The Intersection: Little Puerto Rico

I used to live on the Upper West Side, between 104th and 105th Sts. I called my neighborhood Little Puerto Rico because the Puerto Rican flags were everywhere: draped from telephone lines, displayed in apartment windows, fastened to car antennas. It was everywhere.

A startling transformation took place moving uptown, beginning somewhere around 86th St. Time slowed down, became something to enjoy rather than consume. As soon as the weather was pleasant enough, windows opened and radios were directed outside, where they spilled Latin music into the streets. The old men brought their folding chairs outside and propped them up on the corner near a bodega. For every bodega in the neighborhood, there was at least one old man. There the old men remained for the entire day, arms crossed on chests, looking up and down the street, apparently making a proud effort to do nothing. It would seem that, in Puerto Rico, one aspiration of the retired is to purchase a folding chair and find a good bodega in front of which to place it on summer days.

I often thought to myself, "Those guys have the right idea," after returning from some frantic venture downtown. The mood of that neighborhood was both welcoming and relaxed, so unlike the demanding chaos that exists 50 blocks south.

My grandfather bought a mobile home when he retired, placed it on a lot in southern Texas. Had he been Puerto Rican, perhaps he might have gotten a folding chair and placed it in front of a bodega. He would've enjoyed the thousands of dollars he'd have saved.