Memories of Grand Street

When the cold wind blows, I can’t help but think of the past.

A long time ago, I lived on the second floor of a seven-story building on Grand Street in Manhattan. Every morning, I would wake up to the loud chatter of Chinese women riding the small, old elevator up to the sewing factory upstairs. Their noisy voices would pass by our floor, then fade away as they rose higher—like sinking into water.

In the evenings, the same voices would grow louder again as they came back down, and by the time they passed our floor, it sounded like a storm was blowing through. That’s when I would head out to buy groceries in Chinatown for dinner.

Before we moved to Chinatown, my husband and I had only registered our marriage at City Hall and lived separately. He lived with a roommate in Manhattan, and I lived with mine in Queens.
We were both artists, without proper jobs or a place to live together, so we just continued to live apart.

About six months later, my husband’s roommate suggested we all live together in a loft on Grand Street. It was a big space with high ceilings. One side belonged to the roommate, and the other side was for my husband and me. Each section had stairs that led up to small sleeping areas.
In the corner of our bedroom were old drums and percussion instruments left behind by the previous tenant. Lying there among the instruments, I felt like a circus performer resting in a tent after a long day.

There was no heat in the winter—it felt like the freezing plains of Siberia. The building was old, full of mice and bugs. I would scratch at my skin all night long, and my husband, feeling sorry for me, would lay white paper down and tap the ceiling to make the bugs fall so he could kill them.

Even though we barely had enough to live on, so many friends came by. They would hang out, sleep, and lounge on a big, dirty gray sofa in the middle of the studio. They’d come on Friday and leave Sunday night. They called our place the “Grand Street Church” (because it was on Grand Street). My husband was “Pastor Lee” and our roommate was “Elder Hwang.”

At the end of the year, people would basically move in—coming after work and leaving the next morning, just to hang out. Elder Hwang once brought a huge bucket of marinated bulgogi (left over from a Korean alumni party) in a used plastic compound container. With just one jar of kimchi, that was enough to make all of us happy. The noise, the dirt, the lack of space—none of it bothered us. Even with guests coming and going all the time, it didn’t feel hard.

The landlord ran a bean sprout business in the dark basement. Once a month, we’d go down to pay the rent. It was so dark we had to call out, and only then would he appear.
“Isn’t it too dark down here?” we’d ask.
“If it’s too bright, the sprouts grow too fast,” he’d reply, handing us a bunch of bean sprouts with the rent receipt.

After paying rent, we were often left with no money. Still, we kept working, eating bean sprout soup, bean sprout salad, and even rice with bean sprouts. But as the rent kept rising every year, we could no longer afford to stay. So we left Grand Street. My husband and I crossed the Williamsburg Bridge and moved to Greenpoint, Brooklyn (Koreans call it Nokjeom-dong). Our roommate returned to Seoul.

When the cold wind blows, I miss those friends so much.