Wander Report: Ridgewick

Had the first meeting of the Sunday Wander Society.

4 of us - all experienced wanderers - met at the corner of Stockholm and Onderdonk in Ridgewood, near the border between Queens and Brooklyn.

One of us dug some dice out of her bag and said "In case we need these."

As soon as she said that I knew it was going to be a great experience. Wandering is most fun when the wanderers know how to trust the fates.

The goal of these wanders is to get out of our normal physical, intellectual, and emotional territory and go somewhere different. It gives us a chance to move the bones, rejuvenate the mind, and invite the child inside to come out to play.

We walked a block to Linden Hill Cemetery, where families from all over the world are buried.

We looked out past the gravestones to the skyscrapers beyond and watched a falcon try to pick a sparrow out of the air.

Leaving the cemetery we saw this glorious sign.

This is my favorite form of living ephemera: Advertisements that go nowhere.

Or is it public to-do list?

We popped into a strange swap meet. Kind of felt like everyone was pretending it was 1995. I bought an original Bauhaus sticker for $5 and met the owner of Fringe Records.

Wanderers just walk around and notice stuff and say the things that it sparks for them, and then other wanderers sometimes ask them questions about it. It's lovely.

One of my favorite things about this wander was that all of it - from the time I got of the subway to the time I got back on - was new to me. I'd never been to any of these blocks before. I was the only one who was in completely new territory.

Love this juxtaposition of cables and dream catchers below. Both are entrapment devices for electromagnetic energy. One is digital, the other is analog.

This red tag pops.

We got to this intersection and Q said, "we gotta find a basement entrance that says "welcome to the rat's nest".

We found it, and went down into this cramped little basement drenched in color.

There was a 6-foot fiberglass swordfish near the door.

The graffiti artist Cash4 was moving out of his basement studio. It was literally a rat-infested, stifling, low-ceilinged basement but it made me jealous of both his workspace and his work process. Writing is for nerds.

Ate some outstanding slices at Mano's.

Then passed by this house that made me feel like I was on the west coast.

When I was 21 I was on the back of this jeep on the way to Darjeeling and I took some pictures of the incredible elevation gain of the foothills of the Himalayas. It felt weird to take pics around all these Indian guys I was riding with, who were just living life. A week later I traded the camera to a Nepalese hotel-owner who hinted that his wife's village didn't have a camera.

I didn't take photos for 15 years, until I started carrying a phone in my pocket.

My photos make it seem like the world is empty but that's just because I'm shy about taking pictures of people.

I love Queens more and more every time I go.

We were a few hours into the wander at this point and the sun was starting to set as we walked west on the wide streets. We drifted in and out of formation, someone dropping off the back (usually me to take photos), or two breaking off the front to talk more intimately. But the group kept coming back together.

My dad the architect calls this dynamic tension. Straight lines are a tragedy for our psychology. They lock us in and pull us in their direction. In the picture above, I like this house peeking out from behind, headed off in an organic angle that more accurately reflects nature.