by Timothy P. Fenn
There is a place in Astoria on 31st Avenue, between 23rd Avenue and Ditmars Boulevard, in which you will find an X, and by X, I mean X as in, like, a treasure map (as in: marks the spot). Unlike a treasure map, you are not standing atop the X but underneath it. What’s more, there is no monetary treasure denoted by the X, but, instead, two trains, on separate perpendicular elevated bridges, running at different speeds and intervals: the lumbering N/W elevated “subway” train screeches in and out of its station to and from Manhattan, and the Amtrak Northeast Regional train zips (in so far as an antiquated, rusting American train can zip in 2019) between Boston, MA and Washington, DC (via NY Penn Station).
Now, a piece of treasure is located under the X (hint: not you). The Amtrak bridge arches over 31st Avenue, and at the street-level wall on each end is a painted mural. The one I’ll be referring to is on the east side of the street and is scrunched between a bunch of businesses: a Santander ATM vestibule and a Stop-N-Go bodega on the left (your left, if you’re staring at it), and Los Amigos, a Mexican restaurant, on the right. The mural is best seen on a bright day with a lot of sunshine (the temperature has no effect, so long as you are squinting). At the right time of day which, according to my photo app, is about 4:10pm on a Sunday in the first week of March, the X of the bridges creates a shadow effect over 31st Avenue, so that the light shines only on the mural, as if it’s been bleached and highlighted.
It’s not graffiti, which is to say, it’s not spray-painted; furthermore, what’s written is small and hand-painted, not at all in that fuzzy, angled graffiti font we all know and love. It’s more like the type of thing you might find outside of New York City, perhaps in California. In fact, it’s almost as if some groovy 1960s Berkeley hippies got together and then designed it based solely on the preconceived notions of what groovy 1960s Berkeley hippies might think New York City is.
For one thing, there’s an image of a floating VW van that—no kidding—says “Peace” on it (with the peace symbol and everything, maaaaan). There’s also an eagle in shades playing a saxophone, that emits, instead of notes, the names of local innovators like Charlie Parker and Ella Fitzgerald. Fluorescent green and orange stars are splattered over a large American flag that contains little decked-out couples doing that dance that’s like jazz hands but with their whole bodies. Then, at the bottom and in the middle, is a triptych, and it is the oddest triptych I’ve ever seen in my life. On the left, a zoot-suited Frank Sinatra, cut off at the chest and elbows by the ground like an evening news anchor, smirks directly at you.
In the middle, and higher, is Michael Jackson’s head, circa “Moonwalker,” and Michael Jackson’s head hovers over its complete but hollow (as in, it’s sort of just a wispy outline, like a ghost) body below; and then, to the right, cut off at the chest and shoulders mirroring Frank Sinatra, is a figure that is either the singer Tony Bennett or the actor Richard Gere.
When I stare at this Bennett/Gere figure, his identity—the answer to the question “Is that supposed to be Tony Bennett or Richard Gere?”—changes moment-to-moment. The light and the angle and my mood erupt into a cranial rugby scrum whenever I look at it, and, since I have been walking to and from the N/W train at least twice a day for the past four years, I’ve looked at it a lot. I’ve looked at the figure that’s either Tony Bennett or Richard Gere more times in a week than I’ve looked at all of my aunts in my lifetime.
It is totally most likely Tony Bennett, since the great crooner hails from Astoria and has built a school in the area. However, it’s not totally impossible that it could be Richard Gere, since the 80s romantic comedy icon went to high school in Syracuse (which is not far) and also because this painting just looks so goddamn much like the both of them at the same time.
*
I spent most of my adult life in Boston, then I moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn for a job and, finally, to Astoria. When people asked why I moved from Brooklyn to Queens—which they saw as a “step down,” like I’d put myself in borough jail—I gave the obvious answers: rents in Astoria were cheaper, there was more space (my current room is literally three times the size of the Brooklyn one), and the street I was moving to was quiet, which was essential, as I was going back to school.
A year in, I’d grown comfortable in Queens. At first it was just simply nice to live in a place with no stereotypically glamorous image to live up to like, say, that of the Williamsburgian hipster invader, holding court at boozy brunch with his Teddy Roosevelt mustache and organic donut. But then I saw the mural, and I began to wonder if there was something more than this low-key Queens comfiness that explained my alienation from 21st Century-hipster-Brooklyn—especially since, if we’re just going by appearance and aesthetics, I personify 21st Century-hipster-Brooklyn.
Samuel Stein, in his recent Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State, defines gentrification as “the process by which capital is reinvested in urban neighborhoods, and poorer residents and their cultural products are displaced and replaced by richer people and their preferred aesthetics and amenities.” It was gentrification—and my clearly obvious role as a gentrifier—that made me so uncomfortable in Brooklyn. My roommates and I, white professionals all, were paying higher rents than our building’s longtime residents, who were mostly poor and Puerto Rican, and many of whom I literally witnessed move out over the course of my time there, in favor of more white professionals. I still feel guilty about this. For many white suburbanites, moving to New York means “celebrating diversity,” which “privileges superficial celebration of difference and good intentions at the expense of outcomes, maintaining systems of inequality.”
If you grew up alienated in the suburbs, as I did, then its a romantic notion to pack it all in for the big city on a whim; I remember feeling that New York was calling me, and that I’d finally find my home, in the welcoming, diverse birthplace of hip-hop and jazz. The problem is that New York doesn’t really call anyone in particular; New York doesn’t need or possibly even want any of us. All it takes to live in New York is money. And because I had the money, I got to live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at the time the epicenter of capital-C Cool. The result of that was displacement, of those who didn’t have the money to stay in their suddenly cool home. And while I could superficially justify my presence there—after all, I didn’t create the systems or policies that led to such displacement—I also didn’t have to participate in those systems and policies that lead to inequality for so many.
When the lease was up I made it a point to try and find a situation where I was not displacing someone with less privilege than me, and found my current apartment. My landlords are a really nice family from Bangladesh, a country that is experiencing encroaching disaster due to a climate crisis that my country is greatly responsible for. My rent money contributes to their home ownership, which I don’t look at as some kind of altruistic political act—for it is they who are doing me the favor of renting—but it helps me sleep a little better.
Like the X of the trains at 31st street, our country sits at a crossroads of its own, and like the mural, it can be a real brain drain to figure out what to do about it, to the point where the easiest course of action is to just take care of yourself and worry about it later, which is the epitome of American privilege, and, I believe, a certain kind of death.
*
Astoria, a traditionally Greek neighborhood, is at a crossroads too, and I’ve witnessed its creeping transformation these last few years. A baby clothiers with little David Bowie onesies pops up next to an old Greek Bakery. A vowel-less coffee shop named QWNS, its glass-lined interior littered with little knit-hatted baripsters, opens next to the neighborhood’s twenty-four hour lynchpin, Mike’s Diner, where the waitresses and cooks still have old timey uniforms. There are at least two bars on Ditmars Boulevard that have retro video games in them, which is two more than my first summer there, when it had none.
And yet amidst these changes, the air still smells of baklava. On warm days, old men in film noir hats sit on lawn chairs and read Greek newspapers. Local restaurant Taverna Kyklades, which has been serving the same mouth-melting, charred, lemon-tinted octopus by the same family since at least the Kennedy Administration, has three-hour lines out the door on weekend nights in frigid February. Astoria is still what we think of as Astoria.
But it’s more than that, too. At my local coffee shop, where I am writing this, I see seemingly everyone in the diaspora: to my right, two hoodied twin brothers who, once, gave me dating advice that actually worked, pass a notebook and laptop back and forth, carving out rap tracks for Soundcloud; to my left, a college student is snapping away at her laptop’s keys, in between texts; in the far left corner by the window, three paint-splattered construction workers emit humid storms of laughter; in line, a family—outfitted entirely in Adidas soccer jumpsuits like Wes Anderson characters—order pre-match carbs. The entire spectrum of backgrounds and cultures seems visible; white staff serve non-white customers, and interracial couples (of which I have occasionally counted myself) gather zero gawks. There is a loud, joyous din. Later in the day I’ll almost break my right hip in the park playing pickup basketball with some local neighborhood dudes in their 20s who, for some reason, invite me and my creaky Paul-Pierce-old man-post-up-game to play with their sleek Steph-Curry-pick-and-pop style. I say this solely as a personal observation: people here seem to be able to live with each other.
I was telling my roommate about the mural the other day, and I was curious to know, since she was from Queens originally, if she could answer the question definitively: was it Tony Bennett, or Richard Gere? Her answer was: “Who?” She didn’t know who Tony Bennett or Richard Gere were. To her, it didn’t matter. For she was a New Yorker, and, I suppose, I was a New Yorker, and all that really mattered was that I finish up with the goddamn microwave so she could finally warm her leftovers from Taverna.
Timothy P. Fenn is a senior at the NYU SPS Division of Applied Undergraduate Studies, graduating in 2019 with a BA in Humanities. He currently lives in Astoria, NY, and works in the Center for Academic Excellence and Support. Tim plans on keeping himself busy after graduation with high-falutin’ life goal-type activities like graduate school applications, writing projects, journal submissions and physical fitness, though he’ll probably end up spending most of that time watching Simpsons reruns on a couch covered in snack wrappers.