a triptych of tompkins square park in summer
leave your pride and your pain on avenue a and enter the magical realm of pleasure
I'm passing the sidewalk hookah lounge next to Tompkins Square Park this morning. Like a phoenix from the ashes, I emerge from the mango-flavored vapor. I'm wearing massive floral sunglasses from the Rainbows store in Rockaway. I'm holding a Big Gulp cup of 7/11 iced coffee with a gigantic straw. The Middle by Maren Morris and Zedd blasts through my wired headphones. My hair swings in a high ponytail while I strut into the park as I have every day.
The fenced lawn hosts a hundred hedonists. It is Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, the central panel of the triptych. The dreamers picnic with pizza and berries, drink wine out of the bottle, smoke a joint, or cuddle with their lover. Girls in bikinis with perfect bodies and shirtless men with beer bellies lay across towels in direct sunlight. Others find solace under a tree. A speaker playing Big Thief competes with a speaker playing Latin pop. The day of the week and time of day do not matter because most of these hedonists do not have regular jobs.
In front of the heavenly Garden is a tree and dirt mound surrounded by a semicircle of benches: the Arena. Like the Roman Colosseum, this Arena is the community's spectacle and entertainment hotbed. With all in your peripheral, no one goes unnoticed. Judge and be judged. Lock eyes with a hinge date you ghosted 6 months ago, then pretend he's a stranger. The punks and squatters gather in laughter with their dogs and brown-bagged liquor. Bands and buskers from all over the talent are standard anytime. Just this morning, there was a screaming noise-emo band playing to a crowd of 20 drugged-out dancers.
Then there's the boy zoo known as the skatepark. The multi-purpose court is used by the elderly for morning tai chi practice and by marketing interns for Saturday field hockey, but the Tompkins skaters rule it. They decorate it with their ramps and things. I can't help but glance at them and admire their kickflips, baggy clothes, and arrogant carelessness. But more than I enjoy our parasocial relationship, I envy the skate boys' seemingly effortless existence. If I were a boy, I’d be a skater so I could always have a big group of casual friends and something to do outside with them.
Similar to the skatepark in chaos and animality is the dog park. I like to lean on the fence and watch the dogs play until some dog (usually a goldendoodle) decides to hump another dog right there in the center, at which point I exit in discomfort.
Little paths with benches occupied by predictable types of people make up the outskirts of the park. You have the dimes square-looking guys wearing well-fitted pants and a white tee. This type of bench guy smokes and reads something sinister. I often wonder if those eyes, hidden behind tinted sunglasses, are reading the words on the page or pretending to read to impress women. Of course you have the familiar homeless people who found a decent resting place on a shady Tompkins bench. You also have your women on the phone, usually in athleisure. At least a third of the couples on benches will be eatting bagels.
I always like to point out Tompkins' peculiar fauna. Perhaps you've caught glimpses of the ginger squirrel or the black squirrel. Maybe you've noticed the wildlife photographers with their tripods, who come out of nowhere, pointing their lenses at an owl or hawk on a branch.
Although the picture I paint is incomplete, I'll leave the rest to the imagination or for you to discover independently. Perhaps you'll find me there, waiting by the Temperance Fountain.