Sara’s 2nd Derive: Extremities
March 19, 2018, by Sara
This derive began a lot differently than my last. The last derive, although I explored new places, I had a general sense of the area. This time, however, I was dropped into a totally new place. I was coming from midtown, and had to find a way to get there on Citymapper, the map app that I use when I get very, very lost.
This time, my placement was much farther to the East side of Manhattan than I normally go. I live off Lafayette, so my boundary is usually west of the Bowery. My starting spot for this assignment was essentially parallel to Avenue C.
This time I made sure I had a pen and paper to take notes on instead of trying to use my phone and also the derive app. My immediate impression is that the Lower East Side (LES) has a huge number of murals. My starting spot was near a school, and amongst all the other typical buildings, the murals popped out at me.
At Reagan and Clinton, I stopped to look at the buildings around me. The LES is slung lower than a lot of Manhattan. I wondered, if there was a 3-D map of Manhattan, would it be shaped like a triangle?
My dad’s work used to have a map “builder.” His store focuses on camping equipment, and people who were really rugged would come in and get maps printed of the areas they were aiming for. These people were usually a very specific breed of man – tall hiking socks and utility sunglasses even in the middle of a mall. My dad matched them a lot of the time. My dad would zero in on the surrounding area they were looking to explore, and a 3D terrain map would show up. I never knew if these were helpful.
I walked underneath the Williamsburg Bridge, but quickly. The bridge has a pink cage surrounding the pedestrian and biking area. Strange that to save $2.75 or to go on that inter-borough run we’ll submit ourselves to a dressed up enclosure.
In middle school I walked over the “catwalk” every day after school. It was a pedestrian bridge that crossed Highway 85 and fed the middle school students almost directly onto the high school. Getting between the two otherwise was a 15 minute drive and there was school traffic. There wasn’t an overhead cover to the catwalk though. But the amount of graffiti across the bridge means that Williamsburg Bridge – whoever it is that designed it – probably had the right idea. I walked over the catwalk 5 days a week for four years, from 5th grade to 8th grade, but I have never walked over the Williamsburg Bridge.
I felt safer on the Delancey Street side of the bridge, mostly because on the other side a man I didn’t know had talked to me and then I walked around a group of people arguing outside a bodega. Just past the cross, away from the bridge, was a massive police station. Police cars – and a few firetrucks – lined the street. In the parking lot there was an ambulance that to me seemed ancient.
Just around the corner were blocks of identical housing. Tall and brown and uniform the dotted the surrounding blocks. About halfway down the street the blocks stop suddenly and the brown cinderblock is replaced with grey. The pre-fab office spaces remind me of a tweet about that burgeoning apartment style that’s taking over every single gentrified area in every city across the US.
Soon I hit Clinton and Broome. I live on Broome Street, but a lot farther inland away from the water. It’s strange how a street changes as it moves. It reminds me again of the spine idea. My borders are generally between 7th Ave and the Bowery. I travel up and down, from Fi-Di all the way to Washington Heights to work and visit friends and shop. But rarely am I ever so far to the East. If Broadway is the spine of the city, are these areas the extremities?
Extremities are the first thing our bodies cut off blood flow to when we are exposed to the cold. Our bodies prioritize the core: the heart, the brain, the internal organs. Our cells know that it is much easier to live without the limbs, our fingers, our toes than it is any of those other pieces. In case of emergency, our bodies execute their own form of triage. Does the city do the same? Who do we decide to cut off – or relegate to the sides or the shadows?
And yet the area itself is also showing signs of gentrification, like just about every other place in the city. Those pre-fab offices, the organic doughnut place all mixed in amongst the buildings that have stood in the LES for years.
On the other side of Allen Street, moving toward the west, the signs transform. The area itself comes alive. The postings are almost exclusively in Chinese, or at least a mix of both. The buildings are bight and the fire escapes draw my eye up up up to the ornate roofs. I try and draw a sketch of a building, its white window frames carved in intricate designs. At the bottom is a market packed with boxes of fruit and shoppers stepping between the narrow aisles. I got yelled at once on this street, months and months ago, for taking a photo. My definition of harmless was drastically different from the man – out of frame – who thought an image of him, in the hands of a stranger, might be at threat. Today while I’m here I just look and take notes. The sun has brought out people in droves, in spite of the cold.
Eventually I hit the intersection that leads to the Manhattan Bridge. This one I have crossed, mostly on my trips to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The view once you’re over the water is stellar; you can see the Brooklyn Bridge and the skyline and if you squint the Statue of Liberty. But before the train has gone all the way over the water, it screeches over blocks of apartment buildings covered in makeshift clotheslines. I went last October when it was warm and felt guilty to be so close to the windows of homes and lives. Extremities, again.