People don’t use the sidewalks in my neighborhood. It’s a fluid side-to-side between cars, mopeds, the garbage scourgers, the potato truck, the junk cart, little old ladies, cute Turkish girls, kids and Turkish guys with trays of tea. A little chaotic? Sure. But it works.

     » Half a block from the front door:
I have yet to see the corner store on our block actually closed and we come home late. They’ll trade 10 or 15 empty beer bottles for a pack of cigarettes. The guy working there and I have lengthy conversations with him saying things in Turkish and me replying in English. Sometimes I’ll say complete jibber-jabber just for the hell of it. “Provolone? You actually think school buses eat ducks in the bathtub?” He smiles, nods his head, and then rambles back. I wonder if he’s saying the same shit back to me in Turkish. Either way; it’s fun communication and we laugh a lot.

     » One and a half blocks from the door:
I just got my hair cut for $2 at the barber shop using the tried and true “we can’t talk to each other so I’ll show you a picture of my hair when it was short” strategy. My barber laughed and babbled on in Turkish and gave me a great haircut.

     » Two blocks away from that, to the left:
The tailor repaired my jeans for $3. This is the third time they’ve been repaired on this trip. Upon pickup, he bitched about the apparently shoddy job done by the Peruvians and Colombians on previous repairs. “Look at this – it’s terrible. They do not understand how to cut patches,” he says, gesturing to the maze of stitches that the knees of my jeans have turned in to, “I couldn’t even enjoy my work.” (He points out his specific contributions to the increasingly tattered rag my jeans are turning in to. He did an excellent job. Especially for jeans that should have been retired 4 months ago.)

“Those repairs were done in Peru and Colombia,” my roommate Hatice translated from me to him.

“Colombia?!” he replied back, “If I knew it was done in Colombia I would have just taken all the stitches out and started over.” Hater.

     » Another block; watch for the cabs that don’t slow down coming up the hill:
The guy that sells delicious intestine sandwiches that taste kind of like stromboli recognizes me. The juice guy recognizes me, too. He teaches me phrases in Turkish while squeezing juice out of fresh grapefruits and explaining the same story of his brother who is in the US illegally. The juice is $1 and stupid tasty. The brother seems to be in limbo.

     » In front of the pavyon:
The bouncer at Fantom Bar always hits up me and Bryan when we come home late from the bars. He offers a discount on beer. Right, buddy. I even saw the hot prostitute walking by on the street when I was buying a sandwich from the guy that cooks in the back of his Volkswagon Minibus. The hooker has yet to email me.

     » Three block radius:
Everything is right here. A big-ish grocery store with wine for $3, the vegetable store, the fish store, the cheese and olive store, the butcher, the baker, (the candlestick maker is still M.I.A., though I have little doubt in his existence), the random electronics store, cell phones, barbers, restaurants, a taxi stand, the subway.

The sense of community is unavoidable after being here for only a month. Don’t think I could ever go back the ‘burbs and I do think I could live here for more time. All the more reason to come back some day.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS