The Weekly Screed (#790)

A thousand rings, a single clown
by David Benjamin

“It’s just that there are all these Sandras running around who you've never met before, and it’s confusing at first, fantastic. But damn it, isn’t it great to find out how many Sandras there are? It’s like those little cars in the circus, you know? This tiny red car comes out, hardly big enough for a midget, and it putters around, and suddenly its doors open and out come a thousand clowns, whooping and hollering and raising hell.”
          — Murray Burns, in A Thousand Clowns, Herb Gardner

BROOKLYN — Didn’t he grow up here? How did he miss this?

I lived here for just a few years, on a block where, coming out the door in the morning, I often weaved my way through throngs of Hasidic tots on route to Hebrew School. My nearest neighbors were a black music producer who smoked too much weed and a French concert cellist with two kids who didn’t smoke anything at all.

Not to mention the Doberman pinscher in the hallway (shades of Edward Albee!).

Brooklyn — and Queens, too, where he began his career, as a junior slumlord — is a thousand-ring circus impossible to take in. The best you can do is sit in the bleachers, high enough to see it all unfold, smiling in idiot wonder and noshing on your Cracker Jack.

Our street, when we lived here, was a living tribute to Emma Lazarus, a human hodgepodge where, halfway up the block, a huge lady set up a chair on the sidewalk, partly to avoid the summer heat indoors, partly because she just loved to say hello to everyone who came along. When she was at her post, we crossed the street to feel her motherhood and receive her blessing.

His roots are in these streets. Well, they should be. How can he turn from this warmth and welcome in favor of the dour Dutch Reformers of Iowa and the cordial cross-burners of dying Dixie?

On this visit, my business takes me down Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn — not to be confused with the one in Manhattan. Monday night, I dined on 5th with friends at a French-Vietnamese bistro. For lunch next day, still on 5th, I ate Hungarian, across from a Salvadoran restaurant. Along 5th, I could have just as well had Mexican, Italian, Cajun, Peruvian, Colombian, Irish, Swedish, Greek, Afghan, Japanese, Szechuan, Hunan, Cantonese, Japanese, Thai, soul or barbecue. I noticed a food truck offering hot dogs and cheesesteaks alongside falafel and gyros. There are bagel factories, oyster bars, chicken windows, pizza slices, sandwich takeout and burger joints, but no sign of KFC or McDonald’s.

I think, ah, in all those flyover states, denizens are shopping online or stuck with Walmart. But in Brooklyn, people prowl 4th, 5th and Bedford Ave. for every need, even God — who occupies a thousand storefronts in a hundred denominations. Main Street is moribund in Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, Indiana. But here, in a dozen blocks, a dozen hardwares — not one an Ace or a Depot. I pass at least five groceries and twice as many bodegas, two joints to get tattooed, more than that to get my hair dyed, three barbers (with barber poles!), nail shops in six languages, jewelers galore, a real Chinese laundry, two smoke shops — “cigars, cigarettes, cigarillos” — delis everywhere, including the “Kindest Deli” (next to a shop called “Please”), two bakeries, lots of clothes to buy (new, used and ethnic), a plethora of storefront medical and dental clinics (some looking more reputable than others), two schools plus the streetfront academies that teach Japanese karate, Korean tae kwon do, Brazilian jiu jitsu and (apparently) multinational kickboxing. There are lots of drugstores, an honest-to-God dimestore and shoe shops up the yingyang. Not to mention the Fifth Avenue Cat Clinic and a wine store brilliantly titled Red White & Bubbly.

Fifth is a briarpatch of apostrophes: Daisey’s Diner, Smith’s Tavern, Bonnie’s Grill, Luke’s Lobster, Freddy’s Bar, Peppino’s Pizzeria, Russo’s Deli, Annie’s Blue Ribbon General Store and (thank you, Frank Capra), Zuzu’s Petals!

How did this world not touch his heart and capture his imagination?

Tuesday morning, I slogged through the rain to an old haunt, the Connecticut Muffin shop on Myrtle Ave. I was looking for my old coffee companion, Nadav, an Israeli transplant who charms women half his age and takes them to Broadway for dinner and a show. Nadav was absent, but the boss (and his assistant) remembered me. Two ladies interrupted an intense gossipfest to share with me their affection for Nadav. Victor, a local poet and black activist, tapped me on the arm and said, “Hey, you’re the writer, right?”
 
How did he — who never had his daily coffee in a corner muffin joint — come to declare that these mixed, mongrel and memorable folks don’t belong in the same nation as their fellow survivors in Youngstown and Janesville? How did he convince millions that Nadav and Victor — and those two grandmothers talking by the window — are creatures to be feared, in a wasteland of crime?

There isn’t a street in mid-America more Main than Myrtle Avenue.

On my way back from coffee, passing by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, suddenly a cluster of schoolkids, coming toward me in a familiar — jostling, jabbering overwhelming — New York formation. As they swarm past, some excusing themselves, some oblivious, I notice one girl in particular.

How can I help but notice?

She’s neither white nor black nor exactly brown. She is New York City. She’s 14 going on 30 and she’s beautiful. In a lusty voice in perfect tune, a shake in her hips and a shimmy in her shoulders, she’s rapping a favorite song. She’s performing — I realize — straight at me, a twinkle in her eye and an impish grin.

She passes in a flash, and I wonder — as I turn to watch her go — whether she saw me smile back, and whether she sensed, in my surprise, my approval for her brassy-bold style and my hope that her whole life turns out as joyful as one morning in November when she strutted past BAM and Beyoncé-ed an old white guy.

As she goes, I can’t help but think this girl is the center ring in the Brooklyn — Queens, New York, American! — circus. This teeming tent is all mixed up, it’s too much to take in, and it is — absolutely — great. If something needs to be re-made, it’s not here.

It’s not her.