Morningside Mornings on a Sociable Bench

By Nancy J. Brandwein

I’m sitting on the bench between Jane and Alvaro, two others who, like me, often claim this minute slice of New York City real estate in the mornings. The bench is just some rough-hewn boards knocked together to form a seat barely long enough for five rear ends. The back rests under an awning and is flush with the window of Samad’s Gourmet Market, the Lebanese deli in Morningside Heights where I have come for decades to get my morning coffee in a paper cup, rose petal covered Turkish delights, basmati rice and pita bread.

Now I linger on the bench as a way to gain purchase on the featureless day ahead of me. In semi-retirement, there are whole swaths of time between substitute ESL teaching jobs, time that often envelops me in a grey fug on weekday mornings after the working husband’s brief goodbye buss on the cheek.

With nowhere to go, I started going to the “somewhere” of Samad’s bench. I came to sit with a cup of drip coffee warming my hands and watch the ever-captivating parade of passersby on Broadway. Yet in establishing “bench sitting” as my morning routine, I’ve been able to enjoy something resembling small village life albeit with a New York City difference.

When I first started parking myself on Samad’s bench, I kept myself to myself. Yet, I soon noticed there were two other “regulars,” a woman whose face was almost hidden by a wide pink visor, and a thin angular man who seemed something of a raconteur. Often people would stop to chat with the couple, as if the bench was their home office. When the conversation turned to the latest heinous act of the administration, I chimed in to collectively bemoan our fate.

Through gradual conversational forays I learned that Jane is a famed courtroom sketch artist—depicting high profile trials of Trump, John Gotti, and, recently, Luigi Magioni. I’ve learned her husband Lou is a criminal attorney, and that they’ve been coming to the bench for over a decade. In turn, they have introduced me to other bench mates who frequent this small “third space.”

To reap the full benefits of bench sitting, you have to be willing to insert yourself into a conversation that other people are having, but ever so carefully. With an “I couldn’t help hearing”… about your torn meniscus, the museum exhibit you went to, the new restaurant in the neighborhood. You have to tilt your head like a sunflower in the direction of others. In this way I met Barbara, a German woman with a neat bob of shiny white hair. Her eyes crinkled in a smile when she sat down next to me, and soon we were comparing where we and our children aligned on a mental map of the neighborhood.

One day I approached the bench and saw a burly man sitting in Barbara’s usual spot. I felt a tiny ripple of annoyance, but then he tilted his head toward me and said something innocuous about the fine day, the chill air and soon we were exchanging our Upper West Side stories. Alvaro was a chef who ran his own catering business but now works as a companion to a man with Alzheimers. When I told him about my own late career change to teaching English he said, “That’s a beautiful thing!” and reminisced about his early days as an immigrant.

The slow accretion of knowledge about people I’ve shared Samad’s bench with bears out a truism of forging connections at any time of life: all you really have to do is show up again and again, whether it’s at the volunteer gig for the food pantry, the knitting group, the political meetings, or a bench. And in the context of the bench, showing up also means more interactions with people in my neighborhood. Sometimes I am joined by book group members I only see at our scheduled meetings. Here comes Anne, chin jutting out and smiling as she pushes forward with her walking poles. Here comes Mickie, enroute to the subway, but with time to stop for a chat during which we make a plan to sample Thai food in Queens. Then there are the neighbors whose children were in the same preschools as mine. Year after year we exhibit a slight flicker of recognition as we pass each other’s aging faces. But yesterday, I looked up and saw one glance in my direction. Mindy stopped by the bench and we gave each other the run-down of our adult children’s lives.

Bench sitting reaffirms for me the importance of what sociologists call “weak ties,” created through interactions with people on the outer rungs of our world—Samad’s co-owners Wassim and Hikmat manning the register, Miguel who hands me my coffee and flatters me in Spanish, my fellow bench warmers outside—some of whom I might stop and chat with when we see each other in the neighborhood. I think of each tie as one more node in a net that spreads out below me, creating a sense of belonging that lifts my mood and catches me when I pitch forward into the empty expanse of a day.

Isolation and loneliness are now considered a major health risk of older age. During a recent trip to England I noticed a bench in the center of a small village with a bright green and gold “HAPPY TO CHAT” sign. In 2019 homemade “Happy to Chat” signs began appearing in Somerset, the brainchild of a police detective who witnessed an elderly woman fall prey to a scammer because she wanted to talk. In a country where loneliness is treated as a public health issue, the signs are now something of an institution and affixed to benches all over Britain.

We are fortunate to live in a city that is full of benches, but, alas, not all of them could be designated “happy to chat.” Benches on Broadway medians attract a rag tag lot and a conversation you may not want to have. There are tens of thousands of benches in New York city parks, but these seem best suited for solitary readers, folks having an intimate tete-a-tete or just people passing through who want to catch their breath, eat a sandwich and move on.

I think the most conversationally conducive benches are located in front of venues selling coffee and pastries but with no proper outdoor seating. I notice the bench in front of the Morningside Heights Oren’s has become a meeting place for African bike messengers. On the Upper West Side, the bench outside Daily Provisions is always full of kibbitzers. Noticing these sociable benches is a new thing for me. I have always been particularly drawn to lone benches along hiking trails. My daughter and I make a habit of taking pictures of benches perched within a scenic vista. We call them “gratitude benches” because they invite you to sit down and feel thankful, for a moment, that “you are here.”

The bench at Samad’s is a different kind of gratitude bench. It’s one where “you are here” can become “we are here.”

Nancy J. Brandwein is a freelance writer and an ESL teacher. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, Hippocampus and Dorothy Parker’s Ashes.

Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.