How I Learned Failure from Roller Skating and Getting Fired During Pandemic
Is there good failure? And what does it mean?
I was pretty steady about one thing in 2021: physical activity. Although we still rode waves of a plague into certainty and then uncertainty again, I felt good about going to the park. It was proven safe to go outside and could whip me out of the usual rut.
I’m not new to Brooklyn—I was raised here—but this phase of my hometown is new. I’ve always lived in areas that straddle the line between the ghetto and the next major landing spot for outsiders. That’s how capitalism in cities works. Raise prices until the poor can’t live in a place and watch as the newly-rich and bourgeoisie fill up those spots. The cycle repeats until every racial group, immigrant caste, and tax bracket has been replaced two or three times over.
I live in Crown Heights now. The part of it that first became popular is now called “Prospect Heights” (to reference the famous park) or Lefferts Gardens (because a verdant garden allusion also attracts newcomers). My apartment is east of that trending section and below an invisible income line. Most of my neighbors are either older Caribbean families or younger Hassidic Jewish families. All of them are stuffed into apartments likely too small to hold their members, much less…
