In 1983, when summer came, I took an opening on the lobster shift. It was full-time work, and I needed to save some money to get through the next academic year.
In the cool of the late evening, I’d take the IRT down to Times Square and walk over to the type shop near 38th and Madison. I was always glad to see the folders of work, freshly arrived from the ad agencies and the corporate headquarters, marked up and ready to go. Working made the overnight hours go by.
I had a special deal with management: I could leave at 7:30 am, so I could make my 8:30 class at City College. Third-semester calculus and analytic geometry. Some of the those mornings, as the summer heat built in the classroom, I could scarcely keep my eyes open.
At 11:15, class over, I’d make my way back to my place on 109th Street. There was no air conditioning, so I’d set up the fan to blow toward the bed while I tried to sleep. The noise helped cancel out the voices and the sirens out on the street.
One Sunday morning, I woke up with the thought that I wanted to make a record of neighborhood life, at that time, in that place. Our building was on rent strike, and some of us were organizing a block association to deal with some of the neighborhood problems.
Anyway, I loaded up the 35mm with a roll of Tri-X and headed out. I walked around the block, keeping my attention on the block on which I lived, bounded by 109th St., Columbus Ave., 108th St., and Amsterdam Ave.
This is what I saw.
