruff grass. It ended in the so-called “blooming lily,” a rotunda with a tree, benches, and steps leading right into “the placid waters of Newtown Creek.” The bottom few steps were rimmed with slime. I sat on a bench and watched a crane lift automobile carcasses and drop them onto a barge. Nearby I noticed an emergency call box, a “trash barrel” (representing Greenpoint’s cooper heritage), and a water fountain (what would spurt out if you pressed the button?). A brisk breeze ruffled the water. Seagulls swarmed in the scrap-metal dust.

The most impressive part of the walk is the gated “Whale Creek Path,” at the end, which features weeping willow trees, kayak landings, and a picnic bench affording a view of the gleaming onion domes of the plant itself. Next to a warning sign about a raw-sewage discharge point, a bayberry bush was planted (“Aromatic wax on berries rendered into sweet-smelling candles,” read the plaque). In the distance, the Pulaski Bridge hummed and arced against the Manhattan skyline, and a billboard for the Shriners Hospital asked, If you could improve a life, would you? If you could change a creek, would you? Yes, and yes! the native plans answer, but there’s no one but me around to hear them.

TASTE: A slice, New York City–style

2010-11-02T10:30:00.000-07:00

The most important rule of eating pizza in New York City is not to plan to do it. You’re feeling a little peckish, so you pop into the nearest pizza shop, grab a slice and maybe a soda, and about eight minutes later you continue on with your day. A slice of pizza in New York is not an event.

My real pizza-eating story takes place on a recent chilly evening, around 9 pm. I was on my way to a cocktail party in Manhattan. I’d eaten dinner hours before but felt I needed some sustenance for a night on the town. So I ducked into Not Ray’s Pizza in Fort Greene (the parodic name is purely coincidental). Fluorescent lights. An intimidating, high counter of thick plastic sheltering stagnant pizzas on beat-up tin trays, and calzones and a bowl of garlic knots as afterthoughts. Glass shakers of faded red-pepper flakes, oregano, and Parmesan. Tippy stools, Formica-topped tables. I approach the counter and say, “Just a slice” (not “Can I please have one slice of plain pizza to go? Thanks!”). The counter guy jabs the pizza wheel across the pie, flips the cutter onto its side, and uses the blade to heft my slice onto a crenellated paper plate with a wax-paper sheet, then into the oven--all in a single fluid motion. Four minutes later he flops the plate onto the countertop. I pay, wordlessly, and sit by the window. The crust is so hot I can’t touch it, so I use the plate to fold the slice in half, taco-style. (N.b.: Another common New York pizza-eating style is to take the slice outside at this point, the plate protecting your hands from the heat, and nudge the slice forward, tip first, eating it one-handed as you walk.)

The spine cracks, and lurid orange grease oozes into the crease. I shake on cheese and flakes. I dab at the grease with a wad of napkins. I tip the slice into my mouth and the cheese slides toward me, leaving a naked, damp, bumpy crust in its wake. The taste: a crisp crack of folded crust, an easing of salty, stretchy cheese into the mouth mingling with the bland crunch of the crust, followed by a swig of effervescent, tangy Diet Coke, swallowed in one searing hot, icy cold gulp. I leave with a scalded tongue: the true aftertaste of a slice of New York City pizza.

Side note: A few weeks later, for thoroughness, I made a planned trip to “the One and Only Famous Ray’s of Greenwich Village,” purported to be the definitive New York City Ray’s. (The business pages list at least fifty-four Ray’s Pizzas in the city.) It was authentic to the core, and improved on Not Ray’s only by having fountain sodas, high, round tables at the front with no chairs (there was a seating area in the back that seemed only for tourists), and local customers who didn’t speak their orders but held up one or two fingers to indicate the number of slices.

TOUCH: The floors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

2010-10-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

When I heard that one could navigate one’s way around the Metropolitan Museum of Art blindfolded, using only the texture of the floor beneath one’s feet as a map, I was intrigued. How many times had I visited the Met and fixed only one sense—my vision—on only one thing—the walls? What would it be like to ignore the artwork and focus solely on the feeling of my footsteps as I made my way through this vast institution?

So I set out to do this one recent weekday morning, when the museum was not too crowded and I could absorb the full sensory experience of walking through the galleries: the different colors of the floors, the sound my feet made passing from room to room, the textures of the surfaces. I should note that I was wearing a pair of especially thin-soled sneakers that always make me feel rapid and stealthy. I therefore didn’t mind when the security guards eyed me as I photographed their floors.

Hellenistic floor

I began in Hellenistic Art, where the roughness of the black and white mosaic tiles offered a pleasant friction. The second floor of art from Cyprus was wood parquet, and my feet encountered more stickiness as I moved across it, perhaps as a result of floor polish. In African Art, a supple, almost creamy rose-colored marble greeted me. The photography wing—an exhibit of beatnik photos at the time of my visit—was squishy, almost bouncy dark gray carpet, soothing and noise-dampening, and so plush that visitors left a faint trail of footsteps in its nap. In the Twentieth-Century Art Wing, however, the carpet turned more utilitarian, almost itchy in its synthetic nubbiness. I exited quickly down a rare internal staircase. My sneakers made a satisfying “pat-pat” sound on the marble. The risers were the shallow type that give you the illusion of floating up and down them.

Cyprus floor

In French Art Deco, the floors were buffed concrete with stylish cracks. My sneakers made an unavoidable and conspicuous “slap-slap.” It was a relief to enter the Modern Design Collection, where slick black marble and bricked tiles with waves in them allowed me to ice-skate through the wing. The parquet in French Rococo Furniture was a dark, stately basketweave, offsetting the faux candlelight, fireplaces, and the stately beds. The Medieval galleries presented the most unforgiving floor: matte stone with brittle grouting, offering not even the faintest reflection of light.

African floor

After my journey, my senses were heightened enough to appreciate the genius of the Main Hall, the atrium one enters upon arriving at the museum. Its gold-flecked floors were either granite or an intricate mosaic of red and orange stones, and they absorbed the sound of footsteps so thoroughly that all one could hear was the grand, echoing murmur of voices and a faint underlying shuffle of anticipation.

SOUND: The Hua Mei Bird Garden

2010-09-07T04:54:00.000-07:00

Every morning, rain or shine, and before the alternate-side parking regulations kick in, the Hua Mei birds and their owners converge in a pine grove just south of Delancey Street. The Hua Mei Bird Garden is at the northern tip of one of the segments of Sara Delano Roosevelt Park, between Forsythe and Chrystie streets, and surrounded by a chain-link fence and marked with a sign in Chinese and English: “Respect the Birds. Respect the Plants.” Approaching from the north, it’s easy to miss the garden: the blaring truck horns, idling buses, and lurching taxis all but drown out the trilling of these exotic, diminutive birds. But if you step off the sidewalk into the cobblestone shadows, you’ll see ornate bamboo cages swinging from poles and tree branches and strung along a nylon clothesline. Behind the bars, bright-eyed birds chirp and preen and fly about, their wings fluttering against the spindly bars of their cages. Each has a unique song. Their owners—almost exclusively Chinese men—perch on nearby benches, cradling paper coffee cups and comparing notes on their birds. Every so often, a few men enter the garden to turn back the cotton cover on a cage, or chuckle at their birds the way one might at a baby.

On a recent Sunday morning, a yellow bird with an orange head and three porcelain water bowls let out a rich warble. A gray bird with a pink beak nibbled on a piece of bok choy and offered a tentative tweet in return. A bird with ringed eyes flitted around its cage. A yellow bird with gray wings called out, “Cheer, twittle tweet!” And a gray and brown bird with a russet head and tangerine breast murmured, “Chick a chick chick chick.” A man in a green Izod shirt wiggled his finger between the bars of its cage. The nearby birds erupted into song, and he moved the cage deeper into the trees. A Hua Mei with gray feathers as fluffy as a newborn chick’s tucked its head beneath its wings. A regal beige bird in an enormous cage with a cover held aside with binder clips uttered a shrill, full-throated call and did a series of back-flips, landing each time on an infinitesimal bamboo swing. The yellow bird whistled in response, its chest rippling, its beak fluttering and quivering “Putta pee, putta pee!” Then it dipped toward its water dish. Up above, huge, silent pigeons soared.

A community group was erecting tents and a plywood stage for a street fair in the adjacent square. A man climbed onto the stage and barked into the microphone, “Testing! Testing!” The microphone squawked. A father passing by with a toddler in a stroller pointed up. “See the birdies?” And a teenage kid crossing the park stopped at the sight of the birdcages, and, without removing his headphones, sat on a bench to listen.

TASTE: Egg Cream with Ice Water Chaser

2010-08-03T04:43:00.000-07:00

The secret behind the best-known New York City beverage—the egg cream—is so well known it’s almost not a secret at all: namely, that the drink contains neither eggs nor cream but rather seltzer, flavored syrup (Fox’s U-bet brand, no other), and milk. Yet there’s something in the persistence of its name that, I’ve always felt, lends the drink a richness that its low calorie content belies. Just saying the words egg cream, especially to a gristly, decidedly uncreamy Manhattan diner waitress, immediately cants my taste buds toward a creamy experience.

At the Lexington Candy Shop, on the Upper East Side, the egg cream lives on in true form. It’s served in a weighty glass with ridges up the sides, with a straw whose paper wrapper quickly wilts from the wet-cloth marks still swirling across the tabletop from the previous customers. The foamy head is thick enough to lift with the tip of a straw. When you press the straw into the foam, it leaves a puncture that immediately fills with egg-cream fizz. The sweetness of the first sip dissipates quickly on the tounge; it’s sharp, tingly. The coffee syrup swirls through the lightness of the seltzer, and the combination produces the illusion of “egg creaminess.” Slurp noisily until all that is left is a lacy filigree on the inside of the plastic glass.

But at the Lexington Candy Shop, there’s more: the water chaser: cold New York City tap water arrives in a wax-paper cone resting in a stainless-steel cup-holder, not unlike a hard-boiled-egg cup. The whole contraption has a pleasing weight, and the paper cone is cool and downy and giving, like a tiny bag of flour. Moreover, you can chew on the edge of the cone so bits of wax flake off in your mouth and mingle with the cool rush of the water, which “chases” down the coffee-milky-creamy-sparkly egg cream like nothing else. When the cups are empty, there’s the slap of a ripped-off bill on the table. Swirls of ballpoint pen—no smiley faces or heart doodles here—and like the straw wrapper the bill dissolves in the wet rings left by your drink cups. Settle up, move on into the glare of the sidewalk: what could be more New York City than that?

SMELL: Church Avenue, Brooklyn, in summer

2010-07-06T09:02:00.000-07:00

According to nonofficial sources, the area around the 11218 zip code, in the Kensington/Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn, is one of the most ethnically diverse in the country. I’ve taken a couple of summertime strolls down Church Avenue, one of the neighborhood’s main thoroughfares, and each time I’ve been struck by the changing landscape of aromas.

Walking east from the corner of Westminster Road, the smell of hot oil seeps from beneath the door of No. 1 Restaurant, followed closely by spice and charred meat from a barbecue joint. Then comes the warm-scalp scent of hair relaxer from Paris Hair Design, balanced by cold gusts of linoleum, freezer burn, and wet mop from C-Town, with its tins of export soda crackers and Café Bustelo. The Rugby Road intersection offers a refreshing waft of mown grass, but this is quickly overwhelmed by gusts of diesel bus exhaust from the B35 outside the DNA Paternity Testing Center at Burlingham Road (sign outside: Does he really have his father’s eyes?).

The entrance of Bobby’s Department Store yawns open with the plastic smell of cheap rubber sandals spilling from cardboard crates, mingling with more grease from neighboring Chin Chin Wu restaurant. Kids race their tongues against melting ice pops from a jangling Good Humor truck, with its sugary cold breath. Next comes rancid fish from S&A Fish Market with its flashing fish logo, then one of my favorite urban smells: the warm floral gusts of Tide and Downy from the Super Li Laundromat. Near the corner of East 17th Street I detect the tang of ketchup from a mysterious source. On the next corner, bags of star anise, cinnamon, mangos, pineapples, and enormous foam-padded bras spill from the open panel door of a curbside van.

Men’s cologne and synthesized piano music drift through the iron door grate of the Brooklyn Gospel Assembly Church, with its rows of folding chairs beneath fluorescent lights. The laundry a few doors down offers no smells through its bulletproof windows, nor does the shuttered Brooklyn Islamic Center, near the roti shop with its banners advertising “ Recession Meals” in the form of the “Micro mini” and “Super mini” plates of Caribbean food. I turn around at the corner of St. Paul’s Place, with its confluence of fruit stands smelling like the cool inside of a just-cut squash. At J&S discount, across the street from Bobby’s, the air smells like human body odor, relieved a few doors down by syrupy cologne from La Chic Ladies Fashion.

As I am nearing the end of my journey, a woman in a high-Sunday suit passes me, carrying a box of roses. I wish I could say the fragrance lingered in her wake, but it quickly gave itself to the larger bouquet of these iconic few blocks of Brooklyn.

TASTE: Manhattan Special Espresso Coffee Soda

2010-06-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

Shelved between the Frappuccinos and the Red Bull energy drinks, Manhattan Special Espresso Coffee Soda is an often-overlooked New York City deli staple. I’ve never seen anyone buy it, and the label is so mysterious it borders on sinister. A head-banded vixen dims her eyes and drapes her long-gloved arm around the neck of a pomaded, mustachioed man, who appears not only unmoved but annoyed. Perhaps it is because an espresso percolator and brimming cup await him, just out of reach, in the foreground of the fuzzy cameo-cloud in which this couple floats, a silhouette of the New York City skyline looming behind them. The words “Since 1895” arc above the cloud, though the couple looks more flapper than Victorian.

I picked up a bottle at my local deli, intent on unbottling the secret to more than a century of local shelf life. The clerk turned the bottle in his hand, as if he hadn’t noticed he stocked it. “Have you tried this?” he asked, peering at the label. “Looks like it’s made in Brooklyn. And it’s made with real sugar!” He rang me up for a dollar fifty, seemingly impressed and reassured.

At home, I pried off the metal top. Caramel bubbles rose to the lip with a soft fizz, forming a crest that slowly sank. The first sip had all the bitter graininess of espresso, with the unmistakable tongue tingling of real sugar and a prickling of carbonation. The glass bottle was a nice weight and fit comfortably between two fingertips--not unlike an espresso cup. But the drink quickly devolved into a too-sweet soda, lacking the creamy, lip thickening, pulse-quickening quality of real espresso.

Disappointed with my first experience, I decided to try Manhattan Special the way I drink my morning coffee: in a glass with ice and a liberal dousing of half and half. What a revelation! The cream mellowed out the cloying sweetness and acidity of the coffee, but the carbonation still adds an unexpected effervescent texture to each sip. The head poured out rich and foamy, like a nice stout, rather than dissolving into a vaguely chemical lace residue as it had when drunk plain.

On a recent trip to the Gravesend, Brooklyn, Italian diner Joe’s of Avenue U (which deserves an entry in its own right), I noticed that the beverage menu comprised soda, seltzer, mineral water, coffee, espresso, cappuccino, and Manhattan Special. Apparently the parts don’t add up to the whole, which puts this local beverage in a class of its own.

N.B.: Check out the company website for a slide-show history and “guestbook” rich with local reminiscences. I called the factory—on Manhattan Avenue, in Brooklyn, hence the soda’s name--for more information about the couple on the bottle, but they could not help me.

SIGHT: Staten Island’s Boat Graveyard

2010-05-04T05:43:00.000-07:00

On a hazy day in early spring, I made my way down a shabby stretch of Arthur Kill Road on the western shore of Staten Island, past Big Nose Kate’s Saloon, Guy’s Tire Buys, and Crazy Goat Feeds pet-food store. From the gravel shoulder where I parked, a flight of stone steps led up to the Blazing Star Burial Ground, a hillside knoll where lilacs droop over gravestones dating back to the 1700s. Not half a mile in the distance lurked the bald green pate of Fresh Kills landfill. And just ahead, through a sweep of tall grass, was what I had come to visit: the rusted hulks of ancient ships that have, like Blazing Star’s occupants and the trash of the five boroughs, also come to Rossville for their final rest: at Staten Island’s boat graveyard, otherwise known as Donjon Marine Company salvage yard.

After donning tall rubber boots, I pushed my way through the grasses, teetering across landfill sludge—Santa hats, flyswatters, shampoo bottles—on ancient ship beams studded with nine-inch rusty nails. The air smelled like sulfur and stagnant mud. In the distance, spring birds twittered over the rush of the West Shore Expressway. In the rippling water, Canadian geese drifted between empty shells of ships sunk in the mud. Their hulls canted to port and starboard; portholes pointed toward the sky. Splintered wooden wheelhouses toppled onto decks, where crusty cleats held limp bowlines strewn with algae. In some places the hulls were paper thin, almost lacy, and the metal curled at the edges; one could imagine it rustling and tinkling in the wind. Gears, pulleys, and capstans clung to the decks of the ferryboats, tugboats, barges, and fishing boats like desperate sailors on a stormy sea, only the waters here were so stagnant that I spotted a few mussel colonies growing in the shallows.

For a different view, I drove a few yards down the road to the official entrance of the salvage yard and managed to snap a few pictures. As I was admiring close up the sunset patterns the rust made on the hulls, a pickup truck ground up beside me and two guys hopped out. “Hey Mike, see that? A brass valve, right on the front!” They stood beside me for a moment, assessing the wreckage, before we were both chased off by a firm if somewhat lackadaisical guard. Apparently that’s part of the reason the ships are here: so they can continue to serve the public, if not by ferrying goods and people, by offering a brass fitting or an old tiller wheel.

Just before I left, I saw a rubber raft with an outboard motor puttering among the ships, and then a shiny red tugboat streamed past, its fresh white wake splashing up against the rusted shells of its ancestors.

TOUCH: The New York Earth Room

2010-04-06T05:01:00.000-07:00

“It’s just dirt,” the man in the overcoat warned me as we passed in the hallway outside the New York Earth Room: he was leaving, I was arriving. And it’s true: at first glance, the New York Earth Room is just a room full of dirt. What could be so great about that, in a city that already has more than its fair share?

The long-term installation, by artist Walter De Maria care of the Dia Art Foundation, has resided in a SoHo loft on Wooster Street since 1977. It’s open free to the public: you just press a buzzer, climb a flight of stairs, walk across some creaky gallery floorboards down a narrow hall, and the space opens up: an expanse of raw, fragrant dirt spread out like a fertile field among the white columns, walls, and huge windows of an otherwise typical downtown loft.

From the outside, the only indication that something unusual resides inside 141 Wooster Street is some mist on the second-floor windowpanes. But inside is a rare urban respite of air that seems to breathe—and a wonderfully vibrant silence. The 250 cubic yards of earth, which reaches about knee high (22 inches), is contained by a transparent piece of Plexiglas between the walls. You can kneel by the edge and touch the earth. It’s chocolaty, sparkling with flecks of mica and stray stones. Faint rake-marks trail across the surface, as if the earth had recently been tilled. Bare ceiling bulbs provide spotlights, but in the afternoon natural light streams through windows on either side.

The earth feels cool and firm between the fingertips, crumbling into moist, ripe clumps like floury cookie dough, or how I imagine moistened, tamped espresso grounds must feel when they’re knocked out of a filter. If you simply rest your palm on the surface, you sense a resilient vitality stirring beneath the solidity. It’s loamy, velvety. If you spend some time in the New York Earth Room, as the gentleman in the overcoat evidently did not, you realize the difference between “dirt” and “earth,” and how little contact we New Yorkers have with the latter.

SOUND: Sidewalk cobbler, Sunset Park

2010-03-02T15:24:00.000-08:00

One recent winter afternoon, I found myself standing in my slippers on the sidewalk outside Happy House Seafood Restaurant in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. As shoppers hustled by, some glanced curiously at my slippered feet, and then at the Chinese man crouched before me, with my shoes in his hands.

As it turned out, I hadn’t needed to bring my slippers, after all: as a sidewalk cobbler, he provided a pair of courtesy rubber sandals, as well as a plastic stool to sit on, emblazoned with the words “Moon River Spice” and a cartoon woodland scene. His cobbler’s setup was simple and portable: a wooden cart, about two feet by four feet, containing a tiny hand-cranked sewing machine, a magnet with pins stuck to it, a hammer, an iron shoe tree, a few baby-food jars of shoe tacks and spare shoe parts, and a bench to sit on made of two-by-fours held together with old shoelaces.

When I first spoke to him, he had tapped his ears and furrowed his brow, apparently to indicate that he was hard of hearing, but we managed to communicate nevertheless. I handed him my boots and gestured to the worn-down heels; he slipped the boots onto his shoe tree and, amid the thronging horns of delivery trucks and the chatter of passersby, pried off the existing heel, plucked a piece of black rubber from his bench, traced the outline of my boot’s heel on the rubber with a pencil stub, sliced it out with a pocketknife, and tap-tap-tapped it into place. Then came the most satisfying part, as he turned my boot in his hand while holding a file to the edge of the sole, and a shaving of black rubber curled away from the heel beneath his thumb. Then he sanded down the edges with an equally satisfying rubbery rasping sound, leaving a small pile of black shavings on the sidewalk at his feet.

When I asked if he could polish the boots, he rummaged around in his wooden cart and emerged with a metal tube of Chinese shoe polish, nearly flattened, with only a nubbin of brown beneath the crusty cap. Still, he rubbed it into the toes of the boots with a hard old chamois cloth, making a pff-pff-pff sound, and presented the boots to me, one on each fist.

The re-heeling and polish cost five dollars. Admittedly, a month later, the heels had worn down again, and I had to turn the boots over to a more modern cobbler with access to Vibram rubber and a more abundant supply of brown shoe polish. But I’d say the experience was worth every penny, and every time I heard my heels click beneath me on the sidewalk, I thought of his little stand and the sound of his hammer, and smiled.

TOUCH: Buying tickets at Grand Central Terminal

2010-02-02T04:43:00.000-08:00

There’s no doubt that Grand Central Terminal offers a host of sensory experiences. There are slippery, salty oysters on ice and crunchy, buttery cinnamon babka, the smell of tar and heat on the tracks, the echo of heels clicking on marble and muffled voices beneath a vaulted green ceiling of stars.

But despite these, probably my favorite thing about visiting Grand Central is the process of buying a train ticket. These days, there are two options: the ticket counter, or the MetroNorth ticket vending machines, relatives of the MetroCard machines in subway stations. Both offer tactile experiences worth noting here.

Each time you press a button on the vending machine screens--to enter your destination, number of tickets, etc.--the machine emits a puck sound that is perhaps even more satisfying than the pop of Bubble Wrap. The buttons are just the right size to fit a fingertip, and after pressing one button the next screen appears instantaneously, ushering you through the ticket-buying process with the efficiency of a Manhattan sidewalk during rush hour. The MetroCard machines, while just as attractive and easy to use, do not make this sound. While I do like the way MetroCards shoot confidently out of a slot at the end of a transaction, there’s something wonderful about how the MetroNorth tickets flutter down into a plastic bin beneath the machine, still warm from being printed.

If you choose to buy your tickets the old-fashioned way, you can wait on line at one of the ticket windows along one side of Grand Central’s main hall. In return for your patience you have the pleasure of sliding your hand along the smooth, cool marble counter into the pool of light on the other side of the grille. There’s no bulletproof glass here: just elegant brass filigree and numbered triangular lamps hanging from brass tusks above each window, and a rack to rest your purse on beneath the counter. As you complete your transaction and let your fingertips linger over the veins in the marble, it’s possible to imagine the thousands of fingertips that have worn away this surface over the years, sliding bills (or credit cards) through and receiving a paper ticket (still paper!) in exchange.

It’s the simplest of transactions—a few buttons pushed, a few slips of paper exchanged--but in this setting the wonder comes alive in the stories behind each gesture, and behind each gesture the limitless destinations.

TASTE: Bombay Chat

2010-01-05T05:03:00.000-08:00

The neon sign says it all: COFFEE BAGEL MOMO. It’s the first thing that greets visitors entering Bombay Chat, a sort of Himalayan bodega/deli in Jackson Heights, Queens. The store’s name, like the sign, appears to be a wink at its role as a meeting ground for the Nepalese, Tibetan, Indian, and American communities it serves, with “chat” a play on chat, for phone and Internet services, and chaat, or Indian street food. A glassed-in booth at the front proffers phone cards, Neem toothpaste, lip balm, Motrin, batteries, and a bowl of betel leaves and brass urns of spices for paan, the breath-freshening chew. As at any other corner store, a sign taped to the window reads PLEASE PAY AT COUNTER FIRST, but here features a clip-art picture of hands pressed in the namaste blessing gesture.

Inside, a flight of stairs leads downstairs to the Internet room. Upstairs, inside a small room festooned with streamers, one can snack on samosas and momos (Tibetan dumplings), as well as other Himalayan snacks from a steam table and small counter.

Though I saw no signs of either bagels or coffee, the American-Himalayan fusion was everywhere in evidence. A group of Tibetans in wool hats hunkered over tea in Styrofoam cups. A monk in red robes and sneakers rose from his table and bundled into a ski parka. A girl walked in, slipped a McDonald’s apple pie out of a paper bag, and munched on it while she waited for her plate of momos.

I ordered a samosa and vegetable momos, which were boiled to order and arrived fresh from the pot: warm, stretchy dough with poppingly crisp carrots, peas, and scallions bursting through the puckered skin, doused in a squirt of hot sauce. Though the samosa had been plucked from the steam table and microwaved, as it is in many of the Punjabi taxi stands I frequent, it tasted just the way I’ve come to like it: limp and saggy in the middle with large, crisp, flat edges, the inside a warm, soft mush of potato, cauliflower, and turmeric flecked with cumin seeds. A chai tea finished off the meal, tickling the tip of my tongue with a sweet ting of sugar and spices and a warm wash of milk.

As I ate I looked up the portrait of the Dalai Lama hanging over the tables. He had his hands in prayer but was looking over one shoulder with a distracted and slightly bemused expression, as if he had been interrupted mid-prayer by a humorous comment. This seemed a fitting choice for Bombay Chat, which with its Duracell and its dumplings is a prototype of the cultural distraction that enriches and exemplifies our city.

SIGHT: Dennet Place, the Street of Tiny Doors

2009-12-01T05:17:00.000-08:00

When you move to a new neighborhood—as I did about six months ago—you suddenly find yourself more open to wonder and surprise. Carroll Gardens, my new home, has offered up its share of delights: the taste of tiny balls of fresh mozzarella dipped in salt water from Caputo’s deli, the old Italian men in sports sandals and tube socks puffing cigars in lawn chairs on the sidewalk, the startling sunsets over the BQE, the sound of the evening bells from St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic church.

While circling the neighborhood one evening looking for parking, I discovered a one-block-long side street called Dennet Place running between Nelson and Luquer streets and Smith and Court streets. Each stoop of the tidy two-story row houses had a tiny door built into its base at street level, beneath the stairs. The doors were no more than four feet tall—the average adult would almost certainly have to duck to enter. But in all other respects, they appeared to be functional doors to the garden-level apartments. Painted a variety of colors, the miniature doors were complete with mail slots, peepholes, doorbells and knockers, numerals, and deadbolt locks. Some even had octagonal windows beside them festooned with pumpkins and Thanksgiving decorations, and when I peered inside I saw umbrella stands, coat hooks, hall lamps, and dustpans and brooms.

When I got home I did a little cursory research on Dennet Place and its miniature doors. My search turned up nothing but fellow admirers, no insights at all into why the apartment doors on this particular block were built on such a small scale. Whenever I’ve passed the street since and glanced down the block, its residents appear to be of average size.

MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE: Bryant Park’s Public Bathrooms

2009-11-03T05:00:00.000-08:00

When I read that the public restrooms in Bryant Park were voted “Best in the Nation” in 2002 by CitySearch, I was intrigued. How nice could they really be, just blocks from the tourist traffic and former sleaze of Times Square?

In fact, the restrooms, housed in a grand stone building just off Forty-second Street, right behind the library, offer a multi-sensory experience fit for all but the most discerning of public-bathroom-goers. The queue was miraculously short for a seventy-degree summer day at the height of tourist season. A marble urn of fresh flowers, backed by a wood-framed full-length mirror and floral wall mosaics, greeted visitors in the foyer separating the men’s and women’s rooms. The signs depict the usual stick-figure man and woman, but bearing leaves at the end of outstretched arms to point the way.

Inside the women’s room is a marble changing-table and a marble sink, graced with yet more floral arrangements in bud vases. The stalls are dark polished wood. Natural light filters through an oval window. A discreet air-freshener box high on the wall emitted a clean smell, though the green-and-white tile floor was spotless, and a decidedly non-grimy white terry-cloth towel was folded by the sink to wipe up water spots.

Upon entering the stall, a floral-printed sign instructed me to push a red button for a new Hygolet toilet-seat cover. I pushed, and a scrim of plastic snaked around the perimeter of the seat, pushing the used portion into a receptacle at the other end. The toilet paper was unexceptional, but soft enough.

I was delighted to discover that the soap dispensers offered a plump pouf of white mousse—my favorite kind of dispenser soap. And to top it off, the air-dryers (no soggy paper towels here) are the gleaming chrome Xlerator brand, issuing a hand-free blast of hot air that dries the hands in seconds.

Exiting the restrooms, I noticed two janitorial workers chatting by a patch of pacasandra. Even their uniforms were a delight: leaf-green pants and a contrasting polo shirt, tucked in, with bright blue rubber gloves.

MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE: Canoeing the Gowanus Canal

2009-10-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

One evening not long ago, I decided to take advantage of the free canoe rides offered by the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club and treat myself to a more intimate look at the infamous Brooklyn canal than I was accustomed to from bridges and subway platforms. The club itself turned out to be a trailer filled with canoes, paddles, and life jackets with “Gowanus Yacht Club” scrawled across the back in marker. After strapping one on, and installed in my own canoe, I was blatantly marked a tourist of the canal, but no matter: it’s hard to be a mere nine inches from the Gowanus and not become part of it.

Within moments of paddling away from the dock, spooky currents in the seemingly stagnant water spun my canoe in circles. I consider myself a competent paddler, but as I tried to regain control of my boat, fetid water splashed onto my lap and pooled in my sneakers. The air smelled of gasoline, tar, damp cement, moss, and burnt rubber.

Finally I got past the currents and steered down one of the canal’s several branches. There were few signs of life besides the hiss of the subway clambering over the Smith–Ninth Street trestle and the thrum of cars passing over the metal drawbridges: pa-plank, pa-plank, pa-plank. The occasional bedraggled seagull swooped overhead; sirens moaned; cranes from scrap-metal factories transferred fistfuls of rattling metal onto barges tied to the canal’s banks. The wind rustled through rough leaves.

Gasoline formed rainbow pools on the water’s surface, reflecting the overcast sky and clouds with unexpected beauty, though drifting bottle caps, dime bags, and candy wrappers inevitably shattered them. I also spotted unmistakable lumps of fossilizing human waste, and—ominously, puzzlingly—floating rocks. Old, wet wood and frayed rope seemed barely to corral the trees that struggled toward the sky from the muddy banks, pushing through tangles of metal and piles of old tires.

As I turned to head back to the club, a power boat manned by a middle-aged man in a blue T-shirt putted toward me and sputtered to a stop to let me pass. “Where did you put in?” the man called out. I liked his use of the term “Put in.” Apparently he hadn’t seen my yuppie life jacket; I had been mistaken for a fellow mariner. But I decided to tell him about the Gowanus Dredgers and its free sunset canoe rides. He regarded me dubiously, hand on his tiller. Just ahead, we could see two more life-jacketed canoers batting at the currents with their paddles. “Well, enjoy the evening,” he said, sweeping his arm toward the sky and firing up his outboard. The murky canal burbled in his wake, then settled back to its implacable stillness.

SOUND & TASTE: Shaved-Ice Carts

2009-09-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

Though Marino’s Italian Ice carts are perhaps the most ubiquitous New York summertime sidewalk sight, I can never help feeling that some essence of refreshment is lost when the ice is scooped from a tub. To experience a true icy sensation, you have to find an authentic Puerto Rican piragua cart, where the ice is shaved fresh from a brick and then doused with syrup. I’ve spent the past two months of summer hoping to come across one in my travels around the city, and spotted my first cart just a few days ago, in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.

The cart was parked on the corner of Church Avenue and East Seventeenth Street, distinguished from its two neighboring food vendors by a green-and-white-striped umbrella and rows of colorful glass bottles ringing the cart’s edges: green, orange, red, yellow. The vendor, who spoke little English, wore a Yankee cap over his white hair, and smiled from beneath a mustache as white and fluffy as the shaved ice itself. I asked a waiting customer what her favorite flavor was, and she pointed toward a bottle of creamy syrup: vanilla.

The vendor picked up a metal scoop, removed a damp blue towel from the ice block, and began scraping at the surface with brisk strokes. The scoop made a rasp, shuffle, shuffle sound as the ice softened beneath its edge, not unlike someone shoveling their walkway on a snowy winter day, and immediately I felt a few degrees cooler. Once enough ice shavings had collected in the scoop’s pocket, he tapped them into a soft plastic cup and tamped down on the mound at the top with a paper cone, creating a pyramid. (I later learned that the word piragua comes from agua and piramide.) He shook a few squirts of vanilla syrup onto the point of the cone, and it melted a path through the ice flakes, tainting them yellow. Then he dribbled the top with sweetened condensed milk, which solidified in a few shiny squiggles, and impaled the whole concoction with a bright pink straw.

As soon as he pressed the cup into my hand, I felt the cold seep through the thin plastic. The ice at the bottom of the cup began to melt beneath my grip. The custardy vanilla pooled at the bottom rushed up the straw, whose diameter was thin enough to admit only the purest rush of cold flavor and no bland, chewy flakes of ice. Once I’d drained the dregs, I impaled the straw in a fresh spot, chipping at the surface and then plunging it through the icy shards with a crisp rustle. Like the summer day itself, this treat, its crunch and slow flavor trickle, became something new in each moment beneath the beating sidewalk sun.

SIGHT: Staten Island’s Secret Rock Sculptures

2009-08-04T05:30:00.000-07:00

Before I made the trek all the way to the southeast shore of Staten Island, I had verified the rumors I'd heard of Doug Schwartz’s rock-sculpture garden on the beach of Mount Loretto Unique Area (as the nature preserve is formally called). But once there, on a blistering hot July afternoon, I tried to imagine what his creation would look like to someone who had no idea it was there: A modern-day Stonehenge? The meeting grounds of a demonic coven? The work of
a marooned sailor? According to a fairly recent PBS documentary short, Schwartz has been building a pyramid a day for no other reason than that he wants to--as a temporary gesture to art and nature and the emphemeral.

The beach overlooks Raritan Bay and, in the distance, the New Jersey shore. It’s not the first place I would choose for a casual stroll. As I followed a park ranger’s instructions and headed to the right out of the pier parking lot, I saw no sign of Schwartz’s sculptures, only a stretch of litter-strewn sand and a gangly lighthouse on a steel trestle. But after tiptoeing across a tidal stream burbling with yellow foam, I rounded a bend and there it was: a forest of stone cairns, of the sort hikers use to mark a path or mountain peak, set along a rock-edged path beneath a leafy bluff, overlooking the ocean.

Perhaps it was because I was the only visitor, but there was something enchanted about this place. The careful balance of the rocks beneath the rust-colored cliff, the smell of fish and sea salt, the lap of the tide and caw of seagulls, a string of tattered and sun-bleached prayer flags. Shells of extinguished tea lights beneath a few of the cairns brought to mind what the garden would look like at night, the sun-baked rocks cooled, the flames and shadows muting the colors: rust, ochre, slate; marbled, freckled, jagged, round. A few cairns were buttressed with crumpled beer cans or sticks or clamshells, others tangled with fishing line or feathers, but most were freestanding. One mandala of small rocks and bright blue mussel shells set flat into the beach looked like it had been rearranged by the tide. Many long benches made of washed up boards weighted with stones awaited guests.

On my return walk, I found the tide had come in, and the stream was now uncrossable. I had to duck through the underbrush to reach a gravel spit. It hadn’t occurred to me, when planning my visit, that the path might be as ephemeral as the creations themselves, subject to winds, vandalism, tides—and interpretation.

SMELL: Bushwick’s Tortilla Triangle

2009-07-07T05:40:00.001-07:00

When I first heard about the Tortilla Triangle, a confluence of tortilla factories in Bushwick, Brooklyn, I imagined it would greet me with a cloud of masa-scented air, not unlike swimming into a warm spot in a lake. A recent article in Edible Brooklyn magazine described the area this way: “Stepping out of the Jefferson stop on the L train is an exercise in olfactory entrancement…. The warm minerality of cooked corn stretches the block, and you can almost float on the curls of aroma into the factory, dreaming of the brown-specked tortillas that await you.”

In my experience, however, the scent of the Tortilla Triangle proved much less buoyant, and only discernible between 4 and 10 p.m., when the tortilla factory closest to the subway, Tortilleria Mexicana los Hermanos, at 271 Starr Street, rolls out its tortillas. The four other tortilla factories in the “triangle”—Tortilleria Buena Vista, at 219 Johnson Avenue; Tortilleria Plaza Piaxtla, at 915 Flushing Avenue; Tortilleria Chinantla, at 975 Grand Street; and Tortilleria Tenochtitlan 2000, at 952 Flushing Avenue—are not really close enough to each other to create a neighborhood smell, and even if they were, the truck fumes of Flushing Avenue would be strong enough to overpower it.

Nevertheless, I was enticed, and one weekday night at around 8 p.m., I surfaced from the aroma of the summer subway—hot tar, cinnamon-spicy disinfectant—onto the sidewalk of Starr Street, where I sniffed the air in anticipation. There was indeed a faint smell of toasted corn, dry and sweet, emanating from Tortilleria Mexicana los Hermanos, just a few paces down the block. Mexican music jangled from an open garage, where two men loitered next to a forklift. Adjacent was the makeshift café: a serving counter, a stack of laminated menus, a portrait of the Virgin Mary draped in a garland of fake flowers, and a few tables topped with miniature cacti where hipsters hunkered down over tortillas heaped with meat, beans, queso fresco, crema, shredded lettuce, and salsa.

Glass walls afforded a view of the production line at the back of the garage: a conveyor belt with a big orange bucket of dough at the center, manned by about five people and overseen by two enormous gilt-framed portraits of phantasmagoric seaside cabins. Two workers collected the hot tortillas as they spun out from between the metal rollers, another counted out a stack and plumped it against her forearm before handing it to a fourth worker, who slipped them into a plastic sack, pressed out the air, and twisted it closed. She handed the packet to another man, who stacked it in a cardboard box at the end of the line, which would presumably end up on the forklift I’d spotted near the entrance.

Wanting to experience the Bushwick tortilla in its purest form, I asked for two plain tortillas to go. The women behind the counter looked bewildered. “You mean two packages?” they said, dangling a still-steamy packet. No, just two plain tortillas, I repeated. The women furrowed their brows and mumbled among each other. I am sure I heard murmurs of “loco.” Finally they flipped two tortillas onto the grill and toasted them, then wrapped them in a sheet of tinfoil, waving away my offers of money with “Nada, nada.”

Outside the factory, standing by a fire hydrant, I unwrapped the foil and took a bite. The soft, chewy edges gave way to a sweet, soft middle pocked by air bubbles. The flavor was definitely bland, and would have been improved by some salt, not to mention cheese and salsa, but it was of a piece with the Tortilla Triangle itself, whose distinct but unobtrusive scent continued to waft around me in the evening air.

SIGHT: Manhattanhenge

2009-06-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

“Papa, what’s staring?” asked the little girl perched on her father’s shoulders, looking out over the crowd of heads and cameras beneath her. Apparently she had learned the single rule of Manhattanhenge, the semiannual alignment of the setting sun with the east–west grid of Manhattan’s streets: don’t stare at the sun.

I had heard that the ideal spot for viewing Manhattanhenge was Tudor City Place, a tiny thoroughfare between First and Second avenues whose virtually traffic-free overpass directly above Forty-second Street offers an unobstructed view west across the island. On this clear, breezy Sunday evening, May 31, about fifty people had gathered on the bridge, with stepstools and cameras and tripods, to capture the spectacle. At 8:17 p.m., the full sun was due to slip into position, centered right above Forty-second Street, suspended for one perfect minute before sliding below the horizon.

“Staring is when you look at one thing for a really long time. Here, let’s look the other way for a minute,” the girl’s father said, turning them around to face the East River, where a lavender sky, wisped with clouds and dotted by a lone helicopter, offered a peaceful counterpart to the blazing spectacle to the west. At 8:03 p.m., the sun was still slightly to the south, or left edge, of the grid, but as the minutes passed, it slid into full, blinding view, limning the edges of buildings and casting the Hyatt hotel flag, a fire escape, and even the Chrysler Building’s fierce plumage into shadow.

Since I had not thought to bring a stepstool, I struggled to find hole in the crowd through which to see the sun, and finally located a relatively consistent passageway between one man’s ear and another’s jaw (the setting sun actually illuminated his beard stubble quite beautifully). The spectators appeared to be mostly native New Yorkers, families, couples, and two lackadaisical policemen monitoring the scene and snapping shots with their iPhones. At the peak moment, an elderly Eastern European woman let me stand on her footstool, steadying my back with her palm. At last above the crowd, I had a clear view across Manhattan. The sun’s rays radiated perfectly toward me, like an open hand, creating a golden corridor above the hush of taxicabs and buses trundling over the gentle humps of Forty-Second Street. A few old-timers in the crowd began comparing this year’s event to those in the past. (“Remember back in 2004, when it was a little cloudy? Oh, that was a good one, that was a real beauty.”)

A minute later, the sun’s orb disappeared, leaving only a peachy glow on the horizon. The crowd dispersed. As I descended into the sunset street, I felt a sense of peace and camaraderie unusual to this part of town. One woman crossing the street paused in the crosswalk, halting several lanes of traffic to snap a photo, before dashing into McFadden’s Saloon. Another couple was taken by surprise by the unusual glow to the east. “Oh! There’s the sun!” one said, pointing. I turned to look at them. “Oh! Not you,” they said, laughing. “The sun! The sun!”

Manhattanhenge will happen again on Saturday, July 11 (the half sun on the horizon), and Sunday, July 12 (the full sun), at 8:25 p.m.
For more information, see http://tinyurl.com/qetuwy.

MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE: Thursday-night bow-hunting league at Queens Archery

2009-05-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

Find this inconspicuous garage on a suburban street in Flushing, surrounded by row houses with chain-link fences and gardens, and rent a bow, arrows, and a quiver. Take your place among the bow-hunters in camouflage, shooting at a projection of game: deer, bear, moose, rabbits. Don’t be intimidated; raise your bow and aim, focus on your breath, gauge the tension of your fingers on the arrow, and let your worries dissolve for an hour or so as you lose yourself in the rhythms and focus of repetitive precision.

Bow-hunting may not be every New Yorker’s cup of tea. It’s illegal in the five boroughs of New York City (the recent arrow shooting of a Bronx woman notwithstanding: http://tinyurl.com/cwjfyk). But, as they say, if you can find it anywhere, you can find it here.

During the bow-hunting season, which runs from October through December in the New York metropolitan area, most of the league members hunt in Long Island or Westchester, where rifle hunting is not allowed. The league is also an opportunity to swap hunting tips, prime game-spotting sights—and, of course, stories. At the moment all the members are men (including some fathers and sons), though women are encouraged to join.

Martha Lizzio, the owner of Queens Archery, and her husband, Al, got the idea for their virtual bow-hunting league fifteen years ago. They acquired their first images of wildlife by surreptitiously photographing the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. Like a seasoned hunting team, Martha kept watch for security guards while Al snapped the shots. Back in Queens, the Lizzios converted the photos into slides, which they projected on the white back wall of the range, carefully lining up the animals’ vital organs with the soft target spots built into the wall. Now they’ve gone digital, and Al downloads and adapts the pictures on his computer. The animals don’t move or make noises when shot (as they do at certain other shooting ranges, like the small range in the L.L. Bean store in Freeport, Maine), but the images of turkeys beneath fall foliage or wolves prowling frozen tundra are realistic enough to bring out the latent hunter in these men. The Lizzios have also set up a wooden scaffolding in the range to simulate a tree stand, so the hunters can practice shooting from different heights. Such is these men’s skill that after the image fades, one can see almost all the arrows clustered in the same spots on the wall.

At Queens Archery, the smell of Entenmann’s coffee cake and fresh-brewed coffee might not compare to autumn leaves and doe-in-rut buck lure; the sound of Lite FM might not summon that first crack of a twig that signals the approach of prey; the dry snap of pulling an arrow out of a wall might not compare to the pride and gratitude of extracting an arrow from the still-warm body of an animal. But the dozen or so men and boys who don their jeans and T-shirts (SPORTSMEN DON’T MESS WITH THE BEST; WHITETAIL HERO; HUNTING FOCUS), dust off their arrow cases, and converge each Thursday night are a testament to the determination of New Yorkers to conjure any world the city is lacking, and that “if you build it, they will come.”

TASTE: Coffee-cart breakfast

2009-04-07T05:02:00.000-07:00

Why, I had always wondered, would New Yorkers choose to buy their morning coffee and bagel from a sidewalk cart? The streets of every borough are practically paved in the inexpensive, fresh-out-of-the-kettle bagels for which the city is known, and good-quality coffee is equally easy to find. Sure, there’s something appealing about the convenience of the carts, but often they draw a line as long as that in any Starbucks, and meanwhile force their customers to wait outdoors in heat, cold, and traffic fumes. Moreover, the bagels always looked to me like startled captives, smushed against the plastic windows, the cream-cheese-filled holes gaping out like rows of eyes. Nevertheless I couldn’t deny their indomitable New York spirit, the drivers invariably friendly yet efficient, and moreover with the gumption to rise before dawn, hitch the cart to the back of their family minivan in the outer boroughs, and haul it up onto the sidewalk to face the people and the morning.

So a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to try a coffee-cart breakfast. I’d been tempted to take the subway from Brooklyn into Midtown, where, I figured, I’d find the most authentic carts. But then I realized one of the attractions of the breakfast cart is that you pass it in the course of your commute, so I selected one on Court Street on my way back from the gym. It had the requisite steamed windows and much-amended price list, the rows of bagels and hulking, sugar-encrusted doughnuts, a basket of hardboiled eggs, and boxes of Lipton tea and Swiss Miss. And to my delight, the woman in front of me in line was not only wearing sneakers and pantyhose but gym socks over her pantyhose, and when the coffee man said, “Coffee?” she replied in a Brooklyn accent, “Yeah, wid milk no sugah.”

When it was my turn to approach the window, I experienced a moment of stage fright. I wanted to simulate the curt decisiveness of the regulars. But instead I smiled and asked timorously, “Um, I’d like a bagel with cream cheese, please--” “Whakind.” “Um, plain, I guess, and a coffee--” “Milksugar?” “Well, do you have cream?” Shake of head. “Then just a little bit of milk, please.” “Twodolla.” A humid paper bag slid across the window toward me.

I carried it home and laid out my purchase on my desk, since that seemed to be another part of the ritual. The bagel was rubbery, and chilly to the touch. The slab of cream cheese looked as if had been hacked directly from the brick. When I bit in, the bagel immediately sprung back into shape. Furthermore, the underside was marked with the perforations that indicate breads baked in industrial ovens. It had none of the yeasty, hot-water-and-salt flavor of a signature New York bagel. The coffee was similarly disappointing, in its WaWa cup with a flip-top lid that tickled my nose with each sip. Yet with the sun streaming in the window, buses honking below, and my wad of coffee-stained paper napkins by my side, it occurred to me that even without a java jacket and a creamy “smear” of cream cheese, this breakfast was as authentically New York as the one I’d grown accustomed to, and I felt as ready as ever to begin my day.

SMELL: The scent of vanilla by the Gowanus Canal

2009-03-03T05:58:00.000-08:00

It’s true that most people don’t walk down Third Avenue in Brooklyn, near the fetid mouth of the Gowanus Canal, and under the dripping shadow of the Gowanus Expressway overpass. Third Avenue is the thoroughfare of gypsy cabs, rattling delivery trucks, and low-riders with tinted windows. The neighborhood is Sunset Heights, but not much sun shines down here.

But if you do happen to be walking in the vicinity of 882 Third Avenue, between Thirty-second and Thirty-third streets (perhaps in search of cheap gas, a cheap car alarm, or a cheap XXX video), probably the last thing you expect to be reminded of is your grandmother’s kitchen. Yet a mysterious vanilla scent lingers in the air, mingling with the car exhaust and faint sewage stench wafting off the water. The source is the Virginia Dare Extract Company, whose plant is at this address, and which has been manufacturing vanilla extract, among other flavorings, for more than 80 years.

On the day I visited, right before Valentine’s Day, the breeze rattled the plastic bags trapped in the barbed-wire fence and collected the vanilla fragrance into gusts whenever I rounded a corner. Trucks idled at the loading docks in back of the plant, and lone men lingered at the water’s edge. Yet as I was approaching my car, I noticed a man climbing into a minivan parked nearby, struggling to keep hold of a bouquet of helium heart balloons, which whipped and snapped against the strange, fragrant wind.

TOUCH: The seat by the radiator at the Brooklyn Inn

2009-02-03T06:33:00.000-08:00

One winter evening not long ago, I was having a beer alone at the Brooklyn Inn before meeting a friend for dinner. As I arrived, the bartender was setting out tea lights along on the bar, and through the iron grille-work on the windows, I could see bare tree branches turning to shadows against a purple sky. I was delighted to find my favorite seat empty: at the end of the short end of the L-shaped bar, right next to the old mirrors and the radiator. I hung my coat beneath the bar, got out my book, ordered a Sixpoint Brownstone ale, and settled in.

After a few moments, a man walked in and took a seat a few stools down from me. The bartender appeared to have his drink—a Manhattan—waiting. After a few sips, he asked me what I was reading, and I told him. Then I returned to my book. The combination of quiet, a cool beer, and the warmth wafting up from the hissing radiator was what I’d come for, after all.

As I was heading out the door—my coat nicely warmed—the regular swiveled toward me. “Have a nice evening,” he said, extending his hand. I extended mine in return, and he grasped it with both of his. “Ah, your hands are so warm!” he said. Then he paused. “Let me do that again!” So I offered him my warm hand.

A month or so later, I was once again enjoying a beer and a book at the seat by the radiator on a winter evening. The same man walked in and glanced my way before the bartender presented him with his Manhattan. I wasn’t sure if he recognized me, but I gave him a small smile all the same. When I got up to leave, I thought he might wish me a nice evening or reach out to shake my hand, and found I was slightly disappointed when he didn’t. Instead, he picked up his drink and walked over to claim my stool. Apparently, even the regulars know it’s the best seat in the house. No doubt it was still warm.

SIGHT: The “Toast” of Smith Street

2009-01-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

During my first year in New York City, I would take the F train each morning from Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn to Rockefeller Center, where I worked. If I happened to be standing near an east-facing window as the train descended from the elevated tracks at Smith–Ninth Street into the tunnel at Carroll Street, I would look up from the pages of The Fountainhead, where Howard Roark was constructing skyscrapers with egomaniacal glee, and look down at what I’ve come to think of as “the toast.”

Sand of varying shades has been bulldozed into five corrals at the edge of the Gowanus Canal. Apparently, each shove of a bulldozer creates slabs that resemble slices of bread leaning up against one another, or a loaf collapsing after being released from its wrapper. The dark brown sand might be pumpernickel; the beige, whole wheat; the grayish brown, rye.

Only later did I discover that my “toast” belonged to Quadrozzi Concrete Corporation—and that it would no doubt become part of the Roarkian skyscrapers of a city that, back then, I was only beginning to discover.

I tried to visit the Quadrozzi concrete yard in person on two occasions, and both times I was turned away “for security reasons.” Plus, I discovered that the toast doesn’t look quite as impressive from ground level. The magic, it seems, is in the view from above, when the hearty crusts of these unintentional loaves are set in relief against the stagnant Brooklyn canal and the towers of Manhattan sparkling beyond.

TOUCH: Mood Designer Fabrics

2008-12-02T06:33:00.000-08:00

Silk charmeuse. Iridescent chiffon. China silk habotai. Poplin, corduroy, and velvet. Shangtung. Houndstooth and herringbone. Tuile. Lace. These are just some of the treasures that await on the third floor of 225 West 37th Street.

Wedged between a loading dock and a scaffolding, number 225 looks just like any other garment-district office building--were it not for the hordes of twentysomething design assistants in skinny jeans and boots crowding into the elevator and spilling out onto the third floor. They roam the narrow aisles stacked floor to ceiling with rolls of fabric, clutching scraps of paper torn from magazines, trying to match color and texture to the feathers of a bird, or the feeling of a night sky. Mood salespeople scurry between the bolts with enormous shears, lopping off samples left and right.

But for the casual visitor, Mood Designer Fabrics offers a feast for the fingers. There’s nubbly tweet and itchy netting, tufted shags and glinting sequins. Rich brocades and heavy quilting loll in one corner, while filmy chiffon and lace flutter from another. Rows of trim offer dangling pompoms, crystalline baubles, and tickling fringes. There’s a section of feathers, and one of eyelet leather and slippery vinyl, and a more sedate corner of wool suiting. Perhaps lurking between the taffeta and the seersucker is the next fabric to adorn models on Paris runways and plastic hangers in Chinatown knockoff booths.

SOUND: The bells of St. Martin’s Church, Harlem

2008-11-04T08:19:00.000-08:00

Parishioners in Sunday hats trickled from the doors of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church onto the sidewalk of 122nd Street and Malcolm X Boulevard. As throbbing SUVs and wheezing tour buses idled at the stoplight, the air above rang with the tintinnabulation of one of only two carillons in New York City. When the tolling ceased, I glanced up at the ninety-foot bell tower and glimpsed a shadow darting beneath the bells: Michael Smith, the self-described “unofficial, unpaid Quasimodo of St. Martin’s.”

The carillon is the largest instrument known to mankind. Wires connect a “keyboard” of pedals and knobs to clappers on the bells. St. Martin's forty-two bronze bells, which were cast in 1949, comprise three and a half octaves. The smallest is the size of a flowerpot, and a man could curl up inside the largest.

In contrast to his ancient and enormous instrument, Michael Smith is an unassuming middle-aged man in khakis. I had the privilege of meeting Michael on two previous occasions, when he had invited me up to the carillon room—a pigeon-spattered box accessed by a ladder high in the church tower—to watch him play.

As I listened to the tapping of Michael’s worn penny loafers on the pedals and the rattle and creak of the wood as his fists slammed down on the batons, I felt like I was hearing the secret heartbeat of these bells whose ringing can be heard within a six-block radius of the church. Michael once described carillon playing as a “pointillistic art”: one strike of a pedal or baton creates a note that cannot be dampened, and the sounds layer and merge in an “illusion of polyphony.”

Fittingly, St. Martin’s carillon owes its existence to a civic polyphony of sorts. The instrument was built in 1939 to celebrate the resurrection of the church from a fire that almost destroyed it, and was financed entirely by donations from the working-class families of the parish. Today’s congregation, however, lacks the funds needed maintain it. The bells need to be rotated. The tower roof needs to be repaired, and the bricks are crumbling. Because their music carries so far, the bells effectively have a constituency of their own. The challenge is to convince potential donors that they are not financing a church but rather preserving a more ecumenical piece of Harlem’s history.

Michael once told me, quoting from Ovid, that one thing he loves about playing the bells is being “a voice and nothing more.” After his plinks, clangs, and clongs have faded into the Harlem afternoon, no one knows that the “sweaty-looking white guy walking back to the subway” (as Michael put it) was the reason that they had paused, if only for a moment, to look up--and wonder, and listen.

MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE: The Terrace of Crispness

2008-10-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

I set out for the Terrace of Crispness on an August afternoon. Traffic slunk along the BQE. A haze hung over the Manhattan skyline. My skin stuck to the car seat. When I finally pulled into the parking lot of the Staten Island Botanical Garden, at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, I had my doubts that anything crisp could sustain itself against the limpness of the day.

To judge by the map on the SIBG website, the Chinese Scholar's Garden offers a feast for the senses, comprising, among other attractions, a "Tea House of Hearing Pines" and a "Billowing Pine Court," a "Cool Jade Pavilion or Pavilion of Chilly Green," a "Gurgling Rock Bridge," and a "Meandering Cloud Wall." But on this afternoon, the pines were silent and still; the jade pavilion was lukewarm at best; the gurgling rock bridge offered only a trickle; and there were no clouds to meander across walls.

I held out hope for the Terrace of Crispness, traipsing through the garden's tunnels, walkways, and courtyards. Then I stepped onto an octagonal balcony that jutted over a pond. A breeze wafted across a small marble table at the center. I noticed a sign mounted on one of the walls: "Moon Viewing Pavilion Terrace of Crispness" (and, in smaller letters, "Bell Atlantic"). I immediately began parsing the space for signs of the crispness I'd traveled so far to experience. Perhaps the sharp angles of the half-octagonal pavilion? The tangy aroma of the Austrian pine tree shading one side? The chipper susurrations of the waterfall? My search felt a little forced. Perhaps the crispness was best observed during moon viewings, as the sign implied. I imagined standing at the edge of the terrace on a clear night, the moonlight limning the distant willow branches and filtering through the latticework, sending milky shadows swimming across the peaked roof.

Unfortunately, the garden isn't open at night, so the complete experience will have to remain in the imagination. But isn't that a fitting place, in a way, for a tiny corner of this immense city in which one might still discover a moment of crispness at a bend in a garden path on an August afternoon?

TOUCH: Platza treatment at the Russian and Turkish Baths

2008-09-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

“You are very strong,” Victor the platza man told me moments after I’d emerged from the Radiant Heat Room at the Russian and Turkish Baths, sodden oak leaves plastered to my skin. He draped a towel over my shoulders and pushed me onto a bench, pressing a fingertip to my neck. “Good heart rate,” he pronounced. “But sit still for a few minutes.” My skin felt like it had a pulse of its own: it was throbbing and flushed from the beating I’d received at his hands.

The Russian and Turkish Baths, on East Tenth Street in Alphabet City, are a relic of another era. Founded in 1892, when the city’s poor relied on public baths for hygiene, they’ve made the transition to the twenty-first century with few concessions to modernity. My platza treatment took place in the Russian Sauna, a rock-walled furnace outfitted with cement benches and plastic buckets filled with ice-cold water from continuously running faucets. There was no semblance of privacy: in fact, I had about twelve spectators, ranging from twentysomethings in string bikinis to Hasids with their peyos tucked behind their ears.

Wearing only a bikini myself, I followed Victor into the two-hundred-degree sauna, where he had me lay facedown on a plywood board covered in a thin towel. Since I was on the highest bench, the heat was at its most intense. Within seconds it seared my nostrils. But I was soon distracted by a slippery whack across my upper back, and my nose was driven into the board. Victor tossed a cool wet towel over my head. With each thrash I inhaled sharply, taking in a mouthful of sopping terry cloth. I smelt mildew and the astringent soap mixed with an uncanny scent of autumn leaves. The broom, or venik—made of oak-leaf branches tied with string and soaked in olive oil soap—was softer than I’d expected, sort of like a bunch of rags, but Victor spared nothing in his pummeling. Oak leaves collected in my palms. My pores tingled; time and consciousness were quickly obliterated.

Improbably, with each hit of the venik, I became at once mores anxious and more relaxed: my body recoiled from the intensity of the treatment and surrendered to it. Within minutes, I was limp. Whenever I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore and was about to cry out to be released, Victor threw a bucked of frigid water over me, shocking my body into submission until the heat peaked again. Between beatings he flipped me from front to back and side to side, rubbed my skin with a grainy soap of some sort, pounded my muscles with his fists, and manipulated my limbs into gymnastic contortions, so at one point my legs were bent backwards in an arc almost over my head.

And as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Victor slapped me on the shoulder and ushered me out the door into the frigid swimming pool waiting just outside. As I dunked my head under and resurfaced, stray leaves—and all the worries of the past week—streamed from my skin, and I stepped trembling onto solid ground, more grateful than I could have imagined.

SOUND: Mike Pallotta’s cutlery-grinding truck

2008-08-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

One of the most wonderful things about living in New York is stumbling upon a living anachronism: a barbershop pole, a drugstore fountain, a shoe-polish stand. That’s how I felt a few weekends ago when, strolling down a Brooklyn street, I noticed an antiquated green Chevy delivery truck idling alongside the Outbacks and Land Rovers that lined the block. As I approached, a muffled bell clanged from within. On the truck’s backside I made out the words The Original…. Mike’s Since 1941 While ‘U’ Wait On the Spot bracketed by a painting of scissors and a knife.

A metallic rasping drifted from the truck’s open windows, mingling with the hiss of a sprinkler and cries of children in the park across the street. When I peered inside, I met Mike Pallotta, a potbellied middle-aged man in an embroidered skullcap and a pinstriped shirt. Two sleepy pit bulls, Boss and Princess, snuffled around his feet. Mike’s eyeglasses slid down his nose as he bent over a honing wheel mounted inside the custom-fitted oak-lined truck, inherited from his father (I later learned), who taught him the grinding trade. Mike raised his eyes, grinned down at me, and told me he was working on a pair of $400 haircutting scissors handed to him moments ago by one of the residents of this street. “I gotta take my time with these ones,” he said in his custardy Brooklyn accent, holding the scissors up to the light and testing their sharpness by snipping at a scrap of paper towel.

Mike told me he’s been operating his roving cutlery grinding business since 1941. Though he earns his living working for the District Attorney during the week, on weekends he wakes up and thinks, Where do I want to go today? Then he fires up the old jalopy, parks it on a street corner somewhere in Kings County, and waits to see who shows up. After spending his childhood in Bay Ridge, he’s especially fond of Brooklyn’s coastal neighborhoods, where he can smell the ocean as he works.

I told him I’d be right back and hurried home—a block away—to grab a French picnic knife for him to sharpen. I wrapped it in a dishtowel and ran back to the truck, clutching a few dollar bills and feeling like a nineteenth-century housewife. As the grinding wheel began to spin, its slow, lopsided thumping turned into a high-pitched whirring, then a whisk-whisk sound as Mike’s thick, dust-rimmed fingers held the blade to the stone. Sparks flew. After giving the knife a final polish, we exchanged money, blade, and a handshake through the truck’s window.

A few hours later, driving through Brooklyn, Mike’s truck pulled up alongside my car at a stoplight. I turned my head, then the light turned green and the truck lurched off, with a clang of its bell, to offer another part of the borough its susurrations of the past.

TASTE: Glaser's Bake Shop's Black-and-White Cookie

2008-07-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

I was skeptical of the black-and-white cookie. There was something obscene about their nearly half-foot diameter, the chocolate and vanilla icing: it was like having your cookie at eating it too. They always seemed to lurk near the beef jerky, stifled by Saran wrap, or beside dry-looking pastries in Italian bakery windows. But once I learned they were an iconic New York City treat, I had to find out what all the fuss was about.

So I headed to Glaser's Bake Shop, a century-old Upper East Side institution, and ostensibly the progenitor of the black-and-white cookie. Owner Herb Glaser couldn't confirm this; indeed, he knew very little about the origins of his shop's yin-yang confection. He did reminisce about having two for dessert when he got home from school ("I was a fat kid") and eating the white half first "to save the best for last." He told me Glaser's makes the cookies fresh each day, using a cupcake batter thickened by flour, which creates the cookies' signature cakelike texture. Both icings have a fondant base, spread on with a spatula: you do the white first, let it set, then the black, he told me. "After a while you get pretty good at making a straight line." Mr. Glaser said the bakery has made few changes to the original recipe, save eliminating shortening in a concession to the recent New York City ban on trans fats.

The Glaser's counterwoman plucked a cookie from the glass case and dropped it into a box wound with bakery twine. Though I carried it around all day, when I got home the two halves remained intact. I took my first bite, right down the center line. There was a slight resistance as my teeth met the surface. The sweetness of the icing melted into the floury plumpness of the yellow lemon-vanilla cookie, sticking to the back of my teeth. I imagined in another version, the icing might set into a crust that would crackle with each bite. The domelike shape made the cookie spongier in the center and firmer toward the edges. I found I could achieve a black-and-white melding only every three bites: I had to nibble down around the center bite to be able to reach it again. But when I did, I knew I was getting a taste of New York: stark contrasts coming together in a brash, frustrating, but ultimately satisfying way, and a mysterious past to make each bite just a little richer.

SIGHT: Horseshoe crabs spawning, Brooklyn

2008-06-03T08:21:00.000-07:00

A few Sundays ago I headed out to Dead Horse Bay, in Marine Park, Brooklyn, to see the annual horseshoe crab spawning. The crabs’ mating season peaks each May and June at evening high tides on the full and new moons. As the bus pulled up to a ramshackle bus stop across from Floyd Bennett Field, the only sign that anything unusual was happening in this desolate part of the city was a cluster of pilgrims in anoraks and rubber boots huddled beneath the Q35 sign, where we had been told to meet for the hike to the beach, organized by the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment. As it turned out, we’d all disembarked at the wrong stop, but we finally found our way to the trailhead with the help of a kind man in a car--a gesture of rare New York City altruism. The air smelled like honeysuckle as we wound through tall grass to the beach. Strangers chatted and shared almonds from their tote bags.

Though it had rained all afternoon, by the time we arrived at the beach the sun had started to streak the clouds pink. As we approached the water’s edge, we glimpsed the brown, shiny, domelike backs of a pair of horseshoe crabs washing to shore along with droves of rubbish (comprising a curious number of shoe parts, making me wonder if there was a shoe factory nearby). The male approached the larger female and clasped onto her back so casually it seemed almost happenstance. But they remained steadfastly joined even as the tides buffeted them to and fro. Sometimes another male joined the pair in a crustacean ménage à trois. Single crabs in search of mates buzzed along the shoreline with the smooth but erratic movement of bumper cars.

Some of the visitors lifted the crabs out of the water and passed them around. The horn-like tail swooped up and down like a drawbridge, threatening to poke someone’s eye out, but the BCUE naturalist assured us that we weren’t harming the animals. The crabs were heavy, their carapaces cool and smooth. It was incredible to think that these creatures had been engaged in the same dance since before the dawn of human civilization, when giant dragonflies droned overhead instead of JFK-bound airplanes, and the prurient spectators were cockroaches rather than Gore-Texed urbanites in search of a last weekend adventure before returning home to their suppers.

MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE: The YeloNap

2008-05-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

What could be more New York than a PowerNap—and a trademarked one at that? Nestled in the heart of Midtown, just west of Columbus Circle, is Yelo, a “wellness sanctuary” offering naps and reflexology massage treatments: multisensory experiences designed to relax and renew in the time it would take to drink a venti latte. “Yelo is about time-efficient, results-oriented relaxation,” the Web site promises. And one Friday, with an hour to spare between an art show and a dinner party, this was exactly what I needed.

Inside the lobby tea lights flickered and pillows beckoned bearing the slogan NAP YOUR WAY TO THE TOP. A Yelo representative greeted me and handed me a multipage questionnaire on my health history and napping preferences. He then led me to the back of the room, where a uniformed “nap butler” of sorts guarded the entrances to the nap pods, or YeloCabs. These “patented treatment cabins” are maroon and yellow cubicles arranged in a sort of honeycomb, a red strip of carpet leading to each numbered door.

The Yelo representative settled me into what looked like a high-tech leather dental chair bolted to the floor in the center of the cabin. The room, purportedly filled with purified air, felt as sterile as an airplane cabin, and was constructed of similar material. The only accoutrements were a pyramid of rolled towels, two small trash cans (for what? I wondered), a revolving stool (for visitors?), and a pair of lit display shelves showcasing lotions and teas available for post-nap purchase. He left me to settle myself, assuring me, “I’ll be right back to tuck you in.” I found the intimacy of that prospect slightly unsettling. But when he returned he gave me the most businesslike tuck-in imaginable, arranging a beige cashmere blanket over me, adjusting the 500-thread-count pillow, and kneeling by the side of the chair to recline it into a “zero-gravity” position, to put my feet slightly higher than my head, which he told me was an optimal position for relaxation. Then he dimmed the lights, closed the door, and left me to my twenty minutes of high-powered slumber.

I had trouble getting to sleep because I couldn’t help myself from trying to optimize my level of relaxation. I fiddled with the recline position on the chair. I adjusted the blanket and pillow to achieve maximum softness against my skin. I squinted through the darkness at the beauty product offerings. I tried to dissect a faint whirring sound and regretted that I had chosen silence rather than a relaxation sound track (options include whale song, medieval chant, and “inner voyage”). With more deluxe nap packages, you can have a scent—such as fig or wild blackberry—piped into the room, but since I’d opted for the basic YeloNap, the room just smelled like vacuumed carpet. In twenty minutes, a “sunrise” gradually filled the pod with a pink-orange light that spread up the walls and ceiling, a lovely way to awaken, had I been asleep.

On my way out, as I sat in the lobby drinking a cup of water, I realized I did feel mysteriously refreshed. A guy in a windbreaker and big sneakers burst in clutching a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. Glancing around nervously, as if afraid of being seen, he asked which nap package would give him the highest-value relaxation for his time. Nap your way to the top, I thought, pushing through the glass doors into rush hour.

SIGHT: Birdhouse fence, Flatbush

2008-04-08T07:34:00.001-07:00

A few blocks past the tabernacle churches, hair-braiding salons, and Laundromats of Church Avenue lies a quiet residential neighborhood. Dogs bark. Children play catch in driveways. Ornamental cabbages grow along the edges of the sidewalks. But at 615 Lenox Road, at the corner of East 43rd Street, the suburban Brooklyn birdsong seems to swell. This is the home of Manny, a Vietnam vet who for the last twenty years has been transforming the chain-link fence around his house into a paradise for local birds.

“Some people like cats, some people like dogs; I like birds,” Manny told me. He said he got the idea for the bird fence when he saw a similar installation in Texas, where he was in the air force. Manny is from Panama, middle-aged, with dark skin and milky blue eyes that give him the appearance of being blind, though his vision—in the many senses of the word—is obviously keen. On the afternoon I visited, he was making the rounds of his fence in camouflage pants, vivid blue and green Nikes, and a hat with earflaps held together by a safety pin. His house is modest, covered in faux-stone siding, a corrugated metal roof over the porch. But even from a few blocks away it’s the fence you notice first, and the bush in the front yard that quivers with the hundreds of birds that call 615 Lenox Road their home.

“In the mornings the sidewalk is filled with birds,” Manny says, gesturing down the street with the tip of his cane. He suffered injuries in the war and walks with a limp, and he claims his hands don’t work as well as they used to. Still, every morning he sifts birdseed into the hundreds of cages and birdhouses that festoon his fence, and the birds arrive in droves; some even spend the night. “But the neighbors don’t mind, because I keep things clean,” he says. Manny’s English is impeccable, though his accent is barbed by the five languages he picked up during the war.

Manny’s collection includes wooden birdhouses with heart-shaped holes and slanted roofs, bird churches with steeples nestled in beribboned Easter baskets, traditional wire cages with swinging perches and feeding dishes, bookshelves lined with miniature houses and bird figurines. The blank spaces along the fence—and there aren’t many—are filled in with bird-themed doormats and chair pads and other souvenirs, all draped with bright flower garlands.

As the birdhouse fence grew into a neighborhood fixture, he says, people began to leave contributions on his doorstep. During the winter, when there are fewer birds, he covers the houses with an equally motley collection of plastic bags—Sears, Duane Reade, Met Foods—to protect them from the weather. But in the spring he unveils them, and birdsong and the colors of his collection fill the Flatbush air once again.

TASTE: Warm arroz con leche on a cold winter night, Sunset Park

2008-03-11T08:21:00.000-07:00

If, on a snowy evening, you find yourself in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, stop by the card table set up on outside Taqueria La Mixteca, across from the park on Fifth Avenue between Forty-second and Forty-third streets, and buy a cup of arroz con leche to sip as you walk. Arroz con leche, or “rice with milk,” is a Latin American drink of warm milk, rice, sugar, and cinnamon. It can also be served firm and chilled, like rice pudding, but I prefer it warm and sip-able, a hearty substitute for hot chocolate.

At Taqueria La Mixteca, the arroz con leche is made by Caroline, a middle-aged Mexican woman with wizened skin and smiling eyes. The taqueria is a nondescript storefront nestled among Fifth Avenue’s phone-card stores, fluorescent-lit hair salons, and bodegas—if it weren’t for the red and blue thermoses set up in front, you might walk right past it.

Most of the time Caroline can be found in the kitchen, where it’s warm, a black hairnet stretched across her forehead, frying up quesadillas in a haze of greasy smoke. She doesn’t speak English, but if you poke your head in, smile, and point to the sidewalk, she’ll bundle herself up and shuffle outside to sell you a cup of her concoction.

As she dips a tin ladle into the thermos and spoons the soupy drink into a Styrofoam cup, steam rises into the chill air. Walking along the street, ice crunching underfoot, cup the drink in your mittened hands and flip back the plastic top. The sweet milk will fill your mouth as the pieces of swollen, mushy rice slip down your throat and settle like a warm blanket in your stomach. It requires almost no chewing, just a slight pressure of the tongue against the roof of the mouth to flatten the rice grains, and the combination of nutty texture and creaminess matches the biting air and soft snow that blankets the park as evening falls.

SOUND: The G train Recharging at Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn

2008-02-07T11:51:00.001-08:00

On a typical day, the G train runs from Court House Square, in Long Island City, to Smith-9 Streets, in Red Hook, mowing a green zigzag swath across the outer boroughs. After discharging its last passenger in Brooklyn, the G continues along the tracks to the 4 Avenue F train station, in Gowanus, to recharge before chugging back toward Queens.

I used to live near this stop, an elevated outdoor platform with sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty. But the sight I enjoyed most was the apple green circle at the front of the G train emerging over the railway bridge, its headlights dim. It chugs to a stop on the center track, sighs, flexes its brakes in rhythmic thrusts. It exhales a whoosh of pressurized brake steam, then shudders to stillness. The digital window signs still flicker from CROSSTOWN LCL to LAST STOP/SMITH-9 STS. There’s a metallic hum. The car lights dim. Sometimes a conductor moves through the cars with a broom.

Inevitably, an F train hurtles into the station, pings its doors open and closed, and sweeps out, hardly casting a glance at its hick cousin, who will never have its floors anointed with bags from Zaro’s Bread Basket, will never know the thrill of burrowing beneath the East River or the corner of Central Park.

But the G train has had a moment to collect itself. There is a clicking. The window signs go blank, then flash LONG IS. CITY/COURT SQ. The lights brighten. The train brakes suck in air as they get ready to roll. Folklorist Amanda Dargan claims that she hears the first musical phrase of the song Somewhere– as if singing “There’s a place for us” when this happens on the 4, 5, and 6 lines. But I can’t say as I’ve ever heard the G train sing.

The wheels turn over once, squeal to a stop, and rotate again with increased confidence. A shiver, then a grinding lurch. The pigeons that have settled on top of the cars scatter. The green G recedes against the skyline of a city it will never enter. It feels like--for a moment--I knew the G train, having witnessed its most vulnerable moment. But now it’s unreachable once again, like an old friend who’s moved on.