You came in with a picky head, uneven and coarse, designed underneath a baseball cap, and you left swiftly afterward a new man, smelling sweetly of coconut oil and with a cut as sharp and clean as a swearword.
Zadie Smith, “White Teeth”
A path through the North Woods of Central Park, where I head to defrag my brain and lift my spirits.
Reviewed my notes Sunday evening at the Hudson River, as the sun set over New Jersey.
I passed by these girls while walking recently through Sheep Meadow, which is Central Park’s largest lawn without ballfields. The girls were among clusters of people tossing Frisbee and frolicking but what caught my attention was the girls’ taking turns lifting one another off the ground. “Hey guys, I’m light,” the girl in the white top, in the center above, exclaimed to her friends. That’s something we stop doing at some age — picking each other up (in the literal meaning of that term) just for the fun of it. I’m not suggesting we start, but watching these girls trying to lift one another and delighting in their playtime delighted me.
The Atlantic Ocean always beckons me. It’s the ocean we visited on summer vacations as kids when my father piled us into the Oldsmobile for a drive across Pennsylvania to the shore. Throughout my life, a trip to the beach has meant plunging into the waves that roll into New Jersey, Delaware, New England, New York City and elsewhere along the East Coast. Until recently, I worked in a newsroom that offered sweeping views of New York Bay, where the Hudson empties into the Atlantic.
Thus it thrills me to visit the Atlantic from Africa, where my girlfriend and I swam recently at the beaches off Cape Town and drove along the road that skirts Chapman’s Peak, a mountain that ascends from the ocean to the city’s southwest. The 5.5-mile drive twists and tucks into the rise, suspended above sheer drops that tumble into the sea while the mountains tower above you.
Every mile or so we stopped the car and stepped out to gaze out at the blue expanse, which glistened in the sun. I pictured New York, roughly 7,900 miles away, and imagined what might be happening there and what it might be like to see all the way to the other side. Next time I’m at the beach in New York, I will imagine what might be happening here.
I played Bruce Springsteen’s “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” on my iPod randomly one day while walking with our dogs, Tala and Juma, at a farm here in South Africa that we like to visit.
The song, which appears on the album “Born to Run” and tells the story of Springsteen’s E Street Band, resonated with me in a way it hadn’t previously. Maybe it’s the lyric about being all alone and on own’s own, which feels like an anthem to this stranger in a strange land, even if I’m hardly alone.
Or perhaps it’s the connection between this place and home. The green hills that roll to the Drakensberg here in Kwa-Zulu Natal and New York City, which I left, each have a scenic grandeur. As it happens, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are slated to play their first shows in South Africa this January.
Or maybe it’s that listening to “Born to Run” makes sense at a farm where the dogs and I go to run. If anyone were born to run, it’s Tala and Juma.
The Zulu guys with whom we share the road and I exchange a thumbs-up when we pass one another. Everyone’s smiling.
Here’s the song:
At Clifton Beach in Cape Town on Wednesday I watched as the last of about a dozen swimmers emerged from the blue-green water on a 78-degree afternoon. The group had been swimming freestyle, about 25 yards from shore, traversing the four beaches that link to one another in this strand that sits just north of Camps Bay. “Maybe only 10 or 12 days a year when the water’s this warm,” one of the swimmers told me as he shook water off him. “It’s like the south of France.”
By then it was early evening and the beach was dotted with clumps of teenagers and families on blankets. A circle of boys passed a rugby ball to one another. Parents held babies. An old man wearing a pea green polo shirt and yellow headphones used a detector to scavenge for whatever metal might be buried. Three Indian guys played beach cricket.
Behind the beach and across a strand of road loomed Lion’s Head, a mountain that rises nearly 2,200 feet with ribbons of houses chiseled across its lowest section. The mountain provided a background to the action on the beach, where Odo, a 20-something Zimbabwean who came to Cape Town at the age of eight, sold hats from a selection he carried under his arm.
On Halloween my girlfriend and I made up our faces to resemble the walking dead and set out for the Tour Eiffel. After walking along the Seine and under the tower we headed to the Champ de Mars, the long green mall that lies immediately to the tower’s southeast.
Someone had removed a section of a black metal fence that cordoned off the green. About 20 people had entered through the opening. Once inside they clustered on the lawn, sitting on blankets in groups of two or three. Someone dribbled a soccer ball. A guy selling wine and champagne by the bottle made the rounds.
We entered, found a soft patch of grass, and unpacked a baguette, some aged Gouda and a bottle of Cotes de Rhone that we had in our backpack. We opened the wine and toasted a lovely night, with the tower looming over our right shoulders, illuminated in amber and flashing thousands of sparkly lights.
About four-fifths of our way through the wine, a police officer approached. At first we thought he was busting us for drinking in public. But we realized he was shooing us off the lawn. Other police had fanned out and were doing the same to the others.
Of course we complied. We gathered our things, headed out and continued to walk along the gravel pathway that lines the green.
Later I realized that together with the other merrymakers we had hacked the city. We conformed a public space to one that accommodated us.
We who use cities confront similar challenges daily. How does your city feel? How would you like to engage with it?
Street skaters hack their environment. Citizens are using publicly available data and computer code to solve challenges relevant to their neighborhoods. Pedestrians forge pathways in parks regardless of whether the park’s planner placed a path in that spot.
At PopTech in October I heard Helen Marriage, co-director of the London-based design firm, Artichoke, talk about the large-scale urban spectacles she produces. “A city isn’t just for toil, trade and traffic, it exists for people,” said Marriage. “The rules of our cities are not somebody else’s rules – they’re our rules, and we can change them, briefly, or forever.”
I went swimming recently at the Asphalt Green community center in Manhattan’s Battery Park City. The pool, which has six lanes that extend for 25 yards, opened in June. The depth runs from 3’ 6” at one end to nine feet at the other.
The pool is part of a 52,000-square-foot facility that includes a fitness area, locker rooms and basketball courts. The building, which occupies three levels, has earned a LEED gold-level certification for environmental friendliness.
Swimmers can leave the locker rooms and walk directly into the pool area.
The pool feels wonderful. Lanes are marked by green lines on the bottom and divided by blue and green dividers. While swimming, I loved looking at the pool’s bottom, which has none of the grime that can build up between tiles. The walls felt great on flip turns. The water was crystal clear.
After my swim and a shower, I thanked the people at the front desk, headed into the sunshine, boarded a Citi Bike and pedaled along Hudson River Park. The ride took me past Tribeca and the West Village and the new Whitney Museum that’s under construction
Compared with New York, Halloween in Paris seems serene. On the metro we saw a girl with silver hair and a grey face. A few benches away sat a man who wore a bloody hockey mask, a la the Friday the 13th films. But you might miss them, too.
New Yorkers celebrate Halloween riotously with a parade through the West Village. The subways fill with ghouls and witches and, maybe this year, Anthony Weiner lookalikes.
No parade for Paris though some have called for one. Some trick-or-treaters came out. Mostly the city’s lights beckoned the undead and looked lovely as always.