slowly beginning to grasp
that I’m not living in bushwick
I’m living in new York city
Bushwick is my temporary home but
this,
this is it
found a bike on marketplace last night
arranged to come check it out this morning
spoke on the phone all the way along the J-train tracks
‘till I saw the street name and thought, oh, this looks like something I’ve seen on tv,
sat on the stoop and waited for a guy I didn’t know to check his phone
the guy was nice and the bike was beautiful
the bike was too small
googled mapsed other bike shops and recognized one I’d checked out the day before
decided to walk
realized I wasn’t in Bushwick anymore, that I approached bed-stuy, the place my friend’s dj-friends are living,
a fire(?) acted sprinkler and I wondered whether someone did it on purpose to wash their car or if it was just accidentally bumped by something heavy
a helicopter is soaring over me as I’m typing this,
remembering last time I was here and it took us a week to realize they aren’t police officers chasing criminals in cars,
they’re offering a tourism service, who wouldn’t wanna see Manhattan from above?
and so I kept on walking, decidedly not checking my phone until I saw the street name “Ralph”, checked, turned right, turned left, saw the bikes on the pavement or is it called sidewalk, I forgot which one is british, and there he was, the guy
JC
“those are my initials”
I told him my price range was that I’d found another bike yesterday to $400
immediately regretted it
because the whole reason I didn’t go back to the $400 bike was to pay less than $400
he said,
this one is your size
and it’s 250
I felt like I had made a friend and a knot untied in my gut
a beautiful man and his two beautiful girls bought a plastic air pump to make sure their basketballs were game-ready
I bought the bike
I bought a lock
I bought a bell
I bought a helmet
it was less than $400 dollars
I took not just one photo of him but he took multiple of me
asked for a review
there’s nothing I’d rather do
I hadn’t taken enough money out of the atm because I hadn’t considered I’d need a helmet
so I didn’t have $330
I had $326
and it was fine
this guy,
I wanna go back and make a documentary about him
im sure he’s like this with everybody
he said, first thing,
“this isn’t really a bike shop, it’s a talk…” and he wasn’t even bullshitting me
he reminded me of my old bartender-boss
“a happy employer makes for a good business, that’s just common sense”
JC told me it had taken a long time to build the business like this
not pushing product on people
not getting them to buy stuff they don’t need
but now they’re returning over and over and over
closed for 4 months each year but when we re-open,
he said,
people are waiting by the doors to go inside
I want an invitation
how can I be one of those people, relaxedly attached and part of the non-bikeshop bikeshop,
I really do not have any friends here yet, I am aware, it will come, this guy, JC, he’s with me now wherever I go,
because I bought the bike
And it’s a mountainbike
And it’s got gears ( <3 apparently a hard find in the used-bike market I’ve learned),
and it’ll take me onto sidewalks and tall curbs,
cause it’s a mountainbike and I’m a good rider cause I’m from Denmark, no not the Netherlands, yes the Netherlands have amazing agriculture I guess but so do we, oh, yes, the tulips and the river from the alps, yep for sure that’s not us that’s the Netherlands, but similar biking cities so I’ll be able to get my way around here I thought
and I motherfucking did
I tell you
following road signs and intuition and using the skyscraper in the distance to mark what I’m fairly sure must be DUMBO,
refusing to check your phone
because you’re not??? In a hurry?? To do??? Aaaaanything
it’s just me
and this bike that I’ve bought
with my absolute last cash
and I found downtown Brooklyn
and I found a café
there’s music outdoors
two American women speaking at the table next to me on the other side of the little cute fence with the plastic plants
it might be a job interview
I bought an ice coffee
refilled my bottle of water
im gonna be here for a long time, yo
and when I decide to leave
I’ll hop onto my bike
And go wher-e-v-e-r I want
probably not Bushwick today