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My Side of the Tracks

If you stand at the corner of Foster and Ocean Avenues, you would find yourself at the proverbial train tracks. Good side, bad side — you know the deal. Ocean runs north-south, and Foster east-west. If you walk east two blocks, to 22nd street, you can marvel at how there are three-story, 90 year old Victorian houses to your right, and on your left lie the six-story apartment building that lack elevators. That’s what you would call a quality of living dropoff.

Go three blocks north from there, and you find yourself in the PJs. “PJs, you ask? Public housing, my good man — the Projects. Retrace your route, out of a healthy respect for the area, and find yourself back on 22nd and Foster. Go east, young man, and you hit Flatbush Avenue, which runs all the way across Bucktown (Brooklyn, if you must know). Flatbush may just be the most commercial street in New York City. Yes, yes, Manhattan and whatnot… Blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada… Houses don’t deign to grace Flatbush Av. with their presence — the closest you’ll get is the apartments that occupy the second and third stories above the stores. If you follow Flatbush for about five blocks or so — well, blocks is an understatement… it’s like saying the Twin Towers are just another couple of tall buildings — you’ll hit the Junction, so called because it is the juncture of Flatbush and Nostrand Avenues, and three other streets, as well.

Now the Junction, my good man, is where you go if you need anything. And this really is an all-inclusive anything. Food, clothes, music, shoes, comics, electronics… I really need not go on. All told, it’s a quality place to be. As long as you don’t mind being the only white person. Being mugged is only exciting the first time. After that, it just becomes another inconvenience. You learn to deal.

After overstimulating your senses, you trek back once again to that corner of Ocean and Foster. Waiting the requisite two and a half minutes for that bastard light to change (Ocean is what we would call well-trafficked) you cross over to the scenic side. Two blocks west, and you find yourself looking down tree-lined streets, manicured lawn and expansive houses. The neighborhood is called the Flatbush Malls. This is where the white folk live.

Six blocks and you find yourself at “Newkirk Pl_za” — the sign on the metal barrier has lost its “a”. This is a one-block strip that lies above the train tracks that cut 16th street in half. There are stores on either side. Two barber shops, four restaurants, a community bank, a bagel place, two corner delis that seem stranded in their mid-block locale, a hobby shop, a supermarket, a 99 cent store, two pizza places and a hardware store. In the center of all this lies the train station — 3 doors each on two sides, offering the seduction of travel to experience all the spices New York has to offer. But you turn down the travel demons today, my friend, and head back home.

You go back down Foster Av., cross Ocean, and then hesitate on the corner of 22nd. You look left at those six-story apartment buildings, and you think, “What if?” But the moment passes, and you turn right, go past the red brick fence of the corner house, and kick open the rusted, wrought iron gate to your house — the 93-year-old, three story Victorian that your parents are paying the mortgage on until you’re 35, even though it’s probably tripled in value with all the renovating your dad has done. You bound up the finely painted steps to the new porch Dad built this summer because he got bored, and stand at the door. You’d think, “I’m home.” If you weren’t going to school in North Carolina.