Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Took the Williamsburg bridge for a change; wanted to see if the steepness was a challenge. Not much, but I was passed more often than on the Manhattan bridge. Getting home after arriving in Wmsburg always interesting; I will get turned around without fail and can never remember which street is which. Ended up drifting along Broadway, or S. 5th, but in any case came to an overpass above the BQE and there attached to, hanging on the fence, it were 40 ultra-orthodox Jews. Like they were looking at the seals at the zoo.

I went over to investigate; more and more people running behind me, people attaching themselves to the crowd, speaking Yiddish. A car--an SUV--had crashed and turned over; there were people inside. The ambulances were arriving.

People were excited, smiling, pointing, staring, all in their daily costume. So many babies, hundreds of strollers. It was a Weegee photo come to unnerving life. I was only one of a few goyim in the crowd. More and more people came up behind me, pushing the bike out of the way. A policeman arrived to survey the scene. I left.

Two blocks later there it was ultra-Orthodox life as usual, no awareness of the tremendous excitement and violence one minute's walk away. A few more blocks from there and it was the Marcy Houses, a very different sort of place. (Last week at the Michael Jackson Dance Party in Prospect Park the emcee (maybe it was Spike Lee; I was told this when I arrived) went to the mic and said, "here's someone straight from the Marcy Houses," and the crowd was briefly, seriously enthused. But "it was only Tracy Morgan," I was told. Not Jay-Z.) More motion yielding more information.