To be free, ah, to be out and about, with a cool summer breeze, and the scent of the low lying smog along the urban fabric of Manhattan.

Along the streets of the Island, zipping along in cars on the Gowanus, along West Street, and along Spring, and Sixth Avenue, people moved about, chatting, yelling, laughing, sitting quietly, and jumping around.  At Ear Bar, groups of scantily clad lookers, whores, and skanks, as well as ladies and fugly friends, stood, walked, ran, strolled along with counterparts who either matched them exactly, or were out of their league.  Men are feeble creatures, attracted to pussy scented heavily with perfume, or exhibiting the slightest bit of cleavage.

It was the end of June, the straight up beginning of the first weekend of summer.  This was life in the New York Metropolitan Area, unfurling its petals and opening its womb to the fateful few hoping to find love in the warm air.

“Yo, take this.”  Kris said with his breath held tight, and I looked down in the direction of the shifter, where Kris’s hand was cupped around the berry flavor Phillie blunt, rolled with the finest haze two swinging stoners like ourselves could muster on the streets of the island at 9:00 on a Friday evening.  As we rolled slowly through the tunnel, Kris made his move under the cover of the Brooklyn Battery, and rolled the blunt with no suspicion whatsoever.  We now smoked it with subterfuge, along the police controlled streets of downtown Manhattan.

We had exchanged the warm air of the summer for the grey, smokey haze which matched the interior of my 2003 Saturn Ion quite well.

“So, yo, you gonna chill for a bit?”
He said, as he pulled a Newport out of the community box we both chipped in the purchase.  I slapped his hand.

“You fiend!  Are we gonna have more to smoke later??”
“Yo, I got Waves at home.”
“Dude, Waves totally suck ass.  You can’t chip in to get a new box?”
“Yeah, I got some cash at home.”
“Then have a stog.”
“Don’t slap my hand again.”
“I’m sorry, dude, I had to.  It made it more dramatic.”

“Clip that, you gonna chill?”
“Ya, what you wanna do?”
“Open bar between 11 and 12 at this place my brother is DJing at.  It’s called the Shady Beaver. ”
“Shady Beaver, eh?  Well, I guess the best kept secrets are for the shady.”
“Aint nothing shadier than me.”

11:01pm. Friday.

“Yo, Jay.”

My mind had been focused on watching my favorite channel, Nickelodeon GAS.  Finders Keepers was on.

“Dude, this fat bitch is getting every fucking answer right.  The lil black kid just riding her coattails to that trip to Space Camp!”
“We gonna be out soon?”  he said as he finished up the blunt and put it into his mouth to ignite it.
“How long is your brother on for?”
“He’s on till 12.”
“And when’s open bar?”
“11 to 12.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“So, what if we get there at 12:30?”
“Then I guess we have to buy our beer and listen to shitty dance music.”

I sat in a seat at the end of the train car, in disability seating. As I played with my XM Inno, trying to find the right Ron and Fez to listen to, the train pulled into a stop. Just before the doors opened, the seats opposite me were empty except for the one closest to the door, which was occupied by an Asian lady on her way home from work. The doors opened, and a young couple in their early 20’s boarded. The girl made an attempt to sit in the middle seat, with the hope that her boyfriend would take the end. Instead, a haggard older lady, with thick glasses, disheveled graying hair, and cotton balls stuck in her ears swooped in and plowed her way into usurping the end seat from the couple. The girl look perplexed as she got up, while her man simply commented, “Wow.”The woman looked up, shrugged her shoulders and sneered, as if to say “whaddaya want?” The couple forfeited the middle seat, which the old lady annexed for her gray heavy coat. She bent down and riffled through a plastic Duane Reade bag with one broken handle, pulled out a book, and then leaned back, crossing her legs to reveal awful brown panty house from under her polyester peacock design skirt. The rest of us at the end of the train looked on in befuddlement. A man on the other side of the doorway took a break from reading “Home Buying for Dummies” in order to join us in staring daggers into the woman, who tried her best to ignore us as she read her book close to her face. The couple retreated to the door as the boyfriend continued to comment.

“Crazy people. Pushing people just to get a seat. This woman is crazy. CRAZY. Some people are mad rude, know wha’ I’m sayin’? Rude fucking people.”

This went on for one more stop, while the lady continued to read, cross legged. The boyfriend then went up to her.

“Can I sit here?” She looked up, then riffled through her Duane Reade bag, put her book away, and begrudgingly removed her coat from the seat and stuffed it into the plastic bag. The boyfriend sat down.

“Come on, baby.” He motioned to his girl, as she then sat on his lap. They then alternated making out, feeling her up and down and talking shit about the woman. She was not pleased. The look on her face was pure dejection as she got her just reward. As the train pulled into the next stop, she hurriedly gathered her broken handled bag and her purse and ran off as the doors opened. The boyfriend took his end seat in victory, and he noted my laughter at the situation. We exchanged our agreement on the matter and he peered into the door of the next car and noted “That crazy bitch switched cars! Crazy fucking bitch, I swear.”

Standing on the train, I notice that people reading books are still in the first chapters. A man in his 20’s wearing and leather jacket and carrying a military issue messenger bag has just begun “Rookie Dad.” The thirty-something Asian woman next to him , with her black roots creeping into her purple hair had just started “Reposition Yourself.” I’ll admit, at times, I’ve begun books on the train, but maybe that’s all that passengers have the time and patience for; to read the first chapter, then skin the rest, and then done, book read. Glean as much information needed to regurgitate back during regular conversations in the midst of uncomfortable situations, those ones that occur with people who have no kids and toys to distract.I had to stand until Queens Plaza. Before then, I watched tourist families board, with children born in towns chartered by pure innocence, taking up seats that tired and hungry workers gave up so that their mothers wouldn’t need to worry, that their fathers could take a moment to stray their gaze away from their offspring for the moment, but mostly to deter the little ones from yelping and flailing about. These were former rookie dads, these were women who repositioned themselves as mothers.

In the middle of a writing induced trance while on the subway home to Queens, I was startled by light, outdoor light, light that flooded the interior of the train. I looked outside my window and became frightened by the height as the train began to traverse the 59th Street Bridge. I thought, did the R take a detour? The yellow symbol that said W told me no. It was the wrong train. I quickly formed an escape plan. Get of at the next stop, and hope ther’s a train to take me back to the last overlapping stop in Manhattan.I got off at Queensboro Plaza and walked quickly towards the down staircase marked by the Manhattan-bound W. I descended the stairs after dismissing the thought of seeing where the 7 express train might take me. A W train had just arrived, and I got on board with some Hispanic day laborers wearing vibrant hats and hoodies, along with 3 teenage girls, one black, one Asian, and one Hispanic, all chattering excitedly about dancing. I stood by a door and held onto an overhead bar, as the train scaled the tracks, ascended over Queensbridge, displaying the Housing Authority’s handiwork of red brick slums provided to the people by Robert Moses all those years ago, and then the train tunneled into darkness as we made the approach to Manhattan. I was not paying attention, obviously, the first time I passed the upcoming station, so now, I wondered how far I had veered off course. The subway entered the station, but moved too fast for me to make out the signs that whizzed by in a blur. Be a stop, I prayed, be a stop I can use, and as the train slowed, I heared murmurs and whispers of the word “Lex,” and I turned and craned my head in order to find visual confirmation that this was indeed Lexington Avenue and 57th. It was. I was back on course. The doors opened, and I got out and crossed the platform to await the R. Now, with my detour in the past, I just hoped for a seat. The train arrived, slowed, stopped and opened its doors, so I stepped inside, and found a window seat. The train smelled like garlic, but at least it was going my way. It was the right train, and I sat down, and went back to writing.

I stopped by the corner of 14th and Broadway in order to indulge in something I had not had for several months. That day was one where I needed a quick lunch while I did a time trial walk from my office to Center Street in order to make a manual bank transfer by 2pm. This lunch, which I craved and had forgotten about, was a hot dog, and, God, had I missed out. No hot dog in all my Tri-State Area travels could compete with the dirty water dog found on every busy street corner in Manhattan. I asked the vendor for my usual, one dg with sauerkraut, and he obliged for the price of 2 dollars, which I furnished immediately. As I took the dog, I thought about this idea of the hot dog cart, of the mobile food cart; the cart is a mobile piece of architecture, itinerant, only dependent upon the busy built up intersections of streets. It existed within a symbiotic relationship to the streets, to the buildings, to the city. I walked back to my office, and as I approached 13th, a scaffolding covered me overhead, about 2 stories up to the platform, to the corrugated steel covered perpendicularly by 12″ wooden planks. The scaffolding existed only to provide an area, a surface for the construction workers assigned to restore the sculptural facade of the building at 13th and Broadway. I meditated on this as I took bites out of my hot dog, trying my best to not eat the napkin or the wax paper in the throes of hunger. The juxtaposition of scaffold against scuplture was the most fascinating of all the subjects regarding beauty that this scene could raise. The buildings as object, a sculpture of busts, gargoyles, pilasters, cornice work, frieze work, rake, a facade composed of art work which clung to the structure, to the walls of brick, concrete, and steel to remain frozen forever just to make sure every generation would see the craft that went into this labor of love. Attached to the facade like a lamprey to a fish, the scaffold obtains life in use, in function. It feeds on the building decay, expends energy to repair it, and the works get money in return, money with which to live. Owner and worker, the scaffold the facilitator of their symbiosis. It is not a parasite like I suggested, nor is the vendor on the street. Both architectures are mobile, transportable. The architecture facilitates the relationship between the two, in service, in goods.