The Invisible City: extended report and interview with John Rogers - LIDF

The Invisible City: extended report and interview with John Rogers - LIDF

new york vid

new york from fugueur on Vimeo.

Made this with my little Sanyo Xacti CG-10. The music is by Neveranthony

Yet another murder

I'm posting this report from the Islington Tribune not through some mis-guidedly morbid linking of murder and place but because it was a murder on these streets near where I lived that prompted me to start this blog.

The killing of Sam Fitzgerald took place very close to where I lived when I started writing Islintongue, as did that of Sonny Cracknell back in 2004. This is an area that still retains such precious memories for me but seems blighted by violence - very sad.

Here's the beginning of the report in the Islington Tribune

Published: 16 April 2010
by CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS

CLOSE groups of teenage friends have been left overcome by grief again in Islington after a young Arsenal supporter was stabbed to death close to his home.

Sam Fitzgerald, 20, died from a knife wound sustained outside the Thornhill Arms pub in Wynford Road, off Caledonian Road, on Wednesday night.

He was well aware of a series of recent violent deaths in the borough with friends telling yesterday that he knew murder victims Martin Dinnegan, 14, and Ben Kinsella, 16.

Sam was be lieved to have been a former boyfriend of Jessie Wright, the 16-year-old whose death in King’s Cross is a police case now the subject of murder proceedings at the Old Bailey. He led the tribute march to Jessie on his bicycle last month.

In all too familiar scenes for grieving relatives and friends, teenagers gathered together at a growing shrine yesterday (Thursday). Many of the youngsters were in floods of tears and unable to put their emotions into words.

Sam had been watching his team play Tottenham on the television inside the pub and was attacked when he briefly stepped outside. Detectives are keeping an open mind about the motive for the stabbing but are not linking it to football rivalries.

Sam, of Priory Heights in Wynford Road, was rushed to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel but died soon after.

Walk to Brooklyn

On my two previous visits to New York I had failed to venture beyond Manhattan, it seemed more than enough for me and I had little idea what lie beyond it. This time I had a motivation to cross the water - to interview Joe at the Perogi Gallery for my ongoing documentary about Bob and Roberta Smith. This was also a chance to cover a bit of ground on foot beyond my habitual drifting.

Downtown from SoHo all is quiet, sun out, an April like the first time I came here in '98. As warned Brooklyn Bridge was heaving with walkers - at once a brilliant and heart-sinking sight. Is this what the pedestrian highways I once proposed to Wycombe District Council would look like - a sweating mass of agitated perambulators.
From the bridge I got a very different sense of what New York appears to be - I think it's often easy to forget that many cities are defined by what is at the periphery; so caught up are we by the buzz around the urban core. Maybe that's the city dweller's fear of nature - the force in that water so evident when looking down from the bridge; we scamper inland to cower behind bricks.

On the other side of Brooklyn Bridge I am without bearings for a bit and follow my nose. I have a strong image of Henry Miller wandering round here implanted by several readings of Tropic of Capricorn.

I want to find the apartment that Bob lived in on 3rd Street and amble in that direction.
Smith Street is a real hive of activity - loads of heaving cafes - people really lunch here eh? I go into Book Court and literally the first book I see is Alfred Kazin's 'A Walker in the City' - "When I was a child I thought we lived at the end of the world", he writes of Brooklyn.
The literary version of Brooklyn I'd built up was of somewhere rough-and-ready work-a-day and I see straight away how out of date that has become because at times I feel like there must have been a mass photo shoot for American Apparel in the neighbourhood. It's a nice vibe though, a comfortable place for a wander.

I turn into 3rd Street and the mood soon changes - becomes run-down industrial, deserted except for a few cyclists. I stand on the bridge over the Gowanus Canal and suck in the rust. I don't find Bob's apartment - must have been knocked down. I move on round the corner to Perogi on 9th Street, hungry and stiff legged now.








This is the Brooklyn of my imagination.
The American Legion club, people milling around outside Liquor Stores. 177 9th Street is a locked industrial unit. I ring Joe, "North 9th Street Williamsburg" he corrects - miles away - but only about 4 subway stops from my hotel it turns out. I laugh, my walks are always wild goose chases - mis-guided excursions following after lost scents. People had very kindly offered to show me round Brooklyn but I know at heart that I need to get lost to find what I'm looking for.

I jump on the subway back to Manhattan then over to the gracious Joe who gives me a great interview at Perogi, complete with accounts of the show he did in Bob's shed - The Leytonstone Centre for Contemporary Art. Strange how a walk round the corner from my house in London one evening led me here to Brooklyn.