It was a freezing afternoon. I attempted to keep my hands warms by blowing on them but that was an awkward mess as I was holding a heavy camera in my hand. I would later find out that all the footage was shaky and blurry because my concentration was on maintaining my body warmth more than it was on acquiring aesthetic footage. Despite the atrocious weather, the streets were crowded with the usual amount of people. The halal carts were bustling with customers as the smell of shawarma meat intermixed with the smell of the Popeye’s across the street. The smell of food was welcomed by my cold nose, but it was quickly replaced by the lingering scent of left-over garbage from the day before. It seemed as if the snow had slowed things down.
However, people still jumped over garbage bags and puddles of melted slushy ice to cross the crowded streets to get to their shopping sprees or their journeys home. It was evident who was there for the latest deal in T.J Maxx and who was there to rush home. Both men and women in suits holding suitcases and wearing long coats ran across the warning red hand that foreshadowed the incoming cars that splashed the pedestrians with dirty snow. I stood there watching all of these interactions before deciding to cross the street. Across the street, an elderly woman was struggling with her shopping cart. She attempted to pick it up over the snow; despite the crowd, no one helped her. At the corner I was standing in, there were others standing with me. An elderly man, of Middle Eastern descent, was angrily yelling on the phone in a thick Egyptian Arabic accent. A crowd of Fort Hamilton high school students (all of them looked like they were white), were loudly waiting for the buses. Three of them were holding hot Starbucks drinks from the Starbucks behind them.
I started walking the opposite direction towards 4th avenue, and the crowd quickly increased as people were exiting the buses and the train station. The crowd consisted of people of all ages, but mostly high school students and working middle-aged people. Wendy’s and McDonald’s were unusually crowded. I assumed it was due to the weather because when I usually pass by these two fast food chains, the high school students are normally outside eating the food they just purchased. The clothing stores were mostly empty, which is unusual, but I excused that as an effect of the dismal weather.
When I decided that it was time for me to walk the block home, I realized that this “stakeout” was much more disappointing than I expected. The majority of the people were loud and obnoxious high schoolers who I felt were judging me as I was just standing and not doing anything. The other half of the population was people who were rushing to go to their warm homes. It was quite evident that 86th street was the center of chain stores and transportation of Bay Ridge. Being a resident of Bay Ridge, I already knew this but experiencing it for 20 minutes was a bit of a shock to me. The amount of cars, buses, and people does not seem much when I am part of the crowd, but 86th street makes Bay Ridge look more like a city than the “small village” it is. In fact, when I attempted to approach a few people for a quick interview, I was ignored. When I got home and wrote down my field notes, I decided that it was just a bad day because the weather was not welcoming or happy in any way, and I had hopes for the next time.
