I went there once, nose first, on a date with a high school teacher I’d met at a communist bookstore— revolutionary communist, to be clear— to see 12 Years a Slave. I don’t remember the neon yellow Sunshine above the black marquee or the mostly-black graffiti splayed out on the urban beige brick or the New York-famous Jewish bakery next door— Yonah Schimmel Knish— that grew up with the cinema when it hosted Yiddish vaudeville circa 1909. She was my self-appointed Lower East Side guide so maybe she pointed all of this out but I just wanted to get to her apartment— subsidized, three-quarters up a 60s tower block— and take off her black blouse while watching Trailer Park Boys on the little box TV set she wheeled around on an Ikea cart. But rewind: before that we clasped hands behind a paper cup half-full with iced tea while sweet dark strings rattled my thirsty heart and voices pummelled with sound around— “Roll, Jordan, Roll”— and tears came down my face and I knew them on hers too. Our walk to the subway weighed more than the butter machine, she smiled at me but behind was a splintered sadness— Weltschmerz is the German word: to know it’ll all let you down— as I would, as I knew I would— she turned for the escalator I strolled back out into January Manhattan my bones still quaking from a voyage in the dark of a light factory later to collapse in my mind. Four years later they demolished the Sunshine, in its place are nine storeys of glass and a cryptocurrency office and nowhere on site is the story of how I was cockblocked by Chiwetel Ejiofor playing the violin, me unable or unwilling or unmanned to see the famous Tupac mural— “Live by the gun Die by the gun”— on the same urban beige brick, just my research now into everything I missed while I wandered by dreaming of tomorrow.
Bio
Ben Charland
Ben Charland is a writer and communications consultant. From 2018-20 he hosted the weekly podcast, What On Earth is Going On?, which featured guests such as poet and biographer Rosemary Sullivan, fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay, broadcaster Terry O’Reilly and many more. Ben lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, with his wife and two kids. Learn more about Ben and his writing at bencharland.com.