Flatbush Summer
by
Stephy Scaglione and Ricky Thompson
The start of a new millennium was a great time to be young in Brooklyn. There I was, an artist among artists, thinking I had finally made it. Liberated from outdated Midwestern life. I felt like a Bohemian Mary Tyler Moore on the streets of Little Haiti.
By day, the sun played hide and seek around the buildings, bodegas, and synagogues. Dappled streaks diffused through the leaves of well placed trees. The summer light mixed the reds, greens, yellows, and blacks of ethnic flags and regalia, the culture danced in my brain.
Murals covered bricks like a string of canvases, painted by giants. Every so often, under overpasses and down forgotten alleys, graffiti artists painted different stories. Stark against their shady backdrops. Still triumphant in their vibrant expression, by the real and the talented, created under the cover of secrecy. A lexicon of tagged street names.
Women dressed to match the vibe. So vivid, the colors breathed life to their tired brows. Mothers carrying babies on their hips. Soothing their fussing by swaying to music that beats inside them. College girls in low rise jeans, their backpacks keeping time with their steps. The smell of their summer sunscreen makes me tingle. Women, all kinds of hues and temperaments, are the heart of Flatbush.
Walking past the childhood home of Jean Michel Basquait. Wondering how a house so normal could spawn something so exceptional. Row houses side by side. Their bay windows smudged by tiny fingers. Gated lawns full of Tonka Trucks and Big Wheels. Mothers, busy, through open kitchen windows, and kiddie art hanging on their fridge doors. That was my first gallery show too. Future Basquaits staring back at me with runny noses.
New York. Brooklyn. Flatbush. A village within a city of villages. Everyday my shoes beat the streets, paddling through a stream of people, who in turn all ebbed and flowed to their own rhythm. From my summer base I headed out in every direction. Often with no destination. I imagined as I walked that I was carrying a large strand of wool behind me as I wove a pattern through passers by. I felt I was weaving my own threads into the fabric of Brooklyn. Just by breathing, experiencing, walking. More often than not, my adventures involved grabbing a coffee on Utica. The spoon stood straight up in that dark black brew. That's the kind of coffee you can only get in Crown Heights!
So odd, needing so much less back then. Home was a couch in the windowless living room of Pete and Andy’s place at Flatbush Garden Apartments. I didn’t even care that I didn’t have a room. I barely slept. The nighttime noises sang to me. I often found myself on the fire escape, smoking a cigarette, taking in a nocturnal concert of city life. A symphony of taxi horns. A cacophony of Brooklyn beats. How can you think to sleep in a city like this?
At night I was Tron, contained only by the boundaries of neon that lined Broadway. I'm sure every generation says the same thing, but back then Flatbush Avenue was the place to be on a Friday night in your 20’s. The bars all flooded and overflowing with coeds from Brooklyn College. Up and down the Ave, girls’ dresses hardly covered what their mama gave them. Me, no longer feeling ashamed to watch women twirl and jiggle, my Midwest Ohio self seemed so gloriously far away. I felt reborn on Flatbush Avenue.
I was drunk with sensations, to me the drummers and sidewalk performers’ songs were more intoxicating than the well pours and dollar beers. Muscled up guys in low riders blared their own mobile concerts as they creeped along, shouting at skirts and ass. “Fresh and pressed” older men with new haircuts and vivid silk shirts darted into traffic; desperate to catch a cab to Bembe.
Bembe. The nights I could afford that thirty eight minute cab ride uptown was worth it. I would dance for hours with strange men who smelled like CK Eternity and stale cigarettes. Spinning me around to a rhythmic salsa beat. Hands in all the places you wanted them to be. The live band banging out tempos on bongos that felt attached to my hips. Too loud to make out dance partner's name. Too euphoric to even care about a name. Too poorly lit to tell if he was wearing black or blue. I loved how experienced dancers studied my Imperfect yet organic moves. Matching their skill to my chaos. I just wanted to dance!
Salsa dancing is a poetry best heard on the dance floor at Bembe. Out of breath, and waiting on my “wing-men” to get drinks, I fancied the African Tribal masks that clung to the brick walls inside. Candle light projected shadows of their features that warped and danced against the textures of the mortar. On more than one drunken night, I begged Pete and Andy to create a distraction, so I could walk out with one. No one would notice a pale white Midwestern girl walking out of Bembe wearing a Maasai mask. Andy was so tired of my antics. Regardless of my fruitless efforts to start my own Bohemian collection with Bembe's wall décor, the night always ended too soon. Pete and Andy usually dragging me off some “new friend” at last call.
It's taboo to name your favorite corner cafe – it'll just be gone the next time you visit. With over 20,000 places to eat in NY, it could move and you would never find it anyway. Oh I miss the all night spots for night owls like me. Literal greasy spoons offering eggs and toast however you liked, just don’t ask for poached. Early industrial era dives with silver haired waitresses pulling the late shift so they can help with the grand-babies. As I walked in, I would glance at the faces that lined the booths and counters during the hours where I stuttered to say either “night” or “morning”.
All kinds of faces. Dancers like me. With flat hair and smeared liner. College kids drying up. Trying to push through to that 6am deadline. Writers and artists, studying people like me. (I wonder if I’m in their stories too.) People with no where else to go. Brooklyn was still awake while most people slept. Pit stops open all night for full bellies, then pushed back out onto the streets. For me, that meant headed home. Pete and Andy always took a cab but I loved the cool, quiet of Flatbush mornings. Something about Brooklyn felt magical at dawn. I loved walking home as the sun started to crest over the East River. It took about ninety minutes total to walk from uptown to Flatbush Gardens. Franklin Avenue took me most of the way home.
Along the way ancient metal slides beaconed from playgrounds every few blocks. As I approached the rusty leviathans, ghosts scurried ahead of me, leaving vacant swings swaying slightly in the growing light. The tired swings creaked in the slight breeze, waiting patiently for children to awaken on a sunny Saturday morning. Rows of copy-cat houses and the steeples of churches stretched as far as the eye could see in Lefferts Gardens.
I watched as workers rolled up the steel curtains at Labay Market. Caribbean street vendors getting ready to sling breakfast to passersby. The smell of fresh fruit and fish lingered long after. Men on corners holding coffee returned my smile. Catching them turn to watch me out of the corner of my eye. “Hey, girl!” Such a tingle of confidence! But keep walking,chick, it’s a long walk. By 8, I hit Little Haiti, and I was exhausted. Home just in time for two lovely hours of sleep before work. My kids laugh when I say we are not the same.
When I now hear someone speak of Brooklyn, I see the Brooklyn of my young adulthood. (Have we both grown in the decades since?) I used to detour and walk past the abandoned Kings Theater. I was bewildered, gazing at the mildew-warped face of Pan staring down at me. It was sorrowful to hear the low crumble of stucco crashing down from its once grand visage. Maybe I stood in the same spot as some ghostly flapper, both of us flicking the ashes of a filtered cigarette with a sleepless hand. If I paused long enough, I could hear the organ too. I closed my eyes in a half sleep stance and imagined the drinking fountains inside. I had only read about them in books but they called to me still in their half condemned state. DRINK AND BE REFRESHED.
Now, a quick Google shows the glory of Kings Theater, now restored for my children's' children to admire. I used to close my eyes and dream of seeing The King revitalized. How thrilling to scroll over cascades of velvet hanging from opulent ceilings. I'm sure the whole structure sings when the grand organs fill the hall with sound. Waves of crushed velvet chairs forming a soft sea of red. And the fountains, they continue to refresh. Well done, Brooklyn!
I moved on, moved upstate. I rebuilt too, from that fragile but gutsy person. Now, I’m refreshed by waterfalls. But I used to wonder where I would go from that moment. The rising heat of a Flatbush Summer had rejuvenated me. Burned from within me the mental shackles of teenage Ohio. Oh, if it is said that I was meant for something great, then Brooklyn was the start! It was there I dared to drink and be refreshed in both worldly awareness and the confidence of youthful exuberance. Look at us both now.
In my youth, back home was a constant struggle for what I wanted to be, what I was, how saw myself, and finding someplace where I belonged. What was surprisingly comforting for me was that in a “village” this big and this busy, I could find that place. I loved passing through the stone gates of Holy Cross Cemetery. It was an oasis of stillness, the complete opposite of the city around it. The opposite of me. There I gathered myself in the shadows of marble monuments. “Live now, rebuild and enjoy,” they whispered to me, “BE.”
I still carry the lessons from that summer in Brooklyn with me. The art fills my thoughts. It’s often a reference in my own work. The music still plays strong within me. When I'm stressed with kids and career, I close my eyes and take detours though Prospect Park. Before long I am dancing under the falling petals of the Botanical Gardens. Even today, the smell of jerk foods sends me to Little Caribbean. There, the sounds I recall are so distinct -the popping of plantains on the little grills and the old man stocking his ice cream trucks and driving to deserving children–I have it all mentally scrapbooked. Just as I wove myself into the fabric of Brooklyn, she added to the fibers that make me, ME.
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