Traveling to different cities is an opportunity to see how others live their day to day. Wherever you go, people are busy going about the daily activities that make up the majority of their lives. They rush to work, pick up the kids from day care, rush to dance or karate class, and then shop at the store and head home to put dinner on the table. After dinner, baths, and homework, television is a common companion and a welcome relief for those who have been working all day. That’s when it’s time to relax and not have to think, and just enjoy the process of being entertained.
This week, while visiting one of my regular clients in New York City, I was invited to travel to Brooklyn to meet a new associate. She had a few hours and traveling to the city was unlikely for her. I had more free time that day, so I offered to take the train to Brooklyn and visit her.
I had been to Brooklyn once before when my husband took me there to visit his childhood home. But it wasn’t the Brooklyn I visited this week or had heard about for years. He showed me parks and beautiful row houses and his elementary school. No, this Brooklyn was a whole new experience from the moment I arrived!
The train took about an hour to get to the end of the B line and then I left at Brighten Beach. It was the home of the movie Brighten Beach and the home of Coney Island. As I stepped off the B train and down the stairs, tons of new sights and sounds greeted me. It was different from Manhattan, although there were clear similarities in that it also had a variety of stores along the streets. But right on top of it, there’s the train that rumbles through the city every few minutes. The sound is deafening and you have to shout or stop talking when the train passes over you.
On both sides of the streets dozens of shops were lined up that had everything you could imagine in them. Jewelry, handbags, clothes, toys and electronics! There were street vendors with homemade Danish and Russian delicacies. Upon entering the store, the first thing you notice is that the prices were surprisingly cheap. The selections were 100 times what you would find in suburban stores. The first store I walked into was a combination of a department store and a discount store. I noticed all the colors of women’s undergarments that covered the wall. I have never seen such a selection with such a variety of colors! There were about 10 different shades of pink, green, purple, blue, tan, cream, orange, aqua, yellow, orange and red bras in each size. The quality wasn’t all that bad, but the prices were $3-$5 when most stores could sell the same item for 5 times as much. The pajamas were cute and colorful and the prices beat any Marshals, TJ Max or Target anywhere in the US For $6.99 you can buy the pants and top in different colors, patterns and prints.
Everything everywhere was cheap! Bottled water was less than a dollar and street vendors were selling their items for around $1-$2.
I arrived a few minutes before my friend, so I had a few minutes to browse and then I went to the assigned corner to wait for her. I informed him that she was wearing a red top and black pants. I noticed that she was sticking out like a sore thumb. Not many people wear those bright colors in New York which I forgot about when I was packing my suitcase early the morning I left the city. While I was there, a myriad of people passed by and went about their lives as they do every day.
A group of young people were standing a few meters from me. It was obvious that his favorite pastime was hanging out and watching the girls go by. Every time one passed by that caught their attention, the entire group stopped her conversation and followed her with their eyes as she continued down the street. Then one of the boys started clapping to the rhythm that was apparently only in her head and started dancing to the rhythm of her hands. He danced to her own music for a few minutes while the other boys kept up their exchanges with each other. Another group of ladies were consumed with their own conversation and standing in the middle of the sidewalk and even blocking traffic. I was standing first, but ended up moving because people had to walk around them and the backpack that was slung on one of the girls’ backs.
As I stood on the corner, looking up and down the street trying to find my new friend who was coming back from a funeral and dressed in all black, some young men in a car sitting at the traffic light about 8 feet from where I was standing sounded using a megaphone: YOU LOOK LOST. I looked at them and started laughing at them and said, “I’m looking for my friend and I don’t know what she looks like. Can you yell at Marianna?” Then, without missing a beat, suddenly, with a voice like thunder, I hear: “MARIANNA, YOUR FRIEND IS LOOKING FOR YOU, MARIANNA, YOUR FRIEND IS LOOKING FOR YOU.” I laughed and they laughed as they walked away and then I was back with all the people around me, lost in their own conversations and enjoying the beautiful day in Brooklyn.
On the corner was an ice cream truck with the soft ice cream cones that can be dipped in delicious chocolate and toppings for an additional 50 cents. When my friend arrived, we treated ourselves to an ice cream cone and started walking towards the boardwalk.
We walked a couple of blocks to the beach and boardwalk, kicked off our shoes, and walked down the sandy beach. We sat on the sand and ended up talking and sharing for the next hour or so. The beach was packed with people laying out in the sun with a few people swimming in the gentle surf. There were quite a few people with amazing bodies and it was obviously a great place to show off your clothes.
As we talked, we discovered that although she was of Russian descent and I was a pure mixed-race American, we found many similarities in our personalities and life ambitions. We talked and talked and finally got up to go find the perfect gift for my son.
We walked around and did some window shopping, I saw items I had never seen anywhere. There was a flower shop that had hundreds of beautiful dolls in the windows and the one that caught my eye as a “fairy” with beautiful sparkly wings. I thought of my sister-in-law who collects fairies and thought that one day it would be the perfect gift for her. I found a present for my son, a Batman because he has something that shoots out, and I felt like it was almost perfect. We then accompanied her to the YMCA where she was teaching an acting class for a group of teenagers.
Everywhere around me people were speaking in Russian. It’s a huge Russian community and I met a lot of people who didn’t speak any English. When I asked for a bathroom, I had to talk to several people because no one knew that word. Finally, after pointing down, a girl asked, “Bathroom?” I don’t know. I found it shocking…with the thousands of people walking up and down that block every day, she didn’t know where a ladies’ room was located. I ended up buying her a cheese danish and found a Walgreens with a ladies room and then headed to the train to go back to New York.
What fun the trip was! I was there for about 3 hours, but in that time I got a little glimpse into a whole new world of how these thousands and thousands of people live. It didn’t even look like America because hardly anyone spoke pure English. The food, merchandise, and culture all seemed completely different from what he had experienced before. The women even looked different from American women. They were fair-skinned, with small faces. They were very feminine and youthful, which also seemed different to me. They clearly had a very strong culture attached to this town, and it was a joy to experience and I was filled with gratitude for the opportunity to be able to share a part of their lives for the short time that I did.
Sitting on the plane next to me is a lady of Russian descent who shrugged her shoulders when I said how great Brooklyn was. She said, “no…it’s fine.” She said, it’s unique to you because you haven’t lived there for 27 years and I agreed. He’s on his way to Florida to pick up her 10-year-old daughter who stayed with Grandma for the summer. She is excited with anticipation to see her daughter, so we both had an excited attitude when we talked after sitting down. Me about her hometown and her about going to my home state!
What a bonus to be able to experience other cultures right here in the good old USA of A. Got a taste of a bit of a bustling Russian community and really enjoyed it. I realize that very often I go about my daily life, visiting the same shops and traveling the same road to my daily activities day in and day out. I listen to the same few radio stations, talk to most of the same people, and meet my associates at one of the 3 Starbucks in town. Most of us do the same, and every day that we do, we are living our lives. Days stacked together turn into weeks, weeks into months, months turn into years, and very rarely do we intentionally go out and drive outside of our comfort zone and experience something new.
It was a wake up call for me. There are probably new places to visit within walking distance of my house. Maybe this weekend, we’ll go somewhere new for the weekend instead of the usual beach we frequent. Maybe we try a new activity or try some different foods. Maybe put on some jazz instead of easy listening popular music and go to a different grocery store than my usual shopping stop. I want to live and explore the world, keep my mind fresh with ideas and open to opportunities for new experiences.
Brooklyn. My husband’s hometown now takes on a new meaning. Now I have a Brooklyn experience and that memory now lives in me.
