Upstate NYC

Continuing with the Key to the City project, Lynn and I ventured out again this weekend to find some more locks to open.  This time we headed way up north, to the Bronx.  There are five locks in the Bronx, but two of them are only available during business hours on weekdays.  We haven't quite figured out how we might visit those yet.  Three others we could get to, however, and there were a couple in northern Manhattan if we had extra time.

The beginning of our adventure took us to the Grand Concourse near Yankee Stadium.  The Grand Concourse was supposed to be the Champs-Élysées of the Bronx, a wide boulevard with tree-lined dividers, running up through Bronx four miles all the way to Van Cortlandt Park.  For a time, it was the height of middle-class living in NYC.  But like much of the city, and especially much of the Bronx, rapidly declined in the 1960s.  Today, however, it's doing very well again, and we walked passed a couple very tempting restaurants serving brunch on our Saturday excursion.

Three friends meet at their mailbox.

The first stop was PostNet, which is a pretty standard printing/copying/shipping place.  To the left after entering is a wall of post office boxes, and our key opened box 136.  Inside were messages people had left, and interestingly, messages people had mailed to the PO box directly.  As we stood reading some of these, we noticed a woman sitting in the only chair next to the PO boxes, looking at a subway map and writing in her notebook.  She smiled at us and said she was a fellow keyholder, and we quickly struck up conversation.  A fast friendship was formed, and we invited her to join us on our Bronx adventure.

....unless you have a key.

The newly formed trio trekked east to the neighborhood of Melrose.  Melrose is one the largest Puerto Rican communities in NYC, and sadly, also one of the poorest neighborhoods.  Throughout the 1970s, the neighborhood was synonymous with arson, and most of the residential buildings were damaged or destroyed.  Much of what exists now has been rebuilt by the NYC Housing Authority as low-income and subsidized housing.  Our destination was the Centro Cultural Rincon Criollo, a community garden on a quiet street right in the middle of the neighborhood.  It was lovely, lush and green plots surrounded a small green club house in the middle.  There were many people spending a relaxing Saturday afternoon in the garden, and they all waved to us as we searched for the garden plot that our key unlocked.  We found it behind a large "No Trespassing - Prohibido El Paso" sign, but the garden was as welcoming as could be.  Fresh cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, and grapes grew all around, and were watched over by a whimsical scarecrow.  It was easy to see how such a place could bring the people here together, and we felt grateful to be welcomed into their lush treasure.

Moving further east to the shores of the Bronx River, our last destination in the Bronx was The Point Community Development Corporation.  This was in Hunts Point, another of the most difficult neighborhoods in the Bronx.  Here, more than 60% of the population is unemployed, and the average income is less than half the national average, making Hunts Point part of the poorest congressional district in the entire country.  There are essentially two main businesses here, it is home to one of the largest food distribution centers in the world, and three detention centers.  Still, like everywhere, the people make due and enjoy life as well they can.  Several small parks have popped up, and a few small businesses have opened, and are trying to engage the community.

Building boats

One of these is called Rocking the Boat.  It was started by a man named Adam Green, who Lynn and I first heard about when he was the subject of a "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" episode.  (Don't judge.)  The program allows high school kids in the neighborhood to learn practical, leadership, and life skills by building wooden boats from scratch over the course of a school semester.  They plan the work, they do the work (all of it, from chopping wood to painting the name on the stern), and then they run a program where locals can take the boats out on the Bronx River on weekends.  The main entrance to the lock we were looking for was closed the day we arrived, and a note directed us to the dock where the Rocking the Boat staff were renting out their boats.  A nice woman there offered to take us through their building into the courtyard where we'd find a door we could unlock.  Along the way, she gave us an impromptu tour of their boat workshop, which was very cool to see.

Art inside

Behind the building lay a courtyard with a garden, some portable classrooms to teach the city-born kids how to operate their boats, and a small brick shed.  A rusted door held the lock matching our key, though we mistakenly went in through a second, unlocked back door.  We opened it, turned on the lights and found color.  Bright colors shouted at us form all directions.  This building was a piece of art itself.  A table stood in the middle with paints, brushes, markers, crayons, papers, glues--everything you could want to make something fun.  And those who had come before us certainly had.  There were paintings on the walls, ceilings, and floor.  A web of yarn made it an enjoyable challenge to get from one end of the room to another.  Papers were everywhere with drawings and messages.  We rolled up our sleeves and dug in, leaving a message (me), a drawing (Lynn), and a painting on the wall (our new friend).  I'm running out of synonyms for "fun," but it was truly, and simply, kid-creative fun.

Under Construction, 118 years and counting

Realizing there was much more light left in the day, we decided to head over to Manhattan to open one more lock.  We went down to Lynn's and my old neighborhood of Morningside Heights.  We even stopped right in front of the apartment I lived in while attending Columbia University.  A quick walk around the corner took us to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, the fourth-largest church in the world.  Although the inside is breathtaking, the outside is still under construction--having been started in 1892.  (There's a neighborhood joke about Saint John the Unfinished.)  Two world wars and a devastating fire have plagued the construction of the church, but it continues to this day nonetheless.  Much of the nave was off-limits and under construction when I lived in the neighborhood, so this was the first time I could see it all open.  And open is a pretty accurate description; the ceiling was 124 feet above us.  It's a beautiful, quiet place, and we wandered the whole church before even starting to look for the lock.  At last we came to a gate, padlocked with a velvet rope.  Unlocking the gate let us into the Baptistry, which was a gift to the church from the descendants of Peter Stuyvesant.  Peter was the last governor of the New Amsterdam colony, right up until it became New York.  The Baptistry was quiet, and empty, and we enjoyed the peacefulness.

Tired, and in desperate need of milkshakes, we ended our journey at one of Lynn's and my old haunts, Tom's Restaurant.  Most notable for being the external shot of the diner in "Seinfeld," it's also a neighborhood favorite for the milkshakes, late hours, and friendly staff.  Being almost exactly between our two apartments when we were in grad school, Lynn and I frequently met there at all hours.  The owner, who will chat your ear off if you let him, recognized us when we walked in and sternly asked me where I'd been for the last three years.  We had our shakes, and chatted more, ranging from our lives in New York to cultural differences (our new friend is French, and lived in Paris and Guadeloupe).  It was a pleasant end to another grand adventure.

PS: Map!

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