Slipping Upstream
Dear Diary:
I went to N.Y.U. and used to spend hours watching the pickup basketball games at the West Fourth Street courts. The confidence. The exhibitionistic joy with which the players passed and leaped and hustled. It was thrilling.
I wasn’t ever great at sports. I’ve likened my career to a team sport many times. But, in a non-metaphorical world, I must admit that I’m afraid of the ball. You never know where it’s coming from, and there’s generally an expectation that it be caught.
I am a good runner, and an especially skilled city walker. I like feeling like a deft salmon slipping upstream. But the eternity that exists when it becomes clear that an actual ball is heading my way? That has always filled me with dread.
After I graduated from college, I lived for many years on the Lower East Side and would often walk past Sara D. Roosevelt Park. There’s an open-air court there. No cage. Just sporty chaos within yards of traffic.
One day, I was speed-walking past a pickup game, eyes down, in my salmon zone. And it happened. A blocked shot. Swatted. Coming my way.
Somehow, without breaking stride, I lifted one arm, palmed the ball and shot it straight back into the game. The players cheered.
I never stopped walking. But the surge of pride and adrenaline was incredible. I have never been cooler, and most likely never will be.
— Rebecca Wisocky
Ms. Wisocky is an actor who appears on the CBS show “Ghosts.”
Nearly Grifted
Dear Diary:
It was the normal, pre-Covid summer of 2018. My friends and I were hanging out on the grass at Tompkins Square Park. A schlubby, fake-rich-looking guy approached us.
“Hey guys, you look like you can party,” he said.
None of us knew how to respond.
In less than 90 seconds, he had whipped out his American Express “black” card and Rolex and had let us know he had a TriBeCa penthouse where we could party.
Most notably, he gloated about being the heir to Dolce & Gabbana. He followed this by telling us how many “hot chicks” he hooked up with. All totally normal things for a 40-year-old to say to a group of 21-year-olds.
Intrigued and confused, we immediately used what he had told us to find him online. Sure enough, he was not who he said he was. We had just crossed paths with the “Bungalow Bungler,” who had served time in prison in the 2000s for credit card fraud. He would infiltrate “cool” clubs, steal people’s credit cards and hit the town.
Since we were broke and not cool, he had lost his touch if he considered us potential targets.
I love “high society” grifters. For some reason, you feel extra bad for them because they so clearly just want to feel accepted. In interviews from 2007, he used the exact same phrases he had used with us. It’s inspiring to see someone so committed to a bit.
Nearly eight years after that encounter in Tompkins Square, a video went viral of a man in a heated verbal altercation, saying things like, “I live in Tribeca. We don’t do that” and “We’ll go out here and handle it.”
It was him. The internet had labeled him the “Tribeca Gangster.” I hope he’s doing OK.
— Alex Hartman
Mr. Hartman runs the Nolita Dirtbag Instagram account.
Manhattanhenge
Dear Diary:
Beginning in spring 2002, I announced to New Yorkers via email and news release that on two days each year the Sun sets over New Jersey in a way that perfectly aligns with the Manhattan street grid.
When the western skies are cloud-free, this phenomenon makes for beautiful photos of tall glass-and-steel buildings framing the radiant sun on every cross street that enjoys unobstructed sight lines to the horizon.
This event has been happening since the grid was conceived in 1811, but apparently no one had noticed and documented the phenomenon. I coined the term “Manhattanhenge,” evoking the solstice alignment of the rising sun at England’s prehistoric Stonehenge. I had visited the site on a science expedition when I was 15, and had always wanted some version of it for my home town.
Few people took notice initially, but now, thousands flood the Manhattan cross streets and block traffic to get a glimpse when those days arrive.
One of the best views is from the Tudor City overpass, which allows your sightline to trace the exact middle of 42nd Street without standing in the middle of 42nd Street.
On a Manhattanhenge day a few years ago, I parked my body early on that overpass, where hundreds more people would eventually arrive.
About 10 minutes before sunset, I was standing and talking about Manhattanhenge to some strangers next to me when a loud, raspy voice called out from several rows back: “Down in front, sonny!!”
In my mind, I shouted back: “Lady, do you know who I am? If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even be here on this overpass.”
But in reality, I politely apologized for blocking her view and quietly sat back down, allowing all behind me to enjoy the spectacle.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Dr. Tyson, an astrophysicist, is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. (He also contributed to Metropolitan Diary in 1991.)
Tasty Burgers
Dear Diary:
The first rule of the Bed-Stuy Racquetball Club is: You do not stop talking about the Bed-Stuy Racquetball Club.
Three years ago, my friend David asked if I wanted to try racquetball. I pictured a cramped, noisy gym, and men flailing at a tiny ball. But he explained this was classic Brooklyn handball (with rackets), played outdoors in Herbert Von King Park, two blocks from my house.
A few days later, at 8 a.m., we met five other guys on a freezing, cracked concrete court in front of a chipped concrete backboard. Some were sweeping away shattered glass, leaves and garbage, speaking in a rapid-fire banter I didn’t understand.
I remember asking: “Why does he keep saying ‘tasty burger’?” (A great serve.)
The group formed during the pandemic, when Richard, a painter from Boston, and Jonah, a whiskey writer from upstate, started playing for exercise and just to hang out.
Ambrus, a Hungarian artist and bodybuilder working out with his crew beside the court, introduced himself, picked up his first racket and quickly became the best player.
Vadim, a Lithuanian-American filmmaker from Flatbush who was walking in the park, asked what the game was, and instantly had the best serve.
Jonah recruited his next-door neighbor Josh, an Australian event planner. David, a perfumer from Massachusetts, had been hitting with his son on the adjacent backboard. He joined, and then asked me. Others came and went.
Now we play three or four times a week — in rain, snow, even after dark by the light of our phones. We come for the exercise, the hang, the rhythm of the park, and the jokes.
Recently, a 79-year-old man stopped to say he hadn’t played in decades and wanted in. Of course! The more the merrier.
— Hamilton Leithauser
Mr. Leithauser is a musician. His most recent album is “This Side of the Island.”
Matter of Degrees
Dear Diary:
The doors opened one afternoon on the 1 train, and Kevin Bacon stepped on. Actual Kevin Bacon. “Footloose” Kevin Bacon. “A Few Good Men” Kevin Bacon.
I watched as, one by one, everyone on the train looked up from their book or their phone, registered that he was there and then silently went back to their book or their phone.
Except for one person: a young, college-age guy at the end of the train, who said under his breath, “That’s Kevin Bacon.”
Then he said, a little louder, “That’s Kevin Bacon.”
Then he stood up and started marching straight toward Kyra Sedgwick’s husband. As he did, he said again, “That’s Kevin Bacon!”
The woman next to me locked eyes with him.
“We know,” she said quietly. “Sit down.”
The young man stopped in his tracks, paused for a moment and then sheepishly returned to his seat.
The 1 train rolled silently along. Kevin Bacon was safe. And everyone who had witnessed that event was now one degree from Kevin Bacon.
— Jenny Hagel
Ms. Hagel is a writer and performer for “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
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