Backtracking

Day 6:

I don't like to backtrack. No one I know does. Who wants to cover the same ground more than once? I do my best to refrain from it, but in some instances it's unavoidable.

This is one of those instances.

So back we go. It was, my previous post notwithstanding, a major event, one that defies a quick run-through. As a result, I may break it down into several entries if I find myself running on or remembering small details. I do like details, so consider yourself forewarned. 

Here we go.

I am a hipster detective, I told the truth earlier. The office I walked into was the headquarters of Bushwick Industrial Zoning Commission. It is a small cinderblock room, devoid of almost anything, save a desk, a few plastic chairs and my boss. When I walked in the conversation went something like this:

My boss: "What color is the sign on the outer door?"

Me: "A fugly yellow-green."

My boss: "The job's yours."

Me: "Great. What is it?"

What it is involves is finding apartments that have been set up in industrial or commercial buildings. Illegal apartments that have sprouted up in one of Brooklyn's designated industrial zones. These apartments have long been part of New York City and apparently there has been a just as long a battle to keep industrial zones industrial only by people like my boss. I personally think he's fighting a losing battle, people in this city kill for real estate and in the long run I don't think that a dinosaur like heavy or light industry can hold out against the crush of humanity.

So I'm supposed to find these illegal apartments, get as much info about them as possible, and get that information back to him. But what I found was a dead kid.

The Hipster.

Moving on

Day 3.

I may have to move.

I live in Greenpoint and my territory is Bushwick. The distance between the two physically is not a barrier for my new commute, not by any means and the two areas share a sketchy recent history. Greenpoint is a historically (at least 20th century) Polish neighborhood that sits on a century-old oil spill, festering beneath all of us. Bushwick burned during one dark week in the 1970s and smoldered for a couple of decades after. But it's not that I don't fit in one neighborhood or the other, because I do. This is not to say that I'm accepted in either, just that I'm tolerated as a sign of the times. In most parts of Brooklyn in 2009 scores of blocks are haunted by guys like me, shaggy-haired guys with notebooks, cameras and backpacks, gliding by on bicycles or ambling along on foot and staring up at the uppermost reaches of industrial buildings and the cornices of brownstones. Guys like me knocking on doors in search of apartments and looking for the best local empanada or cup of coffee.

It's because of my omnipresence that I was hired and also why my first day of work went so smoothly. No one registers any surprise when I knock on their door, no one minds when I take photos of their apartment. They might adjust the rent unfavorably by fifty or a hundred bucks because I don't speak Spanish or because I like the work of Andrew Wyeth or because I'm over the age of 30 but I take my notes in my Moleskine and thank them for their time. You see, I'm never interested in renting any of these apartments. I don't want to live in Bushwick, it's just my territory. I want to live in Greenpoint, but my problem is that my new job pays much less than my previous one.

I may have to move.