Midnight Cowboy

I'm going where the sun keeps shining

Through the pouring rain

Going where the weather suits my clothes

Banking off of the northeast winds

Sailing on a summer breeze

And skipping over the ocean like a stone

-Fred Neil

Late, busy, and not able to write a long one today. The dams I built in January to hold back the crush of my day job while I'm in NYC are starting to crumble a little, just in time for finals.

Last Friday P and I decided to watch Midnight Cowboy, mostly to catch a glimpse of what this part of the City was like in the late '60s. That was a time of transition for the Lower East Side, as the mostly Jewish residents moved away to Brooklyn, buildings were abandoned, and a seedier underclass started to take their place. Much of the movie is shot during that period of desuetude and decay, when this neighborhood formed the perfect backdrop for a depressing couple hours.

But what a cool nugget of trivia we uncovered while watching.

Peg never leaves me simply to watch a movie, instead peppering me with questions that force me onto IMDB to answer. When did that actor die, and of what? Where have I seen that bit player in the movie previously? And, most frequently, where was that scene shot?

At one point in the movie, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman make their way to Hoffman's abandoned tenement building, slated to be condemned. Even the windows were X'd out in preparation for demolition.

Yep, that was the place, as it looked in the 1960s. Notice all the Yiddish, which you still see here and there around the neighborhood.

So Peg asked me to look up the address, and it turned out to be 166-68 Suffolk St.

I'm sitting at 171 Suffolk as I write this.

166 is right across the street. The building in the photo has been long since demolished--it really was condemned when they shot those scenes. And the building that was here that day also no longer exists--this apartment tower was constructed in 2019.

The space where 166 Suffolk used to stand is now occupied by some sort of office or studio, flanked by a community garden.

You can see the gap in the storefronts, and the windowless flanking walls of the adjacent buildings, and tell something was once there. A shadow of the past right outside our door.

And those damned Citibikes--my demise will likely arrive when a hipster ignores a red light, as they're wont to do, and runs over your hobbling author in the crosswalk. The bikes would be a great thing, if only the riders obeyed the traffic laws. They seem to taking their riding cues from the Doordash guys.

I've digressed. And now I must get back to work. I have class tonight, and need to go find a pair of shoes with P now that our winter boots no longer work in this 80 degree weather.