Mika's Second Derive
March 20, 2018, by Mika
The second dérive again took me to an area I was familiar with from my days living in Lafayette. When I arrived at the starting point on Baxter St., just a block or so south of Canal, I immediately took pictures of the Vietnamese restaurant in front of me and the Malaysian joint across the street. Funny how “Chinatown” isn’t just Chinese. As I opened the derive app I began thinking about what forces caused Chinatown to really become “Little Asia” and the fact that my favorite pho spot wasn’t too far away. Going there always brought to mind the Chinese Opium dens mentioned in Sante’s Low Life but more specifically their depiction in the Showtime show The Knick where Clive Owen plays an opium addicted cutting edge surgeon in the New York of 1900.
I thought that would be the vibe, the psychographic map predetermined in my mind, for the night but then the app told me to take a seat for two minutes. I plopped down on the curb and soaked in the scene around me. I was stilling thinking about Chinatown at the beginning of the 20th century but this time as described by Sante in the “Rubberneckers” chapter. While I agreed with the officer that Chinatown is usually quiet and pleasant I too couldn’t help but wish to uncover some mysterious and ancient secret or witness a kinetic battle over some local turf.
The psychographic decade behind my internal compass, a memory that’s neither mine or real, spun forward from the 1900s to the ‘40s. I know the Detective Noir genre usually took place in L.A. but how could that be more exciting than New York? How could the clever roguishness of those old time Dicks flourish anywhere but New York? I sat on the curb and recognized my surroundings, or at least had the impression of recognizing them, from my recent binge of the second season of Jessica Jones. I love the way these Marvel shows on Netflix have been depicting New York City. I grew up addicted to comics and the NYC streets of the Marvel universe were vibrant in my imagination. Seeing these heroes bound across the rooftops and brawl in alleys late night looked even sleeker on the silver screen than it did in my pre-pubescent daydreams.
Jessica Jones is a PI and the show definitely draws from those noir tropes. I was here in 2018 but the pace of the narrative in my mind was 1940something. A neon rainbow bar sign caught my eye, a joint called “Pasqual Jones.” What a name. I stood up from the curb and entered my own little world. Walking on my own two feet I felt powerful and mischievous, I had a secret and I had a mission. Nobody knew I was Pasqual Jones, and nobody knew the depths of depravity of this city like me. I was the only guy for the case, and the tip on my phone told me to walk down a one way street.
Strolling west on Canal I noticed a small structure with some Asian architecture and lined with neon. That neon glow was alive tonight, advertising distractions and obscuring the truth. Even though the street vendors had packed up for the day the air was pungent with the cocktail of fresh fish, ice, and that unique east Asian spice I couldn’t name. I may have been in New York but Chinatown was a whole ‘nother rythym: slow and sing-song, a nice lullaby. Most of the storefronts around me had signage with characters foreign to me, Chinese probably but not defiantly.
I saw a bank called “EastWest” as an older woman packed up her fruit cart. She probably would have looked the same a century ago, maybe she was around and did. That bank, though it might have been hiding something, had it right. This is where East meets West, but an old East. This wasn’t reminiscent of an ultra modern metropolis like Beijing or Tokyo but rather a gleaming diamond in the rough of Americana.
Across Canal was the sign for little Italy, which is so peculiarly in the heart of what’s Chinatown in my mind. You’d think it would be larger, but its presence is eerily felt around the corner of these Chinatown streets. 
I can only imagine the types of conflict that must have erupted among immigrant communities trying to have their own slice of the island. The app had me search for silence and on the corner of Canal and Elizabeth I heard nothing but the hum of the wind. It was getting late, maybe nobody would be around, but then I heard a scream.
Up the street I could see a boon mic. Two young women were filming something in front of a Chinese restaurant. I wonder how different the Chinatown they were trying to portray was than the slick sweet streets I was patrolling as Pasqual Jones. I was instructed to move north and made my way up Elizabeth St. There was an added character to this road. Some of the bars felt out of place except for the neon glow they shared with the massage parlor lining the next blocks. I wondered which patrons they shared.
As my dérive took my east I noticed an Ukrainian Orthodox Church that felt orphaned so far away from Veselka. I stopped at Mott and Broom because it smelt incredible, I had to pause there for more than moment and really absorb it. It felt like a rich soup from somewhere far east loaded with spices from an Italian grandma’s pantry. As I got closer to SoHo I noticed a shift beginning with a park dedicated to some Italian American police chief.
This is when the fantasy of Pasqual Jones began to fade. More people were around walking the streets; the cobblestone roads had more overhead lighting. I felt a little more watched. 
I was told to look for a dog and found a man walking his deeper in the heart of SoHo—I hope he didn’t see me. 
I saw rich people dining in a fancy underground restaurant under the Prada store. The store’s window art was comic booked theme, extracting all the joy of playing pulp comic hero for the night.
