Big Apple pleasures in a time of Trump

IT WAS the last Sunday BDT (Before Donald Trump). I was enjoying lunch at Amir’s Falafel, a small, cluttered Middle-Eastern restaurant in Manhattan’s Uptown area.

With me were Kay Logan and her cousin, Prexy Nesbitt. Kay was a long-time member of The Church of the Intercession in 155th Street, situated on the edge of Harlem. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu was a regular visitor to the parish as the guest of its rector, the illustrious Canon Frederick B Williams, who has since died.

I first met Prexy in Geneva in 1982 when he worked for the World Council of Churches Programme to Combat Racism. We have been friends ever since and share similar views on the essentials of life.

This veteran of the Civil Rights Movement has not mellowed with the passage of time. Nor, as struggle victories peaked and waned, has he become weary and jaded. He remains alert and involved in issues of justice and over lunch he enthused about Black Lives Matter (BLM), the activist movement rooted in the African-American community.

This began in 2013 as a protest against systemic racism towards black people, most evident in the shooting dead of a black teenager, Trayvon Martin. The movement intensified its focus the following year when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York.

Prexy was intrigued by BLM’s lack of hierarchy and its organisational values and philosophy.

It’s a testimony to strength born out of resistance and a reason we should never weary of doing good and fighting evil.

I also see this defiance of the mundane played out in the visual vignettes in the streetscapes of our global cities.

As part of an ennobling attempt at fitness I walk wherever I can these days. There’s always some individual who steps – literally – into my path and gives it an engaging slant.

One such was a heavy-coated fellow I encountered on Day 1 after the election of Mr Trump. He walked ahead of me in the sulky, autumn sunshine. We both braced ourselves for the anticipated sharp breeze as we turned and leaned into a gusty Broadway. Up ahead, a smartly dressed young woman, sashayed towards us in her Downtown glamour.

He stopped and queried in a genteel and becoming tone, “Excuse me, Miss, do you have a cigarette?”, as she passed within exhaling distance, her perfume a fleeting promise.

She frowned, her stride on flow, and gave an emphatic, affronted “No!”

We continued towards Fulton Street where I was heading and I reluctantly turned out of his shadow. For a long time afterwards, I relished his bemused muttering: “I only asked if you had a cigarette. I didn’t ask you to give me one.”

It was only a survey, Sista, philosophers do that. And if I smoked I’d have given him a full pack in the cause of empirical research into the ways and means of alluring, Broadway ousies.

Three men stepped into the train at Canal Street. One raised his hand, looked pleasantly towards the 15-or-so folk on the train bound for Brooklyn.

He had our attention. And then he said, sort of by the way-ish: “I’ve got something...” (Okay, here it comes, another preacher-of-the-day).

Then, the two behind him joined in on point, note perfect: “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it’s cold outside I’ve got the month of May. I guess you’d say, what can make me feel this way? My girl (my girl, my girl). Talkin’ ‘bout my girl (my girl)”.

And we smiled along, drawn in by the hustle of necessity; loving the pluck and the style.

I happily parted with $2 as the collection bag passed by, blessed with a strong, broad-smiled, highfive.

They got off at the next station. And we enjoyed what they had left behind: a lot of sunshine and that groove-thing feeling when strangers become less strange, for a little while.