Friday. Juneteenth. Instagram’s JusticeForGeorge site (the best one-stop shop for #BLM actions in New York City) lists five pages of activities in Brooklyn, from 10 a.m.-8 p.m., plus pages more in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx: vigils, bike rides, family gatherings, children’s marches, rallies, celebrations.
The city may still be in Phase 1 of reopening (Phase 2 set for Monday), but vehicle traffic feels almost back to normal — worse in some spots. This is no doubt because people still aren’t riding the subways, and because all of the demonstrations are sending drivers down side streets and byways, looking to avoid tie-ups on major thoroughfares.
We ride bikes. Early afternoon I pick up The Kid at The Co-Parent’s; we ride through Prospect Park, north on Vanderbilt to get home — we pass one march, and traffic is steady, but it’s not as crazy as I’d predicted.
Then I ride back south to meet The Girlfriend for an inspection of the new home for which she’s contracted, in the northwestern corner part of East Flatbush. It’s a row house, 110 years old, two stories with a finished basement, a sweet, narrow backyard (a main selling point for The Girlfriend, who’s struggled with apartment living, no outdoor space).
The owner’s been upgrading for the past five years — pretty well, the inspector concludes. The chimney needs a stainless steel liner; the front stoop and rear exterior wall need masonry repair; the boiler needs replacing. But the wiring is sound, the roof may have another decade, little else needs immediate repair.
The home to the south is vacant, derelict, the owner non-responsive. The Realtor says he’d hoped to package it with the place The Girlfriend has under contract: “If you put two lots together, a developer could put up a seven-story apartment building. That owner could get $700,000 for the house as is. But he apparently wasn’t interested, or couldn’t be tracked down.”
Over a hip-high fence separating the back yards I chat with the homeowner to the north, who’s lived there for 16 years. He tells me about his garden, while a German Shepard, two elementary-school aged children run in and out of the back door. The garden is impressive: corn, tomatoes, Scotch bonnet peppers, spinach, herbs, a fig tree, Japanese plum tree, more. The backyard points east; he says the garden gets sun from mid-morning to late-afternoon.
“It’s a little late this year,” he says. “Too cold in the spring. But come back in four weeks. The corn [now knee height] will be up to here” — he points to his chest. He still sports a Jamaican accent (he grew up outside of Kingston). “My tomatoes will be beautiful.”
I hope The Girlfriend can move in before late-summer harvest. Her backyard is mostly paved but has a stretch of grass that could be converted to a garden next year.
I walk out to unlock my bike; the block is filled with school children in their small front yards, on the sidewalks. I ride home past another march on Rogers Avenue, thickening traffic elsewhere. Temperatures in the late afternoon remain in the 80s; when I pull into my bike room, I’m dripping.
The Girlfriend joins us; we decide to order pizza. A 6 p.m. march, 8 p.m. bike ride beckon, but we’re all tired.
“We don’t have to go to a demonstration every day,” The Girlfriend says. “How many have we done this week: Five? Six?”
I think five. We stay in, play Ticket To Ride (children’s version), watch videos (The Kid and I, at her behest, the ABC musical comedy series “Galavant,” The Girlfriend “Disclosure: Trans Lives On Screen,” directed by a friend of hers).
By now fireworks are exploding everywhere. From our windows we see crackles, coconuts, comets launched from Prospect Heights, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Flatlands, Midwood, Weeksville, Brownsville, East New York, Canarsie. It’s relentless, doesn’t let up until past 2 a.m.
I give up on sleep, catch up on the Trump Administration’s latest attempted Friday Night Massacre: Attorney General William Barr’s effort to dismiss Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is overseeing investigations into Michael Cohen and porn star payoffs; Rudy Giuliani; Deutsche Bank (the only major bank willing to fund Trump after his casino bankruptcies); Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, indicted for channeling Russian money to GOP candidates; efforts to extradite Ukrainian oligarchs Dmytro Firtash and Igor Kolomoisky; plus cases involving Chinese and Turkish financial influence in the 2020 election.
Jeepers, why would Barr want to install another crony in that post?
Berman was himself installed as a Trump loyalist, but he’s stymied Barr for the moment by staying on the job (and, by implication, noting that Barr lied in a press release by saying Berman was resigning). That action seems to have prevented a significant brick from being masoned into Trump’s and Barr’s authoritarian wall.
It’s conceivable Trump’s first CoronaWorld rally — originally scheduled for Friday night in Tulsa, then moved to Saturday when the outcry over a Juneteenth rally in the city of a 1921 massacre of more than 300 African Americans — was scheduled to coincide with (and obscure) the Berman firing. Trump has overridden his Secret Service’s recommendation that the Tulsa mayor call a curfew over the next few nights; Tulsa’s mayor acceded to Trump’s request. The president would like little more than to see police crush demonstrators during or after his rally, to underline his “law and order” campaign.
Meanwhile, cases of Covid-19 are spiking in Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Arizona, South Carolina, and other spots in the West and South where governors have eagerly reopened their businesses. Suddenly, New York City, where new cases have remained flat for more than two weeks, looks like one of the nation’s safer spots.
Happy Juneteenth. God bless America.
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