RUSSELL,
NY, NY.

A few years ago, when I was 51, the industry in which I'd built a career crashed. At my age, I couldn't find another job at that income level in that industry, or any other.
9/11 certainly didn't help. We burned through our savings and my 401K. Both my parents died. We sold the house. My wife took the kids and left. 

Since then, I’ve been trying to write my way out of oblivion, or at least obscurity, and keep my feet clear of Skid Row. From a three-story house next to one of the most beautiful parks in the world — Prospect Park, Brooklyn — I moved to a ground-floor apartment in a ghetto, where I’ve lived ever since.

I’ll very shortly have to get my two kids through college. Am I concerned I might not have the do-re-mi to do it? Bingo! At the same time, I’ve given them what I can, shown them how not to give up, demonstrated that just because one’s career gets a little off track, one doesn’t shoot the train.

My eldest sister freelances as a hospice nurse. Never wants for work. Now there’s a job with a future for folks over fifty. Help other oldsters not to rage into that good night — but go gently, quietly, no muss or fuss.

Me? To pay the rent, I’ve substitute-taught, edited Websites, worked for a couple of landscaping companies as a laborer, assistant-janitored at a private school, interviewed and booked jobs for ex-cons and welfare moms, and, lately, collected data for the Census Bureau. This last is only temporary, no benefits — no compensation for getting held up or picked off in the wrong neighborhood — and pays $15.90 an hour.

I get to walk around a lot. Get to know parts of Brooklyn I might otherwise never see. Get to know how other folks live — folks whose lives I can’t even begin to understand, and virtually all of whom want nothing to do with me or my survey.

Finding ugliness amid the hoopla of spring isn’t easy. But turn a keen eye on the wrong neighborhood, and there it is. In Brooklyn, certainly — and no doubt in other ‘hoods, too. Neighborhoods by the growing score in this last year before the second Great Depression. All of them wrong, and becoming more wrong by the day.

On today’s round for the Census Bureau, I’ve taken the “N” line to Avenue U in Grave’s End — and I think I may have just found the ugliest station in the entire crumble of the NYC subway system.

I look — at the peeling paint, the garbage, the graffiti, the grey faces — however few of them might have somewhere to go at this mid-morning hour. One poster on the wall advertising HBO’s “The Tudors” catches my attention because someone has carefully keyed away the paper, precisely where the queen’s nipple would be.

I exit the station and turn, quite arbitrarily, right — and pass the RAMBUG Termite & Pest Control, and then, following hard, the Beautie Bounty Hair Salon. Next to both, a Russian video store with a couple of English-language titles in the window, “30 Days of Night” and “Extinction,” setting a genial mood. Our Lady of Perpetual Help stands willing on the opposite side of the street, just in case I’m not yet getting into the swing of things.

More ugliness at the Wrong Number Cocktail Lounge, just half a block down from the station. If this is a lounge, I think, give me nails — a whole bed’s worth. The letters of the Wrong Number — each of them in a different (and differently bad) choice of color — hang, fading, on the exterior wall. The front door opens and I see a sign hanging on the inside face:

“Caution: We don’t call 911.” Nice touch.

A woman walks out, takes a last drag on her cigarette, flicks the butt out into the street. She’s somewhere between twenty and a hundred-and-twenty, and looks as if she’s never taken a breath of unconditioned air in her life, never tasted water that wasn’t meant as mixer, never walked into sunlight unless pushed out of a door or window. I decide it’s time to go in and meddle.

I enter and walk to the end of the bar, sit down and order a beer from a lady behind the bar named "Carol," but otherwise keep quiet. The place is in every sense nondescript: video games, a couple of overhead televisions — both showing today’s Mets-Cubs game — and a foursome playing a very loud card game.

The lounge is a low-hanging cloud of foul voices mouthing banalities, complaints about aches and pains, complaints in general about the state of the planet. I drink my beer, grab my stuff and walk out. At least no one calls out "Have a nice day" as I’m exiting—this ain’t Starbucks.

I’m sorry. You were expecting a story? The only story here is that there's no story — just a neighborhood in decline with no disaster plan, even within wishful thinking distance. No need to Google this ‘hood — never was, never will be. The Wrong Number doesn’t answer to the right number, doesn’t call 911, doesn’t even bother with a street address.

And your Census guy — me? I’ll just keep on counting, taking numbers, collecting data—heads and bodies, as long as they’re connected and still in motion. After all, we’ll still need data come the second Great Depression. We can eat data, right?

— Russell Bittner, 2008

New York Writer-Photographer Russell Bittner recently landed a new job in the business world — back in the high life again. Here he is today, with his college-student kids. He's still writing. HIs new collection, "Stories in the Key of C. Minor." is available here, at Amazon.com. Photo by Shelton Collins.

Portrait of Russell Bittner by Alex Braverman.
Other photos copyright Russell Bittner.