Culture clash

This column isn’t going to be about Andrea Mersits. She wanted it to be. She’s a charming young woman from Australia, working on her citizenship and wanted to get her name in the paper. She e-mailed and called to remind me about a party that she was throwing at K&M in Williamsburg on Friday the 13th.

I even went, drank the free drinks she gave me and was planning on writing about it. This column was going to be about a Halloween party in June; the dry-iced sticky dance floor and the horror films playing on the wall. It was going to be about the bloody tear drop painted on her face that night and the wheelchair she got for free that the bouncer was sitting in when he checked my ID.

But when I was chatting with her about it a few days after the party at Legion, my neighborhood bar where she works, I met Kev.

Kev is a young black man who for a week or two was hanging out at Legion. He never seemed to have any money, but he had tons of energy and is the kind of guy who doesn’t need any help carrying on a conversation. He just talks.

So, for a while, I listened.

Kev grew up in the Cooper Projects, right around the corner from my apartment. He lives most of the time with his father in Miami but is in the neighborhood for the summer and staying with his grandmother.

To describe our interaction as a culture clash would be an understatement. We were total opposites. In speech, occupation and appearance.

It was a culture clash that I see every day. The influx of young white hipsters in the neighborhood has made everything more expensive, and though I live literally a block away from the projects, Kev was the first person I had met who lived there.

I wondered that night as I listened to him freestyle why he had chosen this bar, and more specifically chosen me to talk to. He asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was an editor. My friend Matt asked him if he ever worked as a production assistant. We could get him a job, we told him.

After running into him a few times on the street on my way to talk to Andrea about the party, we became friends, in that way that you become friends with someone out of routine. You are both in the same place enough times that eventually you decide to accept the fact.

I realized that I had never seen him inside the bar and wondered if he really was 22, like he said.

He asked Matt and me if we wanted to go to White Castle with him.

While we were waiting for our order a young black woman walked in. Kev knew her and said hello. Matt tried to introduce himself and held out his hand. She looked down at it, back up at his face and continued talking.

“They’re cool,” said Kev.

“We’re his white friends,” Matt said, jokingly.

“Yeah, you are,” she said and left.

Kev said goodbye to us. There was apology in his eyes as he shook our hands.

“Later.”

The next night, I was watching a movie, alone in my apartment.

BOOM! I flinched. Was that a gunshot? BOOM! Laughter. My eyes scanned the street outside. Nothing. BOOM!

I figured that there were too many to be gunshots. BOOM! They were getting quieter.

I decided to sit on the couch, away from the window.

I was mid conversation with Andrea when Kev tried to come into the bar the next night. I was happy to see him. I didn’t notice that she wasn’t. He was talking to the bouncer. I went over and said hello.

The bouncer told me that he was calling the cops and I shouldn’t be talking to Kev.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“He was throwing firecrackers into the bar last night.”

I looked at Kev, who shrugged.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked him.

“It was fun for a night.”

“Yeah, but now you can’t hang out here anymore.”

Kev shrugged, his eyes were cold.

“Now, we can’t be friends anymore.”

Kev shrugged.

I went back into the bar, knowing the one thing we had in common was about to change.

Security is tighter at Legion now since Kev’s firecracker adventure. I still see him around the neighborhood, and though we no longer speak, we exchange a cordial nod.

If you get a chance, stop by Legion on Metropolitan and Humboldt and say hello to Andrea, though this column isn’t really about her. It’s worth the trip. She always knows of something good going on in the neighborhood.

-Zac Stuart-Pontier