The dead people of Woodlawn are a lot easier to find than the living and eating ones. Step off the end of the 5 line and the mammoth cemetery is right in front of you, shrouding most everything else from view.
I knew nothing of Woodlawn, but I thought I should make some trips away from the more southerly subway ends with which I am more familiar. So I plucked Woodlawn pretty much at random from the Bronx possibilities and took care not to look too much at a map—that seemed like cheating. Surveying the vast empty expanse of the cemetery on one side and Van Cortlandt Park on the other, however, I was having second thoughts. I had a vague memory that civilization lay somewhere to the northwest, on a street that started with a K. I struck out in that direction.
I like walking, but walking with the nagging possibility that you are going the wrong way is not so fun. I decided that if I kept the cemetery always on my right, like Captain Vancouver hugging the Pacific Northwest coast, I couldn’t get too lost. But there really weren’t many landmarks save for a giant sign reminding me that I could get special “under construction” pricing on mausoleum crypt space. Continue reading
In the interest of honesty, let me say that I was not in the best of moods when I arrived at the end of the B line in Brighton Beach, and I desperately needed a cup of coffee. But though I found a steaming vat of pierogis inside of a minute, a coffee shop was oddly difficult to locate. I started to feel keenly how little I knew about Russian food in general and this neighborhood in particular. Don’t the Russians drink coffee? Or tea or something? What are they doing with all those samovars in the Chekov stories?
A free lunch really does exist, and I was walking the streets of Flushing, Queens recently, trying to hand it out. But I was having trouble finding any takers.