The gas stations in New York City have been driven out of town. Especially on the Lower East Side and SoHo and the West Village.
I remember the spots that were there, so funky and comfortable. They are haunted spaces for me, pretending they are normal. It was once-proud ground now forced to endure the weight of tall glassy buildings where they used to breathe on their own. Ok, so it was only a patch of cement with a few gas pumps. But it had a sightline. Not anymore. And it makes a difference in my life.
That’s what happen on Avenue C at the East end of Houston Street where I would take my car. I was always late in getting around to the state inspection sticker thing. It was an event, a time to hang out with the guys with coffee and a plastic-wrapped cheese Danish from the nearest bodega while my car was their patient, exposed with its hood open. I can feel the ghosts of those guys with greasy rags in their back pockets that wafted an oily perfume.
They would stick the inspection sticker on your windshield for an extra ten or twenty dollars depending how far they found your car out on the thin edge of not passing—and if they knew you. They knew me. We had these yearly interactions and intermittent gas fill ups, and we’d talk about city things, sweet nothings, as we smoked dangerous cigarettes in the gas fumes. I’d laugh at their good humor, and they at mine.
Then – Houston at Avenue C. photo:EV Grieve
Now – Houston at Avenue C. photo:City Realty
When I had my loft down on the Bowery and Delancey, my car—my eternal badge of growing up in Detroit—was snuggled just across the street. Its home was the brown brick five-story cube of a building on the corner of Elizabeth and Kenmare. (Delancey street is called Kenmare when it crosses to the East side of Bowery).
The smiling Spanish guys would bring my car out to me on the truck elevator from whatever level they had parked it when I left it to them. I’d leave it, my 1970 two-seater Karmann-Ghia convertible, in whatever bit of space I could squeeze it into near the two gas pumps. The cramped pumps stood just outside the blurry window of the office that held Jerry the owner’s greasy desk. (Jerry would let me give him post-dated checks for the rent when I was low on cash. . . Those were sweet neighborhood days.)
That garage was home. It was the apartment building for my car who lived, packed in with others, on shifting levels.
Sometimes the guys brought it down to me while it was still sleepy-eyed, rough-engined, and coughing awake from the closer second floor. And sometimes—a longer wait—they had to carefully juggle it free from the packed-in fifth floor. Then it would be purring evenly and ready to let me flash us past the cop at the traffic light on the Bowery. We had to get us out to the Fire Island ferry or head north for Vermont for god’s sake.
But in those wait-times for my steel friend who I was always glad to see, I’d talk. We would talk. The garage guys were always outside waiting for transient cars to park or were fixing flats, so we would talk. Why not? We knew each other.
I lived just across on the Bowery for twenty years. And they knew it. They knew that I was in graduate school, that I went to art openings, that I was from Detroit. They knew I was Italian and loved the prosciutto bread from my allies at the delicious Parisi Bakery just a block away on Mott Street. We were intimate there in the space just big enough for two gas pumps always crowded by cars—moving or still—and sheltered under the overhang of the car-dormitory above.
This was my safe space. I was never a stranger. The guys would acknowledge me with a nod or wave when I walked by going to or from home. They made me feel watched out for. We shared our gritty neighborhood, a workplace for them and a home for me, there on the crossroads of the Bowery.
It was tougher then. Back then there were the brave working girls on the corners. I admired them. I’d smile with a half-nod as I passed, not wanting show my respect too much or interrupt their concentration. What courage, those women! They kept watch acutely, assessing which tricks were safe to snag from the cars going to and from the Manhattan Bridge down at the east end of Delancey street.
Those Bowery corners now are another cleaned up part of SoHo, and I’m long gone from there. Back then, gas stations—like bars—were a part of the wardrobe of neighborhoods. They were special to me. And decades later in this city they still are. My gas guys now have no car-dormitory above the pumps here on 51ststreet at 10th Avenue. Our banter is quicker, sometimes just a smile and a meaningful “hey.” It’s busy at this rare oasis—one of only thirty-two left in the city. I read that online. Can it be true?
Anyway, they know me with my aging Saab now. Maybe it’s because I’ve made a habit to never take back the change from a fill-up. The first time I waved off a dollar I was surprised that he was so surprised, that skinny Rasta guy. It struck me. And it started a trend of feeling closer. A few words, a smile. I’m a regular.
51 Street/10th Avenue
When I needed a battery for my key fob, I was stuck. The robber barons at the Cadillac dealer next door to the station had closed. I’d go there, forced to, because care is scarce for a 2001 Saab. General Motors bought that Swedish company and they have all the parts now. Another dealership I tracked down had handled the fob and handed it back, unopened, no new battery. So where to go now? I wanted someone who wouldn’t mess up what could turn into an expensive key for my dated car. I’d learned that already.
The black-market duplicate I’d gotten before from the shady key shop on Second Avenue (not far from my loft then) is gone. Another sacrifice to East Village newcomers. That guy in his cramped, dark shop had duplicated my key fob for forty dollars instead of the GM price of two hundred—and never looked me in the eye. It was friendly, that mutual avoidance of eye contact. It showed the silent trust that meant neither of us was going to talk about this.
But at 10th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen now one of my gas guys said “give it to me” and plucked the key from my hand. My car was still at a pump, an annoyance to others swarming in and out. But hey, I’m a regular and my guys take care of me, never mind how busy. And they did their best. They tried.
They disappeared past the mechanic’s lift in the dark repair den. I could hear raised, debating voices tumbling from the space. It didn’t seem too long, and then another guy bounded out waving my key in his hand. That was quick—but no. He gestured for me to wait, and he went to pump gas. And again, and. . .
“Wait wait, don’t worry,” he said it as he handed off my key to a smiling turbaned man I hadn’t seen before. And so it went from hand to hand, my guys trying. It never worked out, but that didn’t matter.
It’s always more than any kindness of strangers that’s at work. It’s being one of the guys, and more. It’s being naked. It’s being naked and accepted. No matter about age, or she’s just a woman, or any judgements. It’s what makes this city holy for me, still. Holiness in spite of all its roughness—or because of it. There’s a sacred contrast of pause in the midst of constant movement. It’s a jarring necessity, this fleeting human-ness. It pulls my neediness out of me and lets me show myself, naked.
I learned to expose myself early when I was a new psychologist. When I learned to become an unclothed therapist, not focused on theory or method, I found I got something back: I got that person without the weight of labels and expectations. I learned that being me stripped us both. And it still spills over, this therapy, in gas stations. We share a wisp of each other without the clothing of judgment. Naked.
“If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.” [Michel de Montaigne. Essays, Book 1, XXVII, Of Friendship]
Spencer Tunick. 2010. Sydney Opera House [edited]