Everyday after work I slowly grind up the hill back to the train station to begin part two of the roundtrip that is my epic daily commute. Many of those days I’m waylaid for a pint at Big Time. Then I get back on my uphill line from 42nd to 43rd. I never take the Ave, sometimes I take Brooklyn, but I prefer to take the alley. It’s like a rite of passage, running the gamut, running the gauntlet, a garbage-strewn shitshow defining the U district. The seedy unsightly smelly underbelly behind the scenes with unappetizing dumpsters overflowing everywhere behind all the restaurants on the Ave and between a handful of pay-for-parking lots that will all be 15 story apartment buildings soon enough. My line adapts, overcomes and changes depending on the delivery trucks or the posse of Uber Eats-Grub Hub bros in their cars waiting and clogging up the South end.
The day before yesterday in the alley I had thoughts of pausing and leaning my bike on a dumpster for a photo depending on what just right light through yonder building breaks. Looking to sum up the U district in one digital snap shot. But as I rolled up to an ideal spot, there was a guy pissing by a dumpster. He was in no hurry and wasn’t trying to disguise it at all. So I kept rolling on to the station and waited for the elevator with my bike.
got on the elevator and pressed the PLATFORM button. The doors were almost closed when someone pushed the down button and paused the elevator. Two more passengers got on. One of them was the piss alley piss guy. The toe of his right shoe (his downhill foot) was still a little wet dappled with piss. I shook my head and said to myself “welcome to the U district”
Yesterday I was grinding up the alley until a delivery truck clogged up my line. So I took a left through the parking lots over to Brooklyn where I paused and took the symbolic photo above. As the ideal U district piss alley underbelly shot exists only in my mind.
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