Sunday driver

On Sunday, I took a cab up the Henry Hudson Parkway to The Cloisters.  The scenery was alternately lush and green or steep and rocky, completely familiar but still awe inspiring. From my neighborhood, I was there in about twenty minutes flat, the cab driver confirming he knew the museum though he had himself not been.

After a few hours in The Cloisters, details of which you can read in yesterday's blog post,  I exited the museum and considered my options to return home - cab, bus, or subway.  I decided to take the M4 bus which circles directly in front of the museum and makes all local stops along Fort Washington Avenue then down Broadway to West 110th street before crossing to the East side.

At the start of the route, we moved slowly along a narrow stretch of residences and parks, then past churches and schools.  As we took one curve along the narrow tree lined street near 181st street, I glimpsed a kind of a sidewalk flea with coats and blouses hanging on clothesline tied between two trees.  I noticed a lady in a red dress and red shoes, then around the bend, an elderly woman in a white gauze skirt. Each person and scene had an almost vintage feel, as did the neighborhood itself.

Here are a few snapshots I managed from the bus window as we made the crawl down the wider, more commercial part of the Avenue, all the while offering positive reinforcement to the female driver, first over one passenger who left his bag up front but refused to claim it: "Didn't I ask who left their bag up here?" ; then over an elderly woman in a shawl who insisted she had no change to pay; then over another in a form fitting floral print dress and LVMH bag who got the change to pay the old lady's fare but apparently then did not pay her own , " These two don't pay and then they have the nerve to talk about me?'

The woman seated behind me chatted on her phone, detailing a story about having to call 911 on her daughter for erratic behavior on the afternoon she had been released from St Luke's. "It has not been a great Summer!"  

Outside, the street appeared calm. It was Sunday after all....




a good smoke on a step

a cool drink by the donut shop



a slow stroll to G&K Food

 

a tall text outside the pawn shop
 

architecture and ornament along the route

 

 

Washington Heights is a New York City neighborhood in the northern reaches of the borough of Manhattan. It is named for Fort Washington, a fortification constructed at the highest point on Manhattan island by Continental Army troops during the American Revolutionary War, to defend the area from the British forces. Washington Heights is bordered by Harlem to the south, along 155th street, Inwood to the north along Dyckman Street, the Hudson River to the west and Harlem River to the east. (Wikipedia)