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The Cat No One Wants
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...
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Parking Wars
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...
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The Elevated Train
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.
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Imaginary Forest
A copse of poplars, no more. Even so, it hums with monarchs, crickets and sparrows. Shhhhh. My secret Blissville.
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Discernable Text
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...
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Rats
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...
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News! News! News!
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...
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And What About Saleem?
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...
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Streetscape
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...
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No Good Deed
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...
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Waiting
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...
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Dial Tone
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...
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Found
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...
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Leftover Blissville
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...
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Guests
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,...
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Questions
A search on the Internet revealed nothing about the new Inn, and so it continues to remain a place of curiosity.
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Fabric
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...
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Mourning
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,...
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Gifts
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...
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Edible. And Recommended.
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...
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Economies
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...
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All in a Name
Found on Van Dam, on a house whose ivy obscured the laundry hanging in the Sunday sun.
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Ten Rows In
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...
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Imaginings
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...
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Ends
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...
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