Every New Yorker without a car should force themselves to rent a car at least once a year, if only to reiterate the inherent smartness of living the rest of the year without one. Sure there is the initial joy of feeling like you can go anywhere! do anything! You feel possessed of the heady sense of self-determination that no-doubt drove our forefathers to wagon-train into the Great Unknown of the Louisiana Purchase only to settle in what is now Utah. Then you realize that all the assholes who get in your way on the subway are now in front of you, each in their own metal exoskeleton, and each of them with as little clue as to where they're going or how much room they're taking up than on the L train platform.
I just returned a rental car (from Image on Empire Blvd, cheapest Sentras in town!) and despite how useful it has been over the past four days, I am relieved to not have to drive one for the foreseeable future (at least, not in a major metropolitan area). We got the car to drive to Baltimore to surprise Jeannie's mom, who turned 80 recently. We snuck down and stayed at a friend's house for the night, then emerged while the Moms was at what she thought was a casual dinner at her friends' house. The surprise worked (video to follow, I left my camera in Jeannie's purse), and a lovely time was had by all. We got to spend some time with her and I got to see the many faces of Baltimore, something I had wanted to do since Female Trouble. A misreading of the map landed us in West Baltimore, which indeed does have that Wire feeling, although to me it looked a lot like Bushwick in places. Our friend lives in Hampden which is like a flower-filled and silent Williamsburg, with better architecture. In between we saw sweeping mansions and blasted out hovels, historically-significant buildings and an influx of skinny jeans.
The rest of the time we were driving, to Baltimore, to Bel Air, back to Brooklyn. I know Robert Moses didn't invent the superhighway but I still like to curse him every time I'm in traffic. There was a lot of traffic to and from Baltimore, mostly severe jams that lasted hours and seemed to have no cause whatsoever. Also there are like a bazillion tolls between Brooklyn and Baltimore, whose costs were only slightly less annoying than how the constant stopping and paying affected traffic. It's impossible to relax while driving, and relaxing isn't something I'm that good at anyway, so I'm still a bit frazzled from the trip.
One shining light was the fact that Costco is right off the BQE, and we got back into town just in time to duck and grab more cat food and dish soap. Our car was minuscule but it held all the crap we got there, as well as all the crap we bought at the Bel Air Target (I know we have one in Brooklyn but it's always so picked over). The Costco trip was something we needed to do anyway so it was a nice perk to get that out of the way. We dragged the stuff home and thankfully got a decent parking spot in front of the house. Despite the positives, I still can't see how people can live like this every day.
I took the car back in the morning, thinking the trip would be a nice cruise over to Crown Heights, but once again the Impossibly Stupid Drivers of Brooklyn were out in force. It should have taken 20 minutes, tops, to get over there but it took twice as long, due to bad drivers, a plethora of red lights, and perhaps a bit of my own poor driving skills. With the car dropped off, I walked around the corner and got on a 5 train taking me almost directly to my office halfway up Manhattan in less time than it took me to drive a few miles in the car. Now that's transportation.
I went on the latest BCUE walking tour of Bushwick, this time focusing on the southern tip of the neighborhood. Bushwick Specialist Adam Schwartz (of upfromflames fame) led some 20-odd folks around, getting down to the Trinity Cemetery and up to Irving Square Park, going through the side streets along the way. I'm not sure if the route was selected for this purpose directly, but we went by some lovely homes, and not the kind of thing I would have expected.
When I walk around my neighborhood, it's usually for some purpose like running errands or heading to the train. I don't get a lot of time to stroll around and just look at the place. Since I spend most of my time on Broadway, my view of Bushwick is loud and garbage-strewn, with a lot of shuttered storefronts. While this may be accurate, there's also a lot of charming homes and people hidden in there somewhere. It seems odd to have such a revelation since I've been living here for nearly two years; I realized that my estimation of the neighborhood has been, my block is nice but not much else is around here. But like my street, there's many well-maintained blocks full of beautiful houses. Thanks to the tour I was able to pay more attention to this fact, as well as pick up some history as well.
I was a bit disappointed to see only a couple of people I recognized from the bushwickbk.com, but this side of the neighborhood is not exactly a hotspot: most of the tour attendees appeared to be senior citizens, possibly residents of one of the former iterations of Bushwick. The meet-up was especially surreal because a) they were working on the street so there was almost no traffic, and b) the meeting spot at Chauncey is surrounded by new construction retail buildings, none of which appear to be rented yet. But when we plunged down the side streets, the scene changed immediately to the neighborhoody vibe that had attracted me here in the first place.
We saw several sides of the neighborhood, the beautiful churches, the Shell station that used to be Trommer's brewery, the houses on Chauncey Street with the weird little balconies. As we were covering the Our Lady of Lourdes part of the tour, we met Izzy, a local who led us to the church's current incarnation in a former Chevrolet warehouse off Bushwick Ave. The Most Holy Trinity Cemetery was founded on the notion that all people should be equal, at least in memoriam, so all the grave markers are made out of metal. A nice theory, but this leaves you with a field of rusty tombstones.
I had to ditch the tour a little early to go to a band rehearsal, but not before we saw an impeccably-appointed fire house, and spied a pigeon coop on top of a building on the corner of Eldert Street. Adam explained the sport of pigeon flying, in which competitors try to lure other people's pigeons (O.P.P.) into their flock. I knew about the sport after puzzling over the "Pigeons & Pet Supplies" store at the end of my block, but I've never seen a coop before. I probably just haven't been paying attention.
Ironically the tour ended up making things seem less exotic to me. Demystifying the neighborhood is a good thing since I feel like I understand a little more clearly how this spot I call home came to be. But knowing the history doesn't change the fact that it's still just a neighborhood, the changes that have occurred since I got here are just another drop in the bucket.
I forgot to take pictures of the kittens again, but I'll try to take some tonight. It's pretty fascinating to watch the progress. They are now a month old and are behaving more and more like cats and less like larvae.
Elsewhere in the cataverse, I thought another rundown of the main locals is in order. Many of the cats who hung around a while ago have not been seen in a while, while new cats have appeared to take their places.
Marbles. This is the cat that I thought was male at first, but she proved me wrong by getting pregnant. She hasn't given birth yet, we have tried to get her inside but she doesn't like to stay long after she eats. Then again, she will lie for hours next to our garbage cans, which apparently she prefers to our comfy chairs.
Gladys. This little female started showing up about the time we realized Marbles was pregnant, I had hoped to ensnare her and have her fixed. Then I realized she already gave birth and was currently nursing a litter. No telling how old they are or where they are being raised.
Jojo. This young male showed up the other day, barged into the house, flopped down on the floor and hasn't left. He will not take no for an answer and I'm a sucker for a gray tabby. Since we seem to have no choice in the matter it looks like we're keeping him. I wanna take him into the shop to make sure he's not harboring some horrible disease. He still spends nights outside until we can confirm his health and his ability to play nice with others.
Siamese Cat. This guy is a prizewinner. I don't think he's purebred because he's sort of muscular and stocky for a Siamese. But he's one good-lookin' cat. If anybody wants a Siamese, I'm working on taming him and will try to get him fixed. How does such a cat become a stray? Even if he's a mix, these cats don't usually come cheap. We came up with a host of theories, usually involving an elderly dowager who owned the cat, then died, leaving him homeless. That's probably not what happened, but at least it allows me to look at him and not necessarily think somebody tossed him on the street on purpose.
Chauncey. You may remember this guy, we haven't seen him for a long time. He was part of the whole crew of cats who used to come by and try to steal our cats' food. His sudden reappearance gives me hope that some of the other cats we haven't seen lately are still out there and okay. We're nearly positive he had an owner now, since he's been MIA for months and then shows up looking totally healthy. Unfortunately, the intervening months have shifted his personality from goofball older kitten to randy young adult. He got into the house and got into a fight with Lucy which I feel only happened because she's the only unaltered female around. It's too bad, he was a fun cat. This makes me want to take him in and have him fixed, even though he's not a stray. Imagine his owner's surprise when he comes home sans balls! Anyway it's an interesting ethical question.
And finally, the New Cat. Actually, there are at least two of them, as a pair showed up the other night. I think they're washing their paws in the water dish I leave out. They are enormous, by the way. What bizarre animals.
Also sighted lately include George, the tuxedo cat (newly-thin after giving birth, we assume), the flea collar cat, the second Russian Blue (who showed up the same day as Chauncey, they may both be owned by the same person).
Gothamist had another depressing post about the number of cats in the city. Damn there are a lot of cats here! And people do not seem to be getting any smarter. I commented that it seemed to me the best course of action for the city would be to offer free neutering to any pet owners. If people would only get their pets fixed, we wouldn't be up to our ears in the first place. Of course, there's already a huge number of wild cats out there too. But I don't think it's the feral cats who are dropping of boxes of kittens in front of every shelter in town.
Anyway, somebody responded to my comment with:
The ASPCA offers FREE and low-cost spay and neuter services six days a week for pet owners who are residents of New York City's five boroughs.
Low income pet owners in New York City's five boroughs with proof of public assistance such as Welfare, Medicaid, Medicare, SSI, Disability, Food Stamps, or Public Housing qualify. Unemployment does not qualify. If you do not have proof of public assistance, a $25 donation per animal is requested.
The ASPCA website has the schedule of spay/neuter clinic locations and more info on the "New York Services" page:
http://www.aspca.org
Or you can call for the schedule here: (212) 876-7700 / Ext.4303
Hey! Somebody is offering free/low-cost neutering, AND coming to specific neighborhoods! Now my question is, are they telling anybody about this? If you check the calendar, you will see the mobile spay unit does get around. In fact, it's been to Bushwick recently. Funny, I didn't hear about it. Oh yeah that's right, NOBODY TOLD ANYBODY THEY WERE COMING.
Maybe I'm not going to the right parties or reading the right magazines, is the SPCA promoting this fact in any real sense? I don't know what I want from them exactly, but I've been trying to find resources for "cheap fixes" for some time and this is the first I've heard of it. So I'm trying to think of ways to spread the word, aside from the mighty power that is this blog.
I really can't figure out the mindset of people who own pets but don't get them fixed, especially cats. Unaltered cats, male and female, are full of drawbacks. The males caterwaul, fight, and spray everything in sight. Females go into heat and then have kittens all over the place. Would the owners of animals who do this have the wherewithal to note when the mobile unit would be in town and get their cats worked on? Seems unlikely to me.
Worse is the fact that the next time the mobile unit comes to my neighborhood, it'll be on a workday, so only the unemployed or those in a position to take time off from work can make it. I know this thing has to roll all over town, but this still sucks. I think I can take the day off from my job, but lots of people don't have that flexibility. Oh well, it's a start.
All this cat stuff is grating on me of late, as I've noticed even more pregnant cats in the street lately. Apparently this is prime kitten season, but there's a lot of summer left.
... Plus we kind of took in another cat the other day, but that's a story for another day. Spread the word about the mobile spay unit and get your damn cats fixed!
As promised, less kittens and more big fat white cats in the back yard! We hit up Home Depot yesterday for the first of what will probably be several trips there to populate the yard with plants. they had a surprisingly good selection, both for the garden and the window boxes I bought months ago but have yet to fill and mount. And yes, the window boxes are the lame plastic kind, but that's all they had at the XXtra discount store. In fact, HD was running low on decent planters too, I saw only one window box worth anything, and it was too small. To remedy this, we tried to get plants that would spill over the edge of the box to minimize our gauchity.
For the boxes we got annuals (including some 'double impatiens' which I just think are swell), but everything for the yard is perennial, so that we may enjoy the greenery for years to come. Or until we win the lottery. We're sort of reaching at straws, picking out stuff we like with little plan as to where stuff will get planted. But I guess it can go anywhere for now, it's not like we're gonna run out of room with the few plants we have so far.
At some point I'll have to remove most of the mint plants that sprouted up everywhere. I hate to tear up a perfectly serviceable plant that is doing a helluva job covering the side of the yard, but then, it's not like it won't just come right back.
I still want to get some big planters and plant some tall skinny trees so that I may move them around the patio at will, but HD had only superlame planters left. What's up with the state of outdoor furnishings? It's like people want their yards to look like the Enchanted Fairy Forest of Faux-Bronze Pots with Little Fleur-de-Lis all over the place. To the customers' credit, it seemed all the plainly designed planters and whatnot had all been sold, leaving the fugly stuff behind. But somebody must be buying this crap. I'll take my plastic boxes over the ostentatious stuff any day!
I've got the rest of the week off! If only I could enjoy it, but the specter of the workload when I return will ruin my ability to savor my freedom. Unless, perhaps, I get really drunk.
On the Map Dept: I live on Eldert Street, a 6 block long stretch on the south side of the Shwick (let's get all the kids to start calling it that!). My end of the block is residential, rowhouses and an elevated train. Children run around the block and participate in activities that can only be described as "wholesome." They roller skate (with or without those shoes with the wheels in the back), jump rope, bike, play basketball, pick broomsticks out of the trash and hit each other with them. It's been pretty startling to see kids act like this, I thought kids just sat in front of the TV all day, absorbing Fritos and Hawaiian Punch while watching reality TV shows about people starving themselves. What I wanna know is, how do these nice little kids transform into the surly teenagers who hang out further down the block?
Anyway, that's life on my end of Eldert Street. On the other end there is an old knitting factory building that's been converted to loft apartments. The industrial side of Bushwick somehow made it this far south, seemingly only along the L train. The building at 345 Eldert is full of artists, and apparently a group of them are trying to get financial backers so they can buy their building from its management company. If successful, they will have a huge space in which the artists call the shots. Nice idea, I guess, but are they serious? The article in the Brooklyn Paper isn't clear how much of a joke this is, but the accompanying photo doesn't lend a whole lot of credibility to their crusade. They need some kind of venture capitalist to provide the dough to buy the place, who's gonna do that? This sounds like the 21st century version of the "Let's put on a show!!" type stuff from the 70's and 80's. I hope they pull it off, though I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time anybody thought of this ("Hey, we all live here, we're all into the same stuff, let's buy the building!"), but I dunno if anybody ever actually went through with it. Aren't there any wealthy, eccentric philanthropists anymore?
Still, the notion of a gaggle of artists trying to run their own building ... shades of Lord of the Flies? Speaking of which, are you aware there's gonna be a reality TV show in which a group of children live in the wild without adult supervision? See what the kids on my street are missing out on?
Ugh, the last few days have been miserable, and not just because of the rain. Sometime on Friday night, Decatur slipped out an open front window. We didn't realize it until the next afternoon. We started searching around the area, trying to apply some form of feline logic to the situation. It seemed to me she would have dashed across the street into the vacant lot/parking lot as it is easy to get into and hide. But the more we looked around, the more we realized how many places there are for a small animal to hide. Not the least of these is the church yard behind our house.
At this point we didn't know what window she went through, so we looked out in the back as well. The church has been out of commission for years and the lot (which contains both church, rectory house and driveway) is totally grown over and full of trash. So it's basically a stray cat's amusement park. I searched through it several times, rousting many other cats, but not the one I was looking for.
The circumstances surrounding Decatur's disappearance may shed some light on all this: see, on Friday night we let some cats into the house. One was that Russian Blue cat I spoke of earlier, the other was the Kool-Aid Kitten, who has an even better 'in' to our home: she's pregnant.
Last time Decatur was around a cat with kittens, she bolted and I didn't see much of her for over a month. I didn't know if this was the same situation or if she was really lost; she had never been out front before, and this weekend had been fraught with stuff to scare both cats and humans. Friday night there was some huge to-do down at the far end of the block; we heard what may have been shotgun blasts and soon the street was full of people, cops, ambulance, fire trucks. Not sure what the story was there but it was a bit unsettling. Saturday night as we were entertaining friends with discussions of how Bushwick is really much nicer than its reputation suggests, some dipshit started shooting a gun right outside our house. I'm still not sure what that one was about, I checked outside afterwards but saw no one in evidence, shooter or shootee (the next day the cops came and placed tiny orange cones next to each bullet casing; the bullets had shot out the rear window of an SUV).
So I thought Decatur might have been so spooked by the commotion that she had gotten herself really lost. Anyway, we kept up the searching and the fretting, I made flyers and posted to lost-pet web sites. But things wrapped up pretty much 20 minutes after I put up the flyers.
I noticed the parking lot gate was open, a guy from Luis Refrigeration was changing the tire of his company van, so I went in and asked if it would be okay to look around for the cat. I went to the back of the lot, which was covered with that bamboo-like stuff I so detested from my old back yard, shook a jar of cat treats and called her name. Like it was nothing, Decatur emerged from the underbrush. Just like that.
She was no worse for the wear, despite having been outdoors for all the huge storms of late. the tire-changing guy said that he had seen her sleeping in the cab of one of the trucks that park there. I brought her back inside and she seemed nonplussed to be home. In short, my sympathy levels dropped at light speed. Damn these cats!
Anyway, she's back home and she's being sweet again, so all is well. We have the house on lockdown so nobody's coming in or out for once. We're not sure what to do about the pregnant cat, I'm hoping to relocate her to the backyard, but she seems to be fine with living in the lot across the street. That may be the most ironic aspect of Decatur's sojourn: if she left because she didn't want to share space with the pregnant cat, why then did she move herself to that lot, where the very same cat spends most of her time? This is the logic you get from an animal with a brain the size of a walnut.
I'll have more stuff on the stray population, we have some real characters around here!
Freddy the Formerly Stray Cat scared us the other night when she climbed over the back fence and into the church yard behind it. She wouldn't come back, bedding down in an old milk crate and staring at me critically when I tried to convince her to come back inside. I feared we'd have to start all over with her, slowly luring her back to the house, but the next day she ran into the kitchen like nothing had changed. But it had ...
On a previous night, she got into a growling match with a big male cat that had traipsed into the yard. Now it seems she and this cat were pals; they slept next to each other in the church yard and hung out together on the patio. Not only that, but her ambassadorship seems to be attracting others. The other night we were sitting in the living room when I noticed a cat sitting on the kitchen counter. This is not unusual, but it wasn't one of our cats. It was a Russian Blue, looking pretty much show-quality, if a little on the thin side. He had come through the open window that sits above the counter. And Freddy's original friend kept lookout on the window sill. It then occurred to me that I had left that window open the night before in case Freddy decided to return, so they'd probably already done a dry run for this infiltration.
I don't know if these cats are strays (gently used) or feral (Born Free), but they bolted when we inched over towards them. The Blue cat really was a lot better-looking than pretty much any of our cats, it makes me wonder if I can trade some of them in. But we haven't seen it since. Meanwhile, the parade of neighborhood cats continues unabated.
Out on the street there are tons of street cats that appear to go from stoop to stoop looking for handouts. We keep getting visited by a calico kitten who momentarily garnered my sympathies because I thought she was covered in her own blood. I carried her out to the back yard and stuffed her full of cat food. Then I noticed the 'blood' splashed on her side much more closely resembled Kool-aid. I guess that's 'street smarts.'
Here's something to waste some time during your workday: Google Maps has added a 'Street View' feature that allows you to see a 360-degree panorama of your location. Granted, they haven't mapped out the most important areas of the city yet (namely, in front of my house), but I'm sure they're working on it. Oddly, they have actually mapped all of Bushwick Ave, which comes within a block of my house. This is odd because I would have thought they would have mapped out Broadway first, which runs parallel to Bushwick Ave. Then again, in my few driving experiences here, I noted with disdain how screwed up Broadway is. For such a seemingly vital thoroughfare, it's pothole-ridden and stoplight-laden. Anyhow, the photo above is a bodega I often frequent at the end of my block. My house is actually the other way down the street, but that view is particularly boring-looking under the eye of this map service. When they get down every street, though, you'll really have something. This should have some interesting ramifications. Now people can virtually walk down Atlantic Ave in Brownsville and East New York with impunity.
Meanwhile, it was a lovely weekend all around. One semi-disappointment was that the tree service guys never came back for all the remaining detritus. They had told me to keep a good portion of their fee as a deposit, which would be collected when they showed up to take all the vines and leafy parts. The logic involved was that this material needed to dry out to be easily handled (all the wood goes to a chipper and gets turned into mulch). Saturday came and went without a word, even after I tried to contact them. The forecast for Sunday was rain, so I got antsy, thinking if the whole reason they left this stuff was because it needed to dry out, getting rained on wasn't gonna help. So i got out the contractor bags and went to town on it. It wasn't actually that difficult, and soon I had almost all of it bagged. Now I just have to dole it out to the trash, and I've just saved a tidy sum on my tree/ladder issue. Still, it's not exactly good business practice to leave your customers hanging, especially since this guy was trying to sell me on many of his fence and deck-building expertise.
Tonight it looks like I'm going to see Babe the Blue Ox at Magnetic Field. I can't tell if it's gonna be crowded or what. Does anybody remember them? They haven't played a show in over 3 years, and I haven't seen them in 6. But they used to play my college town in the early 90's; Planet of Pants played with them at some point as well. I can't say I'm still into their sound nowadays, but they always put on a good show, and considering they were the first band I ever knew from Brooklyn, they had something to do with tempering my notion of what New York bands were like.
Anyhow, the 3 members of the band now have separate music groups they work within, all 3 of which are also playing tonight. Then BBOX is going on after, at maybe 10:30 or so (show's supposed to start at 8). First I'm going to Matchless to see Knife Crazy (I always picture the name with lots of unnecessary exclamation points, !!KNIFE!!!!CRAZY!!!!! ) from Buffalo. Where the hell is a full band gonna play at Matchless? The basement? I hope so.
One thing Bushwick has lots of is cats. I have seen actual packs of cats roaming the streets en masse, cats caterwauling on our stoop, cats sleeping inside our gate door. My neighbor complained of cat odor recently and had the chutzpah to suggest it was the fault of my own personal cats. There are literally hundreds of cats out on the streets marking territory or otherwise making their presence known, and MY (currently indoor) cats are stinking up the neighborhood?? See if I invite you to my backyard BBQ now!
We'll see if this little fella amongst the trashcans returns to woo Decatur. This guy, like many of the local felines, seems pretty tame. I wonder if it would do any good to get them into a trap-neuter-release program. If nothing else, I bet it would be a good way to get them to avoid hanging out near my house.
Oh no! Okay, I haven't been to the Brooklyn Inn in a long time, so maybe I'm somehow to blame for this, but I always liked that bar. Now comes word that the bar is to be repurposed into a bistro. What the fuck is a bistro, anyway? This sounds suspiciously like what happened to the Sweetwater Tavern in Williamsburg. It used to be a foul-smelling, graffitied-up liquor barn with a surly clientele, and then one day I walked by and it was a 'cute' little restaurant, with curtains and quaint lettering on the window. Eww.
The Brooklyn Inn wasn't all that special, but it had the sense to it that it had been exactly the same for decades. I don't even think it was all that cheap. But I used ot meet a friend of mine there after work, as it was equidistant from our respective homes. So now it's gonna be a frickin' bistro, I've moved to the other end of the boro, and my friend moved back to Cleveland. Is nothing sacred?
UPDATE: The bistro may not be true after all! What? Something on the Internet turns out to be false? What a world. Here's an Eater Update, sounds like it will remain a bar, albeit a lame one like Magician and Tile Bar. Whooppee.
This was quite a weekend, but before I get to any of that, I must mention the most bizarre moment of the past 48 hours. Saturday morning (er, afternoon), I was hanging out with the guys from the Makebelieves (they stayed at our house after their Glasslands show), and Al mentioned "What's with your neighbors and their big bird?" He directed me out to the back yard where, 2 yards over, there sat one ring-necked pheasant. Yeah, that's right. A pheasant. Whaa?
Sadly, my stupid camera's batteries were dead and we had no spares around the house (Incidentally, this makes me want to go on a long rant about how it's pissing me off that bodegas constantly sell mostly-dead batteries to me), but you must believe me that inside the chain-link fenced yard, strewn with garbage and renovation debris, a lovely example of this game bird strode about like he owned the joint. A stray cat was in the next yard, eying said bird with great attention. Reportedly, the cat had been in the yard but was actually chased away by the pheasant, which was somewhat larger than the cat.
According to my research though, this is not all that strange. Pheasants are all over the boro, and because nobody is really hunting them, they get along just fine. Still, there's something just plain odd about seeing such an animal in this environment.
I went on the latest 
When I walk around my neighborhood, it's usually for some purpose like running errands or heading to the train. I don't get a lot of time to stroll around and just look at the place. Since I spend most of my time on Broadway, my view of Bushwick is loud and garbage-strewn, with a lot of shuttered storefronts. While this may be accurate, there's also a lot of charming homes and people hidden in there somewhere. It seems odd to have such a revelation since I've been living here for nearly two years; I realized that my estimation of the neighborhood has been, 
I was a bit disappointed to see only a couple of people I recognized from the 
We saw several sides of the neighborhood, the beautiful churches, the Shell station that used to be 
I had to ditch the tour a little early to go to a band rehearsal, but not before we saw an impeccably-appointed fire house, and spied a pigeon coop on top of a building on the corner of Eldert Street. Adam explained the sport of pigeon flying, in which competitors try to lure other people's pigeons (O.P.P.) into their flock. I knew about the sport after puzzling over the "
Ironically the tour ended up making things seem less exotic to me. Demystifying the neighborhood is a good thing since I feel like I understand a little more clearly how this spot I call home came to be. But knowing the history doesn't change the fact that it's still just a neighborhood, the changes that have occurred since I got here are just another drop in the bucket.
And finally, the 
Last time Decatur was around a cat with kittens, she bolted and I didn't see much of her for over a month. I didn't know if this was the same situation or if she was really lost; she had never been out front before, and this weekend had been fraught with stuff to scare both cats and humans. Friday night there was some huge to-do down at the far end of the block; we heard what may have been shotgun blasts and soon the street was full of people, cops, ambulance, fire trucks. Not sure what the story was there but it was a bit unsettling. Saturday night as we were entertaining friends with discussions of how Bushwick is really much nicer than its reputation suggests, some dipshit started shooting a gun right outside our house. I'm still not sure what that one was about, I checked outside afterwards but saw no one in evidence, shooter or shootee (the next day the cops came and placed tiny orange cones next to each bullet casing; the bullets had shot out the rear window of an SUV).
So I thought Decatur might have been so spooked by the commotion that she had gotten herself really lost. Anyway, we kept up the searching and the fretting, I made flyers and posted to lost-pet web sites. But things wrapped up pretty much 20 minutes after I put up the flyers.
Anyway, she's back home and she's being sweet again, so all is well. We have the house on lockdown so nobody's coming in or out for once. We're not sure what to do about the pregnant cat, I'm hoping to relocate her to the backyard, but she seems to be fine with living in the lot across the street. That may be the most ironic aspect of Decatur's sojourn: if she left because she didn't want to share space with the pregnant cat, why then did she move herself to that lot, where the very same cat spends most of her time? This is the logic you get from an animal with a brain the size of a walnut.
Here's something to waste some time during your workday: 
