Or, the Aborted Rescue Mission
My, what an interesting day it's been: "interesting" in the way of Chinese curses, that is. Anne Sattler, the woman from Oregon who's kid, Alice, got caught up in the Republican National Convention protests back in September, reappeared in the city this week to both have some surgery and meet with her lawyer, who's making her part of the class action suit against the city. Turns out she's the perfect representative: she was a minor, held without being charged for more than 24 hours without access to a lawyer. So she takes the bus down from, uh, Vermont or someplace where she's been doing wilderness EMT training, after spending six months in Mexico at a group house, rolls into Port Authority and promptly gets mugged. Poor Anne calls me, frantic, and wonders if I can meet her and lend her some money and perhaps help her get a plane ticket home. No problem, I tell her.
Ha!
After a couple of back and forth phone calls establishing her whereabouts, I pop out and go to the bank, intending to get on the train to 116th Street and walk over to the hostel on West 113th Street. After getting the money, I realize I've forgotten my PDA, which I'm going to need to find a nearby cafe to get the kid some food, and possibly to find an internet cafe where we can log on and she can buy a plane ticket with her parents' credit card numbers. Run back to the apartment, grab PDA, say hello to next door neighbors moving out (wonder if they'd be interested in selling the air conditioner, since they're going back to India; and who knew I was living next to a Bollywood movie star?), run back to train station, get on the train. Ah, I settle in for a little Vindigo research, a little more reading of my latest e-book, Bangkok Tattoo.
At the next station, St. Lawrence, we come to a premature grinding halt. A girl has fallen, been pushed, or jumped under the train, right under our car, apparently. I'm horrified, but also annoyed, in the way of New York commuters. Why my train? Why not the next one? If only I hadn't gone back for my PDA.
If I'd been thinking, I'd have gotten off the train, walked back to Parkchester and gotten a car service from the group always hanging around the station. But no, I go the other way up to Morrison/Soundview figuring I'll find one on the way.
Uh, no. Duh!
I try to take the train back to Parkchester. No trains either way, now. I collect a transfer, get on the bus, and by the time I get back to the Parkchester station, the trains, miraculously, are running again. Go figure. There were half a dozen emergency services vehicles of various kinds there, including a ladder truck, so I'd say they managed to get her out pretty quickly, considering. Nothing on the news about it tonight, strangely enough. All in all, I spent about an hour running around my neighborhood, trying to get out of it, enjoying the quintessential "you can't get there from here" experience. I did enjoy the little exploration though, and I walked by Fine Fare, which looks like a halfway decent grocery store, at least from the outside. When the weather's nicer, I might take a jaunt down there. Especially since there's a bus.
116th Street is only about 20 minutes away, but the walk over to the hostel is about a mile. Halfway there, I check my messages and discover Alice, resourceful girl that she is, has sat herself down on the sidewalk with her backpack, an apparently innocent face, and a sign: "Just got mugged. Trying to get home" and collected about $40 in loose change, gotten herself a plane ticket, and is heading out to JFK on her own. Screw New York. I have to admire her initiative, but now what? I decide I might as well see if she's actually left the hostel and then carry on from there.
No Alice at the hostel, just some backpacking college kids and Japanese tourists. I call Anne, who's heard from the kid at Kennedy, where she paid off the laughing taxi driver with quarters, got some food and washed up in the loo, and is on her way home, having fortunately kept hold of her passport.
Harlem was interesting. The area's slowly, well, not exactly gentrifying, but getting some decent shops and amenities, thanks to Bill Clinton and Mayor Mike, I suspect, in part. It's full of nice old buildings sadly gone to seed, and some very pretty parks, including Morningside Park, which astonished me. I walked in off the street and found this:
This fall is about 20 feet high and empties into a nice little pea-green pond, full of wildlife, of which there are more pics over at Flee's New York. So I walked around the park a bit, watched the cormorant (which some dorky tourists from California assured the New York natives was called a "corrigan" and there were lots of them in California. Never mind.) diving and swallowing fishies, took pictures of the turtles and Canada goose and enormous, dignified, white egret.
Then I walked up the stairs from hell to Morningside Drive and over to St. John the Divine. This was, sadly, so dark inside that I reflexively reached to take my sunglasses off when I went in. I decided I was too footsore, after walking about two miles, to walk much more, and found a Starbucks and then headed home.
There went five hours of my day. I got home just in time to take a shower, call Dad, and watch a thunderstorm roll in. Now I'm off to watch "House of Flying Daggers."
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