I moved to New York City as a young artist and with the help of a few friends hit the mother lode of good luck: The top floor of a 150-year-old furniture factory was for rent and it was cheap. It was way up on east 95th street where abandoned buildings were home to squatters and social rules were in flux. The heat went off at five PM, no bathroom but a john and nothing more but space. Space and light, they say is the gold that can’t be weighed and the dream of any person with a brush and canvas.
The surprise of my new neighborhood was its secret energy. It was alive with people who just appeared after the sunset. Generations of families, lovers, drug dealers and undercover cops hiding in the shadows. The corner bodega was the meeting place with Columbian food, beer in a paper sack and stuff to get you through a blizzard. Salsa music rolled through the canyons of buildings most nights. When it was warm the clubs opened their doors and it was everyone’s party. This was Kojack’s New York and I fit right in.
All was well except the need to sleep and place to do it. I had a mission to complete and a beat-up hammer to make it work. It was doors I wanted. Not so much doors to go through or close but as a passage to a corner for dreams.
At the time, construction sites in Manhattan often used old doors from demolished buildings to make barrier walls around the massive holes being carved in solid rock for foundations of the soon to be high-rises. These walls of multicolored doors were stacked three high and nailed together just well enough to stand up to the weight of curious eyes peering between the cracks to see the spectacle below.
I had declared to borrow from the stacks of doors just enough to help build a sleeping space in my corner of the loft. On a freezing midnight with flashlight and hammer in hand it was time to select the perfect doors. They were ancient to me and seemed like old friends. One was a tint of worn and faded lime green with gashes and dents the other was the color of pure cream with a crinkled finish and a faint smell of smoke. Each door wore a beautiful glass knob with diamond like facets that someone had once adored and polished to perfection.
By some act of kindness at this exact moment a man came out of the darkness to join me. We carried the doors back towards Harlem in a crunchy quarter beat of footsteps cracking in the frozen snow.
All over the city at night as cars and cabs flashed their lights you could see oceans of glass doorknobs sparkle on construction walls. If doors could talk, they did that night….