My Life In Brooklyn

Every year I’ve been adding more and more gardening containers to the ten-foot concrete and fenced in area that is called my front yard.  Yes, the pee tree out on the sidewalk offers a goodly space as well by way of the tree pit, but that is much riskier to work with, as it is necessary to dodge all kinds of cultural artifacts that appear within its boundary.  I keep adding more containers, fill them up with potting soil and try to encourage plants to grow.  It actually gives me a great deal of pleasure and often, in the cool of the evening, I sit on the stoop and enjoy the healthy green.

This was the situation Friday evening.  My husband LL and I sat on the stoop enjoying – well life I guess – when we noticed a big guy across the street duck into my neighbors yard and commence climbing over the scaffold that has been temporarily erected while the façade of his brownstone is being improved.

Allow me to mention that the building next to the scaffolded house is our “problem building.”  Drug dealers hang out there all day long peddling their wares, and though most do try to keep business hours, there are those on the night shift too.  They are a  noisy, profane, crew who are well organized, you can see the same cars (read: customers)  frequently stop to buy, characterized by the window-rattling bass playing on the car radios.  There is also a basketball hoop in front of this building, and though folks in Carroll Gardens received huge fines for flower barrels blocking the sidewalk, in our case the police seem to think this hoop is just fine.  Even when there is a rowdy game at two a.m.  The sidewalk space in front of Problem Building is also known to host impromptu dice games, all-night stoop parties and bar-be-cues. Aside from the noise/nuisance factor these events translate into garbage, broken bottles and our front yards used as urinals. This building contains a warehoused apartment (meaning it is empty and not being rented for some reason) on the first floor.  It’s been empty for quite a few months now. The only other fact worth mentioning is there is an alley between Problem Building and Scaffolded Building that is enclosed by a tall iron fence which is locked.

And so we sat on the stoop and watched Big Guy climb the scaffolding and deftly hop over into the alley. We didn’t think much of it because there are frequent incidents of basketballs being lost in that area and the fence climbing to retrieve the ball is fairly common.  But Big Guy didn’t look for a basketball at all.  Instead, two giant strides and a practiced leap had Big Guy standing on the concrete window sill of the warehoused apartment.  Another jump and we watched Big Guy dive head first into the empty apartment in what seemed to be an excellent gymnastics maneuver through the upper half of the window we now realized was open.  He was inside the empty apartment – Big Guy, mind you, does not live in Problem Building at all.

LL and I exchanged glances of pure astonishment.  There was a sense of admiration in the physical capability of Big Guy, but then he was also breaking and entering at the same time.  We watched, our eyes observing both the now open window top and the front door.  We waited 2-3 minutes, and though LL suggested perhaps all Big Guy really needed was a bathroom stop, he did emerge from the front door of Problem Building.  He glanced around, catching the eye of two lackeys, each did a quick look about to see who might be observing and they all entered the front door, presumably to utilize the empty apartment.  Perhaps for a shareholder’s meeting.

This is my life in Brooklyn.  One part of it anyway. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 12:36 am and is filed under Brooklyn, Crime. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.