building

first i ought to say i don't think brooklyn needs a big fat sports arena slammed down right in the middle of everything over on atlantic and flatbush. and i don't believe i'll see the affordable housing that's supposed to be coming with this grand new construction any more than i expect to see the cleaned up and "family-friendly"coney island gleaming with fancy new hotels snuggled up by the high rise housing projects.

big brutus and the rain (and us)

but i am a sucker for machinery, so much so that i married the sweetie at the largest electric dragline shovel still alive today. cranes and tractors and other beasts capable of moving great piles of earth or iron or steel or even trash do to my heart what little kittens do to the hearts of most folks. and because of this i've found a thousand reasons to wander past the mean-spirited construction going on at atlantic yards this summer, including today's five mile round trip trek to sahadi's for a bottle of orange flower water which, sadly, they no longer carry.

cranes in june

there is plenty to do and see along the way and the walk is pleasant, full of pretty bakeries and shops with old and rusted things. but on my orange flowerless return trip i stand a long while at the corner of fifth and flatbush to watch a crane operator drop a big checkmark-shaped piece of metal delicately in place among the other bones in this monstrosity.

the crane is one of two i can see from where i stand, tiny bodies hidden below what they've already built, their red booms stretched like the necks of hungry animals. a cable suspended from the boom point ends at what looks like a bobber you'd tie to your fishing line. the bottom is red and white stripes. the top is a blue field with white stars. at this bobber the cable becomes two cables, stretched wide to affix to the checkmark at two places, not as far from one another as i would have thought. and then hanging from either end of this piece of metal is a length of rope, each nearly as long as the metal itself.

all along the beams that have been welded together, all along the finished part of the skeleton of this arena, there are cables running maybe waist high, affixed from time to time to the beams like streetcar wires. there are men, tiny as ants, fastened into those cables close to the edge where the checkmark hangs like a feather in the sky. the men stand there under it and do not even think about what might happen if that slab of metal suddenly drops from its fastenings. i spend my first few minutes watching them thinking of nothing besides that.

the crane lowers the metal piece once and something is not quite right. the cables lift it silently back up,  swing the whole thing around, then lower it again. the men on the skeleton begin to move like flocks of birds, into two loose groups, shifting with the movement of the metal hanging above them. they move through the sky like it is where they live, which, i suppose, is mostly true. they do not once look down. and when the checkmark descends for the second time men from each group grab the ropes dangling from its sides and guide it to where it will live. from the start of that second try to the moment when metal sits up against metal is not quite five minutes.

there have been blocks in my past, wooden ones and plastic ones that snapped open and closed like alligator mouths. there have been lincoln logs and tinker toys and ring-a-ma-jigs with pieces that click together so easily a three year old could build an arena with them. and i know up close on the corner of flatbush and fifth avenue there is the noise of machinery and the yelling of those men to one another. there is that checkmark of metal hanging above their heads, more than two thousand pounds wrapped in skinny cables, but from where i am standing so far across the street it looks effortless.