Like Manna From Heaven

For a brief period of about 10 months to a year it seemed that the media in New York was fixated on the fact that there were old buildings in the city that were falling apart - literally - before one's very own eyes. The devolution of these decrepit buildings was evidenced by the fact that actual bricks and other building materials had slowly begun to crumble and fall off of building facades city-wide.

These heavy bricks and bits of plaster had actually fallen and seriously injured some innocent passers-by and the City Buildings Commission was put on high alert throughout the city.

Amidst this hysteria and infatuation with every pebble or luggee that came hurtling from building tops towards the sidewalk at extreme velocity, I strolled into work one morning on 23rd street. On this particular morning, in front of the entrance to my building, I was surprised to see firemen and other officials milling about near the entrance which had been roped off with pink tape. I paused in front of the building and noticed that a few large bricks - the same color as the bricks on my building - were lying on the sidewalk with large pink circles drawn around them where they lay. If was almost as if the bricks themselves had suddenly died and their corpses had been encircled in pink chalk outlines.

I made eye contact with one of the firemen and he asked me, "Do you work inside?"
"Yes"
"You can go right up."
I moved past him into our building's sparse lobby and took the elevator up to the 3rd Floor where the uncertainty of what would happen next had taken hold of most everyone.
"What are you doing here?", our spandex wearing yet curiously overweight Operations Manager squawked. "They're probably going to close the building."
At that moment a man in a blue City of New York windbreaker with graying hair and glasses moved past me to speak to our CEO.

Thinking that this decision process could take the better part of the morning I left the scene and headed back to my desk. If there were any evacuations to be made I'm sure I'd hear about it.

Much to my surprise, less than an hour later our CEO, a short, high-strung older Jewish man in his early 60's came by my desk and said curtly "Come on. Let's go. They're closing the office."

Bob Karcy, our CEO was obviously not in agreement with this decision but was powerless to fight it. Powerlessnes was a state with which Bob was largely unfamiliar. Fortunately, there was a work-related convention going on in mid-town that we were planning on attending anyway so we left the office and headed uptown a little earlier than originally planned.

Later that afternoon, during a lull in the conference, Bob headed back to the office to see if it had been reopened. With most of the day already gone - I headed home.

Apparently when Bob returned to the building it had been reopened and he worked what was left of the day. During our next pay period I would later discover that my failure (and everyone else's for that matter) to return to the office for this tiny slice of the workday would cost myself and my co-workers a half day's worth of vacation. I remember seeing this on my check and being dumbfounded. "The city closed the office", I would say. With no one upon whom he could take out his frustrations, Bob turned his ire from the City to his own employees who didn't go that extra mile to finish the workday.

Thinking back on this, however, I reflect more profoundly upon the poor state of the building itself and not the pettiness of my boss. When I first interviewed with Bob one of the things I most vividly remembered was how I felt when I approached the building itself from the outside and how crestfallen I was upon seeing this faded, nearly dilapidated looking office building in a gritty, plain block of the Gramercy Park/Flatiron District. I literally groaned and looked away in disgust not knowing that this sad excuse for an office would be my professioinal home for 4 years.

Throwing it All Away

At times, the city seemed to be such a hardcore, tough place to live. I don't mean that there were unique circumstances that made life hard but as a citizen, one tended to come in contact with certain characters or to witness certain situations that one wouldn't commonly experience anywhere else.

This concept can be explained by my experience walking east on 86th Street upon "de-subway-ing" at the 86th Street stop on the 6 train one busy Saturday afternoon. I left the station by vaulting up the narrow stairs of the southeast exit to 86th street. Instead of winding my way through the avenues and streets to my apartment on 91st and 1st Ave. I decided to walk due East on 86th to see what was playing at the (relatively) new movie theater on 86th Street between 2nd and 3rd avenues.

There was a large crowd of moviegoers in front of the theater ticket window beneath the marquee. As I approached, I looked up at the marquee to see what was playing. Nothing really interested me, so without so much as slowing my stride I began weaving my way through the dense crowd and past the theater. A knot of teenagers had formed in front of the ticket window however, taking up almost all of the space on the sidewalk directly in my path. I swerved towards the street to get around them. As I did so, I noticed a gaunt, older black man leaning against a signpost holding a cane in one hand and a black plastic bag used as packaging by any number of the local bodegas in the neighborhood in the other. This man was not directly in my way but I somewhat cautiously moved between him and the teenagers so I could pass. Just as I passed by him I saw him out of the corner of my eye jerk suddenly and bend over while emitting a strange, high-pitched whirring sound that could best be described as somewhere between a shrill whistle and an electronic beeper. This startled me and I kind of hopped away from him while he proceeded to vomit a thick yellow-ish orange all over his shoes and the sidewalk directly in front of him where I had just been walking.
"Oh God!" I groaned half grossed-out, half exasperated as I knew that was too close for comfort. Again, not breaking my stride, I looked down at my pant leg to see if there was any damage but a quick inspection found none. At this point I had a flashback to the last time someone nearly vomited on me which would've been at the GW Sigma Nu house during their epic end of year blowout party called "The Wave". At this party, a severely inebriated freshman guy vomited all over the bar in the basement of the frathouse and then spun around while still vomiting showering the vomit onto those standing nearby. I was one of those standing nearby. This was of course embarrassing at the time and now, here on 86th street I felt almost as embarrassed. Wanting to distance myself from the older vomiting man on the street I kept going home, hoping I wouldn't later discover a dollop of vomit clinging to my pant cuff or shoe. The kids staning near the older man started screaming in disgust and I left them to it.

The Sky is Falling

Throughout my time in NYC I became increasingly wary of very loud, sudden blasts of sound that caused my heart to jump into my mouth or for me to wet my pants. At times these sounds made me think that I'd die in NYC due to a heart attack brought on by any number of these unexpected events: dumpsters being tossed around by garbage trucks like beanie babies, cargo vans careening down side streets with a quick burst of speed, assorted crashes and explosions on construction sites and even air conditioners falling out of windows.

This last example continues to freak me out to this day.

My cousin Sarah had called me to tell me that she would be in the city and wanted to get together for lunch. The following day we met at Duke's on 22nd Street btw. Park and Lex. At the time Sarah had not yet moved to NYC but was looking for an apartment and we were strategizing on where she might look. Since our meeting took place during the week, I was set to return to the office when we were finished so we started walking north on Park so that she could get on the 6 train uptown and I could take a left onto 23rd and get back to my office. We walked on the right side of the sidewalk (of course) on the east side of Park putting us closer to the buildings and not the actual street. As we passed the midway point of the Park Avenue block btw. 22nd and 23rd streets we heard this impossibly loud crash that made us involuntarily duck and cringe in reaction. We both turned around and saw that right where we had passed only moments before, a rusty old air-conditioner had slid out of an office building window and shattered onto the sidewalk. Bits of plastic and metal were everywhere nearby. We were both stunned as we saw what had transpired realizing instantly that it could have easily fallen on one of us.
"Oh my God!", Sarah exclaimed.
"Holy Shit!", I said.

But we were speechless.

However, in true New York fashion we didn't hang around and try to figure out what had happened and why this potentially near-fatal accident had occured - but instead kept walking and eventually resumed our conversation (although not with the same enthusiasm as before).

A few more paces and we said our good-byes at the 23rd street subway station but this time with a rueful smile I said "Bye, be careful".
"You too." she said in response.