Back Home

Now then, this will be a short post, because in just an hour or so, I’ll have to take my non-ESA to the vet.

What? Surely you’ve heard of ESA?

OK, I’ll stop trying to shame you—I didn’t know about it either, until this morning, when I was awoken by the sound of a jackhammer below the balcony. This was both usual and unusual, since it is Saturday morning—a time normally devoted to getting rid of and over Friday night. So why were they working?

Well, in fact they have been working for months, now, and on Saturdays and even Sundays. And on the next block, they’ve even taken to working evenings, to lessen the number of days of annoyance as we speed along toward Christmas.

And what are they doing?

They are destroying and then restroying—well, seems logical to me, computer—the street outside. The street had been asphalt you see, unlike other streets in Old San Juan, which have wonderful blue adoquines. Here, see for yourself:

Well, most of the streets have these blue iridescent (especially when wet) cobblestones, and so somebody decided (somebody who lives in a gated community far, far away from the old city) to put in cobblestones everywhere. There was just one little problem: the charming old blue cobblestones are no longer made, and even if they were, they couldn’t be used. Why? Because the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture would never allow it.

It’s odd, though strangely logical—anything new in Old San Juan cannot look old. Instead, it has to look new. So therefore, the new cobblestones are not lovely iridescent blue but an ugly dull grey. Take a look….

Well, the new adoquines are made locally, so that’s a stimulus to the economy. And of course, it took about six months of labor to de-and-re-stroy the street. Oh, and the sidewalks? They used to be a very nice slate. Now they have to be a somewhat darker stone—could it be granite? Don’t think so….

Well, all of this doesn’t come cheap: one source said that repaving a four or five block street had cost more than four million bucks. And the street—Tetuán—is right behind a street that has various good and expensive restaurants. Since the kitchens are all in the back, and since the kitchens’ vents are churning fumes out during hours of operation, Tetuán has become a virtual back alley. There’s nothing there, and the smell—to me—is atrocious.

But it got done, and it got opened, and the photographers came and the media as well and the mayor at the time—Jorge Santini—was happy. That lasted about a week, until he noticed—the restaurants were throwing their greasy trash out on the sidewalk, and the adoquines looked awful. Here’s a lively account of the matter:

Tanta fue la rabia que le dio a Santini que, en la misma Tetuán, advirtió que aumentaría las multas por tirar basura y desperdicios en la calle. Fue incluso más lejos y dijo que, para comer a expensas de tirar manteca, mejor era cerrar. Poco le faltó para añadir que mejor era no comer.

“Es un crimen ambiental lanzar grasa de esa manera”, dijo en un arranque de peritaje en asuntos ecológicos y aceitosos.

Dejó claro, además, que la capital tiene que estar “a la altura” del millón de cruceristas que recibe cada año. Pudo haber dicho también a la altura de los residentes, pero ni modo.  

A rough translation:

Such was the rage that it gave Santini that, in the very same street, he warned that he would increase the fines for throwing trash and wastes in the street. He went further and said that, to eat at the expense of throwing grease, better it would be to close. He only missed adding that better it would be not to eat.

“It’s an environmental crime to throw grease in this manner,” he said, breaking down into an expert in ecological and greasy affairs.

He made it clear, as well, that the capital has to be “at its highest” for the million of cruise ship visitors which it receives every year. He could have mentioned it being at its highest for the residents, but no matter.

Ah yes, the residents, of which I am one. Or rather, the prisoners, since it was impossible, for the last six months, to be in or especially work in my apartment. Whatever noise the three jackhammers and two generators the narrow street reverberated with was deemed insufficient was augmented by the happy shouts of a horde of workers, all of whom separated from each other when attempting to communicate, all the better to strengthen their vocal chords. What am I trying to say? It was ferociously loud.

And hot, as August and September are, in the gropics (meant tropics, but shouldn’t there be a word “gropics?” Like it, somehow…), hot like hell itself. Oh, and did I mention that Luis, the sculptor, came back—and resumed his creative endeavors, which apparently involve banging violently the floor above me with various blunt (I hope) objects?

Well, guess what? The street, at long last, is done. So why, I asked, was there someone with a jackhammer out there at 8AM on a Saturday morning? Easy enough to see: it was the water company, and what are they doing? What they do, which is to break up the sidewalk, shattering all the lovely granite that was so costily (well, we have “expensively,” don’t we, computer?) and arduously and most especially noisily installed.

Mr. Fernández can be easily persuaded to launch into a jeremiad about this, a jeremiad in which the British will be held up as behaving in a civilized—OK, civilised in the honor …err, honour—manner by carefully removing the slate on the sidewalk, placing it neatly to the side, going about their subterranean business, and then neatly replacing it, so that passerby never knew that anything had occurred.

Unfortunately, I observed this on my first trip to London.

Which means that they don’t do what the boys did below—leave a pile of shattered granite shards around a gaping hole, over which a wooden saw board has been placed. Nor do they do what the gas company did down on Tetuán Street, which was to take the jackhammer to several hundred of the 164,700 new adoquines, breaking them up, piling them on the sidewalk, and leaving a crater several feet in diameter in the street, which is now impassable. Oh, wrong—passable if you drive on the sidewalk, which is no problem.

See?

“It’s the quietest building in New York,” said John, and it’s true. How true? I tested it the next morning, and spent a lovely five minutes hearing the clock tick. And now?

Back home!  

(Update on this highly important post—the little granite shards surrounding the water meter are not there. Instead, they have been whisked away? But why? Why go through all that trouble? Then I remembered—in the last craft fair—seeing someone selling little granite paperweights, the stone appearing identical to the sidewalk stone. But that wasn’t the point. On the stone had been painted the flag of Puerto Rico, and it has to be said: so lusty is our love of our island, that you can sell anything as long as it has the flag of Puerto Rico. Wow—so that lady walked away with a purse-load of twenties! See? There’s a purpose for everything….)