Andrew Fleming

October, 2011

It was a brisk but wholly sunny day in October in Germany, and Lynn and I are standing on a train platform in Nuremburg. We were traveling between Munich and Frankfurt, at the end of a 10-day trip across much of southern Germany, on our way to the airport to head home. We're standing on the platform because the super-fast, super-fancy high-speed train that shoots between the capitol of Bavaria and the capitol of the Euro is quite expensive. The local trains, that connect all the smaller towns and cities in between, are slow but much more affordable. We're switching from one local train to another.

When I was in high school, I took classes in the German language. My school offered four languages: Spanish, French, German, and Russian. Many of my friends took Spanish. One in particular tried in vain to get me to take Spanish as well. It's the most widely-spoken language on the planet, she would say, it will certainly be the most useful to you in the future. Ah, but German, I would invariably reply, is so much more fun--and then proceed to shout something in the language just to demonstrate how intimidating it could sound.

When I finally did travel abroad for the first time (Canada doesn't count), it was to Mexico. Then another trip to Mexico. Then my first inter-continental jaunt took me to Chile. In more recent trips, I've gone back to Mexico, then Peru and Bolivia. My next big trip takes me through Argentina. Seeing a pattern? My friend was right about Spanish being more useful.

Nonetheless, I took German in school, and loved it. It was a language that made sense to me; every sentence part had its place. There are rules, and those rules are not broken. The German language is so very...well, German. It was great. I thoroughly enjoyed learning and speaking the language, and my few friends who ventured into those classes with me kept me practicing often.

For a while, at least. In college I was too wrapped up in classes for my major to play with languages. And though I did have a close friend who also spoke German, we found that we did so less and less. So it was nearly eleven years after my last German class that I finally made it to Germany. I found that the rules still made sense, and I could still build basic sentences. My vocabulary, however, left much to be desired. Perhaps not too surprisingly, I met an alarmingly small number of Germans who sounded like my teacher, or my high-school native-English-speaking classmates. I struggled through the trip, being able to make simple sentences, and to understand more than I could speak--but not able to have very meaningful conversations. Sure, I got my general point across, but the person I was speaking with tended to mercifully switched to English when, if not before, I exhausted my abilities.

But on this beautiful, sunny, and only a little chilly in the shade day, my need for German language skills was nearly at an end. In 24 hours' time I'd be back on a plane home. I was standing on the platform, luggage in hand, with all the other people who were waiting for the next train.

Then, the train pulled up the platform, and we all shuffled with our luggage and families over toward the doors. "Sorry," said a middle-aged woman near me who must have bumped into me or my bag, though I didn't feel it. "No problem," I replied. Germans are so polite, I love that too. The doors of the train cars didn't open. Instead, the train started to back up slowly. "Strange!" the woman next to me remarked, as we all started chasing the doors down the platform a ways. The train stopped, we arranged ourselves in front of the doors, and I said to her, "This spot is better anyway!" Then the train pulled forward again, just a little. "Here we go again," she said to me, laughing. "We must go back and forth a few times so they know we really want it," I joked, and we both laughed and boarded the train.

It was about this time that Lynn asked me what we were talking about. I realized, only then, that our entire exchange had not been in English. I had a little conversation,  shared a joke and laughter with someone in their language, and she never felt the need to switch to mine. And I couldn't have been happier for this simple, light-hearted exchange. I could have hugged that woman right in doorway of the train car. Ah, but that would not have been very German at all.

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(Note: This isn't current, but I find I'm just not writing as much as I used to--and I'd like to change that. So while I often sit with a blank page and ponder what to write about only to give up and go surf Facebook, I am instead going to try and get myself to recount past stories. Just to, as they say, get the juices flowing.)

Growing up, our house had cable TV for approximately three months. It was while we were living in an "in-between" apartment while the place we were moving to was not yet ready, and it happened to be cable-ready (which was a big deal in those days). So we had a little cable box on the top of our TV. And with it, I watched "Ren and Stimpy" hour after hour. That's about it.

As a kid, I barely remember anyone having cable TV. In the olden days (oh no, I'm turning into one of those) our TV had rabbit-ear antennae that just barely picked up five or six channels. The major networks were on the VHF* dial; CBS on channel 2, NBC on channel 4, and ABC on channel 7. On the UHF dial were channels 20, 50, and on a clear day, 62. I don't remember too much about those channels, except that Star Trek was on one of them. And really, what else mattered?

Once the 90's hit, it seemed cable was everywhere--or at least, everywhere in my friends' houses. The number of channels even on broadcast TV exploded, merged, bought each other, and added off-shoot channels. Somewhere in there was the short period of "Ren and Stimpy" mentioned earlier, and that was exciting. Literally tens of channels! But when it was back to broadcast TV afterward, I didn't really feel like I was missing anything.

In college, my freshman dorm room had the campus cable. My room-mate brought a TV, and we hooked it up, and watched it once. One movie, about an hour and a half. I later moved off-campus, and though I had a TV, I had neither cable or rabbit-ears, so it was in practice only for watching movies and sitting drinks upon. Besides, the internet was the only necessary source of news and entertainment by then.

Moving to NYC meant no television at all for years. Not that it was unavailable, mostly because I was busy, a poor grad student, and had better things to do. Not until I moved into 90 West, and even then only because my room-mate had already had one, and it was hooked up to cable. As silly as it sounds, I was surprised at the sheer volume of content available. Hundreds of channels! So many, in fact, that I didn't watch any of them. Instead, I signed up for Netflix.

But ever since, I've had cable. Why? Because it came with internet access, or there was some promotional deal, or something convinced me that it'd be more effort to get rid of it than to keep it. But we don't really watch anything. Sure, there are some good shows on these days, but they're also on Netflix, Hulu, or even the websites of the TV networks themselves. We end up turning on the ol' tube (which is funny, because I haven't had a TV with a cathode ray tube since college) whenever we have nothing better to do. This invariably means we end up watching HGTV (or worse, "How Clean is Your House") until we can no longer stand it.

So, we cut the cable. There are tons of people "cutting the cable" these days, in protest to the rising prices or the monopolies of most cable providers, or as a statement that the internet provides the same content for less. We certainly aren't going to miss the higher bills, and we certainly will get whatever shows we really want to watch through the internet. But mostly, we're getting rid of it just because we don't watch.  Or at least, we're ashamed of what we do watch.

And if our home is a little quieter for it, well, that's hardly anything to complain about.


* For those who may not remember, back in the day TV was an analog phenomenon, with VHF (Very High Frequency) and UHF (Ultra High Frequency) defining two ranges of radio frequency used to broadcast television signals. I remember being incredibly excited at the discovery that TV and radio were in effect the same thing. I used to try and impress my friends by tuning the analog car radio tuner all the way down to the bottom of the FM range, where you could sometimes pick up the audio from the TV stations. To my great surprise, this never seemed to impress them.

I find that when it comes to communities, I like the extremes. Give me a rural, wooded, empty landscape. Or New York City. Either works for me. The in-betweens, "small cities," and especially suburbs, just don't feel right to me.

On a recent weekend, I was spending time in Vermont. In many ways, it felt like Michigan's UP: small towns, rough landscape, and hardy locals. Lynn and I strolled through tiny towns, ate lunch along a crystal-clear river, and rode horses through mountain forests.

Immediately upon returning to the bustling metropolis of NYC, we had to quickly transition back to city folk. We had massages at a spa (we were celebrating our second anniversary, after all). That evening we attended the film premier of "Stone" at the Museum of Modern Art. Edward Norton was there (didn't meet him), and apparently a host of other people I probably ought to have recognized (didn't meet them). The after-party was at a swank hotel near the main public library building (think Ghostbusters) where the food was amazing, drinks unending, and coolness factor far out-matching myself.

But it was fun, all of it. I enjoyed horseback riding miles from nowhere as much as attending the premier in the metropolis. And somehow, putting them within 24 hours of each other reminded me why the two places I've explicitly chosen to live are on the opposite ends of every spectrum.

If nothing else, the extremes are interesting.

A while back, I received a Key to the City.  Not quite the gold key in the nice box presented by the Mayor, but rather, a normal key that opens locks all around the city.  It's the Key to the City project, from artist Paul Ramirez Jonas.  The concept is two-fold: to bestow keys to the city to everyday people for their everyday works, and to give the city back to those people by making the keys actually unlock something.

When I went to Times Square to get my key, I had no idea the production that it would it be.  There was a little park set up in the square, and those present were paired off if they didn't come with someone.  I was paired with a sweet woman named Julie, and we chatted as we waited for our turn.  Finally, we went into the little park together, and met volunteers running the project.  They pulled out huge ledgers for each of us, and we went through a whole ceremony for bestowing a key to each other.  I gave her a key for her contributions to theater in New York (she's worked in theaters all her life).  She gave me a key for courtesy and caring, saying I was the nicest person she had met that day. (Aw, shucks.)

What do the keys open?  With the key, we also got little passports that have descriptions and maps of how to find the locks, but not what's inside them.  There are twenty-four locks spread throughout all five boroughs.

This past weekend, two good friends of ours were in town.  And as part of a real NYC adventure, we decided to start finding some locks and see what happened.  We hit all four of the locks in Queens, along with another friend who had recently moved there.  We started in Astoria at the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden, which is exactly what it sounds like.  Grilled brats, large mugs of beer, and all in a nice big open space where they have music and dancing in the evenings.

Hey, Pops
The first lock was in a place I'd been meaning to visit since moving here, the Louis Armstrong House Museuem.   It's way up in Corona, a little ways from LaGuardia airport.  The tour we took was great, and the house has been amazingly preserved from when Louis and Lucille lived there.  As a trumpet player myself, it was amazing to see so intimately into the life of an idol, though Lucille clearly had all the say when it came to most of the house!  Still, Louis had a den on the second floor in the front of the house that was his, and you could almost feel him there.  His big desk, his tape recorders (he recorded everything, even everyday conversations), the pictures on the wall, it was all him.  There's a little balcony off the front where he'd play to the neighborhood kids.  The museum had taken some of his recordings from certain rooms and put in speakers to play them in those rooms.  In his den, for example, they played a recording of him sitting at his desk playing his horn along with some music.  You could feel his energy and charm, and I just wished I could have seen him in life.

Louis was undoubtedly a character, too.  He loved bawdy jokes, and collected them like stamps.  The museum played one recording from the living room, where he had his niece recite "Mary Had a Little Lamb."  She did, then he replied with his own version: "Mary had a little bear, and he was mighty fine. And everywhere that Mary went, you saw her bear behind!" to the laughter of his niece and himself.  He laughed a lot.  He also was a big proponent of laxatives, and absolutely swore by Swiss Kriss herbal laxatives, going so far as to give them to the Royal Family when he went to London.

The basement of the house has mostly been turned into the exhibition space for the museum, showing off pictures, a trumpet, clothing, and other effects.  But one room has been left exactly the way it was when Louis himself used it for extended periods of time with his Swiss Kriss.  This room is not on the tour, and not open to the public, but the Key to the City opens the door.  It's his downstairs bathroom.  And sitting on the sink is a photo of him in that bathroom, facing away form the camera, with a clear view of his--ahem--bear behind.

Daniel Dromm's Flag
The second stop was the office of New York City Council Member Daniel Dromm, in Jackson Heights.  His office was closed, being the weekend, but the key unlocked a display case next to the front door.  The case displays an American flag, but behind it previous key holders have left messages and small tokens.  It was a neat, quick stop, but we were admittedly distracted by the myriad of ethnic shops and restaurants on Roosevelt Avenue.  Queens is one of the most diverse boroughs in the city, and neighborhoods there change drastically from generation to generation.  It's fascinating.

Nixta-what?
Not realizing the geography of our trek, we then ventured back to Corona for stop number three, Tortilleria Nixtamal.  This place was awesome.  We got a table to sample the food, placed our orders, and then asked where the lock was.  We were escorted to the back and told that our key would unlock the two doors there, and we could pick which one.  (The one on the right was the bathroom.)  We opened the door on the left, and followed the stairwell on the other side down into the basement.  We squeezed through sacks of fresh corn piled up to the ceiling and into the small kitchen, where everything is made from scratch.  Our waitress showed us the machines for washing the corn, and cooking it into nixtamal.  They then crush this into a dough, and press out flat circles.  These are then tossed onto a skillet for a few minutes, and become delicious corn tortillas.

We were already impressed and thought this was a pretty amazing process to see first-hand.  Then our waitress left us with the cooks, who gave us a bowl of nixtamal and said we were going to make our own tortillas.  We had fun rolling out our tortillas tossing them on the skillet.  I tore my tortilla on the skillet trying to turn it, but everyone's came out great.  We all nibbled on our freshly-made tortillas back up the stairs to our table, where we had some great food (the tostados were fantastic).

Back in Time
Having already eaten our way through half of Queens, we headed down to Forest Hills (home of Peter Parker!) for the final stop of our adventure.  Eddie's Sweet Shop has been serving up homemade ice cream at their soda fountain counter for over one hundred years.  Just walking in the door feels like traveling through time, and you're slightly embarrassed by your own funny clothing.  But the sundaes more than make up for it.  Here our lock opened a small safe box the staff held behind the counter.  Inside were notes and memories of other key holders who had come before.  Some were inspirational snippets, some were professions of love, and some were simple drawings.  We each wrote our own notes, ate our ice cream, and reflected on our exhausting but wholly enjoyable day in Queens.

*Update: Now with a map!

View Key to City - Queens in a larger map

I've spent a lot of time lately explaining the difference between a co-op and a condo here in NYC to friends and family.  In a nutshell, it breaks down into what you own.  In a condo, you own your unit from the walls inward.  It is yours, you are a property owner, and you can (generally) sell it to whomever you like and do whatever like to it.  In a co-op, you own a share of the controlling interest in the building proportionate to the size of your unit, and you hold a permanent lease on your unit to live in.  So the apartment is not your property, and the co-op has a great deal of say in who you can sell it to and what you can do to it.

Fortunately, I now live in a condo.  Condos are rare in NYC, for reasons that aren't particularly clear to me.  Co-ops seem to be the norm in this town.  So I consider myself pretty lucky to have found a good one.  Still, both condos and co-ops are overseen by a Board of Directors.  In a co-op, the Board has near-limitless power, since they control essentially the whole building.  In a condo, the Board is not quite so omnipotent, but is still responsible for building management, maintenance, and generally keeping all the residents happy.  After all, someone needs to actually run the building.

Last week, we had our first Unit Owners meeting, where everyone in the building got together for the first time.  At this meeting were the Sponsor (the developer who built the building) and his lawyer, who officially transferred control of the building to the Owners (us).  The first thing we then had to do was elect our three-member Board of Directors.

At this point I should mention, everyone in this building is pretty cool.  Everyone I've met so far has been really nice, very open and welcoming.  It really makes me feel even better about living here.  Many of them are just like Lynn and I, young first-time homeowners.  I suppose that last one is actually the one possible downside: no one has owned an apartment, so no one has any condo or condo board experience.

Still, we had to elect a Board, and elect one we did.  Five of us volunteered, based on interested more than experience (since there was none among us).  We held sheets of paper in front of us with our unit numbers, and stood in a line along the wall in front of everyone, like a police line-up.  We went down the line telling a little bit about ourselves and what experience might be relevant.  And everyone voted on the neighbors they just met, based solely on those few minutes of talking.  I was elected, along with another guy on my floor, and the guy who lives directly above me.  The only thing we knew was that we had our work cut out for us.

And it's true.  We met for the first time, and are still in the process of even identifying all the things we have to take care of.  It's a long list that includes everything from hiring someone to take out the trash to dealing with bank accounts and financial stability and buying a grill for the roof deck.  But though I'm not exactly sure what's next yet, I'm really confident about this.  The three of us are all on the same page, we get along really well, and we're all having fun figuring out what we're supposed to be doing.  It'll be an interesting experience, but a good one.

Best of all, we're creating a community in our little building.  And we're off to a great start.

When I first came to NYC, back in 2003, it was my dream to get an apartment right in the middle of things.  I idolized, as so many transplants do, the Village.  Little did I know what geographic trouble I was getting myself into.  The original Village, Greenwich Village, was centered in what is today known as the West Village.  To the east, appropriately, is the East Village--which was originally part of the Lower East Side but renamed for real estate appeal long ago.

I settled in a little studio on Waverly Place and Mercer St.  When people asked me where I lived, I said "the Village," marveling at how incredibly cool that sounded.  But then they'd say, "East or West?" and I was stumped.  Some people insist the dividing line between East and West is Broadway.  Others swear that it's Fifth Avenue.  Maps, even official-looking city maps, are just as fickle, saying one, the other, or sometimes referencing both.  Mercer Street, were I lived, is right in between Broadway and Fifth Avenue.  Thus, each time I tried to describe where my little apartment was to anyone who lived in the city, it generally sparked a long--and often heated--debate on the boundaries of the Village.

Never one to shy away from cartographic controversy, I now find myself in a similar neighborhood border situation.  Our new apartment in Brooklyn sits between two prominent north-south streets, Court Street and Smith Street.  These streets are both labeled by several sources, maps, neighborhood guides, and city resources as the dividing boundary between the neighborhoods of Cobble Hill to the west and Boerum Hill to the east.

Cobble Hill was originally known as Ponkiesbergh, and was settled in the 1640's by the Dutch farmers in the area.  It gained its current name from being a small hill (the highest point is at today's intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street) where cobble stones were disposed.  These stones were used as ballast in the trade ships coming from Europe, and were not needed when the ships left New York laden with American goods, so they were dumped in what was then just outside of the town of Brooklyn.  Althought grouped into the generic "South Brooklyn" designation with everything else south of Atlantic Avenue for many decades, the name Cobble Hill has been in city documents since as early as the 1840s.  The high point itself was even used as a fort during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, though nothing remains of either today.

Boerum Hill, meanwhile, has a slightly more quiet history.  The area was named after the Boerum family whose farm covered most of the area in colonial times.  Its development followed closely along with Cobble Hill.  Some folks will tell you the name "Boerum Hill" is a product of gentrification in the area, like DUMBO or calling Hell's Kitchen "Clinton."  This is because, like Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill was lumped into the "South Brooklyn" designation well into the 1950s.  However, there are plenty of records showing the name "Boerum Hill" going back as far as the colonial farm itself.  So while the name may have been resurrected after South Brooklyn lost its appeal, Boerum Hill was the original name given to what is now the neighborhood.

Interestingly, in the early 1920s a large group of Mohawk families moved to Boerum Hill from a reservation in Quebec.  They came to NYC as ironworkers to build the new skyscrapers as, unlike their European-American neighbors, they were comfortable working at the dizzying heights of the tallest buildings in the world.  But as crane and building technology improved, the Mohawks eventually left as well, heading west where there was more work available.

So which neighborhood should it be?  I see one strong argument for each.  Historically, the actual hill that Cobble Hill refers to was centered on what is today an intersection of two streets one block away.  That puts our building literally "on" Cobble Hill, so it would make sense to call it "in" Cobble Hill as well.  On the other hand, the city government draws the line between Community Board 2, which includes Boerum Hill, and Community Board 6, which includes Cobble Hill, along Court Street.  This means that, as far as our representation in the city government is concerned, we're in Boerum Hill.

Though I suppose I could avoid the issue entirely, since nearly everyone in Brooklyn knows exactly what I mean when I say I live "around the corner from Trader Joe's."  As for the Manhattan dwellers, all I have do is say "Brooklyn" and watch their eyes glaze over.