It's block party season in Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights. Driving between the two is literally a maze of one-way streets and folks kickin' it. No warning comes before major thoroughfares are closed off by jumpy castles. Massive lines of SUVs are forced to snake down small streets. Just when you find a short cut and build a little momentum, you're rerouted by caution tape between two folding chairs.
The beauty of it is mighty. Most of the celebrations are unsanctioned, just neighbors deciding on a date and stopping traffic with flimsy blockades or parked mini-vans. Kids run through fire hydrants, men watch smokers cook meat, stoops are full of yapping teens, friends call across the street with raised hands. What it is, is community and there might as well be rainbows it's so damn great.
Yes. There are people fuming in standing traffic. Lots of complaints fire about being late or hungry or hot, but somehow it seems worth it. Like a little bit of communal debt payoff. Some sort of metropolitic karma we pay as city dwellers.
Really it's a gift. It's a moment to revel in the last days of summer when you can't believe there haven't been block parties the whole time. So, the time has come to use up Fourth of July's cast-away fireworks, and I know it's hot out there, but if you roll down the windows you can hear the gospel choir soaring.
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Really it's a gift. It's a moment to revel in the last days of summer when you can't believe there haven't been block parties the whole time. So, the time has come to use up Fourth of July's cast-away fireworks, and I know it's hot out there, but if you roll down the windows you can hear the gospel choir soaring.
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