Strike up the one-man mambo band.
Mr. Modesto’s mouth danced across the harmonica, and his fingers made
rhythm out of junk. He played and he bobbed. At the end of the nameless
number, he raised his arms as if waving to the Palisades on the far
shore. Suddenly, he noticed that he was being watched, and called out,
“Hello señor,” and burst into a laugh.
It was the Tuesday after Labor Day, the first day after the spiritual
end of summer, though not yet the true beginning of autumn. At the pier
and tiny cove on Dyckman Street, calendars were beside the point. Mr.
Modesto, 66, comes every day to play, even if only the birds and fish
are there to hear him.
Usually, though, others turn up. Luis Benitez, 44, known around Dyckman
Street as Indio, and Fausto Andreas, 54, who showed why his nom de pier
is Sinatra Latino by belting out a few lines of “Come Rain or Come
Shine,” both address Mr. Modesto as Caballero, a gentleman of high
station. This is their place, a claim staked one day at a time. The
season changes, and so does the neighborhood; they do not.
Directly south of the pier is a new restaurant and nightclub called La Marina,
with a spectacular prospect of the river and George Washington Bridge.
The restaurant trucked in sand to make a long beach area, built a stage
at one end and set up 15 canopied beds, queen size, along the river. The
actor Leonardo DiCaprio rolled in over the weekend, and the automatic
question to ask would be if he had gotten lost and wound up at the wrong
end of Manhattan, except that the restaurant apparently is crawling
with women in slinky dresses and men in sleek shirts.
Shortly after 10 a.m., Mr. Benitez made his way to the water side, a
litter-picker in hand, pincering anything that did not belong in the
bushes or on the grass. He begins every day by repairing the miniature
cove, collecting empty bottles and potato chip bags and foil wrappings.
For years, this crossroad of river and sky seemed to have been indelibly
marked by slobs. Last November, though, Mr. Benitez, who makes his
living as a night deliveryman, started picking up the trash and packing
it into bags. Soon, a parks supervisor noticed him. Paid by no one, Mr.
Benitez works for everyone. But now he has a small armory of parks
department cleaning tools at his disposal. Raking out the sand in the
cove, he was, like Mr. Modesto, indifferent to attention.
“I put the trash in the bag outside the fence, and the sanitation man
picks it up,” Mr. Benitez explained. “This is my neighborhood.”
Mary Paolicelli strode down from the pier, which she visits every good day with her dog.
“Indio has pulled 100 tires out of the water,” Ms. Paolicelli said. She
and a friend had given him a gaff and rope. “He sees one floating by,
and he’ll lasso it, usually in one shot.”
The weight is hard to fathom. “The tire is filled with water, and it’s
usually truck tires,” she said. “He pulls it up over the dock and puts
them outside the fence, and the park department picks them up. Look at
his muscles, man.” Mr. Benitez blushed, but he has earned respect.
A fisherman opened a plastic bag to show him an eel.
“A baby one,” Mr. Benitez said, and they resolved to throw it back. The
fisherman poured the creature into the water and spent a moment with Mr.
Benitez, watching for it to wriggle away. Then Mr. Benitez plucked the
motionless eel with his litter-picker.
“He died now,” Indio said, dropping it back in the bag.
A few yards away, Mr. Modesto fashion clothes online was wrapping up another song from his
parade of unheard hits, this time, with a flourish, in front of a
camera.
“Mucho besos,” he said, in cheap full lace human hair wigs for black women conclusion: lots of kisses.
Then he laughed.
“Besos para todos,” he said.
Kisses for everyone.
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