RUDIMENTS, pt. 513
(making hay on brennan's farm)
Hoping you've all seen
the photo of the Brennan
farm at today's 84th Street
and Broadway, in the late
1880's, I'll go on : In 1974,
there were two books out,
recently published, those
years, which I devoured.
One was titled, 'Will They
Ever Finish Bruckner
Boulevard?,' and it was
by Ada Louise Huxtable,
the Architecture Critic
for the NY Times. The
other was by Lewis
Thomas, entitled, 'The
Lives Of a Cell.' I was
enraptured of both, for
two different reasons, I
guess. They were both
well-written, and exquisite
to a fault. The thing about
Lewis Thomas' was the way
he presented humans as a
swarming-organism, getting
things done and making
things by their united
energies and chatter. His
clarion call sentence was
'We need more noise!' - said
as his refutation of those
seeking calm and discreet
quiet by which to settle
the world. His point was,
by NOISE do things get
done! Most certainly a
city argument. Ada Louis
Huxtable, on the other
hand, wrote notably of
NYCity structures,
design, construction,
utility, etc : the bricks
and mortar fabric of
the urban-scape.
-
A real focus of her
book was, for 1974,
the just-finished Family
Courts Building, in NYC,
which JUST happened
to be built at the Centre
Street area, which was
the smack-middle of the
old Collect. (Pronounced
'Ka-lect' and not 'collect,'
like 'collect'ing garbage).
It was a striking piece of
new architecture, back then,
in a thin veneer of a current
brutalist-style concrete and
glass assault. I liked it for
about half a year, and it
suddenly looked nasty and
passe. It's still there; been
re-freshened up once, and
slightly changed. In fact,
at that location is an entire
raft of NYCity bureaucracy
buildings, as I previously
said. And the irony of all
this is, of course the manner
in which the usurpation of
things by Government -
city, state, and Federal
(courthouses and jails
at various levels, etc).
The old Collect Pond and
the old Rutgers homestead
are long and sadly forgotten.
Bums hang about now, under
the overhangs or at the little
park where the final part
of the Collect was sent
underground. This is far
downtown, bums pee, crap
lounge, eat, sleep, drink,
and die there. It's (almost)
not even dangerous because
the lethargy that permeates
the place runs right through
all these half-dead guys. The
Tombs is right there too,
across the street. It's all
very weird but it's about
the richest piece of NYC
and Manhattan (pre-NYC)
arcana you cam find. No one
has ever chased me away;
you can sit, eat or drink as
you wish. There are bicycles,
or parts of them anyway,
still locked in place on the
chain-link portions of the
cautionary fencing around.
Benches are plentiful enough,
though they usually have
guys sleeping on them, with
bags and bundles of vagrancy
belongings, the likes of which
you've probably not seen
before. One time, late of
a long Summer day, mid
June, I know this because
of the Gooch's Garlic Run
motorcycle rally that had
brought me there. We'd
broken off from the mob
and went here to settle in.
There were a few bums
about, interested and
talkative, in their way,
about the motorcycles,
they began jawing - the
one guy had a swollen
tongue! I mean swollen.
It like filled his mouth
and affected his speech.
I'd never seen that before.
Wondering about it all,
I said to my friend nearby,
'Holy cow, how's that guy
eat?' He replied, 'Heck with
that, how's he French kiss?'
(Biker humor; you had to
be there I guess). The
Tombs also being right
nearby, there were also
classes of degraded people,
mostly black and white
(this was late 1990's) and
families, milling about -
the waiting area encompassed
an overhang, a covered area,
and a lobby/steps, where
people milled about for
visitation hours, hearings,
etc. Had Dante Alighieri
been here with me, I'm sure
we, together, could have
written a nice, late-entry
chapter to his famed book.
Inferno, or not. Police
personnel, motorcycles,
cop cars, prison-transport
vehicles, paddy-wagons,
chains, gates, beepers and
stingers. It was already a
version'd tease of Hell
anyway, and - with this
swollen tongue guy as
well - I fully expected
a swarm of Bosch freaks
to be leaving though the
main doorway (Hieronymus
Bosch, Flemish painter.)
-
Ok, this is leading to
my last point. All of this
is quite unique to me, how
all of this old, sacred, rare
landscape of old Manhattan
island has been desecrated
and pillaged as it has. Down
at the Collect, I almost want
to cry. Referring back to that
photo of the Brennan farm,
which location is not the
corner of 84th and Broadway,
it is here my story veers
wildly off - and I send
out my warnings about
tastefulness and offense.
-
In 1984, working with a
friend, (Jeff Gordon, of
w87th street, down near
the end, by Soldiers and
Sailors Monument and
Riverside Park - a very
nice, spaciously bold,
large pre-war apartment,
grandfathered through
his family, at those reduced
rents that allows - and
his wife, Juanita Elefante,
a Filipino who had lived
in the old San Juan Hill
projects and who was
displaced, along with her
family, when Lincoln
Center was built, on a
record LP project for
Polygram Records, I
arrived one day, about
three hours too early.
With that time to kill,
I walked around, stopped
in a bookshop or two,
and even dipped into the
Mystery Book Store (on
87th, dedicated to mystery
books). I went to the corner
of 84th and Broadway, and
waited some more - not,
at this time, knowing
anything about Brennan's
farm, nor what I was
standing upon. A long
white van kept driving
slowly about, stopping,
people got off, new
people got on, one
or two at a time, and
then it drove off again,
returning in 10 or so
minutes. 84th and
Broadway. Yep. Isn't
this all a kicker? You
know what was going
on? The well-appointed
van was carpeted and
set-up - it was a brothel
on wheels, grandly doing
its upper west side business.
On Brennan's farm.
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