The Circle of Death
I started this post months ago, and then forgot all about it until a NY Times article my agent sent me reminded me about it.
One of the first acts of the Obama administration was to push forward an economic stimulus bill in an attempt to kickstart a recessing economy. Many detractors said that this is a waste of money. Unnecessary spending that will provide a short term fix that will only further burden future generations.
And these detractors would be dead on, if the Obama administration had just sent everyone $300 or more in cash, or gave away billions to companies and the wealthiest Americans with no accounting of how it was spent, which is what the previous administration did under similar (if less severe) recession indicators.
But this president was more responsible, seeing to it that this “free” money was spent wisely on, among other things, upgrading infrastructure and public works. Things that not only create jobs and feed money into local economies, but which also create permanent value and make our country a better place to live in.
Case in point: my neighborhood.
I live in Kensington, a neighborhood in Brooklyn that has seen economic rise and fall over the years. I’m no historian who can recite the details, but I don’t need to. The facts are embedded in everything around me. The high ceilings, archways, and molding in my apartment building was not built for a slum. This was a ritzy neighborhood back in the 30’s when my building and the others on either side were built.
But the next 60 or so years were not kind. When I first moved here in 1997, it was kind of ghetto. Years of neglect had turned my building into a weak shadow of its former grandeur, and made the neighborhood an often frightening place to live. I was beaten and mugged once, and attacked by a gang of teenagers another time, both incidents barely a block from my front door. Home robbery was a real threat, and there were heavy bars on every window. And for access to the park or highway, whether by bike, foot, horse, or vehicle, you had to cross The Circle of Death.
The Circle of Death is the roundabout intersection of Coney Island Ave, Prospect Park South, The Prospect Park traffic entrance, Prospect Park South, Prospect Avenue, The Prospect Expressway entrance, Fort Hamilton Parkway, and Ocean Parkway. It was a maelstrom of activity with a safety island in the center, but no walk signs to tell one when they had time to get to it. Walking through that to access the park was like playing a game of fucking Frogger, with you as the corespawned frog.
New Yorkers are not good with traffic circles. We are an impatient, irritable bunch, and the best of us flout traffic laws constantly, not because we are bad people, but because it’s the only way to friggin’ GET anywhere without it taking 5 hours because of traffic congestion. The Circle of Death is like the neighborhood dragon. There are accidents and terrifying near-misses there all the time because assholes have no idea how to drive through a traffic circle without behaving like a fucking savage. People will cut straight across 4 lanes of traffic without so much as a signal if they think it will save them ten seconds.
But I fell in love with this neighborhood anyway. It had good bones. The rooms in my apartment were huge, and filled with closets. I could walk to the park. Or the movie theater. Or the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Or the parade ground/ball field. Or the Brooklyn Museum. The horse stables. Or the trendy restaurants in Park Slope. It didn’t take a genius to see that this old girl was ready for a comeback, and I put my money where my mouth was and bought my first home, right here.
And I was right. Things got better every year for a while. It became a haven for yuppie website designers, artists, and hipsters. TV producers and middle-management PR people. Smarty-fart fantasy writers. You get the idea.
Shops were opening to service the new residents, and the streets got safer. Subway service improved, and abandoned buildings were torn down with plans to build new ones made.
But then came the dark times. Then came the empire. The general middle-class economic growth required to sustain the improving area halted, and then began to reverse. Building projects to improve the neighborhood were halted as developers went bankrupt and were foreclosed on by banks that then went bankrupt themselves. The construction sites became dangerous rotting wounds, oozing foul pus into the community. I started hearing about local robberies again, and several budding shops were forced to close their doors.
I was trying to hold faith, but after Cassie came along, I really started to reconsider the old girl, and wonder if I should move on and raise my little angel somewhere where she can play in a big backyard in a safe neighborhood.
I decided to hold on just a little longer. Prices for suburban homes like the one I imagined were (and still are) obscene in New York .
I am so glad I did, because the moment the stimulus hit, things started to come unstuck. They started repaving roads and working on the subway lines. The bankrupt banks that owned the abandoned construction sites were sold and the new owners are making the sites safer until new plans are made.
And the Circle of Death was made into Swiss cheese. Now pedestrians (even those of us with baby carriages) have safe access to the park, and there is some level of organization forced on reckless drivers. Some people complain about how this was done, but I have a feeling those are the same people who were cutting perpendicularly across 4 lanes of traffic, heedless of the danger, because they couldn’t be bothered to wait an extra few seconds in the proper exit lane. I got no sympathy for them.
These are changes that have made my quality of life, and that of my family and neighbors, permanently better, and raise the value of our homes and community to hopefully draw back some of those up-and-coming folks that were starting to move away.
What did I spend the $300 stimulus check from Bush on? I don’t even remember.
So this is odd.
Annie 
You may remember Verena, the German bookseller my buddy Myke made friends with a couple of weeks ago, ordering Das Lied der Dunkelheit from her store and buying it, only to turn around and give it to her, asking her to give it a read.