Washington Square Park

A YOUNG MAN (23) sits along the Washington Square Park fountain. He holds a Polaroid photo of a girl and stares at it longingly. He is noticeably distressed. It’s cold and his breath is heavy and visible. He stands up and holds his arms straight out from his sides and steps onto the edge of the fountain, balancing himself like a tightrope walker.

The sun has recently set in the distance and the sky is beautiful.

He slips, but catches himself before he falls. He checks his watch and squints as he scans the faces of the passers by. THREE FRIENDS stand impatiently waiting in the distance. One calls out to the young man in a think Irish accent.

“Oy! She’s not coming.”

The young man looks over his shoulder. “Give me a second,” he says as his eyes turn away from his friends to scan over the park again. He drops the Polaroid in frustration, and looks straight up.

I watch him in awe. He is captivating.

“Okay that’s a cut,” my earpiece crackles to life. “Don’t call it out. We’re going again right away.”

The young man takes a sip of tea and takes his place seated on the fountain. The photo is placed back in his hand and his make-up is touched up.

I am excited to be working on a movie in Washington Square Park. I was called on somewhat of a whim. The key PA knew that I went to NYU and would be in the area. I’m only here for the day.

I checked the call sheet when I arrived and was surprised to discover that Keri Russell (I learned how to spell her name since my last column) was in the movie and would be on set. I recounted the story of my framed photos of her to a few of the other PAs over the course of the day. They laughed.

Washington Square Park is the closest thing NYU has to an actual campus. Many of the university buildings surround the park.

When I first arrived at school as a freshman, I lived in a dorm three short blocks away on Fifth Avenue and 10th Street. The park was one of the only landmarks I could navigate to and from with confidence, so it became a meeting place whenever anyone came to visit me.

I grew fond of one particular park musician. It seemed like he was in the same place every time I walked by. He played classic rock songs, a lot of Rolling Stones and David Bowie. I would make a point to walk past his spot and listen to him. He had no hat to throw change into. He was there entirely for fun. He grew to recognize me, and we shared an unspoken connection.

I had visited NYU for the first time with my father a year or so earlier on September 17, 2001. I remember the date because it was six days after 9/11 and the first time I set foot in the park, the twin towers were still smoldering in the distance.

“They used to stretch toward the sky right over there,” said another potential student’s father on the school tour, raising his hand and pointing to the empty sky.

Opposite the emptiness, the arch stood tall, like an entranceway to Fifth Avenue. Taxis lined up as far as the eye could see, and the Empire State Building rises up above the skyline in the distance.

As a sophomore, I strolled through the park with my astronomy class. It was a particularly clear night and my professor told us that he would point out some of the constellations we had been studying. My professor was a very old German scientist; he spoke in a thick accent that made him seem like a genius. He wore a thick hat with fur-lined earflaps. I looked up at the sky but could see only darkness.

The class stood in a circle around him. Like a magician, he smoothly took a small telescope from one of his pockets and held it out to us. The streetlight sparkled off of it.

When it came to me, I held it carefully. It was five inches long and very thin. It was smooth and worn with gold trim. I held it to my eye and pointed it at the sky. A star glistened in the center.

It was the first time I’d seen a star in city. I had thought it impossible and had looked forward to walking down the hill to my house in Narrowsburg with my head tilted back, straining my neck, staring up at the massive sky above me. Walking slowly, I would let myself get lost in the expansive atmosphere.

There was always something calming about it. Like I was a part of something larger than myself.

I spent the summer in the city after my sophomore year.

I remember one night I felt alone in the Tribeca loft where I was staying. Many of my friends had gone home for the summer and I was living by myself for the first time in my life.

I went out, not knowing where I was headed, and walked north. I ended up in Washington Square Park. I remembered my teacher, his antique telescope and the star. I looked to the sky and found it cloudy. In the distance, I heard the familiar sound of a David Bowie cover.

The guitar player sat alone under a streetlamp. His voice echoed as I took a seat on a nearby bench. My eyes scanned the faces of the people passing by.

The young man tosses the Polaroid to the ground for the tenth time, finally joining his friends. Together they walk out of the park in silence.