I shot north, and this was new. Most Upper Manhattanites are convinced that they live in the threshold of civilization, that they have bravely made their home at the edge of a frontier but that you would be unwise to tread any further. When we stayed with Ian’s brother, at 95th Street, he told us not to get in the 100s. When I met my landlord, at 130th street, he warned against even 131. I wonder if he realized his kingdom was included in most men’s no-man land. Whatever their differences, there would have been unanimity in their pleas against crossing the Harlem River. There is no Manhattanite definition of dangerous “up there” that lacks the Bronx. But no matter: With curiosity, youthful invincibility, and the promise of dinner, I shot north.
The borough makes no effort to welcome you. After a brief and bewildering stop at my normal 2 3 station, brought to you by surprisingly strong force of habit, I took a D train uptown. The car lacked a route map, and the next stops were announced quietly by a woman who sounded like she was trying unsuccessfully to avoid distraction. The stations we stopped at were clean but bare, even of advertisements. And they lacked the intricate mosaics that ordinarily announce destinations major and minor. Even Yankee Stadium, even that home away from home for Ruth and DiMaggio and a whole host of heroes for children and their parents and their grandparents alike, even that shrine made its presence known only reluctantly, only through the reserved Helvetica of an ordinary subway sign. At each station we shed a few more commuters without bothering to search for replacements. I felt the starts of the extraordinarily hateable smugness so many travel writers describe, the thrill in going where others wouldn’t want to combined with the pride in being the kind who does, and I didn’t try too hard to suppress it.
We lurched into the Fordham Road station and then I too deserted. I realized as I headed for the exit that I had no idea what was waiting for me aboveground. New York is iconic but the the Bronx is not. My image of Manhattan was high definition, Brooklyn, Queens, even Staten Island, a passable rendering, but I didn’t really have one of the Bronx. It’s not like I’ve never heard of the place, I’m sure I’ve seen some ruin porn in some sociology text, I’ve read Underworld, etc., but nothing like an image had taken hold. So the walk upstairs was thrilling.
What I saw was people, throngs of people, sidewalks packed with people. People hawking mix CDs, homemade incense, all manner of kitsch and chaos, and their targets, people perusing the infinite merchandise of infinite stands, taking their sweet time to sort through the CDs and incense, and those they were all obstructing, the people weaving forward, stuttering sideways, pausing for a moment to burst through a hole in the linemen. The jaywalking was fascinating. It was clear immediately that the drivers and the pedestrians had reached an understanding: The pedestrians clump together, aggressively begin their crossing before the light turns, in exchange the migration is finished in time for drivers to speed their way to a right hand turn. If everyone went at their own pace, the whole thing would fall apart. This many people requires a process.
I was awestruck, actually struck as someone ran into me. The desolation of the subway had been a red herring. I had taken the bait. Ritchie tells me that Fordham Road is the Times Square of the Bronx, a special case, it’s not all like that, and sure. But for a kid raised on the edges of Detroit, who didn’t realize such a conglomeration was possible absent a Detroit Lions football game, I could not help but be impressed. I always am, every time the density is such that I cannot control the pace of my steps. It took me a minute to notice the buildings, the four story triumphs of post-war construction and the gas stations and the Autozones. There were almost no trees, most treeplots trodden and empty, the remaining greenery’s patience visibly tested. This too was otherworldly, at least after a month on Manhattan. Carmen said he liked it because you can see the sky. I did not have time to look for the sky.
The people dispersed and I regained my pace as I got to Fordham University. Fordham almost looked like home. It was lush, there were gorgeous oaks and rolling green lawns that went on forever. There were the same kind of stately halls that every campus deserves, with the grandeur of arched doorways forgiving the A/C units sticking out of professorial offices. But I had to squint between the iron bars to see this. For Fordham is a padlocked college, a gated community of an educational establishment. It is located in the Bronx but it makes it very clear that it is separate from it, just a single Bronx street to be braved to make it from the safe world of campus to the escape hatch of the subway.
Past Fordham but before a reassuring street corner with multiple gas stations, I reached my destination, my reason for rejecting the sound advice of landlords and friends’ older brothers. I got there early, or at least not late, which tends to score the same. We met at Ritchie’s office, a spacious messy sort of place, still shockingly expensive to rent, but pleasant enough to see. He and I talked until Helen and Carmen and their daughter arrived, which meant I had the opportunity to try to sound smart while furiously scribbling mental notes as I listened to a man who actually is smart. (We solved affordable housing, by the way, if anyone is interested.)
The group walked to Arthur Avenue, a street whose reputation I gather is supposed to precede itself but didn’t for me. Now this was a place that felt familiar. It felt like a scale I could appreciate, two story buildings with pastry shops and restaurants, an incredible diversity of Italian names adorning the signage. The explorer in me turned down. I did not have to grasp at the meaning of a stupidly-named sandwich at the Bronx Beer Hall. I was reassured, not perplexed, by the standoffishness of the waitress at Palombo’s cannolis. Carmen said the street reminded him of south Philadelphia, where he’s from. I didn’t say it but it reminded me of Chicago, of Grand Rapids, of Plymouth, even, or of the main drags of the thousand interstate exit towns in which I’ve made meaning. Wherever there are yuppies there exists the potential energy for a Bronx Beer Hall. Wherever there are disillusioned teenagers there exists the potential energy for an indifferent waitstaff at a Palombo’s. Wherever there are friends there are nights out converting those energies into motion.
Helen drove me home and in between missed turns I tried to communicate my experience, my sense of Manhattan as a limited infinity. She agreed, but added something I’d missed: The incredible distance from the rest of the city to Manhattan. She told me about people living in the Bronx who have gone their whole life without ever visiting the island. The reverse is true, too, Manhattanites who have never left it. And my trip to the Bronx had been informed by that distance, by the thrill of warnings and the solemnity of crime rates and the mourning of poverty. Manhattan is the quintessential American city and the Bronx is its discarded other. So imagine my surprise that it was there, in the heart of the central Bronx, on the wrong side of that divide, that I felt Americana for the first time in months, that I felt closer not just to home, but to everywhere else.
