As the air begins to warm up and the leaves emerge from their many month hibernation, so does the sounds and shouts of spring and summer. Just after drifting off to sleep last night I awoke to shots, shouts, screams, and sirens. I looked at the clock and it was around 12:48 am. I must have been asleep all of two minutes, so it scared me even more than it normally would. It was like a falling dream where you wake up before you hit the ground, but this time the scary part was the awake time.
We live on a block in between Fulton St. and Atlantic Ave. nearly atop the Franklin Ave. C subway station. Our bedroom wall and backyard is on the Fulton side of the block, so as summer nears so do the sounds and chaos of Fulton/Franklin and Fulton/Classon corners. The distance between Classon and Franklin is like a 1/2 city block. Both corners look out onto a calamity of transients, unemployed, and generally unhappy people throughout the days and nights. The Franklin Ave. subway stop, according to a guy I overheard coming up the south exit stairs one day is "...the stinkiest mother f*%#!@$ subway stop in all of New York City!"
