At the Ornate Entrance

I haven’t been to Ft. Green in what, thirty-years? I recall visiting someone there in the self-same-named park who’d just bought one of those Federal Era buildings facing out from the square.  It seemed risky at the time.  It was risky at the time . I’m sure it has octupled in value since then, as it evolved from the locus of Kool G Rap nightmare crime scenes to the upscale neighborhood it has become.  I went one stop too far and walked back from Lafayette to the café my friend had suggested we meet in, on Willoughby Avenue.  I’d wanted to have a look around but only drove passed the park itself and its iconic Prison Ship Martyrs Monument and tower.  

My Lyft driver wanted to know if I had opinions on how we got from Fort Green to Sunset Park.  I did not.  He explained that he only knew the Bronx.  But as long as we were down here he thought he’d make a bit of money before he headed back home.  I know next to nothing about the Bronx, so I shifted the conversation to discern that he’d emigrated from Bangladesh.  My sister had typed in 21^st Street when she’d meant to type 24^th Street and I had a chance to walk a few blocks in Sunset Park, after I’d told Mir, the driver to “just drop me here.”

My second trip down to this Industrial City complex they have in Sunset Park.  Hanging with my nephew he wanted to take me to a place he knew that served the best burgers.  Sounded good to me and before long we were in a playroom bar area that had a Farah Fawcett and 1977 Star Wars poster on the wall.  We opted for bar stools where a pleasant gent with a West Indian accent took our orders.  Walking back home we had a look at the ornate entrance to the Greenwood Cemetery.  Apparently, I’ve a few distant relatives inside, but the grounds are enormous, and it was getting late. 

Later, a friend whom I’d asked to find us some place in midtown where we could have a quick meal before I got my train suggested the Algonquin.  I knew the name and something of all the literary luminaries who’d made it home during the last century.  It was easy to find and though the bar was uninspiringly stocked, and the chicken pot pie might have been heated in a microwave, it was good to see this friend and soak up a bit of the atmosphere and consider the Mary McCarthy book, I'm reading with the older one.  The white tiled bathroom, downstairs with old New Yorker cartoons on the wall did more to evoke a lost era than anything else about the place. 

Sunday 01/12/20