bowery / 3rd ave / 129th st
11.83 miles
i thought it might feel different when someone asked me for change on the street, but it didn’t. i’ve been trying to take representative photos as i walk, but one thing you haven’t seen are the countless men and women who live on the streets. it feels intrusive to photograph, but seeing each person strikes me every time— whether with sadness, guilt, or hopelessness.
since i moved to the city i have said i would regularly volunteer with an organization that works with homeless people, but it is senior year, and that routine has yet to be established. this morning, i woke up at 6am to help the bowery mission serve breakfast. to fill cups with coffee is not a revolutionary action. but i met charles, a currently out-of-work hairdresser from london who volunteers every day from morning to afternoon. i watched a boy, about nine, ask for two cups of coffee, nothing else. my heart broke when an elderly chinese woman tried to obtain a second breakfast that we could not give her; she looked at me, she tried to speak to me; i could only shake my head, not knowing what she was trying to tell me.
to volunteer is an act of selfishness— an exercise in empathy, a necessary reminder of the humanity of each person in this city, to experience the kindness of others and be able to give it too.
yet, it was still difficult to make eye contact with each human i saw sitting on the street as i walked back towards home.
this was my longest walk to date (closer to 15 miles counting detours), and my ankles are sore as i write this. i stopped by two yet unvisited new york landmarks (veselka's and prince st. pizza), and commenced my hike northward, for the first time. i'm not sure if it felt longer or shorter watching the street numbers go up instead of down. beginning on prince street, i walked up bowery, which shortly turned into cooper square (there's a muji there), and then into 3rd avenue, which i walked all the way up til its end at 129th street.
it was a strange disconnect walking through the upper edges of the lower east side, with boba shops and pizza and millennial pink, while reflecting on the breakfast line of three hundred i had just witnessed. the bowery mission was founded in 1879 to serve the homeless men on skid row. the bowery looks different today, but the need has not changed; in fact, it has exponentially grown. as i walked through east harlem later in the day, i pondered the waves of immigrants and ethnic groups that have flowed through the lower east side, and i wondered what harlem will look like fifty years from now.
it was a good day to be in the city. here are a few of the sights: multiple people greeting each other on the streets; a punjab deli and grocery; a mailman conversing with a man living on the street; a store called 'rainbow kitchen supplies' (rks, anyone?); construction and closed up shops, as always; catcallers; children's faces! (the fact that children do not have to wear masks is a saving grace); 'george washington', 'thomas jefferson', and 'jackie robinson' public housing (there is some strange irony to be had here); carts selling chicharrones de harina, multiple places of worship on 129th (methodist, baptist, jehovah's witness), and at last, the hudson river.
i was alone with my thoughts for half of this walk, and all of my previous two. but in light of feeling the studies pile up, i elected to listen to an assigned podcast during the second half of my journey today. as i listened to a vietnamese woman read her sister's gratitude journal, reflecting on her time in a refugee camp when she was five years old, describing her thankfulness for the man who carried her through a forest, for the rats the men could hunt in exchange for ramen— my eyes watered as i made my way through the upper east side.
this week i have felt a little more isolated, a little more homesick. my roommate and the few friends i have in the city have all been settling into the zoomschoolmeetingcall routine, as have i. my classes are good, but it is still difficult to be in the same room for so long. as i passed hundreds of people on my walk today, i felt lonely.
