#Brooklyn Bridge Captions

[bestlaptopsventure]

Hey there, fellow Instagrammers! 📸 Looking for the perfect caption to make your Brooklyn Bridge pics pop? Well, you're in luck! We've got over 200 amazing captions to help you capture the essence of this iconic landmark.

From breathtaking views to stunning sunsets, the Brooklyn Bridge offers endless photo opportunities. So, whether you're strolling across its majestic span or admiring it from afar, we've got you covered. Get ready to dive into a world of captivating captions that will elevate your Instagram game.

No need to delve into the depths of your creativity; we've done the hard work for you. So, without further ado, let's explore the best Brooklyn Bridge captions that will make your followers say, "Wow!" 🌉✨

Visit Blog

[turtle-steverogers]

i love the idea of steve being a total grandpa/ghost on social media by choice. he understands it easily and behind the scenes, he doomscrolls like anyone else. but after his PR team forced him to get instagram to “humanize” him and “bolster his public image”, he decided to do as little as possible out of spite.

he has maybe 10 posts total, none of which are of him. there’s a couple of bucky’s silhouette in front of the brooklyn bridge and by prospect park, and one or two of alpine and a few leaves he liked because of their funky shape. none of the posts have captions and they’re all clearly done on a whim with at least four months between each post.

somehow, though, he has the second most followers in the world and his posts each garner AT LEAST 4 million likes.

and, much to their annoyance, he somehow has bucky and tony beat by a couple million, despite them both making efforts to be something like influencers on social media for their own image reasons

[nottesilhouette]

Transcript:

[on MSNBC, a headline at the bottom reads: Breaking News, Mideast Conflict Divides The World. Above the video of the news reporter, a TikTok user has captioned: "if ur still not sure where you stand on the ongoing ge.0c!de watch this"; all emphasis mine.]

"And given these bombings are being done using our tax dollars, perhaps we should ask some questions. For example, how does bombing a densely populated land strip filled 50% with children constitute self-defense?

How does bombing hospitals, churches, mosques, and U.N. schools constitute self-defense? 'Well,' you say, 'if Hamas fighters are hiding in the hospital, using civilians as human shields' — okay, let's say they are.

Are you arguing that flattening the hospital and killing newborns in their incubators and their moms in the NICU, cancer patients, someone with a broken leg, the doctors, nurses, and just the women and kids hiding in the hospital — that that's not a war crime?

Because you would be wrong, according to international law.

'But why don't the people in Gaza just turn over Hamas militants to the Israelis?' Okay, how do you propose they do that? Hamas is the defacto government in Gaza, as they're the ones with the guns. The leaders of Hamas aren't even in Gaza. And if they were...

If you were a teenager living in an open air prison getting bombed day and night by, let's say Mexico, and Mexican police kicked in the door and raided your house any time they wanted and turned off the water and cut off your food, what are you going to do? Side with them? Help them while you're dying?

That's like asking why Black folks don't help or trust the police.

'Okay, but after 9/11, we bombed Afghanistan in self-defense,' yeah... we did! And did that put an end to al Qaeda or get bin Laden? No! It did not. Because like Hamas, bin Laden wasn't in the country we were bombing. President Obama got him 10 years later in Pakistan using special forces and without bombing scores of kids to death.

Bombing Afghanistan did buy us a 20 year occupation that got us more enemies in the Muslim world, when we scooped people up on the battlefield and dragged them off to Gitmo, and when we threw in a gratuitous war against Iraq, based on lies by a Bush administration, that traded on our anger and our fear, the world rose up against us as we committed torture — and tossed former Iraqi police and soldiers into makeshift gulags and those prisoners later turned into ISIS.

Oh, and the Taliban are back in control of Afghanistan, so again, what is the goal? Of mass bombing Gaza? Is it to find the people Hamas militants abducted on October 7th? Okay, how? By flattening whatever shelter they're taking from the bombs? Don't you risk killing them all by bombing them with the Palestinians?

Just some relevant questions. And trust me: people do want answers. Over the weekend, protests erupted around the world with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators rallying in cities in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Copenhagen, Rome, Stockholm, Kuala Lumpur. Scores took to the streets in the U.S., shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge in New York & a major highway in San Francisco.

The call in each of these protests was for a ceasefire. A word that for some, has somehow come to mean 'anti-semitism and a lack of care about those who were brutally killed on October 7th', or even support for Hamas.

So how, then, do you explain the family members of some of those being held by Hamas who are also calling for a ceasefire?

And what would a ceasefire even mean? Well, it would literally mean both sides stop shooting. No more rockets into Israel, no more Israeli jets strafing Gaza. It would mean a prisoner's swap negotiated by credible third parties which sadly, probably doesn't include us at this point.

It would mean getting food, water, and medicine into Gaza and not pushing for two million Palestinians to expel themselves to Egypt or Jordan, likely to never be allowed to return. Hopefully, it would mean tamping down the McCarthyism and the doxing and anti-semitism and islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism in our own country and in Europe.

And then somebody, anybody, actually working to solve the real problem: which is a 56-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip, that has sparked and will continue to spark vehement (and yes, even violent) resistance whether Hamas exists or not."

[a TikTok end screen pops up, showing that this video is from user @sainthoax]

[musicarenagh]

From the Vault: Ari Joshua’s Post-9/11 Tribute 'Tagine' Ari Joshua’s latest release, “Tagine,” catapults me back to the era of self- and societal brainstorming in the early 2000s. This is an unheard previously track that was cut at Wombat Studios, Brooklyn, with guest appearances from Marco Benevento on the organ and Joe Russo on the drums. Combined, they produce a mood that is somber and foggy, yet expressive of something profound and truly powerful. The name ‘Tagine’ is derived from a Moroccan restaurant in New York city in which Benevento started weekly sessions attracting talented players. You can see what close friends are like in the trio; they grasped the experience of those intense sessions. Joshua’s guitar is dark yet complex and perfectly synchronized with Benevento’s organ notes and Russo’s stomping on drums. It goes beyond a simple musical creation as a record of emotions that New York felt in the years following the September 11 tragedy. Joshua tells me the harrowing experience of having to drive across the Brooklyn Bridge with gears and burdened by sad news to Tagine under more security than usual. It brings an additional layer of meaning to the track – a sense that enriches the experience of listening. [caption id="attachment_56545" align="alignnone" width="600"] It goes beyond a simple musical creation as a record of emotions that New York felt in the years following the September 11 tragedy.[/caption] The name ‘Tagine’ is a reference to an African cooking pot, but the music it contains is progressive and psychedelic fusion with touches of Coltrane and Davis. The ideas of the band are experimented here, but at the same time, make the song timeless yet new. It is the way in which one can tell where they are and what a specific time period is all about simply by listening. The song “Tagine” is one that fans of Ari Joshua, a jazz fusion artist, ought to listen to. It depicts the young budding talent and the nascent works of Joshua, Benevento and Russo who later on became critically acclaimed artists. Given that this one is the first song to appear from this particular session, there is hope for more discoveries from Joshua’s collection of songs. Having a good listen is within everyone’s reach since “Tagine” is available on all streaming platforms out there. Listen Tagine below  https://youtu.be/shPOoETRHQk Follow Ari Joshua on Facebook Twitter Spotify Bandcamp Youtube Instagram Soundcloud

[newyorkthegoldenage]

June 20, 1925: Painting the Brooklyn Bridge.

In 1925, 42 years after it opened, the bridge's spider web of cables needed a paint job. In this photo, fearless painters are coming down the bridge's vertical suspenders, hand under hand like sailors on a tall ship, probably after hearing a foreman's whistle to take a break.

The original caption to this photo, published on June 21, 1925, said, "Spring cleaning with the world's most famous cyclorama as a background: Painting the cables of Brooklyn Bridge. Where a misstep for the 'artists' means a cold bath in the East River." Apparently there were no safety belts back then. The nerves of potential painters were tested by having them walk along the bridge's towering horizontal cables, hundreds of feet above the river. Those who passed would soon learn first-hand that the bridge's paint scheme is "Brooklyn Bridge Tan" and "Silver."

Photo: NY Times

[silverskyy]

[ID: a collection of memes about the fake film Goncharov.

Text reading "Me during the confrontation on the bridge, when the music reaches a crescendo, with the clock as the rhythmic instrument in the background, symbolizing the imminent downfall of everything Goncharov holds dear." Underneath is the triumphant flaming Elmo picture.

Text reading "When the third act starts and you hear Goncharov's theme in minor". Underneath is a picture of a horrified looking man with the caption *confused screaming*.

The two books meme. The larger book is labeled "Goncharov (1973)". The much slimmer book is labeled "Goncharov (1973) if Goncharov and Andrey confessed their feelings for each other before the belfry scene".

A conversation between a woman in a car and a man speaking through her open window. The man says "I love the movie Goncharov (1973)". The woman responds "Okay, name one character". The man, confused, answers "Goncharov?" The woman looks away and says "That's on me, I set the bar too low."

A split-screen meme, with a simple drawing of a tired, dehydrated looking figure. They are labeled "Katya" with text beside them reading "The world is a cruel and unjust place. There is no harmony in the universe. The only constant is suffering." Under the split is the figure looking much better and slightly blushing. They are now labeled "*minutes later*" and the text reads "Sofia, my beloved".

Text reading "Trying to explain the people that neither Goncharov nor Katya are to blame for the conflict and eventual betrayal between them, but that they're both forced into the situation by happenings beyond their control and they actually love each other very much." Underneath is a picture of someone speaking to a brick wall.

Text reading "Goncharov during the poker scene". Underneath is a moment from a Brooklyn 99 episode, of Raymond Holt saying "Why is no one having a good time? I specifically requested it."

/end ID]

This movie is a childhood favourite of mine and I LOVE that it’s finally getting some recognition!!!!

[teaandatale]

Oooh, Feeding Her Cat Coworkers AU?

OOH this one is fun if I do say so myself. Honestly this wip game has been so great at reawakening my Steggy muse.

I can't find it now, but this was originally prompted by a tumblr post @dorrinverrakai1 sent me where there was a cat sitting on a wedding dress captioned "get used to it Steve, I am still her first and only love."

General Summary: Peggy is out of town for work for a very important meeting about a project they were hoping to secure. While the meetings go well, everything else goes to hell in a handbag. She's fighting some kind of cold or allergies. Then her flight gets cancelled. Then all flights in the area are cancelled. Not only does she have to delay her return to NYC until the following morning, between trying to find a place to spend the night, Peggy remembers that she didn't arrange for anyone to feed her cat Ollie. Angie, her best friend, would have of course fed Ollie for her, but because Peggy hadn't scheduled with her ahead of time, it's looking less and less likely that Angie had the time to spare. Not only does she have her barista day job, she just got promoted from understudy to the lead in an Off Broadway play. And she has not only a matinee and evening show, but a seven a.m. casting call for a lucrative commercial. Peggy calls everyone she even mildly is friendly with but they all turn her down for one excuse or another. She grows increasingly desperate.

Peggy and Steve and coworkers at an architectural firm, but they don't really know each other as they work in different departments and their paths had not crossed much until recently. But when he returns her work-related call a few minutes after her latest rejection by someone she will never offer to pet-sit, house-sit or water plants for again, she finds herself asking a practically stranger to go feed her cat. To her surprise Steve agrees to do so.

Only things don't go smoothly from there for Steve either, between having to go find Angie in Manhattan for her spare key, to realizing there's no cat food left to feed poor Ollie. And Peggy, as she arranges her necessary hotel stay, grows more and more concerned that Steve will give up on doing her the favor.

But Steve, ever willing to please, and not knowing he already had a crush on Peggy to begin with, completes the task. And when Peggy returns to the office, her first stop is Steve's cubicle a floor above hers where she brings him coffee and after their giggly retellings of their crazy adventures the previous day, she blurts out an invitation to dinner. Steve blushes and stutters his enthusiastic yes.

Snippet Below The Cut

She is beyond desperate and defeated when she finally gets rebooked – the earliest flight not leaving until seven a.m. She wouldn’t make it back to her apartment until mid-afternoon. Her poor Ollie. What must the poor cat think of her. Peggy taps her nail against her phone as she tries to think of anyone else that she could call.

Howard was traveling for work. Jarvis would be with him…

She sighs and decides it’s time to figure out a place to sleep for a few hours. She’d prefer a bed to a makeshift arrangement at the airport.

Her phone buzzes in her hand and she has hope for a brief moment that someone has changed their mind and volunteers to go over the bridge into Brooklyn to go feed her cat. But instead it’s an office number calling.

“This is Peggy,” she greets as she always does in a peppy, professional tone.

“Hi Peggy. This is Steve. Steve Rogers. The replacement drafter?”

She actually knows who he is, after all she had called him, but she can understand his want to explain. She doesn’t know him very well, but she knows he’s a relatively recent hire. Their paths hadn’t crossed until this project.

“Yes, hi Steve. Thank you for returning my call. How’s everything back at the office?”

He laughs over the line. She finds herself drawn to the sound, masculine but warm. “Oh you know, typical Thursday out here. Not nearly as interesting as your day I’m sure.”

“That’s definitely one way to put it,” she replied, rubbing her forehead reflexively, hoping to ward off any further headache.

“Oh? Your voicemail seemed like things went well. How was the meeting with the owners?”

“That went well. Very well indeed, actually. It’s been absolutely everything else that’s been a thorn in my side since.” She let out a loud sigh. “Any chance you’re not allergic to taking the train into Brooklyn like the rest of my Manhattan friends and also are not afraid or allergic to cats? Between fighting a combo of a cold and allergies and this last-minute travel, I completely forgot to arrange someone to feed my cat for me and now I’m stuck here until tomorrow morning. All flights have been cancelled and the airline won’t assist with hotel accommodations either.” She sighs again. “I think I need a cocktail.”

After a long pause, where she is sure she’s lost him and he’s hung up, she hears his breathing on the line. She closes her eyes in anticipation of another polite rejection, of course he would, they hardly know each other.

“I actually like in Brooklyn too. Where in Brooklyn do you live? I can go feed your cat after work.”

[slapshot-to-the-heart]

When We Went From Friends to This - a. beauvillier

One day late, but here it is! I’ve been studying for the LSAT, but finally took it today, so I’ll have some more time to be writing more regularly now. Title is from Taylor Swift’s Paper Rings. I loved getting to write this, so please please let me know what you think, my inbox is always open! Reading the tags is one of my favorite things to do, and reblogs help me know people are liking my work.

word count: 7.7k+

September 18 (sat)

Astride Leclair was the kind of person you always wanted on your side. She’d drop anything for a friend, always be the first to reach out, and would never give up on something — or someone — without a fight. She was also incredibly stubborn. Astride had also always had a penchant for adventure, which is how she found herself in a new job 600 miles and one international border from her hometown. And she hated asking for help, it really didn’t matter the circumstance. Which is how she found herself alone, trying to heft an armchair up the stairs of her new apartment building after being very rudely informed by the width of the elevator door that it wasn’t going to fit. 

The lump sum her firm gave her for relocation was enough to cover a fair amount of the furniture for her new place and she tried to bring as much as she could on the drive down, but it wasn’t like she was about to rent a U-Haul and there was only so much a Honda Civic could hold. And Astride was still her father’s daughter, still would rather step on a rusty nail than pay Ikea for assembly, so by God she was going to do it herself. And “doing it herself” apparently meant dragging an 80 pound box up three flights of stairs in 90º heat in September, when New York City seemed to have not quite yet gotten the memo that the rest of the Northern Hemisphere was now in fall. 

Astride finally managed to get the chair in the door, propping the door open with one of her moving boxes, unceremoniously pulling the box through the entryway as she scooted backwards into the living room. The 600 square foot expanse of her apartment was covered in boxes, more boxes, and for good measure, extra boxes. There were moving boxes, furniture boxes, shoeboxes filled with anything except for actual shoes. There was her guitar leaning against the microwave, three suitcases worth of clothes in the barely-assembled bedroom, and her dog in a crate in the corner, who had started to whine. 

“I know, baby, I’ll get you out soon,” Astride said, shooting a sympathetic glance towards the beagle mix. She had adopted Poutine a little over a year ago, soon after starting her first job out of university. It was never a question whether or not she would make the trip with Astride, and thankfully it was much easier than she anticipated to find a dog-friendly apartment in Brooklyn. It wasn’t too long a walk to Prospect Park, a little under a mile, and she was looking forward to getting out with Poutine later in the day. If, that was, she actually finished unpacking enough boxes to function like a normal human being. She had picked up her mattress-in-a-box earlier in the day, but it was still sitting in the corner of her bedroom and she wasn’t particularly looking forward to a night on the hardwood floor. 

---

Three hours later, Astride had finally gotten all of the boxes out of her car and began to make decent headway on assembling the chair, finally having let Poutine out of her crate. The beagle trotted around the apartment, sniffing the baseboards, boxes, and single bag of groceries Astride had picked up from Whole Foods earlier in the day. The rest of her Ikea order was coming the next day, the actual bedframe and couch along with a couple of other larger furniture pieces that she had had to leave in Montréal. Whatever she couldn’t order online she’d find at a thrift store. 

Astride looked tiredly over at the kitchen. She really wasn’t in the mood to cook, and was in even less of a mood to dig through all the boxes until she finally found her set of pots and pans. She really should have taken her mom’s advice and labeled everything, but Astride was stubborn as a mule, and once she was stuck in her ways, there was precious little anyone could do to convince her otherwise. Pulling out her phone, she navigated to her Uber Eats, feeling a tiny pang in her heart as she switched her location to New York. Not the language, though. Astride was so hungry that she literally clicked on whatever place could get there the fastest, which ended up being a Chinese place a mile or so away. After placing her order — she got an extra box of chow mein so she wouldn’t have to deal with breakfast the next day — she settled back into the hair, the only fully-assembled piece of furniture in the whole apartment. Her finger hovered over her Instagram for a moment before she clicked on it, liking a few photos before going to post one of her own. It was a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge as she crossed it that morning, Poutine’s head lolling out the front window. One tap and one caption later, it was posted. 

---

Anthony flopped onto his bed, his duffel landing with a satisfying thump on the floor beside him. Training camp had just ended, and while he’d certainly been keeping up on his workouts over the summer, the hours upon hours of skating had nevertheless made him more than a little sore. He grabbed his phone, opening up Instagram and scrolling through the new posts, only half paying attention. Astride’s new photo caught his eye.

Sometimes, needing a change means a new haircut. Sometimes, it means a new country. Very excited to start this next chapter in my life. Salut, New York! Anthony quickly clicked onto her profile page and read her bio. International economics analyst. Eating my way through the world one pancake at a time. BCom McGill. MTL-NYC. He read the last line over and over again. MTL-NYC. He swiped back to the photo; she had tagged herself in Brooklyn. Brooklyn. She was less than an hour away, not even thirty if the traffic wasn’t bad. But she hadn’t told him, she hadn’t said anything. Anthony felt a pang in his heart. Astride knew who he played for — obviously — and she knew that of course he’d want to see her any time they were even remotely in the same place. She knew that. Right? 

He spent the next twenty minutes typing out a message to her. Then deleting it. Then retyping it. Then continuing the type-delete-retype cycle until his head was spinning. This was his best friend. Why was he so nervous to talk to her? Because she was his best friend, and as much as he hated to admit it, he really wasn’t sure where they stood. He hadn’t been sure for a long time. Hey Asty! He internally cringed at himself at the use of her old nickname. I saw you moved to New York, that’s amazing! I’m over on Long Island, so I’d love to catch up with you for coffee or something when you get a chance. It’s been too long :) 

It might have been a little petty — scratch that, it definitely was petty — but Astride didn’t respond to his text that night. She didn’t have read receipts on, thank God, but it sat in her messages, without response, like something she was too scared to confront. And she didn’t even know why. Okay, fine, she knew exactly why. She had moved and suddenly they were in the same city for the first time since they were kids and he was, had been, her best friend, but why now of all times? It’s not like he was never in Montréal during the year, or like they couldn’t have committed to a weekly FaceTime or something, or at least texted more than once a month. He could have done something. And that something, that lack of a something, was what kept her from responding until the next morning, tapping out a text as she halfheartedly made her way through a bowl of oatmeal. Hi, Tito, just saw your text! Lie. I did, an opportunity for a transfer came up and I decided to take it. I figured you were pretty close by, so it would be great to catch up. I don’t start at the office for a week, if you’re free any time between now and then. That much was true. She wasn’t stupid, she knew the Islanders played on, well, Long Island, and as much as she wanted to still hold a grudge against him, her heart ached at the prospect of finally being able to see him again. 

Anthony responded almost instantly, Astride having just closed the door to the dishwasher — a luxury in New York, she was told — before seeing her phone light up with the telltale bubble. I’d love to, we just finished up training camp so I’m more or less free aside from practices. A second later. Is brunch still your favorite meal?

Astride laughed. It didn’t surprise her that he remembered, but it was still touching to see him say something about it. It is.

How about Tuesday? I’ll send you the directions. It’s this little café in Flatbush, I think you’ll love it. 

I’m counting on it. 

September 26 (sun)

Brunch had turned into dinner, which had turned into going to a Broadway show — Anthony had insisted the moment she told him she’d never been — which had turned into him coming over for Saturday night movies, an old habit of the pair’s from their days back in Québec. Which had turned into two movies and two bottles of wine, which had turned into Tito sleeping over on the couch instead of driving the thirty-odd minutes back to his apartment. Poutine sniffed him curiously, nudging one hand with her head. Astride stifled a giggle, opening the door to the balcony. “He’s very sleepy, Poutine. It’s not good manners to wake up your guests.”

“Even when they fall asleep on your couch and steal all your blankets?” Anthony said sleepily from behind. 

Astride wheeled around, greeted by a half-awake Anthony Beauvillier, who was indeed bundled in all of the blankets she owned that weren’t actively on her bed. “Tito! Oh my God, you scared me. How’d you sleep?”

He shrugged. “Not bad, about as well as can be expected.” He tapped his phone, cursing when he realized it was dead. “Do you know what time it is?”

She glanced down at her watch. “8:52, why?”

Anthony jumped up, throwing his shirt back on and grabbing his still-dead phone. “I’m supposed to meet Mat for breakfast at 9:30, and the place is,” he paused for a moment, running through the grid system in his head, “probably half an hour away? I’m never the late one, can’t break that streak now.” 

“Gotcha.”

He grabbed his keys, looking back at her. “Why don’t you come? You’re already dressed, and you remember Mat, right?”

She wiggled her hand. “Kind of?” She crossed the room, letting Poutine back in. “You only want me for my charged phone and navigation system.”

“You got me,” he said, laughing. 

---

“You named your dog Poutine?” Mat snickered, taking a bite of his eggs. 

“Would you rather I named him Tim Horton?” Astride deadpanned. “He’s a good Canadian boy with a good Canadian mom. He needed a good Canadian name.” 

Mat raised his coffee mug, tilting it over towards her. “Touché.”

Anthony waved his hand in front of Mat’s face, trying to catch his attention from where he was utterly preoccupied with destroying his sourdough toast. “Hey, Mat.”

“Mmm?” He glanced up. 

“Did you know that Astride lives right by Barclays? Like, right by Barclays?” 

His eyebrows rose. “No way?” Astride nodded. “That’s a great area, would have been awesome if you were here a couple of years ago. Short walk to the games.”

“That’s what I told her yesterday,” Tito responded. 

---

“You’re kidding,” Anthony said, looking up at her building, then across the street to Barclays, then back to Astride, one hand tangling through his hair. “We used to play right across from here.” 

Astride laughed. “I thought about that,” she said. “You know I still watched your games, right? Even after we fell out of touch?” Anthony shook his head. “You were still someone I cared about, are still someone I care about, even when we only talked a few times a year.” 

Beau stood there, unable to formulate a complete sentence. As far as he knew, the last Islanders game she watched had been the 2016 opener, his NHL debut and her first year at McGill. Why did he assume that? Why did he assume the worst? You can care about people even when they’re not in your life anymore. And sometimes, if you get really, really lucky, they come back. 

October 9 (sat) 

“Ebs is having a barbeque thing over at his house this weekend, just stuff to celebrate the beginning of the season if you wanted to come. No pressure if you’ve got plans already, though,” Anthony said over the FaceTime. 

Astride nodded enthusiastically. “That sounds great, I’d love to come! Just let me know when to show up and what to bring, and I’ll be there.”

 It was almost a fifty-minute drive for Astride from her apartment in Prospect Heights to the house in Garden City, but there wasn’t too much traffic and besides, she had always liked driving. So she set off in her Civic, plugged her music in, and headed down 495. Anthony met her outside of the house, greeting her with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek as he cocked his head towards the backyard. “Party’s this way. Come on, I’ll introduce you to everyone.” 

Astride dutifully followed, trying not to let her nerves take hold of her. Everyone might have already been Beau’s friends, but she didn’t know them, or the dynamic of everyone’s relationships, or really, what to expect at all. 

He noticed her apprehension, stopping her with a feather-light touch on her arm just before walking through the back gate. “Hey, Asty. What is it?” 

She let out a little huff, still upset that he could read her like a book even after all this time. “I’m just worried that I’ll feel like I’m intruding on everything, like everyone already has their friends and a group and everything, and here comes some random Québécoise who’s a friend of Tito’s—” 

He laughed, turning her around to face him. “Astride, they’re going to love you. As long as you’re the hilarious, witty, caring person I know you are, they’re going to love you as much as I do, and you’re going to fit in just fine. Do you trust me?” 

She gave a tiny nod. “Yeah.” 

He smiled, squeezing her hand. “Good, now come back, everyone’s waiting.” 

They walked through the gate, greeted by a crowd of smiling faces as Anthony brought her around to everyone to make their rounds. There was Anders, he was the captain, and his wife. There was Jordan and Lauren, and she already knew Mat, and JGP — who was excited to have another person to speak French to — and a dozen or so others, along with their respective partners and children. Anthony had gone over to talk to Mat and some of the other players, while Astride had wandered over to the drinks table. Some of the other women were chatting nearby; one of them caught Astride’s eye and waved her over to join them. 

“Beau didn’t tell us he was bringing anyone!” one of the women said, pulling her over to the group with a bright smile and handing her a glass of sangria. 

“Mhm,” she replied, taking a sip of the drink. “I’m new to the city, obviously, so I think he wanted me to have some people I know outside of just work.” 

They all nodded. “How long have you two been together, though?” another asked. “I didn’t even know he was seeing anyone, did you?” She looked around at the others, who shook their heads as Astride’s eyes bulged. 

“Together? No, no, we’re not together. We’ve been best friends for ages, but,” she shook her head. 

“Could have fooled me,” Lauren said with the smallest of winks. 

Astride suddenly became very interested in the floating berries in her sangria. She looked over at Anthony, who was throwing his head back, laughing at something one of the rookies had said, and smiled. But Lauren’s words kept lingering in the back of her mind. Could have fooled me. Okay, it wasn’t like it was the first time they had been mistaken for a couple; whenever she’d make the trip up to Shawingan to visit him when he was in the QMJHL, more than once she’d have to explain to his teammates that no, she wasn’t Beau’s girlfriend, they were just best friends who had known each other forever. Just best friends. 

Astride had always equated her lingering feelings for Anthony to the nostalgia of a childhood crush, the safety and security that came with remembering something from a time that seemed so simple and so easy. But childhood crushes didn’t last for ten years. And that wasn’t something she hadn’t wanted to come to terms with, something she’d been putting off for years if she was being honest with herself. 

“You didn’t tell me Astride was coming,” Mat commented, seeing her mid-laugh in conversation with the other girls. 

Anthony nodded. “Yeah. She didn’t have any plans for the weekend and I thought it would be nice to introduce her to everyone. I remember how shitty it felt to be in a new city away from your family, don’t want her to be lonely. Plus, I genuinely think she’ll fit in great with everyone.” 

Mat hummed his agreement. “She’s changed since Switzerland, don’t you think?” he asked appreciatively, referring to over five years ago, the last time he had seen her in person.

“Don’t even think about it,” Beau mumbled to Mat, seeing his eyebrows go so far up they were hidden in his hairline. 

“I see a hot girl, I appreciate a hot girl,” Mat shrugged. “But don’t worry, I won’t try anything. I know she’s off-limits.” 

The rest of the afternoon passed quicker than she would have thought, and after a few hours and more good conversations, it was time for Astride to leave. “Have a safe drive back,” Anthony said, giving her a hug. 

“I will,” she responded. 

He opened the driver’s side door for her. “I’m really glad you came, you know. Everyone liked you, you fit in great.” 

“It wasn’t all me,” she said, sliding into the seat, turning her head to Anthony to continue the conversation. “Everyone really did seem to go out of their way to make me feel included, I think they understood the feeling of moving to a whole new place without a big support system and wanted to do what they could to help mitigate that for me.” Astride consciously left out Lauren’s little comment, four words that had been bouncing around in her head for hours since they had been said. He didn’t need to know. She didn’t need him to know, it could confuse him and complicate things when they were just getting back into the rhythm of friendship, of being each other’s person. 

Anthony tapped his fingers on the car door. “I’m glad.” 

“Me too.”

Beau went to sleep that night, Mat’s words bouncing around in his head. “I know she’s off-limits.” It’s not like Cass was his sister or something, someone who would inherently be barred from his best friend’s dating pool. But Mat seemed to know right away, without having ever been told, that she wasn’t someone he could ever even consider pursuing. Why? And what did Mat seem to know that he didn’t?

November 12 (fri)

It was early November, and Anthony and Astride had just settled down at a table in Prospect Park, coffee cups warming their hands through the late fall chill. “How do you feel about last night?” Astride asked teasingly. He had a three point game, two goals and an assist in a 4-1 win over the Canes, so there really wasn’t any question that he was still riding on the high. 

Beau rolled his eyes. “Good, obviously. It would have been nice to get a hat trick, but I know that’s asking for a lot and I didn’t want to tempt fate too much. They made a really good push late in the second.”

“But you won,” she said, poking his shoulder with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around her mocha. 

“But we won,” he agreed. He suddenly got quiet, the kind of quiet where, if you know the person well enough, you can tell that something’s up. That they’re thinking of something. And Astride was right. “Do you ever think about Switzerland?” he asked. 

Astride looked at him from the side, knowing right away that he wasn’t asking about the country. “All the time,” she admitted. 

---

It was the spring of 2015, and they were in Lucerne. By they, Astride meant her, Tito, and the rest of the 2015 Canadian U18 World Cup team. And by in Lucerne, she meant crowded into someone’s hotel room with no adult supervision. Anthony wasn’t sure where any of the coaching staff had gone, but if he was being honest, he was riding on way too big of a high to even care. They had clinched the bronze medal earlier that day, celebrating with the family and friends who had made the trip out, gotten dinner, and then packed into the first team room they came to. Well, technically, Astride, Tito, and Mat had made a stop at the grocery store before meeting everyone else back in the room. The drinking age in Switzerland was 16 for everything but spirits, and everyone was planning on taking full advantage of that. The cashier gave them a look as she took her and Anthony’s French licenses and Mat’s English one, but the charge went through just fine, and fifteen minutes later they were walking back through the doorway with three cases of beer and a few bottles of sparkling wine for good measure. Astride had never been so grateful to have her own checking account. 

“You ever drink before?” Mat asked her as they opened the cases. 

Astride shrugged. “Not really. A glass of wine every now and again back home with my parents, but nothing too crazy.” 

He held out a bottle for her, fishing around in his pocket for the bottle opener they had picked up at the store. “Have fun.” 

And have fun Astride did. She had finished off two of the beers, and one of the younger teammates — she didn’t remember who — had popped open the wine. In his slightly inebriated state, it took longer than it should have to twist off the muselet, which then led to foam all over the floor and fifteen sixteen and seventeen-year-olds running to the bathroom to grab towels to try and mop it up with. And then running back to the bathroom to get the water glasses because they needed something to drink it out of, right? And then to everyone else’s rooms because they quickly realized that two cups definitely wasn’t enough to go around, and then everyone was back in the room, on the beds and around the beds, finally letting themselves celebrate. Astride was just finishing her glass when Mat spoke. “Anyone up for never have I ever?” Nobody said otherwise, so two minutes later, they were all arranged in what could very generously be called a circle, fresh drinks in hand. After a solid five minutes of repeating the rules — there was always at least one person who seemed to genuinely struggle with the idea that you drank if you had done the thing, not if you hadn’t — they were slowly but surely making their way around the circle. 

Questions ranged from the mundane — “Never have I ever gotten detention” — to the raunchy — “Never have I ever had my parents walk in on me” — neither of which Astride or Tito drank to. 

By the time it was Mat’s turn, he had had plenty of time to think, looking around the group with a conspiratorial grin. “What is it?” Tito asked skeptically. 

He shrugged. “Never have I ever...kissed anyone in the circle.” As expected, nobody drank, but apparently that wasn’t expected, not for Mat, at least. He looked between Anthony and Astride incredulously. “Seriously? You two have never kissed?”

Anthony shook his head. “Nope.”

“How? You’ve been friends for, like, a million years, not even when you were little or anything?” he asked. 

“Never,” Astride said. “Kind of hard to kiss your best friend when you haven’t kissed anyone before.” She barely even realized that everyone was still listening in. 

“You’ve never kissed anyone?” Anthony asked, surprised. 

Astride looked down at her hands, sipping her beer. “Nope.” She gave him a brief smile. “I know it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but no. Just hasn’t happened yet.”

Maybe it was the alcohol talking, or maybe it was feelings buried so deeply in Anthony’s mind that he didn’t think would ever see the light of day, let alone have to be confronted, that made him say what he did next. “I could—if you wanted—you don’t have to, but—” he stammered.

Astride laughed, looking at him curiously. “What is it, Tito? You’re not normally one to stumble over your words like that.”

He picked at his fingernails, an old nervous tick from his childhood that his mother was never quite able to get him to break, keenly aware that the whole room had decided to listen into their conversation. “I was just trying to say...I could do it, if you want. Kiss you, I mean. If you just wanted to get it over with, or whatever. I just figured. You know me, you trust me, you’re comfortable with me. Better that than some idiot at school who doesn’t care about you.”

Her cheeks burned as she looked over at him, but even though it took her nearly a minute to respond, she had her answer after five seconds. “Why not?” Astride flashed him the purest, gentlest smile, the kind that let him know just how much she cared about him and how deeply she trusted him. And the look on her face meant the world to him. 

Anthony leaned in, his hand coming up to rest on her shoulder, his fingertips just barely touching her cheek as their foreheads leant together. “You sure about this?” He needed her to be sure. 

She nodded. “I’ve had a couple of drinks, and I never imagined my first kiss would be in front of an audience,” she paused to giggle at the rest of the team, who were giving the scene their full attention in a way that somehow wasn’t uncomfortable at all, just wholesome and supportive, “but yeah. I’m sure.”

That was all the permission Anthony needed to lean forward, pressing his lips against hers, in a kiss that was soft and sweet and somehow everything Astride needed all in one. He pulled back after a moment, a goofy smile on his face. “How was it?”

Astride couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “Good, it was really good, Tito. Thank you for that.”

“What are friends for?”

---

“Friends are for kissing each other, apparently,” Astride giggled, leaning into Anthony on his couch. 

He laughed, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, absentmindedly rubbing his thumb over her arm. “Did you ever think something was going to happen between us?” Anthony asked curiously. 

Astride shrugged. “At some point, yeah. I think it was kind of hard not to, with our parents and literally everyone we spent time with saying we were destined to fall in love.” She looked down at her hands, trying not to give away the fact that at one point, she had believed them. 

November 30 (tues)

“Do you want to come over Friday?” Anthony asked, sprawled out across her couch on one of his rare nights off. He had made the drive over to Astride’s apartment, cooking salmon and roasting vegetables while she took the much more daunting task of picking what to watch on Netflix. She settled on Back to the Future. “I can order in Thai, I know we’re trying to work our way through the Mission Impossibles.” 

Astride grimaced. “I actually...kind of have a date Friday night,” she admitted. 

Anthony made a hum of surprise. “You do?” 

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t act so shocked, Tito. There are men in this city of nine million who want to take me out.” 

He sputtered. “It’s not that that shocks me, Asty. You’d have men lining up around the block for you if you’d give any of them a second glance. It’s just that. You never seem to bother actually going after any of them. What made this one different?” 

“I mean, honestly hour?” Astride said, shrugging. 

“Honestly hour.” 

“I haven’t been on a date since I left Montréal, you know that. It had been a few months there too. And I’ve loved hanging out with you more, getting to know Mat and the team and everyone’s partners, but...I needed something different, too. Something that felt like a part of my life that wasn’t directly connected to the team. Which, don’t get me wrong,” she added hastily, “I love them, and it’s been so nice to be a part of that group, I just…” Astride trailed off. 

“You can’t let that be the only part of your life. I get it,” Anthony added helpfully.  

“Yeah,” Astride agreed. “So enter Cole. He works in a different division of the IE department, I’m obviously Europe and he’s Asia, mostly does work with Taiwan and Singapore. Um,” she said, her eyes turning towards the ceiling, “he seems really nice, did international business at UPenn, which is a great program. Speaks fluent Mandarin, uh, I think he mentioned he’s got a few fish at home.” 

Anthony snorted. “What’s wrong with fish?” Astride asked defensively. 

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong with fish,” he said. “Just seems like an odd choice. Maybe his building doesn’t allow pets or something.” 

“Maybe,” Astride responded. “I wouldn’t know, he lives in Manhattan, over in Tribeca. Bikes to work.” 

Tito laughed again. “I don’t trust people who bike to work in New York City, Asty. They have zero regard for their own lives or safety.” 

She giggled. “That might be true. But I’m looking forward to it, the date, I mean. I really am. It’s been a while since I’ve really put myself back out there, and I’m ready for something good. Something real.” 

He gave a half-smile from his side of the couch. “I’m happy for you, Astride. I hope you have a great time, and I hope he treats you right. If he doesn’t, just let him know that you can sic an entire professional hockey team on him with a single phone call.” 

“I will,” she said. “I’ll call you when it’s over, tell you how it went.” “

I’ll be waiting,” he said. 

Anthony thought back on the conversation as he sat on the corner of his bed that night, about to go to sleep. He turned his phone over and over in his hands, his eyes fixating on the chip in the crown molding that he hadn’t gotten around to fixing yet. He wasn’t lying to Astride when he said he was happy for her. He was, of course he was, who wouldn’t want their best friend to be happy? But while he wanted nothing more, nothing more, than to be able to give his full-throated support for her date, and the potential the future held for her and this Cole guy, he couldn’t do it. There was something stopping him. And the worst part of it all was that Anthony was starting to realize what it was. 

---

Astride had said that their dinner reservation was at 7, some brasserie in the West Village. “That’s a French thing, right?” Cole had asked. 

“It is,” Astride responded, gearing up for her translation skills to be used for the first time in months. She spoke almost exclusively French around Tito, and with JGP and Brassard, but the majority of her day was spent in English. Cole said that the restaurant had come highly recommended from one of his Wall Street friends, something that should have been the first red flag. 

“Never trust the finance bros,” Reese, a German specialist and one of her friends at the office, had said. “They all think they’re God’s gift to mankind when I can guarantee you they ain’t shit.”  

She had said it was at 7, so Anthony wasn’t expecting to hear from her until much later; honestly, he would have been surprised if she had called before 10. He tried not to think about what it could mean if she didn’t call at all that night. She had said it was at 7, so when he heard a knock at his door at half past nine, he practically jumped out of his skin before scrambling to open the door. His eyebrows rose when he saw Astride on the other side of the door, then his face contorted into a look of sympathy as he saw the sad smile on her lips, her jacket slung over one arm. 

“Can I come in?” she asked. He nodded without question, holding the door while stepping out of the way. He padded to the kitchen, bringing out a bottle of Moscato and two glasses. Astride smiled gratefully at him as he uncorked the bottle and poured. He knew that she couldn’t do red wine when she was upset, and she was upset. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked tentatively. 

Astride shrugged, sipping the wine. “Not much to tell other than it was probably the worst first date I’ve ever been on.” 

That piqued Anthony’s interest. He’d never be happy that she was upset, but something told him the story wasn’t quite that simple. “What about it was so bad?” 

“Where do I begin?” she sighed. “He was on time, but that’s pretty much the only thing Cole did right the entire night. He was rude to the waitress when we had to wait all of ten minutes until our reservation was ready, because the couple ahead had gone long. Then he ordered the most expensive bottle of red wine they had, without even asking me to see what I wanted. He really just was trying to show off that he could afford it. And it was a Sangiovese, and you know I hate dry wines, so I was just trying to choke the whole thing down. And then he insisted on ordering for me, which is probably the most chauvinistic thing I could think of, I mean, who does that anymore?” she asked incredulously. 

Tito shrugged. It was disrespectful, absolutely, but more than that, it was just weird. If women have mouths that work, then they’re more than capable of doing something as simple as ordering their own food. 

“And he kept trying to pour me more wine after the first glass, even when I told him a million times I was good.” Anthony’s grip on his glass tightened. Astride rubbed her temples with her free hand. “He just kept going on and on about work, and this big promotion he’s insisting he’s going to get even though I know for a fact that they want Maria for it. I could barely get a word in edgewise. That’s when I just decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I faked that Jean-Claude was calling, grabbed my jacket, and caught a cab over here.” She looked up at him, the same disappointed expression she had worn when he opened the door. “I was really hoping this one would pan out, Tito.” 

He felt an ache in his heart. He may have been less than thrilled about the prospect of Astride going out on a date, but that didn’t mean it hurt any less to see her so despondent. He leaned over, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear that had fallen loose. “I know, Asty. And I’m sorry it didn’t.”

December 13 (mon)

Anthony and Mat were the last ones in the locker room after a morning practice. “I found this new place nearby last week that’s got great smoothie bowls, want to get one after you finish packing your stuff?” Anthony asked, looking over at Mat. 

“Yeah, yeah. Sure, Sounds good,” Mat nodded, half-listening. 

Anthony glanced over at him, a weird look on his face. “You good, dude? You sound distracted.”

Mat spoke abruptly, looking over at Tito with a laser-focused expression. “How long have you been in love with Astride?” 

Anthony’s eyebrows jumped a foot. “In love with Astride? Why would you think that?”

Mat gave him a look, the kind of look that let Anthony know he was dead serious about what he was saying, and more than that, that he believed it. “Tito, I’m dumb, but I’m not stupid.”

Anthony leaned forward, elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “It’s that obvious?” 

“Yep,” Mat said, popping the p. 

“Do you think she knows?” His voice had dropped to barely above a whisper. 

“I don’t know,” Mat said, shrugging. “I don’t think so, she doesn’t seem like the type of person to really be able to know about something as big as that and not address it. Doesn’t like to keep things bottled up, it’s not really her style.”

Anthony nodded. “It’s not.” He raked one hand through his haid, his head still leaning on the other one. “God. How do you tell your best friend you’re in love with her?”

Mat put one hand on Beau’s back, comforting him as best he could. “I don’t know, Tito. I wish I could help. What I do know,” he said, “is that you’re going to have to eventually. Because it’s going to tear you up if you don’t.”

December 18 (sat)

Astride tossed one final empty can into the garbage bag. “I think that’s it,” she said, giving his living room a cursory look. What had looked like a warzone only less than an hour before now more closely resembled the somewhat-messy but perfectly respectable bachelor pad of a man in his 20s, like it should have. With the holidays approaching, Anthony had decided to take it into his own hands to host a party — alongside Astride, who he had practically begged for help — intent on showcasing his newly-acquired skills by playing bartender the whole night. He was surprisingly capable, Astride had thought, if her Sazerac was anything to go by. 

He smiled at her. “Thanks, Asty. And thanks for staying and helping clean everything up, you really didn’t have to.” 

She tied the bag off and set it by the door with the other one. “I wanted to. And besides, I’m staying over,” she said, looking over at Anthony, “so what did you think I was going to do? Lock myself in the guest room while you cleaned up the whole apartment by yourself? What kind of a woman do you take me for?” she asked in mock offense. 

Anthony laughed, sitting down on the couch with a satisfying thump, pulling Astride into his side when she settled next to him. 

“I’m so glad we got back in contact,” she said, muffled against the fabric of his hoodie. “I’m so glad we’re friends again.” 

He felt guilty; more than that, he knew that the guilt, at least some of it, was deserved. “I should have done more,” he lamented. “I should have done more to keep in contact, more to show you I cared, more so you’d know that your friendship is one of the things I value most in my life.” 

Astride gave a small smile. “It’s a two-way street, Tito. Sure, I won’t lie and say that you really put all that much effort into keeping in contact. You didn’t.” He winced, she shot him a sympathetic look. “I love you, but you know me. I don’t mince my words. But I definitely could have done more than text you congratulations or leave a thirty-second voicemail on your birthday. We both could have done more. We both should have done more,” she said, correcting herself. “What do you think happened, though? Where did we go wrong?” As much as she might have hated it, Astride was that kind of person. She went through every bad decision in her life with a fine-toothed comb, needing to know what went wrong, needing to know what she could have done differently. 

“I think,” he began, “that it was just so easy to get distracted from ‘back home’ things. From our friendship, from my relationships with my family. From the important things, the things that I should have made an effort to prioritize even when the season got hectic and games got hard. And I’m not trying to make excuses,” he added quickly, “but there was just something about where I was, physically and mentally. I was 19, a rookie in one of the biggest cities in the world, and I think I just lost sight of things. Between the practices and games and going out and community events and trying to get in more than five hours of sleep a night, it was a lot,” he admitted. “It was stressful, probably weighed on me more than I wanted to admit. And I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I’m well aware I was — and am — living a life thousands of kids would kill for, but there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that you don’t really understand unless you’ve been through it. I don’t have many regrets from my rookie season, or really many in my career so far. Don’t regret moving for minors, don’t regret going to the Isles, don’t regret any of the contracts I’ve signed or plays I’ve made. Well,” he smirked, “maybe a few. But the one big one? The only real regret I’ve had? Letting you go.” 

Astride swallowed hard, choosing her next words carefully. “What do you mean, letting me go?”

Anthony let out a hard sigh. He’d put it off for long enough. He couldn’t do it any longer. “Never telling you how I feel.”

“How you feel?” Her voice had dropped to a whisper, her fingers tangling in the fringe of the fleece blanket that was slung over the couch cushions. 

“Like I love you so much my heart could burst.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “How long have you known?”

He looked at her with a soft smile. “Ever since Switzerland.”

“Six years?”

“Six years.” He reached out slowly, so slowly, pushing a stray piece of hair behind her ear when she didn’t move back. They sat in silence for a moment, and when Anthony spoke again, his voice wavered. “Asty? Say something.”

Astride’s lifted her head, finally meeting his eyes. “I knew since I was 15.”

His face split into a grin, wider and wider until she was sure she’d never seen a bigger smile. “You did? You do?”

She nodded, leaning forward so their foreheads were touching. She put her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat fluttering butterfly-fast underneath her fingertips. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been in love with you since I knew what love was, Tito.”

He pushed forward, pressing his lips against hers for the first time since 2015, the first time since Switzerland. It was gentle and meaningful and somehow communicated all of the love and emotion that had been built up between the two of them in the past six years. Anthony pulled back after a minute, his lips pink and slightly puffy. “Tell me where your head’s at, Astride.”

“Is it too cliché to just say that this might be the happiest I’ve been in years?”

He shook his head, smiling. “Not at all.” But there was something that she wasn’t quite letting go of. “What is it, Astride?”

Astride sniffed. “I want this. You and I, I want it so mad it hurts. I just hate the idea that we’d turn into some sort of cliché. Childhood friends who grow up and fall in love, but something goes wrong and they split up and suddenly the dynamic of everything is messed up and I don’t want that, Tito. I don’t know if I could deal with you hating me because of how things ended.” 

“But things don’t have to end, Asty. Every broken heart, every date where some asshole has stood you up has led you to know that you deserve more. You deserve so much more, Astride, you deserve the sun and the moon and someone who would hang them in the sky for you. It doesn’t have to end in heartbreak. It doesn’t have to end at all.” 

Astride had always been someone who was cautious, someone who thought before she acted and never spoke without thinking through every possible outcome. But this was one of the times that she couldn’t do that, one of the times when, as much as she may have hated it, she needed to take a leap of faith. And so she did. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Anthony asked, his voice lifting. 

She nodded, the happiness on her face unmistakable. “Okay.”

And as Astride and Anthony FaceTimed her parents to break the news, her mom slapping her dad’s shoulder, claiming that she had “called it” back in 2014, Astride was filled with a sense of undeniable, irreplaceable joy. The kind of joy that the poets write about and artists put brush to canvas trying to depict, the kind that most people go their whole lives only hoping to get a glimpse of. The kind that made Astride more certain of one thing than she had perhaps been in her entire life. It didn’t have to end in heartbreak. And this one didn’t have to end at all. 

And as they stood two years later in a little church in their hometown, promising in front of their family and friends and the entire New York Islanders to love each other for the rest of their lives, Astride finally believed it.

[antoine-roquentin]

First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan sent the union a letter saying the budget impact of the pandemic was “debilitating and not yet fully known,” and the city couldn’t afford to pay a lump sum due to active and retired teachers scheduled for this month under a 2014 agreement.

“It is the City’s desire to avoid the necessity for layoffs, and to make a retroactive payment at this time would therefore be fiscally irresponsible,” Mr. Fuleihan’s letter said.

The dispute comes during a hectic and tense back-to-school season. In August, the union threatened to strike if the city didn’t meet its standards for making schools safe, prompting a delay in reopening. Many teachers have expressed frustration with a reopening that has been full of confusion over class schedules, job assignments and insufficient technology for children studying online from home.

“We’re in for another fight,” Michael Mulgrew, United Federation of Teachers president, told members Thursday night in a video message.

The pandemic has brought on the worst fiscal crisis in the city since the 1970s. It faces a $9 billion deficit over the next two years. Dwindling tax revenue forced Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council to reduce or eliminate services in the city budget they approved in June.

To cut costs, the mayor has mandated weeklong furloughs for about 9,000 government workers. He also has warned that he will have to lay off 22,000 employees if state lawmakers don’t give the city the authority to borrow billions of dollars. 

in the world of finance, stakeholders are paid according to the level of pressure they can mount on a bond issuer. once upon a time, new york city prioritized its employees over its financial stakeholders. it hoped to draw high profile talent through well-paying jobs. in 1975, banks said, forget it:

New York City’s bonds, issued by the MAC, plunged to between twenty dollars and forty dollars per thousand-dollar face value, and city note-holders began to line up at the Municipal Building in an attempt to redeem whatever they could. That morning, Rohatyn told the press that everything hinged on the teachers’ union: “The future of the city is in their hands.”

It was more than just the future of one city. New York’s bonds were held by banks throughout the United States and around the world. By some estimates, New York’s default would bring down at least a hundred banks, and expose others to liability for selling suspect or fraudulent products.

Economists warned that New York’s default would hurt the dollar abroad. The Dow dropped ten points at the opening bell, the price of gold began to rise, and, as reported by the United Press International wire service, “trading of bonds of other cities and states slowed to a near standstill, and even the prices of most credit-worthy bonds fell.” One newspaper in North Carolina ran a cartoon of a bum lying on trash, under the Brooklyn Bridge, with the caption, “We’re going down, America, and we’re taking you with us.”

President Ford began hearing from leaders around the world about the dangers of a New York default. His press secretary, Ron Nessen, said that Ford would continue to monitor the situation throughout the day, but wouldn’t change his mind about granting assistance to the city. In Nessen’s words, “This is not a natural disaster or an act of God. It is a self-inflicted act by the people who have been running New York City.”

it was the world’s second neoliberal coup, by accident:

In the United States, as Reagan’s speech suggested, New York’s story would be held up time and again as a cautionary tale of the dangers of Great Society liberalism and the virtues of the free market and private enterprise. Reflecting on the crisis ten years afterwards, Felix Rohatyn observed that it had “redefined the political dialogue” in New York City. The crisis had underlined “in the most brutal way possible the limits of any unit of government to create money itself and to promise all things to all citizens without a very solid private sector base.” In the future, he said, there would be an understanding that “business has to be supported and not just tolerated.”

The framework of “crisis” generated a sense of inevitability, making it seem that there were no alternatives.

Rohatyn was right: The nature of political life changed markedly after the crisis. There was no premeditated plan to seize and transform New York’s government, nor were the actors who gained power during the crisis acting upon an ideology constructed in the abstract. But the scare of the near-bankruptcy brought together the elite groups within the city, and enabled them to act in concert in ways that otherwise would have proved difficult to attain. The framework of “crisis” generated a sense of inevitability, making it seem that there were no alternatives. Across the Atlantic, “there is no alternative” would soon become one of Thatcher’s favorite slogans.

Upending common wisdom about the proper role of city government, the crisis marked the beginning of a new age. A corporate and financial elite, along with technocratic politicians responsive to that group, gained control over New York. They could be counted on to prioritize the interests of business and the wealthy; indeed, they often regarded that as the only way to help the city. This new perspective closed off an older vision of New York, shutting down debate over whether city government should seek to guarantee a set of social rights for all. New York City still has not transcended this constriction of its politics. Neither has the nation as a whole.

nowadays, the needs of the people of new york always have to take a backseat to the people who buy into its bonds.

[aknosde]

Riordainverse characters with instagram head cannons

Percy

he’s got a respectable following, ~80k, a fair amount of his followers are people who remember him as that kid who got kidnapped and defeated his captor on the beach, or people who say that he’s attractive, which he doesn’t understand

doesn’t really do anything special but people love his posts cus they’re “cryptic”, also he seems to be friends with a lot of people who are also mysterious

sketches of his friends and weapons n’ stuff

a photo of him and Nico sword fighting in the arena

him and Annabeth on top of the rock climbing wall

at pride with Nico, Will, Leo, Jason, and Reyna

a selfie of him with a few sharks underwater

a group photo of a dozen teenagers in armor with a giant dog behind them

a video of him skateboarding across the brooklyn bridge ranting about the gods but most of it’s lost in the wind

The comments section is gold. “is that kids hand on fire?!?” “Is that kid with goat legs a furry?” “Percy I swear to the gods, you’ve got to stop taking underwater selfies with dangerous animals, it’s dinner time.” “How are all of these people so hot?” “is that lava?” “Wait isn’t this the kid that had a shotgun battle with his kidnapper on a beach???” “Did he insult Zeus?”

Annabeth

public account, maybe 30k

architecture sketches

a picture she took of Percy in a museum

a picture of her and a few others during a strategy meeting

photo of her school notes

pictures of buildings she designed on Olympus, mortals are confused because the places are so pretty but they can't be found anywhere

also stuff in the comments: “where is that???” “how are your notes so pretty?” “planning for friday, wise girl?”

Nico

has a public account for some reason so he has ~40k followers

actually is a pretty good artist so sometimes he posts drawings

him & Will somewhere random (where they shouldn’t be) having a picnic

photo from Hades’ palace

him and Reyna

sparring

photo of the river styx “remember when you swam in here @/prettysureimbijackson” “@/GhostKing if i recall, that was your idea, and it ended with me taking down your dads army” “what the hell guys”

comments: “where did you get the idea to draw that?” [its a monster he saw in tartarus] “How did you even get there???” “your boyfriend is looking for you di Angelo”

Frank

his accounts also public ~10k

photos of animals, each time he posts one the type of animal is more rare, usually with a caption like “I learned more about X today”

a picture Hazel took of him on the archery range

Him at some event with Reyna, Jason, and Percy, they’re all wearing Praetor clothes

him and Hazel

maybe some photos of food

comments are more tame but: “why are you dressed like that?” “Where did you find the rare X???”

has kinda drawn the attention of some animal welfare people who are confused

Piper

has a lot of followers, some are just superfans of her dad tho :( ~200k

a photo of her and Jason somewhere really high up

a picture Jason took of her in front of some shops in New Rome

pretty food from some cafe

surfing with the others (Percy and her are really good, you can see Leo flailing around in the background)

a really pretty picture of her dagger

comments: “how are you so pretty” “is there someone drowning in the back?” “how’d you get up there?” “a beautiful weapon for a beautiful girl ;)”

Leo

smaller following, but his account is private, but anyone who requests is accepted, ~3k

festus <3

little machines he’s made

a clip of he and Percy high giving but there’s steam coming out from between their hands

the forges

him and the 7 + Nico, Reyna, and Will in formal attire making silly faces

him and the others, everyone is drenched except him and Percy

him, percy, jason, and hazel, the caption “Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked ;)”

comments: “what’re you planning Valdez?” “@/prettysureimbijackson don’t you mean ‘water you planning?’” “what does this contraption do?” “cuteee!” 

Hazel

doesn’t post a lot

private account, only accepts people she kinda knows, ~400 followers

random animals who are all named Frank

her and human Frank

her and Nico

food

Arion, a lot of Arion

comments: “Is you’re horse eating gold” “[in reply] he’s picky like that” “you really like the name Frank huh?”

Jason

doesn’t post often, public account ~20k

photos of him and Piper

pics of completed alters for the other gods

sword fighting with Percy

him and Thalia

video games with the 7+ Reyna, Nico, and Will

comments: “oh look it’s captain america” “more like a blonde superman” “is that a sword” “wait it’s this that movie stars son who mysteriously disappeared? How does he know Percy Jackson?”

Reyna

public account, ~60k, doesn’t understand how she got so many followers

sparring 

her and Thalia ;)

her dogs

the view from that garden for Bacchus

hot chocolate

her in armor & praetor gear with her sword during war games

comments: “sword lesbian” 

im gonna make more of these cus its fun

[hermitknut]

So I made some Goblin Emperor memes...

[ID: a series of pictures. The first is of a man, labelled “Maia”, holding hands with an annoyed woman, labelled “The entire Untheileneise Court”; he is looking away from her to eye up another woman, labelled “Being nice to servants”. 

The second is of a man in an office, labelled “Csevet”, with a caption that reads “If you could not bother the emperor with every tiny thing that would be great”

The third is of a cartoon man labelled “Maia” with his hand outstretched towards a butterfly, which is labelled “Anyone who is remotely pleasant to him”. Along the base of the picture, it says “Is this a friend forever?”

The fourth is of Boromir from The Lord of the Rings, captioned as saying “The Emperor does not simply dress himself”.

The fifth is a sequence of two images; in the first, a man labelled as “Setheris” has just shot a man labelled “his own relationship with Maia”, and in the second the man labelled as “Setheris” is now looking at the camera and the caption says “Why would the Emperor do this to me”

The sixth is an image of Rosa from Brooklyn 99, holding a puppy. Rosa is labelled as “Cala, Beshelar, Csevet”, and the words underneath her say “I’ve only known Maia for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.”

The seventh and final image is of Regina George from Mean Girls, captioned “Edrehasivar stop trying to make the bridge happen. It’s not going to happen.” End ID]

[hannahlhnd2021]

Victoria Siemer artist research (25/03/21)

Victoria Siemer is a digital artist based in Brooklyn in New York. She describes herself as a “Photoshop Aficionado w/ Adult Teen Angst”. She goes by Witchoria. She has a BFA in Communication Design from SUNY Buffalo. 

Two of her projects that I choose to focus on are “Hue Don’t Own Me” and “Geometric Reflections”. 

“Hue Don’t Own Me” catches the eye because the images are so empty. A lot of them look like they were shot in the desert. And whichever text Victoria has applied to the images, the whole image is cast in that colour. It makes the impact of the text reverberate much more. Increases vibrance. I’d describe the mood as sombre. Some of them are angry. Some are sad. Some are about desire. I think these images are designed to give people a visual vibe to the feeling of a certain sentence. A common sentence, like, “You Were Never Enough”. 

“Geometric Reflections” catches my eye because it’s so unusual, crisp, lots of high contrast and vibrancy. And a good mixture of symmetry and asymmetry. I love the whacky dreamy colours and fantasy feel. This body of work exhibits that Victoria has a harness on the calm and serene as well as the hyper colourised and strong.

The image I have chosen from “Hue Don’t Own Me” is “Nothing Lasts Forever”.

I chose it for its emotional impact. Everyone knows this. But it’s such a hard thing to face. And compositionally, the darkness behind the caption in this image symbolises the unknown outcomes of things not lasting forever. How scary it is. And it’s a dead end in the road too. At least, it’s sort of been shot like that. You can see the road going off to the left just barely. But at a glance it looks like the road just ends in the shrubs. These spiky shrubs that disappear into darkness. The colour of the image is both a warning colour and a comforting colour. Yellow is warm but it’s also what you see on hazard signs. The caption simultaneously can give comfort or anxiety too depending on how you look at it. Whatever it is you have going on that you may or may not want to end.

The image I have chosen from “Geometric Reflections” is the one on the far right here. I really like the colours of the image. The balance between purple and blue bridges the gap of warm and cold. The tinges of yellow on the top of the mountains are hopeful. It’s delicate but also strong in the certainty of how the box cutout has an exact distance from the edge of the piece on every side. The little slice of upside down mountain carries hardly any of the weight of the full right side up mountain beneath it. 

To discuss an artist that does similar work (Photoshop surrealism) to Victoria Siemer, I have chosen to talk about Staudinger + Franke who are a famous Vienna based photo studio founded by Robert Staudinger and Andrea Franke.

http://www.staudinger-franke.com/about-us.html

They have some incredible works.

[ginzyblog]

Jack Kerouac at Staten Island Ferry wharf, we used to wander docksides under Manhattan’s bridges & thru truck parking lots along East River singing rawbone Blues, Leadbelly’s ”Black Girl” or Eli Eli, chanting Poe’s ”Annabel Lee” & shouting Hart Crane’s ”O Harp & Altar of the Fury fused!” or ”Atlantis” to Brooklyn Bridge’s traffic spanned above. Time of his Doctor Sax & The Subterraneans, Burroughs was in town, up from Mexico, New York Fall 1953. (photo & caption: Allen Ginsberg)

#jackkerouac #allenginsberg #beatgeneration #subterraneans #leadbelly #hartcrane #poetry #poetrycommunity #poets #writers #statenislandferry #newyorkcity #beatgeneration #ontheroad #annabellee

[anyskin]

Douglas RD escorting the Hindenburg to a landing at Lakehurst, N.J. by kitchener.lord Via Flickr: This photo shows D-LZ- 129 Hindenburg on its inaugural flight between Freidrichshafen and Lakehurst. Depicted in the photo is Coast Guard RD Spica. The Coast Guard Magazine published a cropped version of this exact photo and included the following information in its caption: "A fleet of Caost Guard Amphibians took off from Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, N.Y,., to locate and escort the "VON HINDENBURG" to Lakehurst and to enforce the special Department of Commerce regulations requiring all private and commercial planes to keep clear. The ADHARA, piloted by Lieut. Wm. Schissler, with Calvin A. Chinnis, CRM, L. C. Smith, AMM1c sighted the Zeppelin and escorte her to Lakehurst accompanied by Amphibian SPICA, Lieut. Fahey, J. E. Coker, Radio Electrician; Lonnie Bridges, ACCM from Capt May Air Station; Amphibian CAPELLA, Lieut. Lyons; A. T. Cook, AMM1c; Leadbeater, RM1c and Joseph, AMM3c." Coast Guard Magazine, Vol. 9 (July, 1936), p. 4. Source: USGC Historic Photo Gallery

[casputin]

Miss White & The Unlawful Seven

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Inspired by these wonderful creations by Ástor Alexander.

1. A Fairytale Beginning

Once upon a time in there lived a man named Franz Weiß. He moved over to New York City from Berlin. When the war broke out in 1914 he anglicised his name to Frank White. But most people called him The Duke. The Duke was in charge of one of the biggest drugs operations in the city.

In 1920 The Duke courted a young nightclub singer called Ruby Scarlett. Later that year Ruby died giving birth to a daughter Frank named Scarlett White. As the babe grew into a free spirited young girl she gained the nickname 'Snow' due to her pale complexion. Frank knew that Snow needed a mother figure in her life so married Orla Kelly, daughter of an Irish Mobster which also allowed him to expand his territory.

Snow was an observant child and soon began to learn the ways of the drug trade under her father's guidance. Much to the chargrin of Orla and the Irish Mob, The Duke was clearly lining Snow up to be his successor. Then in 1936 tragedy struck as Frank White got caught in crossfire after a job gone wrong, leaving Snow all alone, save for a stepmother who despised her.

2. Across the Bridge

Now Orla was a jealous woman. Jealous of the love Frank had for his daughter over herself. Jealous of Snow's beauty. Jealous of her youth. And so she ordered a hit on the teenager.

Hunter Murphy was Orla's weapon of choice. Hunter was a cold blooded killer through and through, with plenty of notches on his Smith & Wesson M&P. He was the best at what he did, but what he did wasn't nice.

He followed Snow one night to the edge of Manhattan. But something tugged at his conscience. This wasn't right. Snow was barely a dame. A hit on a 16 year old? There were some lines even Hunter Murphy wouldn't cross.

'Get yourself across the bridge, kid,' he growled, stepping out of the shadows. 'Lay low. There's a price on ya head. If Orla finds out you're alive we're both in the firing line. Find a quiet job in Brooklyn somewhere. Don't ever come back. I can't guarantee you'll be safe there, but at least you'll have a chance.

Snow saw something in Hunter's eye. She knew he wasn't bluffing. Across the bridge she ran, and she never looked back.

3. The Unlawful Seven

Hungry, cold and penniless, Snow found her way to a little restaurant called Pizza Cottage. She went round the back alley, and started to check the bins for any leftovers. That was was Happy Tony, the chef, came out with some more bin bags. He saw the teenager in the moonlight.

'Who's there?' he asked, cocking a gun. 'Show yasself!'

Snow nervously stepped forward. She'd been around enough gangsters in here life to know what to do in this situation.

'Whatcha doin' kid, huh? Rummaging round da bins like dat? Come inside, I'll bake yous a fresh one.'

Snow shuffled behind the chef. It was only then she noticed that he was shorter than her, his presence before had commanded her attention and made him seem bigger, scarier. But as he led her to a booth she noticed a warmth about him.

'Sit down here, kid. I'll grab you a pizza and you can tell me your story.'

Soon they were sharing the biggest Margherita Snow had seen in her life.

'I'm an orphan,' she explained, keeping details vague. 'I've nowhere to go. Trying to find a job, but no luck yet.'

'Well, I think your lucks just rolled in, kid. Just so happens I'm in need of a waitress. Pay ain't great, but there's a room upstairs if ya need it. And you'd have protection.'

'Protection?'

'Oh yeah. Just so happens kid, that you wandered in to the hangout of the Seven Dons of Brooklyn. So yeah, you'd be under our protection.'

Now Snow had never had to deal with the Seven Dons before, her father's business being the other side of the East River, but she'd heard of their reputation. These were the meanest mobsters the Mafia had to offer. Goddamn she'd gotten lucky.

'Doc' Salvino ran a numbers game all over the borough. 'Sleepy' Santoro was the person to visit if you needed someone to visit the fishes. 'Bashful' Gambini was less tactful than Sleepy; you went to him to send a message if someone wasn't toeing the line. 'Sneezy' Spinelli had the cops in his pocket. You so much as sneezed, Spinelli would hear about it. 'Dopey' DeVito was their drugs man. 'Grumpy' Minaldi was the head. He'd set the whole operation up, was older than the rest by a good thirty years. He didn't need to do anything, he had his reputation. And if you called him Grumpy to his face, well let's just say, you would be needing yours anymore. And Happy, well his restaurant was the front.

All were just as short as each other, but all commanded respect.

4. A Call to Arms

As the months turned into years Snow, now going by the name Scarlett Franks, kept her head down and gained the trust of the Seven Dons. She was a particular favourite of Don Minaldi, meaning she enjoyed a status not many others did. If any of the diners forgot their place and so much looked at her the wrong way, they were taken care of appropriately.

But news of this pretty young woman made its way across the river to the ears of Orla Kelly. And she knew who this Miss Franks really was. First she dispatched Hunter Murphy for his betrayal. Then she sent a calling card to Snow; an advert in the Eagle. A full page spread with her face leering out for all to see. And a caption, 'June is soon upon us and we all know Snow melts away with the heat.'

Snow knew she'd been found out.

She had no choice but to come clean to the Dons in the hope that the 4 years she had spent with them meant something.

Once she had told he tale there was silence. Until Minaldi said with a glint in his eye, 'I've always wanted an excuse to get those Irish bastards!'

With 2 weeks until June 1st, the presumptive date of attack, Sleeping trained Snow in how to use a gun. It turned out she was a natural sharpshooter. She also trained with Bashful in hand to hand combat in case it got up close and personal. Sneezy alerted his cops as to what was going to go down. They'd be waiting in the sidelines to assist the Italians and arrest the Irish.

And then the day came.

5. Showdown

Snow and the Seven had barricaded themselves in Happy's restaurant. They had men stationed around the streets.

As soon as the clock struck midnight on the morning of Saturday June 1st the gunfire began. Distant at first as Orla and her men made their way across the bridge. But steadily it got closer, until rapidly it burst across the glass window from the mouth of a machine gun.

Snow ducked behind the counter, gripping her own M1941. The bullets stopped flying. Their turn.

Snow jumped up. 'Say hello to my little friends,' she quipped as the Dons came out of their own hiding spots. They sprayed the Irish mobsters with storm of slugs, taking them down where they stood.

And then, silence again.

A flash of light caught Snow's eye as the moon reflected off the barrel of a pistol. Out of the rubble cam Orla, a crazed look on her face. She pointed the gun straight at Snow.

'Eat lead, bitch.'

6. The End

Snow opened her eyes. She was lying in a hospital bed.

'Glad to see you're up, kid.' Happy's voice drifted across the room to her. She sat up, looked around, and found him. Then she found her voice.

'What happened?'

'Grumpy jumped in front of the bullet. It passed through him then hit you. But he slowed it down enough to save your life. He... He didn't make it.'

Snow reached out and placed her hand on Happy's as a tear ran down his face.

'Thanks, kid,' he managed to sniff. Pulling himself together he continued. 'We took care of the Kellys, they won't cause you any more trouble. And your dad's territory is yours again. Turns out Orla wasn't the Golden Queen she made herself out to be after all. Most of The Duke's old crew turned on her as soon as they saw the opportunity arise. But we gotta place on the council of Dons now. There's gotta be seven of us. How about it?'

'But I'm not an Italian.'

'You are as far as we're concerned. And we always wanted to expand into Manhattan. It'd be an honour to do it alongside you, kid.'

'You're sure?'

'As eggs is eggs. Besides, it's what old Grumpy would've wanted.'

'Then let's do it.'

'Alrighty, Miss White, let's do this. Though as a member of the Seven, I think Don Bianca would be more appropriate, don't you?'

And they all lived happily ever after.

[potato-ballad-sims]

Boroughsburg CC Update 4

Previous updates here. Boroughsburg can be found here.

I always release worlds for free, but help me pay for medical and educational expenses! Every little amount is always greatly appreciated, with the large amount of time I put into these worlds in a busy schedule! - Potato Ballad Sims

                             CLICK HERE & HELP A POTATO OUT

This set focuses on Boroughsburg's church, right after Easter! See captions for more details!

Two new lots! The monumental Our Lady of the Plumbob Heart Church, and the Boroughsburg Parish House. These two are roughly based on St. Mary's in Hunters Point, Queens, and St. Anthony of Padua in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (and its adjacent Parish House).

The church is 40x30, and goes on 33 1st St. The Parish House is 15x30 and goes on 50 Badford Avenue.

Ten hand-crafted pieces of CC that makes this church (and your church) a church! These are fully recolorable and contain appropriate LODS. They can be found in Buydebug > Misc, though the windows can also be found in the Build > Windows category as well.

EPs used: WA, AMB, LN, GEN, PETS, SEASONS, UNI

The church utilizes a decrappified version of the Inflected Double Doors from the Last Venue of Amore.

The lots utilize some of Boroughsburg's props and Mspoodle's ceiling beams, which should be included in the main Boroughsburg download package. The roofs are Sookielee's EA-Match Roofs with White Trim, which I have included in the download as the original upload is gone.

Our Lady of the Plumbob Heart Church will have a window elevation issue when placed (because walls were placed at the edge of the lot), use constrainfloorelevation false to fix it. Same with the Parish House with the fire escapes and wall medallions.

If you’re using Buzzler’s Shell Emitters, you will need to set the shell sound emitter on the lot. The ShellSound is BuildingHero, and the offset is -300.

Download

Get it here.

                                Thanks @mspoodle1 for testing it out!