DESCRIPTION WITHOUT PLACE.

criticism. decorum. innards. bric-a-brac. nostalgia. nausea. polemics. diatribes. litanies. symphonies. polaroids.

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• 

  It’s often quoted that Brooklyn, if counted as a separate municipality, would be the fourth largest city in the US. It is an extraordinary place to live. Aside from a few years in Manhattan, I’ve spent a majority of the last nine years here. Last Friday, Brooklyn gave me and a few dear friends a genuine pat on the back.

  Brooklyn has always been enormous in my imagination and I can pinpoint the afternoon it went from marginal to mythical. I was granted a few running scholarships during my senior year of high school, and when I toured colleges, I would oftentimes get lumped in with the “prospective athletes.” These tours were always the same: we’d go from person to person and say where we were from and what sport we’d be representing. I was always the only runner. I would say, Middle of Nowhere. Cross-country. At Niagara University, I toured with a few volleyball players and a point guard from Brooklyn. When asked the requisite questions, he responded, “Basketball. Brooklyn, East side.” The distinction thrilled me. There wasn’t a person campus-wide who could have distinguished one part of Brooklyn from another. But it mattered to him. And I loved that. This thought stuck out in my head, “Someday, I want to be able to tell people I’m from Brooklyn.”

  I moved here on a whim two years later. A friend of a friend had a loft in Bushwick and needed a roommate. I was in Montreal for the summer with my girlfriend at the time, having decided I was not going back to college. My only immediate plans were to spend the fall learning how to ride a motorcycle, the winter working ski patrol. But for me, a spontaneous move to Brooklyn was worth every highway on every Harley under the sun. I transferred my accumulated credits to a college I’d been accepted to two years earlier (the first time I’d decided to forego college) and drove back to the US to hand over a deposit and a month’s rent. I had promised myself, as a teenager, that I would someday move to New York, but never empty-handed. I would move here with something to offer, whatever the hell that meant. But I didn’t. I moved as empty-handed as I’ve ever been (or ever will be) in my life - I didn’t even bring a bed. Ten days later, I watched the World Trade Center fall from my new roof. I have never learned to ride a motorcycle. I have been patiently waiting for the whim that will take me away from here, but it never seems to come.

  I’ve always read articles about people receiving the key to a city or having a day proclaimed in their honor. I never thought Brooklyn would do me the favor. Who would plan for such a thing? But last Friday, Nick, Danielle, Norah (in absentia) and I were presented with this ridiculous “Proclamation.” And here it is, sitting in a brown envelope on my floor, with no better home than a photograph slapped on my blog (do I frame this thing? is that gauche? what’s the etiquette?)

  This is how it happened. Several members of the Borough President’s staff came to dinner two months ago and asked if they could come back, and bring the BP with them. We said sure, as long as he doesn’t shut us down. Their plan was this: they were going to draft up a proclamation and the Borough President himself was going to give it to us. Since we didn’t know it was coming, we canceled on him, and asked him to reschedule. So they redrafted the damn thing for a different day, and because Mr. Markowitz was busy last weekend, one of his deputies presented it for him.

  So the moral of this story is: if you do something exceptionally fun and of questionable legality, Brooklyn will consider it culturally significant, and give you a wholesome thumbs up.

  This town’s a gem.

  26 Feb 2010