A Brooklyn Life

I’m going to step aside from the keyboard today, and let a friend of mine, Yer Vang, who worked all last week to help with The Gates, take the reins. As much credit as Jeanne-Claude and Christo deserve for the vision and the financing of the project, I think it’s good to remember that workers came from all across the country to help make their vision a reality. These are the people who woke up at the crack of dawn Saturday morning to unfurl the fabric and breathe fresh life into Central Park.

Monday, Feb. 7

First off, just let me say starting new things with strangers is like eating lunch in the cafeteria on your first day of high school. I feel myself turn into this shy 9th grader talking about my favorite color.

We have six days to build 7,800 steel gates. My team of eight, with whom I will work with all week from 7am to 4:30pm, will build 100 gates covering the west side of central park from 68th Street to 72nd Street. These will be my gates. It’s amazing to be a part of something like this, but in actuality you don’t really have to build them to be a part of them, the experience is the art.

Besides all the lushful, sweet things I can say about The Gates, my back hurts, I cut my hand, and I have 80 more gates to build. Oh yeah, I also busted my ass trying to walk on ice–note to self and to all of you, if water is hard, don’t try to walk on it. I did throw my ass into it, so there was some cushioning.

I forgot my camera today but will try to capture a few shots within the next few days. Although we’re not allowed to take pictures while we’re working, my co-workers are snapping away catching every detail.  There are three females in my group, one is an old grandmother from Massachusetts; one is a 30-something writer from Brooklyn; and the other one is a landscape architect and mother of two girls from Connecticut who just quit her corporate America job to work for the Gates. The rest are men, much older than me, except my team leader who is 25 and flew in from San Fran to work on this project. He is a hippie/artist dude, and I think he’s gay. 

While standing in line for my watered-down hot chocolate and breakfast pastry, I met two old French ladies from San Diego who had worked with Jeanne-Claude and Christo on their last project with umbrellas. Just when I thought America was only composed of lazy, un-inspirational, money-grubbing people, I meet these really crazy people from all walks of life who have either quit their jobs or taken time off to participate in this beautiful project. 

These are also the things I did today: I had a specific job, leveling the steel plates so that the gates can go in without tipping over. It’s kind of the most crucial part of the job, and we were all tested at our training session, and I guess I was a quick leveler:) Woohooo! But it’s cool, I’ve never had to level anything before with a magnetic leveler and a steel ball screw. I also got the chance to use a "fid"–it’s just this metal pointy tool that aligns holes together. Now I feel like I can put anything together, except the furniture from Ikea.

… off to bed now and it’s only 8pm. Damn, now I know how construction workers feel.