Reflection #5

I have lived in close proximity to Lindsay Park for almost 3 years. In that time I have had countless random, “New York” conversations with a number of residents and individuals who either live, work, or commute through the Lindsay Park footprint. In the fall of 2022, during the New School Strike, I would watch the organized touch football games every Sunday morning with coffee I would buy from my friends at Young Coffee. During late spring evenings and summer nights, my fiance and I would stop to watch the old man softball league where men well into their retirement years put on full baseball uniforms and relive the drama of the game on Tuesday nights. We’ve come to know fellow dog owners in the neighborhood like Ms. Shirley, who used to have stage dogs; her pups were in Spiderman 2 and apparently Tobey Macguire was a big fan! My own dog Bella, has formed a friendship with the foreman of the Food Bazaar supermarket that abuts the southern edge of the neighborhood. Andy now proudly claims to be Bella’s “Uncle” and he will stop operating his forklift to give Bella a hug and a treat. The community is strong.

I treasure all of my neighbors but the ones I have become most interested in are our pollinator friends who work up and down our “green corridor” providing us with blooming wildflowers. Every now and then the Lindsay Park maintenance teams will get aggressive and attempt to rip out the “weeds” or “invasive species” that line the chain link fence that separates the sidewalk from the largest parking lot on the grounds. Most of the year though, they let it be.

On a warm day in the summer or early fall you can count dozens of different pollinators like honey bees, bumblebees, wasps, butterflies, and ants. I have stopped to watch pollinators roll around in the flower of a morning glory too many times to count. As much as I worry that a passerby will have a negative reaction to seeing so many insects with stingers, the pollinators mind to themselves collecting pollen and buzzing away. I wonder if the bread and birdseed laid out for the birds discourages the birds from swallowing up our pollinating neighbors. Could it be that humans, birds, and pollinators are all living in relative harmony here in Williamsburg? One can hope. I appreciate and value their presence. Their existence and the gifts of blooming flowers that they leave us are well worth the grains and seeds we leave behind for the birds as a deterrent. For all of New York’s imperfections, there is a balanced and simple beauty to the Lindsay Park area. Birds, pollinators, kind neighbors, and beautiful sightlines. A small community park that’s never overrun. A lack of permeable surfaces, yes, but a place well worth adapting because it is a place worth calling home.

It is the last day of November and my hands are cold. Bella did not see Andy today, the last of the morning glorys has wilted, and the lights on the athletic field are bright for the Volo soccer league tonight. As I finish my final reflection on Linday Park as an assemblage and urban ecosystem, I am reminded of all the good that exists here in spite of everything that seemingly conspires against it. I doubt many more, if any, subsidized co-ops will be built in the next ten years with help from the city. And while my plans for the future are not married to New York City or to Brooklyn, I will always remember this peculiar and beautiful corner of the city, Lindsay Park.