9th Street Summer Deja Vu
In the song `Summertime,’ Will Smith says, “Isn’t it funny how the smell from a grill can strike up nostalgia.” I say the same with a couple notes of a song.

NPR has had a running series all summer about the song that reminds you of summer the most. And I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. They’ve already mentioned “Summer in the City” by the Lovin Spoonful and “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys. Now, I could go into listening to Kim Wildes’ “Kids in America” on my little pink box radio that we brought down to the shore, along with four of my friends, for my 12^th birthday, but as the summer starts to round itself out that’s not the soundtrack that’s been sitting on my brain lately.

The summer of 2000 was the first time I ever worked in the City (New York that is – for anyone silly enough to think any other place is the City) and the album Two Against Nature by Steely Dan had just been released. It was the first from the duo in 20 years or so. I knew every note from every other album of theirs so of course I would wear this one out as well. And while it wasn’t a blockbuster hit for them, there are several songs that carry me straight back to walking the sun dappled streets from the 9th St. PATH station to my office on Broadway for three short months. The rhythm of those songs just seemed to meld with the new rhythm I was discovering of what I like to call “small” New York. More of a neighborhood feel than what I was used to visiting up in midtown or uptown.

It was the first time I could really understand people “living” in the city. Here people actually walked their dogs instead of having them walked. Even though, unfortunately, it seemed they ALL went to this one wall to allow them to pee which just happened to be a quarter block from my office and on my direct route… every day. Welcome to working in New York – hold your breath and watch out for mystery puddles.

Just as the album didn’t have the thriving beat of “Reeling in the Years” – the city, on the 6-8 blocks surrounding my office, carried a slower pace than the city that I had known when coming in for a business meeting or day tripping with the family or friends. It was prettier, calmer. It felt like a cool oasis – maybe not temperature-wise but style-wise certainly and I was right in the middle of it all.

For example, the song “What a Shame” starts out with a guy who’s “grinding through his day gig, stacking cut-outs at the Strand. In walks Frannie from NYU…” The Strand Bookstore – which was only 4 blocks from the office was a regular lunch stop and NYU’s eggheaded funkiness was just 4 blocks South. See what I mean? I was right in the middle, literally, of that song. Not to mention the chord that the following lines struck... "I'm still working on that novel, but I'm just about to quit. Worried about the future now - well maybe this is it. It's not all that I thought it would be." I was divorced within a year of hearing that one and had started too many novels to even mention. The prophetic soul of Steely Dan strikes again.

Listening to “West of Hollywood” should conjure up visions of Santa Monica but for me I’m closer to “stompin on the avenue by Radio City” as the boys once said. I cue up the tune, close my eyes and see how the sun reflected an audacious golden color on the brownstones that I passed on warm nights after work as I walked back to the PATH station. And how through an open window you could hear the Yankees game playing in the background as someone made dinner. I’d cruise briefly through Balducci’s gourmet grocery store above the PATH station and then head downstairs holding tightly to my skirt while bracing myself for the blast of hot air to confront me at its entrance. This was my nightly ritual during that golden summer.

On my last visit to the City in May, I took a PATH train from Jersey City to the 9^th Street Station – forgetting until I stepped onto the street that it was my old stop. Immediately I proceeded to walk through a haze of déjà vu. As it always is with life, it was the same but different nine years later. As I mentioned earlier, it was only for three months that I moved through this oasis. My company had failed within 90 days, an early example of a company bleeding cash to the point of bleeding out. Balducci’s is gone and the Yankees are in a new stadium. But the dog pee wall is still there and part of me will always be grabbing the last train to Hoboken.