Blissville

Ends

2007-10-19T07:28:00.000-05:00

This is Blissville, a hodge-podge of garages interspersed between other businesses. This garage sits on the corner of Greenpoint. One one side is the floral shop with fake flowers, on the other, the Long Island Expressway. Once it was also a gas station but only the sign remains. Its prices attracted only desperate drivers before their journey out easy on the Expressway, which has a history of its own.

This expressway was the vision of city planner Robert Moses. Construction began in the late 1930s. By 1940, a six-lane viaduct towered over Long Island City. It ended just below this corner, what is now known as Exit 16.

Decade by decade Moses extended his highway. By 1960 it reached the edge of Queens. Out on Long Island, in Nassau County, the highway proceeded in segments, thought not contiguous. Construction continued until all the parts connected.

In 1966, the highway stretched out to Exit 61 in Patchogue, a town back then of both closing factories and hopeful vacationers looking for sunny beaches.

The highway was completed as we know it today in 1972 in Riverhead. Exit 73 is its last exit. Back then drivers emptied out into a landscape of potato fields. Today it dumps them onto a route that leads to a complex of malls. Tourists from as far as Japan arrive in busloads to shop for designer garments by Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren.

Take the highway one early Sunday morning and watch the light out east fill the horizon. Outside the window enjoy the suburbs with their strips of stores flying by. Whizz by the new developments of housing springing out farmland. Pass through the scrub of pinelands. By now Exit 70 will have arrived, then 71, then 72, and with it, signs that announce the highway's terminus. Even so, it arrives suddenly and simply expires.

Imaginings

2007-10-17T08:32:00.000-05:00

As I wonder about the histories of the buildings around me, I wonder, too, about my 2nd-floor apartment on 35th Street. I know it was built before World War I because of the carved wooden moldings lining its top, still preserved. And, as added proof, my neighbor above said he found newspapers buried in the walls he was tearing down. They were dated 1911.

It has an odd layout, this railroad apartment with two inside windows. The panes are no longer there, but their pulleys remain. Other windows, looking out at the staircase, have been boarded up. And a doorway, too. And so I muse. What did they need the windows? Who lived here? Just one or were there two families? Did the apartment look as it does now or was the kitchen once an enclosed porch?

This apartment of a bathroom, kitchen, living room, study and bedroom, has two fireplaces. One is utilitarian in the kitchen, the other, decorated, replete with mantel, in the bedroom that faces out on the street. So perhaps a single family lived here, a luxury, I think, in those years. But what did they do? Who were they? Where did they go?

An older resident once told me that the first floor was once a hardware store. So perhaps they managed the hardware store. Perhaps two families lived in this building, one on my floor, one above.

When I moved in, I saw rows of sewing machines in the space below. A few years later, the landlord emptied them out and converted it into a rough loft. Karmic for one set of neighbors who moved in. She was a dress designer.

Laundry would have hung across the backyard, as our neighbor's still does. And beneath, on the floor where our garden is, the outhouse. As for winters, surely colder than the ones we enjoy now, I cannot fathom.

Ten Rows In

2007-10-16T07:07:00.000-05:00

Stickball in Blissville was played on an empty block by the cemetery, close enough so mothers could watch over, far enough to give the players a sense of freedom.

A home run, as Bobby Czartoryski explained to me in an email, was when the ball was hit so hard it went ten rows into the cemetery. It took several boys to lift one over the wall to fetch the ball. Bobby is one of the old-timers still living here.

November tenth marks a reunion, the first of its kind, for residents of Blissville during the 1940s, 50s, 60s and any other epoch. It will be held at what was once the Old Bradley's Inn. I once photographed, simply by coincidence, a man whose father once owned the inn. He remembers a childhood of Christmases there, marked by watching his father stuff a paper bag with money, under the counter and ready for when the police came by.

His father finally sold the inn. By the time I moved here it was the Cork Lounge where ceilis were danced and potatoes were grown in the tiny backyard behind the kitchen. Now it's the Bantry Bay Publick House. Little is changed inside from the days of the old Cork, but now they serve a shepherd's pie more divine than words could describe. These are the marks of time in Blissville.

All in a Name

2007-10-15T08:16:00.000-05:00

Found on Van Dam, on a house whose ivy obscured the laundry hanging in the Sunday sun.

Economies

2007-10-08T07:04:00.000-05:00

Why should Blissville be immune to the changes elsewhere in the city and beyond? Where once it supported a tannery, several lumberyards, a shipyard and a bevy of cemetery workers, today its buildings and lots have been converted into storage spaces.

Some buildings have been turned into storage rooms. Just $50 a month, they advertise across their fronts. Other lots hold scaffolding equipment. Still others, cars. Further afield but still in the neighborhood, scrap yards. As one empties out, another takes its place.

But for how long? In a year – or two, or three – new buildings will go up in their places. Maybe they promise new apartments or lofts. Maybe more hotels. But either way, they'll crowd the skyline and our streets, too.

Edible. And Recommended.

2007-10-03T07:52:00.000-05:00

Not many ornamental cabbages grace the fronts in Blissville, thankfully. When they first appeared decades ago, I had hoped at least that they were edible. When people told me they weren't, I liked them less.

But now we have Google, and a search reveals that they are indeed edible, though tough with a strong flavor.

I am hardly the "Wildman Steve Brill," seeking out wild delicacies and medicinal plants at the city's fringes. But along the fence to the Best Western City Motel I did find flowers of promise. They covered the yews that grow in planters, and so I imagine they were sown incidentally, by a bird or the wind.

They are hardy plants, taking root between the cracks of the macadam. Give them another month, and they'll produce winter squash. But for now, I'm content to pick the cherry tomatoes living among their leaves.

Gifts

2007-10-01T06:56:00.000-05:00

One evening we found ourselves in the same neighborhood bar, Evelyn, Tito and I. Tito told me it had been her arm in the open window at the Skyline office.

Evelyn didn't know about this blog. But she wanted me to know about her. And so she began.

Almost twenty years ago, in another epoch, she worked at home, the mother of three children. She lived on public assistance. She had never worked for anyone else. Her older sister Mercedes was the one with a job. Mercedes worked at Skyline .

I always wonder: why does change happen when it happens? One day Evelyn told her sister she'd had enough. She was sick of being on public assistance. She wanted to turn her life around. She wanted a job.

Mercedes found her a job at Skyline. It must have been difficult in the beginning. Evelyn had so much catching up to do. She'd never worked in an office. There were phones and computers to learn. She had to see to all the impatient personalities who passed through, fetching what they needed when they needed it. Her day didn't end at Skyline. Each night she had her children to pick up, meals to make, homework to supervise, bedtimes to observe. And then another day.

It's been nineteen years, and Evelyn has done every job at Skyline practically but President, but to be that, she'd need to work as a driver, and she's not interested. I'm sure she could have been one of the people answering my late night call when I was freelancing at a magazine that had a contract with Skyline. She certainly knew enough of my colleagues.

And Evelyn is only 43. But her time at Skyline is almost half a lifetime. She has married, had three more children and then divorced. Her oldest children have children of their own, making Evelyn a grandmother of six. Hard to believe for a woman who looks like she is in her late 30s. Perhaps it's her gratefulness. Her children have jobs, houses and lives of their own, every parent's most cherished hope. Her younger three are making their way through high school.

Tito and I left her at the bar and took a turn around the neighborhood walking off the sandwich and shepherd's pie we had just eaten. At that hour most houses were dark. We walked up one street and down another. I pointed out to him the house I'd spotted for sale, where I'd peeked through the broken window to its abandoned rooms. The camera only saw the window that reflected me back.

We turned back and threaded our way back to our block and all its familiar landmarks. First we came to the Skyline parking lot. Then their new building. Then their old one where I'd seen Evelyn's arm. Tito paused in front of the next building. We were four doors away from our own building. "This is where Evelyn lives."

Mourning

2007-09-30T13:05:00.000-05:00

City Wide Florist, says the sign in faded green letters, kitty corner to the cemetery's entrance. This flower shop has been here for as long as I can remember. On weekends, no matter what the weather, a small tray of fake flowers stands outside.

A closer look reveals a silver, plastic Jesus who rested in the center of each bouquet. Encased behind the store's glass windows stand the taller, grander arrangements. They crowd the window facing out towards the street, silent reminders of what a person can leave behind on the grave of a loved one.

The glass door also obscures the shop's interior. And so it felt eerie to walk in and see all the flowered crosses in faint purples, greens, yellows, blues and pinks hanging from the ceiling in the dark, airless room. Boxes covered the floor with more fake flowers, subtle variations of the same arrangement. Each box had a white card stapled to it and hand-written, Trelis, $17.50; Altar, $15.50; Grandpa, $24.50; Angel, $14.50. Only one light, a florescent tube, shone, over the empty counter.

A greeting brought its proprietor to her feet. But she shook her head about sharing anything about her business, its history, its stories. Perhaps this is the effect of years of tending to other people's losses.

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

– Gerard Manley Hopkins

Fabric

2007-09-28T07:39:00.000-05:00

For me Skyline was a company whose black cars stole my parking spaces. They had offices down the street. From time to time I saw their cars in the city's streets, the familiar Skyline afixed to the bumper.

Little did I know they were the largest black car company in the city. Little did I know that they were a consortium of owners from all ends of the world. In fact, they've grown so much that they've bought a building behind the one here, out in back of the parking lot on the side.

When I freelanced I worked a stint at a company who used Skyline's services for its late workers. I looked forward to my late Friday nights when I could call the dispatcher for a car. No one can ever find Blissville. But for the Skyline drivers, this was their base. And sometimes, if I was lucky, I'd get a driver who I'd met before, passed on the street in Blissville.

Questions

2007-09-27T07:17:00.001-05:00

A search on the Internet revealed nothing about the new Inn, and so it continues to remain a place of curiosity.

Guests

2007-09-26T08:13:00.000-05:00

No one has arrived yet. There is still too much work remaining, painting, finishing, entrances. On Sunday I peeked in to see walls drywalled and the spackled, wiring hanging everywhere.

But at night, past the bright, unremitting glow of the streetlight, a light or two blinks from our new neighbor, Fairfield Inn & Suites, Marriott.

I imagine the visitors arriving, tired after their journey, dislocated but for the backdrop of Manhattan. Where will their rooms look? Over our houses and towards the cemetery? Or over the ragged skyline of factories and billboards, the Chrysler Building sparkling in the distance?

In the morning after, will they notice us on the ground?

Leftover Blissville

2007-09-25T07:57:00.000-05:00

It feels like an epoch ago when a colleague at work discovered Blissville on his own. He is a city reporter, and he and his sweetheart, now his wife, would spend their weekends exploring the neighborhoods at the city's fringes. He came into the work the Monday after and told me all about it and the twin houses he'd discovered.

He wondered if one of them was for sale. He and his beloved were house-hunting. The size, the history, the neighborhood, they were all perfect.

I had no answer for him. I hadn't even known about these houses. That night I walked with my own sweetheart around the neighborhood, and I fell in love with them, too. Each was as perfect a house as I could imagine. One even looked empty. But neither was for sale. I reported back and then forgot about them. A year later my colleague and his darling bought a house at the edge of Prospect Park.

Then a few years later the house on the right went on the market. It was more rundown than its neighbor, and the brokers priced it at a half a million. Outside the deli a handmade flier advertised an open house. The price was now three quarters of a million. I walked down the block, around the corner and up the block to the houses I loved. People filed in and out, but I didn't go in. I wanted it too much.

Found

2007-09-20T06:36:00.000-05:00

Another legible thought, seen on a wall near Greenpoint Avenue.

An evening trip across the river to the top of the Empire State building netted more grafitti, penned on the stone block walls looking over the glittering city below:

Heather Strassel
Nancy Trileon
Rebecca Stoops
Philip Love's Rose
Angel Villanueva, Edinburgh, TX
And sprinkled in, more names and words in Turkish, Chinese and Russian.

King Kong Was Here!

In neat lettering, TAIWAN.
And further down, Taiwan Is a Country.

But for the moths, drawn to and lit by the tower's lights, these messages meant nothing. They just flitted in the night air like burning scraps of paper.

Dial Tone

2007-09-19T07:16:00.000-05:00

One of my first assignments as a newspaper photographer was to photograph the public phone from which a famous drug dealer had made his last call, that is, his last before the FBI and its thousands of agents captured him. The phone hung down on a busy corner in East Elmhurst. My editor wondered if I'd moved it there. I hadn't.

Saleem has surely used up all of his allotted phone calls. His compatriots, too. Besides, this phone is a block away from his shop.

But it's just a half block from the sofa so maybe drivers use it, though I doubt it. It's just that far around the corner to be noted.

It's prime locale is directly across the street from the new hotel going up. Lost tourists will spot it. But in this age of cell phones, will they use it? Or will it be another relic from another age, left and abandonned on a street in Blissville?

Waiting

2007-09-18T07:06:00.000-05:00

There is a block, across the street from the new skyscraper of a hotel, made up of solely garages. These garages are minimal affairs, the requisite cement floor slicked with oil, a few lifters, a skylight, and a bare room – an afterthought, really – for an office. And so for some drivers, a seat outside amid the bustle of the street beats hands-down a plastic chair in a windowless room.

No Good Deed

2007-09-16T21:57:00.000-05:00

Drive by Blissville on a weekday, and all the shops hum with activity. No stranger could discern Saleem's shop from any another. The lifts are full, the sidewalks are lined with cars and impatient drivers stand on the corners while they wait for their repairs.

I let the little pleasures of the neighborhood fill my days. I stopped thinking about Saleem. I think I trusted he would be fine.

Tonight I learned that Saleem has not been able to raise the bail money. Some of his friends have tried, culling together what they have, $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000 in cash towards his release.

But the investigators just push the money away. "How did you get so much cash?" they ask. "What is your name?" And then they open up a new a file.

Meanwhile, ordinary life continues on every corner. As my beloved Tito reminds me, Blissville is more than one man's crimes.

Streetscape

2007-09-10T20:11:00.000-05:00

Scott Williams, a painter who has had a studio in Long Island City for eighteen years, seeks out quiet spaces and empty landscapes. And so, sometimes he finds himself in Blissville.

He sees a lot, but asks no questions. He wondered, after he heard about Saleem, if he, too, had witnessed a chop shop, in another part of Blissville, even less frequented. No one seemed to worry what he might have witnessed, and he went on painting.

Perhaps there is something invisible about the stillness required for observation. He just laughs. And marvels how often a couple will park behind his easel for an afternoon of stolen love.

And What About Saleem?

2007-09-09T19:44:00.000-05:00

Rumors circled around the block the day Saleem was arrested. Some mechanics said he got out on $40,000. The papers said bail had been set for $200,000. But no matter what the fee, all bet he was out.

But the next day, Saleem was still in jail. Friday passed, and his shop bustled with activity. All day long Lincoln Towncars pulled in and out. His shop was a model of busyness. His wife even stopped by, no one knows why. She left their two children at home. In Blissville, everyone was kind to her, respectful of her plight.

Saturday passed much the same. The shop closed at its usual hour, ten or so at night. And the next day, Sunday when no shop opens, it opened again. And still Saleem hasn't returned.

No one seems to talk about him, except for me. By my count he's been in prison four days now. I can't imagine what that must be like for him. I didn't know him well, except that he seemed a dour man, suspicious of my camera, protective of his shop.

One mechanic told me that everyone in Blissville's garages knew about Saleem's trade in stolen parts. He added that this was not the first time Saleem has been in trouble. He scraped with the law a year ago, and before that, six years ago, when he had another shop well beyond Blissville's borders, across the tracks on Northern Boulevard.

While Saleem was over there, we in Blissville were having our own scandal. I remember that day because when I woke, police cars were parked up and down the block. And we in Blissville almost never see police. I joined my neighbors and watched as the police pulled car after car from the narrow, one-story cement building just two doors down the block from where I lived.

The investigating lieutenant made her rounds. When she came to me, I could only tell her that I'd seen it open on from time to time, between two and five in the morning. She asked me if I'd known that the people running it were trading in stolen cars. I shook my head. I'd had no idea.

For I had thought them a good neighbor, quiet and clean.

News! News! News!

2007-09-06T22:06:00.001-05:00

Saleem Latif and eleven others arrested!

Saleem Latif out on bail for $200,000!

Saleem Latif said to be ringleader of auto theft ring!

Saleem Latif alleged to have chopped $1 million in auto parts!

Saleem's garage lies in the center of Blissville, just down the block from the Blissville Deli and on the corner of Van Dam, the main thoroughfare. Prime real estate for someone with a garage. Like most of the garages in the neighborhood, Saleem's garage exists mostly to service the Lincoln Towncars he rents out to drivers.

Unlike most of the garages, Saleem always has had a large number of Towncars sitting in his yard and on the street. Many were battered, the rest waited for drivers to rent them.

The owners and workers at other garages shook their head at this. Perhaps Saleem was overextended. Perhaps his business wasn't doing so well. They wondered how he managed to stay in business with so many cars unrented. Perhaps that was why Saleem's garage always stayed open so late, long after the others had closed.

A year ago the police descended upon Blissville and raided Saleem's garage. They accused him of using stolen parts in his car. They took away all his cars.

Saleem looked haggard, nervous, and for days, even weeks, no one saw him. Without his old cars along the sidewalk, the neighborhood looked oddly clean.

But he never closed the garage, and business continued. And in time, Saleem returned. Little by little his fleet grew again. And one by one, the battered cars returned.

It was over this period that he lost many of his mechanics. And so today, when the police swarmed his shop again, only new mechanics were working there.

Did the new mechanics know, that when Saleem gave them a part to instal, that it was stolen?

According the the District Attorney, often, if he needed a part he didn't have, he would send someone out to steal a towncar. He even had a special sticker for his cars so his band of thieves wouldn't mistake his cars from another. He is even accused of registering his cars with proper parts, and then replacing some of their parts with stolen ones.

The mechanics in his shop tried to work as usual. It couldn't have been easy. Television crews and journalists milled about the street, waiting. Other factory workers watched from their doors.

And Michael, the deli owner stood on the corner while cameramen filmed him and his awning, "Blissville Deli."

And Saleem? He pleaded not guilty.

Rats

2007-09-06T07:01:00.000-05:00

Found, near the railroad tracks, down by the creek.

Every so often I follow the rail road to to its end, the terminus of Blissville, at the Dutch Kills Creek and Hugo Neu's scrap plant. Greenpoint is dotted with scrap metal centers, but Blissville, with its access to the Newtown Creek, also has a few. No wonder. Scrap metal has become the city's most lucrative export.

Follow the tracks toward the city and they stop at the East River and an LIRR station. Head out to the end in the other direction, and you'll find yourself in Montauk.

This land was once settled not by the Dutch as its name might imply, but original Plymouth Rock colonists. Today developers have their eyes on it. The way they see it, housing is compatible with industry side by side. Never mind the pollution. Its views over the creek look clear out to the city. But where will the industry go? And where will the rats hide?

Discernable Text

2007-09-04T20:17:00.000-05:00

Everywhere in Blissville graffiti is scrawled. Any flat surface will do.

I know it is a language, but it's opaque to me.

Signage also abounds. I recognize the English, but its content eludes me. I can only assume others grasp its meaning, factory workers or railmen.

And then suddenly, a message I can both read and understand, and think on as I gaze out at the fading half moon.

Imaginary Forest

2007-09-02T22:35:00.000-05:00

A copse of poplars, no more. Even so, it hums with monarchs, crickets and sparrows.

Shhhhh. My secret Blissville.

The Elevated Train

2007-09-02T22:25:00.000-05:00

He travels from block to block above our heads, traveling a path where no cat can follow. And when the lines pass through a tree, he gets off.

Parking Wars

2007-09-01T14:35:00.000-05:00

Saturday afternoon marks the beginning of Labor Day weekend in Blissville, when workers head home and factories close.

But come Tuesday morning in this little economic enterprise zone, the pressure for parking spaces will run high. For the businesses that depend on room for deliveries, it's an exercise of cooperation, from business to business to business.

Of course, not everyone honors the same ethic. And so the wars begin. The export-import company's truck will obstruct the entrance to the garage, who in turn will block it with a tow-truck while all along, the traffic along the street will build. And soon a chorus of horns will ring out through the neighborhood. But time is money, and eventually the garage will be forced to pull back to let the delivery truck leave. An armistice that will last only a day.

I once waged my own wars on the block. Cars from the limousine company down the block were occupying more and more of the spaces. I was tired of having to park several blocks away. They had a huge parking lot of their own next to the company building.

And so I fought back. I honked and yelled at the company's drivers. Sometimes I double-parked to trap them in, and when I could, I snuck in behind them and stole the space outright. If they cursed me, I cursed back. They had room of their own down the street, I reasoned. They didn't need the space in front of my apartment building, too.

Then one day I went to my car to run a mid-day errand. I started up, turned the wheel and inched forward. Clunk-a-clunk-a-clunk, my car went. I felt it as much as I heard it. I got out to see what the problem was. I had two flat tires on the passenger side of the car. I got back in and hobbled down the street to the garage at the corner.

The mechanic who came out shook his head. "What did you do?"

I shrugged. "Nothing," I said.

He shook his head again. "Someone slit your tires, miss."

I swallowed. What choice did I have? I told him to put on new tires.

For the next few months I studied those drivers, wondering which one had waited under the cover of darkness to slash my tires. But I conceded whatever parking space they wanted on the block.

Years have passed, and I've found my own peace. And somehow, I never want for a parking spot now.

The Cat No One Wants

2007-08-30T06:57:00.000-05:00

Part of the view outside the kitchen window is the roof of the garage next door. A mulberry tree leans leans over its black tarred surface.

By late spring the roof is covered with fresh mulberries. All summer doves and squirrels visit to feed on the dried mulberries. First come the birds, then the squirrels. They chase each other back and forth for berries. Some days the roof is covered with doves. The supply seems endless.

I also see outside on occasion an old tom of a cat, with a dirty white coat, ears torn from fights, tail bobbed. He goes anywhere. No one seems to like him. "Shoo, shoo shoo," I hear from one backyard to the next.

Recently he's taken to visiting our backyard. I hear him screech at the cat from downstairs, and I catch our neighbor shouting, "Get out!"

So now he just visits from the top of the walls that enclose the yard. There are so many vines that cover the wall that he can rest all day in the shade of their leaves. And it's just a small leap to the roof. To the next backyard.

One morning more recently, I heard feathers ruffling outside. Whomph! I glanced outside. A dove hung in the dirty cat's mouth.

I miss the morning chatterings I used to hear. The roof is empty now.

A Door, A Gun and a Store For Rent

2007-08-29T07:55:00.000-05:00

I never saw the gun until I stepped back, unique among Blissville's grafitti.

The AK-47 was developed in 1947 by Mikhail Kalishnikov, in Russia. It's 60 years old but remains the world's most popular assault weapon because, I am told, it's easy to use and never malfunctions.

Two crossed AK-47s lie in the center of Mozambique's flag. Other AK-47s have found their way into the coat of arms of Zimbabwe, East Timor, the flag of Hezbollah, and the logo of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

But how did this one find its way into sleepy Blissville?

Summer's End

2007-08-28T07:37:00.000-05:00

Once grandmothers sat on the bench and watched over the little girls entrusted to them, all summer long.

Christina, one of those girls, back when she was ten, told me that she was never going to leave Blissville. She pointed to the brown shingled house in front of the bench and said that was where her great grandmother had been born, where she, Christina, lived now, where her whole family lived. Christina said she planned to to marry and return to live there, for the rest of her life. This house, this neighborhood, they were the world she knew and loved.

No one sits on the bench any more, either to rest or watch over little ones. Too many houses have air-conditioning. And Christina, now with two daughters of her own, has moved. As have her mother and her grandmother, another part of Blissville's history gone elsewhere.

But the bench is not entirely unoccupied. Tucked inside the London plane tree that serves as its back was a flowering of coprinus micaceus, inky caps. Edible, but not recommended.

An Apology

2007-08-27T07:48:00.000-05:00

To my loyal readers: I have been away for reasons too trite to list. I apologize for my absence. And I thank you for your thoughts and comments, your support and participation over the year. I am back again, and I hope you will return, too.

In Blissville, others promise more than they can meet, too. This garage is no different than the others on the main boulevard, Van Dam Street. It opens at 8 and closes at 6. The sign, which has hung for at least ten years, is just a remnant of one of its owner's hopes.

Cats

2007-03-24T08:01:00.000-05:00

Seen outside the garage gates: a squirrel chasing a cat under cars and down the street.

Meanwhile, the good garage cat grows fatter by the day, good only for patting now.

Corners

2007-03-22T06:58:00.000-05:00

It's grey outside today, and clumps of brown snow lie everywhere in Blissville. I took this photo a month ago at the close of a frigid Sunday in January. I haven't visited since, but surely the structure is further along now.

I cling to my memories of the neighborhood as it once was. Only some of us now remember that five years ago this was a stone mason's yard. Its owner, when I glimpsed him, was wizened and sturdy. We waved to each other, but we never spoke.

I'm sure he did well, within sight of the cemetery, just down the block. So perhaps he had no one to pass it down to, perhaps the neighborhood prices for land were too high to turn down. Perhaps the market for hand-crafted headstones had shifted. Whatever the reason, he sold. For a year or more, the land sat vacant.

And now this.

But still surprises lurk as I found out that Sunday, when I followed the lines of the grey newcomer. Although I knew I didn't want to live there (being next to the Long Island Expressway), I wanted to imagine its space. And so I looked for its corners and its views.

But I couldn't find the two back corners that would mark its floorplan, and I had to retrace my steps. I found a single corner instead. Which makes it perfect Blissville, where triangular buildings abound.

Little Temptations

2007-03-21T08:03:00.000-05:00

Yikes, there they are, just waiting for me. How can oat bran compare?

Family

2007-03-20T07:10:00.000-05:00

John, John and Jesse, three generations of DeColle's selling used clothes in Blissville. Sadly, senior John only sells on occasion. I used to see him on cold days sitting outside the shop, taking in the winter sun. It's been years, and I still miss seeing the shock of his white hair. Too much time has passed.

I doubt I've ever seen his son, John, and if I have, I wouldn't recognize him. John drives to construction sites all over the city with his stock, used clothes (cleaned) bearing only traces of their former owners, José, Herby, Chris, Abdul, Alfonse, as the red script atop a white oval indicates. John has the heart of a union man, and so he sells only American-made clothes.

Young Jesse tends the store with hours a girl could envy. The old store once sat on the main drag, its displays a call to any worker passing by. Then the rent tripled, and DeColle's had to move. And about that time, Senior John retired. Even so, one of the old signs, painted in bodega colors, still stands on the face of their old home. Graciously, the new tenents, also vendors of work clothes and equipment, point the budget-conscious lost to the new DeColle's, now tucked around the corner on a side street in a basement. But they'd better get there early or on a day off, because out of frame the sign says Open M-F: 8-3:30, Sat: 8:30-1.

The Cost of Business (Another Story from the Deli)

2007-03-19T15:21:00.000-05:00

I heard that Michael was thinking of selling the deli. And so I wondered. Who would be next?

But then one day I saw a new man in the deli, and he seemed as in charge as Michael and Joy. So maybe Michael sold a part of his deli. The new man is tall and wiry, and he never stops moving.

A week after his arrival, and the deli's windows were covered with hand-written signs on neon cardboard in shocking pinks and greens. Hot Breakfasts! Hot Lunch! Sandwichs and Wraps! Hot Udong Soup! I looked, but I didn't try any of the new offerings.

Next, out went the fake espresso machine and in came a real one, made in Italy according to its sign. Fresh Cappuccinos! Mochaccinos! But an espresso cost $2.00, and I passed.

A few weeks later sticky buns lay on the counter. To heck with the budget and diet. 24-Hour Breakfast! I bought one and told myself I'd only stop in there every other morning.

Is ambition a thing, once seeded, that multiplies? The deli's latest acquisition is a hot buffet.

It cost $10,000, Michael whispered to me as he pushed out a cooler. $4.95 Hot Buffet Lunch! Hot Oatmeal! Hot Grits! The outside of the deli is still quintessential Blissville. Inside it now looks like a midtown Manhattan lunch pad.

Manhattan prices, too, the local workers grumble. On Queens salaries.

Though I've never tasted it, the food looks tasty as the new man carries out tray after tray of glistening fish, pork, chicken and vegetables, sauteed, steamed and baked.

Some of the workers admit they splurge every so often. Not bad, they say.

And for everyone else? Miller can 24 oz. $1.25!

Garage Cat

2007-03-13T22:42:00.000-05:00

One day he limped into the garage. His nose and ears bled, and he mewed as if he had no where else to go.

He was so bloody the mechanics didn't dare clean him, fearing his pain. He was so dirty, they didn't care to touch him, either. They tended to him as they knew. They set out food and water, and prepared a bed for him out of an old seat.

Little by little his wounds began to heal. A month passed and he was able to walk with ease. The gash on his neck closed. His hair grew back. He gained weight.

Perhaps when we are weak, we always return home. For this cat, the garage was his first home. The garage owner brought him there to catch rats.

And for years he did that. But he was an independent soul, a working cat who roamed the neighborhood by day and fed on rats by night. He shunned any hand but one that held food.

Then one winter day he disappeared. The mechanics tried whistling, but they were whistling into a void. He wasn't coming back. Perhaps he had been hit by a car, perhaps he had been mauled by a dog. They didn't know. Then he disappeared from their thoughts.

The season led into spring. Then one day a mechanic caught a glimpse of him sneaking out of the hotel. He was plump, and his once oil-slicked coat looked soft, even fluffy. The mechanic called to him. He disappeared back into the hotel.

Back in the garage the mechanics laughed. Maybe the cat was enjoying the spa there, too.

A year passed. Then another. The mechanics could see that he wasn't living at the hotel any more. He looked muscled now, strong and sleek, and the ears on his fat head lay back. He lived bowl to bowl, from anyone who offered sustenance. He was no one's cat now, only his own. The mechanics thought him fearless and bold, roaming even beyond the borders of Blissville, where no neighborhood cat had gone before.

But pride before fall, the saying goes.

When he hobbled in, the mechanics laughed. And as they cared for him, they teased him.

His coat is blue again, slicked back with oil. On cold nights he seeks out the warmth only an engine can offer in an unheated garage.

He has healed mostly. And on warmer nights he now goes out to wander through the neighborhood. But he doesn't stray far.

Each morning they open the garage, he trots up to them. He rubs his back against and between their legs. He lifts up his face to their open hands. He purrs.

Cricket

2007-03-12T21:51:00.000-05:00

The brothers Taskin and Tafhim settled in Blissville three years ago. By chance, they moved into the building directly across the street from boys their same ages, Nabil, Abrar and Faraz.

Perhaps they were shy, perhaps they had other things pulling them, for they didn't meet each other on the block. They noticed each other on the school bus. Back then, only Taskin and Nabil went to school. The others were too little for that.

As boys will do, they began to play ball together. They played the street games New Yorkers have always played – soccer and volleyball and basketball and handball and dodgeball. When their brothers grew old enough, they included them. I caught them playing basketball and soccer.

When I learned that their parents were from Bangladesh, I asked them about cricket. They shook their heads. They didn't know how to play that game yet. The two older boys thought they might learn this year. They've watched their fathers bowl and bat, and sat with their fathers while they watched the game on TV, too.

But they didn't know that tomorrow marks the start of the 2007 Cricket World Cup, to be played in Kingston, Jamaica. Surely they will know by Saturday, though. For Bangladesh will play its first match on Saturday, against its rival India.

And anyone could win.

Bread

2007-03-06T22:28:00.000-05:00

Najib came to New York as a student, not a baker. He knew nothing about cooking, but a friend had given him a recipe for bread, believing that Najib could make a business from it. And so Najib did.

When I walked into the bakery years ago, I first noticed the poster about the plight of Afghani refugees, then the slim, dark bakers who worked in silent harmony. I would gesture to the loaf I wanted, then pay for it (a dollar back then) and leave. I didn't buy bread often, but when I did, I felt grateful for the bakers, and to this country, for sheltering them.

Could it have been five years that passed? I grew friendly with Simón who worked behind the counter at the deli. I was learning Spanish, and I practiced with him, naming things as I went. Pan, I would say when I pointed to the Afghan bread. Simón would nod.

My vocabulary grew. One day I told him about the panaderos who made the bread, and their exilio, their exile.

Simón smiled. They were his relatives, from Bolivia, from a mining town south of La Paz. Each morning they arrived at four to begin making Najib's bread. Each noon, they finished.

They made two kinds of bread, wide loaves and narrower ones. The wider ones were for Najib's Pashtun clients, and the thinner ones for Americans who were always dieting. As for Najib, he was Farsi and he didn't eat bread at all.

They saved every dollar they earned. If one was sick, another relative filled in. Those were good years for Najib and good ones for his bakers,too. They worked one for all, and all for one, never sacrificing their dream. The day arrived when they had earned enough money to buy a house in Wisconsin. But it was a sad day for Najib.

They moved four years ago, and Najib still misses them. But each December he telephones to wish them a merry Christmas.

Found on Review

2007-03-06T21:59:00.000-05:00

Traces of other people's stories lie everywhere. Blissville happens to abound with them. Like snapshots taken at 1/125th of a second, they shed only a glimpse of the moment, leaving the barest of clues.

Midnight

2007-03-05T21:00:00.000-05:00

Beyond the lights, the cemetery.

Lost

2007-03-04T19:18:00.000-05:00

Buried somewhere in the cemetery:

Mayor Robert F. Wagner
NY Governor Alfred E. Smith
Gandolfo "Frankie Marlow" Curto, mobster
Lorenzo da Ponti, Mozart's librettist for the Italian operas
and
Baseballer "Wee Willie" Keeler, "Hit 'em where they ain't",

Freedom

2007-03-02T08:04:00.000-05:00

Across from the deli stands Colbar Art. Inside they make Statues of Liberty. But for Olvidiu, its owner, the statues mean more than his livelihood.

Olvidiu comes from Romania, and he grew up during the brutal regime of the Ceausecus. When he was a young man, he tried to escape by swimming across the Danube. But the guards at the border caught him, and Olvidiu spent five long years in prison for his offense. When he got out he was wiser but no less determined. He applied for a visa to the United States and for four years he waited. Finally the Romanian government granted him permission to leave. Olvidiu left for New York City.

But for the people he left behind, things grew worse. His brother Alexi was an engineer, with a good job and his own house. After Olvidiu's escape, the government took away Alexi's job. Suddenly in a country desperate for engineers, there was no opening for Alexi. He found work cleaning buildings. Then the government took away his house. Alexi packed up his belongings and moved to an apartment in the center of the city. He went on.

In the meantime, Olvidiu started again in his new country. He worked in menial jobs in factories, assembling, welding, filing. He brought enthusiasm, energy and inventiveness, and soon he moved up, into positions of more responsibility.

Every cent he made, he saved. And when the time was right, he opened his own factory, making miniature Statues of Liberty. This was his dream. With the help of refugee organizations, he staffed his business with others who had sought asylum as he had, with refugees from Haiti, Albania, Philippines, China, Colombia and Guatemala.

On the other side of the Atlantic, unrest was sweeping through Poland, the USSR, East Germany and Romania. Overnight the people of Romania overthrew their dictators, then executed them. Alexi waited until the new government was in place, and then he, too, applied for a visa to the United States.

And now he, too, works at Colbar.

Luck

2007-02-28T22:26:00.000-05:00

Arrive early or late enough, and all doors will be closed. Blissville's hours are 9 to 5. President Clinton would have called it an ideal Enterprise Zone, for here small businesses abound.

It's an economy of flux. Some businesses fail, and others thrive. But one, Wonton Food, supercedes all others. For there, they make more fortune cookies than anywhere else in the world, all in an anonymous white building at the end of the block that stands catty-corner to the cemetery.

Freight

2007-02-27T00:02:00.000-05:00

In 1891 the trains surely stopped in Blissville.

It's more than a century later and I've never seen a train stop. But if I'm awake in the depths of the night, sometimes I hear the whistle blow.

Deli Bookkeeping

2007-02-25T09:09:00.000-05:00

Joy and Michael bought the deli from Derek. They had never owned a deli before. They had only worked in a deli somewhere in the East 60's, where their customers enjoyed gourment coffees, French chocolates and Scottish shortbreads. But they were confident they were ready for the next step, a deli in Blissville.

Over the next days I watched them clean. They removed the products that had grown stale and dusty and brought in fresh fruit. They expanded their cereal section, and added instant soups, too. They invested several thousand dollars for lighting under the awning, hoping to attract the early morning drivers revving their trucks before the sun was up. And for good measure, they installed an ATM machine.

They had a vision different from Derek's. They wanted an airy, bright space, and so they stripped the windows of their tinting so that sun could shine in again. And it did, all the way across the linoleum floor.

But with that single move, their problems began.

They received their first ticket for selling cigarettes without a license. Derek didn't have a license, but he had friends. Joy and Michael didn't. They didn't know anyone in Blissville, nor beyond.

The next day the police dropped in to issue another ticket, this time for selling beer without a license.

But Joy and Michael got their heftiest ticket the following day, for letting customers drink beer there. Because without the tinting to obscure that after-hours custom, they'd left the police no choice.

Now they owed the loan for the awning, the price of the tickets (a thousand plus), and the price for the lawyer (many thousands).

But they weren't going to give up. They cut back on what they stocked. They inched up their prices. And they doubled-brewed the coffee.

Many laughed, shook their heads and wondered who would own the deli next. But I didn't. I knew that their success was our success, and their failures, our loss. And in the meantime I would wait and switch to tea.

The Night Man

2007-02-20T20:54:00.000-05:00

The man I love pulls at my hand, leading me to the garage across the street from where he works. It is late, and we have returned from eating out. "There is someone I want you to meet." He calls into the dark garage.

A silhouette nears us.

"Hey, man, this is my wife."

The tall, thin man nods toward me, a greeting, and I nod back. "Where are you from?"

"I am from Africa."

"Where?"

"You know Africa? I am from Côte Ivoire. Ivory Coast."

"Where in Côte Ivoire?"

"You know my country? Vous parlez français?"

"No, no, I know it only from the map."

"Abidjan."

My beloved stirs. "What are you doing, man, working so late?"

"This is my job."

"Yeah, but so late, man."

"How many people you send money to?"

"My mother. My children."

"I work another job, as a cleaner, before coming here. After I leave here, sometimes I find a few more hours at another garage."

We stand looking at each other through the chain link fence that separate us.

"You working so hard, man."

The man on the other side nods. "That's because I support a village."

The Birds of Blissville

2007-02-19T23:52:00.000-05:00

Pigeons
Starlings
Sparrows
Chickadees
Robins
Herring gulls
Black-backed gulls
Catbirds
Mockingbirds
House finches
And once, a great blue heron, high overhead.

P.S. 80

2007-02-19T09:02:00.000-05:00

In the brick school that overlooks all of Blissville, boys entered from the front, girls from the side, so the stone lintels dictated anyway.

Judging by its architecture, it must have been built around the turn of the century. Its builders constructed it to last a century or more. They couldn't have known that events greater than weather and age would force the school to close its doors, only after 30 years or so. Blissville lost much of its population in the years of the second World War.

In the peace that followed, new people came to Blissville, even a community of Satmars. They bought the school and converted the building into a yeshiva.

But after five years or so, they left to migrate to Williamsburg, where they still live.

And so the school emptied out again. It stood vacant during the the 1960s passed, the 1970s, and for part of the 1980s, until an outside investor purchased it. He renovated it, then turned it into a hotel. He named it the City View Motor Inn after the top rooms that look over all of Blissville, out to the skyline of Manhattan .

Then for some reason he sold it. One after another, hotel hopefuls tried to make it work, five owners in five years. And still the building stood empty.

Mohammad Daoud is its latest owner, smarter and more determined than his predecessors.

His first move was to join forces with Best Western. He's been with them now over 15 years.

Then he renovated the hotel again until barely a vestige of the old school remained.

He instituted a shuttle service to the airports and city. And he signed on to take LaGuardia Airport's stranded passengers. He has garnered business from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Chamber of Commerce and the District Attorney's office, all because of his innitiatives.

A room at the Best Western here starts at $150. A room with a view costs twice as much. But all rooms include his Delux Complimentary Continental Breakfast, with fresh juice, donuts and bagels with a special bagel cutter.

And now the 71 rooms are always occupied.

Another Story from the Deli

2007-02-17T08:45:00.000-05:00

The deli was Derek's dream, and he made it his own.

He stopped stocking flour and sugar and anything else for baking. He left only the ready-made, the Yodels, Ring Dings and Devil Dogs. He wasn't interested in being a small grocery store.

He took out the radio that played oldies all day long. In its place he mounted a flat-screened TV for soap operas and baseball. He cleared out the bottles of Tide and Cheer sitting on the window shelves and tinted the glass so no one could see in. I didn't know what he was doing. I missed the sweet days of Mohammad and Ernesto when the sun shone across the linoleum floor each morning.

But Derek had his own vision. He may have lost me, but he drew in plenty of others. On Friday and Saturday nights his deli was packed with burly guys I'd never seen before. Word had gotten around. At Derek's, a man could buy a beer for a dollar and watch the game in the company of men. Who needed a bar?

Some days I'd hear the grates go down as late as eleven. But the next morning he was always there to raise them at six.

I wondered how long he could keep these hours. Despite his protests I thought they were taking their toll. He said he missed his family.

One day he admitted he wasn't making a profit. But after years of working as a moving man for a large company, he was determined to be his own man. Maybe he'd have better luck with another deli elsewhere.

I kept my doubts to myself. One year passed. Then another. And still another.

Then one bright Saturday, I saw Derek packing up. He had sold his deli, for the same price he'd paid. He shrugged. It could have been worse. As for what was next? He didn't know. But it wouldn't be working for someone else.

Another Life

2007-02-16T08:50:00.000-05:00

Alfredo is putting his papers away by the time I arrive. He's finished his four or so hour stint as a newspaper man, in picking them up in Manhattan and selling them here under the LIE. By the time I see him, he is almost out of papers.

When I ask him how the work is, he nods, smiles, $200 a week. He used to work another post, but he likes it better in Blissville. "More tips," he says.

I try to calculate how much he must walk because in the time we talk he hasn't stopped walking. He must walk for three hours without a break. Ten miles at least, I think.

He is readying to return to his apartment in Jackson Heights. He'll rest and play with his small daughter, his treasure. Then, later in the afternoon, he'll head out again, to his second job as a bartender at a catering service. The next morning he'll wake at 4:30 to start another day.

Alfredo wasn't always a newspaperman. He didn't always live here.

Alfredo is from Bogotá. He studied business administration at Colombia's most prestigious university, earned an MBA, and landed a job at one of the state banks. He managed something inside the bank, but I missed what. I just understood that he loved his job.

Then the bank closed. The state gave no one any warning or notice. One day Alfredo had a job, the next day he didn't.

The next six months he sought work in every corner of the city. The economy was falling and many other banks closed, too. He sold his car and moved to a smaller apartment. Finally, at the suggestion of his mother who lived in New York, he came north. That was six years ago.

When Alfredo goes home, the paper he takes is The New York Times. "It has many long words. But I try. Good for practicing for my English."

With English, perhaps someone will recognize his degree. And then he'll be able to return to the profession he loves.

First Snow

2007-02-15T08:54:00.000-05:00

Bent fenders, broken radiators, wrinkled doors, smashed trunks. And everyone in a hurry at the garage.

Some chauffeurs remembered to tip the mechanic whose cold hands worked to put the car back together again. Other drivers paid and fled, because there were passengers waiting and money to be made.

Slumber

2007-02-14T09:07:00.000-05:00

Valentine's Day 2007. The sleet scratches against the window pane while my beloved softly sleeps.

I no longer see the scar, left on the screen from a rock someone threw at our window. I no longer wonder who did it, nor even the why of his gesture. I have let it go.

The Day of Rest

2007-02-13T08:34:00.000-05:00

Blissville is home to over 25 garages, who, in turn, employ countless mechanics and bodymen. The car-repair business surely is the neighborhood's economic mainstay.

They open at 8:00 and close around 6:00. Only a few keep longer hours, working ten, fourteen or sixteen hour days, with two shifts for their mechanics. Six days a week they work these hours. They close only on Sunday.

Now there's a new garage in town, this one with a bold, fresh-painted front, a marquis even, and inside, a large skylight that illuminates a wide, clean space.

Being right off the exit, it's the first garage a person spots in Blissville. Men stand outside welcoming the lost commuter in need of a tire change.

Something about seeing them, gaily hailing customers, even on Sundays, made me happy. Anyone can make his home in Blissville, I thought.

I use Sundays to wander around the neighborhood. The streets are empty, the neighborhood still.

This Sunday my walk took me to a side street where yellow fumes poured out into the air. I walked closer. I peeked in. Someone was painting a car in the open, without any of the usual protections against toxic particulates. Even the bodyman painting wasn't wearing a mask. I walked around the block. Who was this?

The newcomer. Because it was Sunday, the day of impunity.

I Spy

2007-02-12T08:43:00.000-05:00

I've been on both sides backed in traffic when the bridge raises. Tankers, tugs and dredgers still pass through the Newtown Creek. Usually I'm stuck too far away to catch a glimpse of what is passing through, too blocked by the trucks in front of me to note if the boat is heading up creek or down creek.

Only a few times I've been close enough to hear the clanging bells signaling the gates going down and see a tower of a boat float through.

This the most modern drawbridge in Blissville, built originally in 1929 but overhauled in 1987. I used to think it was automated, propelled by a secret signal from whomever needed access.

But I've starting watching the cabin at the summit of the bridge. Sometimes the light is on, and sometimes it's not. On lonely Sundays I've seen the quick shift, from one person to another. I've even seen cars pull up to deliver what must surely be food. They keep to themselves. None of this sates my curiosity.

I am my mother's daughter, I think. She loved to drive by people's houses at dusk and gaze into their windows, imagining other lives, anything but her own.

The Things That Divide Us

2007-02-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

Dekek had once been a morning customer at the deli, one of the the green t-shirted men from Marathon Moving Company. They came in each morning for eggs and bacon on rolls. I greeted them all, but I confess, I never noticed Derek any more than the rest of them.

They were there the day of the O.J. Simpson verdict, too. That morning everyone had an opinion, and no one could leave without offering one. When it came to my turn, I said guilty, even as I recognized it as a test on race, not abuse.

Years passed. When Ernesto left, I boycotted the deli. Then word came that someone new had bought the business. I went to visit.

A man I vaguely recognized stood at the cash register. I introduced myself, and he told me his name was Derek. "You don't remember me? From Marathon?"

"You remember me?"

"I would never forget you. You were the girl who thought O.J. was guilty."

I shook my head, amazed he would have stored that casual moment, as if he had lifted the image of that day out of the stop bath and into the fixer for preserving forever. I looked back at him, unwilling once again to let go of the challenge. "Do you still think he's innocent?"

Years had passed and more evidence had come to light. He smiled. "Guilty with extenuating circumstances."

I smiled back. I didn't know him well enough to tell him about my own marital abuse. Besides, I had survived.

Darkness

2007-02-09T08:38:00.000-05:00

Most days, two ambulances stand across from the cemetery. Because they're only a few doors down from the Ladder Company, I used to assume they belonged to it.

But they are parked in front of an ordinary brick building with a red door that says "Bio-Recovery" in small letters. Nothing else gives away what the company does.

It was a unique concept, I suppose, a business dedicated to cleaning up after disaster, whether fire, flood, or death. A fire or flood can take up to three weeks to rid a home of mold. It requires bulky vaccuums and bags of soda. Death, on the other hand, takes just a day or two to clean. The fresher the discovery, the faster to disinfect.

When I visited, two bodies lay boxed in cardboard, suicides each. One was a young man who had come to the city from upstate. He lived alone, in his own world. But someone, at least, noticed his death.

The other, a man in his late thirties, was still not identified. He was so invisible to his neighbors that he had been dead for a week before someone called the police.

I like to think that in this city of eight million, we are not anonymous. But sometimes we are.

Is Blissville Real?

2007-02-08T07:24:00.000-05:00

"Why don't we meet in Blissville," I offer.

"What is Blissville?" the friend asks.

I explain that it's a wedge of land near the LIE and BQE, on the Hagstroms. Simple to find, easy to get to.

But Blissville must cast a spell of its own. How else to explain why so many friends, deliverymen and taxi drivers disappear in trying to get here?

Ernesto's House

2007-02-07T07:52:00.000-05:00

I met Ernesto at the Blissville Deli. His was the first face I saw behind the counter. There were days when I came in elated, and others when I entered weeping. Through it all, Ernesto never wavered in his kindness.

That was back when Mohammad owned the deli. Mohammad was from Kabul, an engineer lucky enough to leave before the Russians invaded.

Mohammad taught Ernesto everything he knew about the business. They became friends in the way an employee and owner can. Only Ernesto believed his friend should retire. He worried Mohammad would have another heart attack.

Ernesto is from Puebla. He lived in the house next to the deli with his wife and her four children. One year Ernesto and his wife had a baby together. At dusk on summer nights I would see him cradling her in his arms up and down the street.

If Mohammad could have, he would have sold the deli to Ernesto. But Ernesto had no money or saving.

Mohammad spent a year with prospective buyers before he sold it to David.

David didn't want to pay Ernesto the same wages. He didn't like the idea of Ernesto handling the money at the cash register. Or any of the others whom Mohammad had hired. One by one he let them go, keeping only Ernesto. But he reduced Ernesto's salary until finally he was forced to leave. And then year later, David sold the deli. He couldn't figure how to make it work.

And Ernesto? He found work at a deli elsewhere in Blissville, further away. He moved to a less expensive apartment on a busier street.

It's been four years now, and I still miss him.

Nostalgia

2007-02-06T08:50:00.000-05:00

Behind the counter at the Blissville Deli hang rolls of lotto cards in brash, electric colors. Oh, the promises they offer!

Once phone cards hung in their place. Some offered special deals for calling West Africa, some China. While others, the array of South American countries. Just buy a card, scratch off the randomly produced number on the back and get hours of conversation from home, the fine print said.

And if that weren't enough, now there's a machine that can produce a magic number for wherever a person could yearn for.

Warm Bread on a Cold, Cold Day

2007-02-05T17:15:00.000-05:00

It was a regular sight, the flat loaves of Afghan bread stacked on shelves to cool by the door.

But after September 11th, things changed. Its owner, Najib, lost his major clients, Zabar's, Balluchi's, Bloomingdale's and Market Place. People smashed his windows. Others, in the lost hours of the night, fired bullets into his door. For a while, Najib closed his doors, undone by the stress of it all.

Meanwhile, the police stationed a car on the hill by the cemetery to watch over the little bakery. They told him he should paint over Afghan. So Najib replaced Afghan with Kabul.

One day the police told Najib they couldn't protect him any more. He was on his own.

Najib kept on. His clients returned. And person can still walk in and buy a freshly baked loaf for a $1.25.

Who Is J. Michalos?

2007-02-05T01:02:00.000-05:00

Noticed on Sunday: two nudes wired to the gate of the large scaffolding lot on Van Dam, the painter's signature in the lower right corner.

A Summer's Day Gone

2007-02-04T18:31:00.000-05:00

Once there was a mulberry tree behind this fence, and a cedar, too, where a thousand sparrows made their home. They chattered each daybreak through all the seasons. No sleeping in, they chanted. Or so I thought.

Behind the trees stood a tank pool. Not that I saw it, because I didn't – but I heard the splashes and glee of the neighborhood's children on summer afternoons.

The owners of the house (on the left) had lived there for generations. And then one day they sold it and left the city. The new owner dismantled the pool and cut down the trees.

Now I listen to machinery in the mornings and wonder where the birds could have gone.

A Buyer's Market

2007-02-03T10:28:00.000-05:00

I met a scrapper one day. He was pushing almost ton of car parts (his words) in his shopping cart. He said not many could do what he was doing, not many would be able to push so much metal along the streets. He was wiry and muscled, and in the summer noon heat, sweat gathered on his arms and chest.

He slept on the street. Selling scrap was his job. He said he always looked for the best price. Maybe he went from shop to shop, because there's a scrap metal shop here in Blissville, and three more over the bridge in Greenpoint. Scrappers are a common sight here.

Years later a friend who works in recycling explained the economics: the tankers that arrive with manufactured goods from abroad (mostly China) don't return empty, but laden with scrap and paper. Paper is the city's biggest export volumetrically. But scrap is its most lucrative.

No Escaping the Present

2007-02-02T09:23:00.000-05:00

I lived here 15 years before I discovered the 1630 Club, just doors down the street from where I live. But Blissville is like that. It gives up its treasures slowly.

There, underneath the American Legion Post 1630, is a bar with vintage 1950s paneling. Photos of local heros decorate the walls. Some date back to the first World War. A juke box offers the songs from my parent's era. And a Heinekin costs $1, a whisky $2.

And behind the bar stands an autographed photo of Kelly Ripa, who once came in for a drink.

Footprints

2007-01-30T08:42:00.000-05:00

The snow that coated the sidewalks yesterday remains in our backyard. On the sunny side of the street no traces remain, as if it never fell.

When I first moved to Blissville, I kept to myself, barely glancing at my neighbors. I knew no one. I thought I was invisible. But I was wrong. They noticed my comings and goings, and knew who I was, too. I just didn't know it.

Other People's Narratives

2007-01-28T20:11:00.000-05:00

Who left the tepid coffee outside the check cashery?
Who pasted on the eight-ball?

Imaginings of Another Life

2007-01-27T18:06:00.000-05:00

So what is it like to live here? One donut shop, one hotel, one bar, one topless dance hall, one bakery, one gas station, one laundromat and one monument to one soldier who died in World War II. Quite enough for those of us who live here.

We Are Watched

2007-01-18T09:38:00.000-05:00

I'd never really thought there was much of value in the neighborhood, at least worthy of surveillance, until I spotted the camera. Perhaps it spotted me, too.

Selective Seeing

2007-01-17T10:32:00.000-05:00

The Manhattan commuter observes what she is accustomed to seeing. Whizzing by on her way to work, she'll miss the slow, tiny surprises of Blissville. But is she any different than any of us, so used to seeing what we know and recognize that we fail to see the changes?

God Bless the Van Dam Deli

2007-01-16T21:47:00.000-05:00

Some people say it's to be a hotel. Others speculate it will be an office building. And still others hope it will be apartments, even as they know they couldn't afford them. And so most have stopped paying attention to it. We've gone on with our lives. more loyal than ever to the Van Dam Deli.

No Return

2006-12-15T07:52:00.000-05:00

There was a time when there were no laundromats in Blissville. I had to cart my laundry to the single laundromat in a neighboring community. On Saturdays doing the laundry could take half a day or more. How we managed I don't know. Now we have seven in Sunnyside and one in Blissville.

But I've stopped spending even an hour there, not that I have a washing machine. One day four years ago, needing the time for something else, I dropped it off. I told myself that this was a single indulgence, that I would return to doing my own laundry the next time.

My clothes came back perfectly folded, as if they'd been pressed. The pile smelled, fresh, clean, pure. The sheets shone with whiteness. How could I go back to doing my own laundry again?

Erasures

2006-12-14T07:31:00.000-05:00

Only the old timers who still live here remember the days of PS 80 where boys entered through one side, girls the other.

Then the war happened, and many enlisted, most returned. The school closed in those years. The neighborhood changed. The Satmar bought the building a few years later and made it into a yeshiva.

Then they left, and the school stayed closed until someone came along and envisioned it as something else. And now it's a hotel.

Future Blissville

2006-12-12T08:31:00.000-05:00

All around me, buildings I have loved are coming down, and in their place new ones are going up.

This was once a stone mason's. He made gravestones for the cemetery a block away. We nodded to each other, but I never spent time with him. And now he's gone.

New Blissville

2006-12-08T07:11:00.000-05:00

One evening just out of the subway I met an actor. He was lost in Queens, trying to find his way to an audition for The Sopranos. I walked him to Blissville, to the studio.

I never knew if he got the part. I didn't have cable, and so I missed the series.

Old Blissville

2006-12-07T08:59:00.000-05:00

Rents all over the city are rising. In Blissville, too. After all, the neighborhood is just a mile from Manhattan, at the intersection of two major highways.

But some businesses hold on as they always have, and I cherish them.

Ghosts

2006-12-03T07:44:00.000-05:00

St. Patrick's Cathedral bought the land in 1848 to bury the overflow dying from the cholera epidemic raging through the city. By 1850 there were 50 burials a day there, most of them Irish. Half of those laid into the ground were children under seven. They had survived whatever the famines in the old world, but not life in the new.

Today it's Old Calvary Cemetery and dominated by grand monuments and mausoleums. In the early 1930's it was the resting place of certain mobsters such as Stefano Ferigno, Vito Bonventre, and Bonaventura "Joseph" Pinzolo. It also holds its share of silent movie stars, veterans, writers and politicians. (The more humble are buried in New Calvary now, which lies over the expressway and sprawls out through Maspeth.)

It's a landmark in Blissville, sitting at its northern border, only a block away from where I live. But I don't visit it much. I prefer to let its spirits lie within its walls.

Ticky Tacky Houses

2006-12-02T10:44:00.000-05:00

Aluminum siding, fake brick, molded stone – these are the architectural surfaces of Blissville. But whatever its facade outside, inside it's home.

Traces of History

2006-12-01T07:41:00.000-05:00

Eliphalet Nott bought the triangle of land that is now called Blissville with his partner Neziah Bliss. It was farmland then in 1837. But within twenty years the pastures were gone. Factories had sprung up along the river and the canal. In another ten years, the Civil War would arrive and with it, even more factories.

Apartments and houses grew up for the workers in the neighborhood. When they burned down, new ones sprung up in their place. And then a school. And a hotel, a few stores and bars on every corner. Then a railroad. Even a trolley.

When I first moved here, some of the roads were still cobble-stoned. Downpours left roads flooded. Some storms left Blissville a virtual island. Those streets are paved now, and now the rainwater drains with ease. But where are the remnants of that earlier epoch?

A Border Can Define a Neighborhood

2006-11-30T04:29:00.000-05:00

Robert Caro maintained that highways destroyed the neighborhoods of the Bronx.

I wondered if this was true for Blissville, out in Queens next to the BQE and the LIE. But the older men and women who grew up here in the 1930's told me the neighborhood was always a little marginal, divided more by industry (the horse tannery and beer breweries) than the LIE which had been there since 1939.

If you want to visit, there are two exits, Greenpoint Avenue and Van Dam (the last exit before the tunnel).

Leaving Blissville is as easy as arriving, with entrances to highways north, east, south and west. It's a vertible hub of highways.

But for those of us who live here the highways are just background noise, so ever present we forget their presence.

Process

2006-11-29T08:26:00.000-05:00

Every feels half-finished in Blissville. Sometimes I think it's a metaphor for my life. But perhaps another person would see it differently.

What's in a Name?

2006-11-27T18:17:00.000-05:00

Pull out your Hagstrom's, and page to where you can see the edges of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. Run your finger down the creek dividing Queens and Brooklyn, the Newtown Creek, and you'll find the red block letters. Blissville.

I found this marginal neighborhood in The New York Times nearly twenty years ago when looking for an apartment. The address I sought was a few blocks away from the creek. But anything is possible when studying a map. And so I imagined at least a peek of the canal from a window. I didn't realize that a few blocks could have been a few miles. The apartment faced front and back over a mish-mash of aluminum-sided houses.

But it had old wooden floors and light everywhere. The highway hummed in the background, but the streets outside were quiet, the neighborhood still. I took that apartment right then and there, and made my home in Blissville.