Done With the Suburbs: Rethinking Community as an Empty Nester
Mar 19, 2024Season 7Episode 2
Angella Fraser & Leslie Osei-Tutu
After over 30 years of suburban living, Ange followed through on her desire to go back to urban living. Her Brooklyn-soul had been yearning for the energy of people moving about or at the bus stop, hearing familiar music coming from cars, walking to coffee and restaurants.
Ange is admittedly nostalgic but also a realist. The mosaic of city life is not without its complexities, as the social intricacies of her new neighborhood unfold even in the first few days.
Memories from college days at Penn where she was reprimanded for ‘self-segregating’ came flooding back as she reflected on her need to be in spaces where she was not a curiosity as a Black person.
This episode is a candid look at the trade-offs of urban living, such as foregoing in-unit laundry for the conversations and connections in the local laundromat (Les thinks she has lost her mind on this one), and a commitment to plant roots here for at least a year until God shows her her next.
Tune in for an intimate exploration of personal growth and taking steps towards however one finds joy.
This episode and all previous episodes are available on YouTube. Please join our Besties Quad Squad as a Patreon subscriber at the $5 or $10 monthly level. You'll receive exclusive behind-the-scenes content.
After over 30 years of suburban living, Ange followed through on her desire to go back to urban living. Her Brooklyn-soul had been yearning for the energy of people moving about or at the bus stop, hearing familiar music coming from cars, walking to coffee and restaurants.
Ange is admittedly nostalgic but also a realist. The mosaic of city life is not without its complexities, as the social intricacies of her new neighborhood unfold even in the first few days.
Memories from college days at Penn where she was reprimanded for ‘self-segregating’ came flooding back as she reflected on her need to be in spaces where she was not a curiosity as a Black person.
This episode is a candid look at the trade-offs of urban living, such as foregoing in-unit laundry for the conversations and connections in the local laundromat (Les thinks she has lost her mind on this one), and a commitment to plant roots here for at least a year until God shows her her next.
Tune in for an intimate exploration of personal growth and taking steps towards however one finds joy.
This episode and all previous episodes are available on YouTube. Please join our Besties Quad Squad as a Patreon subscriber at the $5 or $10 monthly level. You'll receive exclusive behind-the-scenes content.
I think it's all about you this time. Oh my gosh. Okay, so hey everybody welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.
Speaker 1:
Brooklyn. Listen, I have a lot to talk about today.
Speaker 2:
I know it was almost like an emergency we got to get on film. We got to get on the camera. Come on, let's go, les. I got a lot to say.
Speaker 1:
I'm like, okay, well, we haven't really had a lot of time to catch up because I've been moving. You've been moving figuratively and literally Literally, but it's the literal that I'm talking about, because my body is so sore.
Speaker 1:
But I did do some Pilates because I reached out to DK, who was one of our guests a few episodes back. I'm like, look my lower back, my hips, soar and I know if I go to bed like this it's going to be worse in the morning. So I asked her what I could do before I went to bed and she gave me some stretches and let me tell you, let me tell you, I woke up feeling so good. I was like what. I think I felt better than before I started moving. Really, I may have done it for like 15 minutes, no, more than that You've got to tell me what those are because I need to.
Speaker 2:
Sometimes I wake up feeling like I'm a pretzel.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, but I think what was key is my default was to oh, I need to rest because I feel like this, I need to go light down. But I remember that DK said that that is actually not what the body needs. The body needs to stretch, to stop being so tight and back in the day, right, our inclination is to do this and like, just you know, like Exactly.
Speaker 2:
But, the body is meant to move.
Speaker 1:
You're meant to move. Thanks, dk. Anyway, so physically I'm not feeling as bad as I was, but just exhausted and realizing that you have to listen to your body and I was. There were times when I'm really strong. You remember that right, I'm really strong. I could be stronger, but I'm pretty strong for my age. But I knew that if I kind of rush, rush, rush, rush, rush and just over did it, I would have really regretted it. So I just paced myself and I had help. I didn't do it alone, but I had help for one day.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
And then the rest of the time Anyway.
Speaker 2:
It's hard to pace yourself, though, when you have so many things to do, especially if you're on a time crunch, so you have to hire a moving truck for a certain period of time. You have to leave one place at a certain period of time and then get into another place, so yeah, it's not easy to pace yourself.
Speaker 1:
But I did because I returned the truck actually before it was due to go back. But I won't go into why I did that. But anyway, and because I love my car, I love my car, I love my car. My charger has been good to me. It holds so much stuff. So once, the truck.
Speaker 2:
Don't get me started about that. Car viewers.
Speaker 1:
I love my car. The truck was used for all of the big things and I don't know how my son and his friend Alex got the things into my second floor apartment, but they did it. They did it. It was amazing. They measured, they communicated with each other. It was wonderful. Wow, you were like growing up and spelling. So the truck was used for that. But I made some trips after they left in my charger and it held so much and it just purred. I was shocked at how much it could hold Any other reason for you to love it.
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
And I do, and I'll get to see your new place in about a week or so, so maybe we'll record from there. I hope we do, maybe we can do that, but we're going to be busy, so we might record about how it went after we're gone.
Speaker 1:
Apparently. I have a big to-do list. I have an idea.
Speaker 2:
We're going to do the old school getting shit done.
Speaker 1:
Get it done. So I One of the things that I wanted to talk about and I deliberately didn't tell you of a particular incident that happened, but just to kind of set the context for everyone. I moved from a suburban area where I've lived for almost 20 years in that town, to an urban area. Yes, on purpose, it was something that I wanted to do. I'm a Brooklyn girl and the suburbs served their purpose. My children were younger, all the things. I didn't know the area very well, all the things. But I really desired to live in a more urban area where I didn't have to drive everywhere, I can walk to coffee and just. And God has been so good because I would come to this area because my therapist is not too far away, so whenever I would drive in, I would man. This is really. This is a really nice area. It's primarily black and brown enough gentrification to have good services here, but not Doesn't that say something?
Speaker 1:
It does say something, and that's where I live now, like a block and a half maybe from her, and coffee shops and restaurants. I looked up restaurants for breakfast. I had so many options. I went to different ones so I could get a different sampling and I feel really great, despite being tired, I'm grateful that I'm in place. Okay, it's the first time that I've lived by myself in over 30 years. Wow.
Speaker 2:
Married children Over 30 years.
Speaker 1:
Yes, I think longer than that. Yeah, yeah, over 30.
Speaker 2:
When we said over 30, right, so not 30.
Speaker 1:
Are we going to quibble Whether it's 33 or 38?
Speaker 2:
No, Okay, it's anywhere between 30.1 and 39.
Speaker 1:
Somewhere Masa.
Speaker 2:
That's deep though.
Speaker 1:
That's deep, yeah, and so I'm a little shaky about it two days in but you were literally shaky today.
Speaker 2:
I know I know that was something I know, okay, but she was trembling today.
Speaker 1:
I was trembling. I was in Tarshe and I was talking to Les. I had her on FaceTime and I was like Les, I don't know.
Speaker 2:
You were like buzzing.
Speaker 1:
I don't feel too well and actually we were on the phone and I'm like let me put you on FaceTime so you can see, you said let me go around people.
Speaker 2:
So yeah, I said sit down. You said sit down.
Speaker 1:
What's the reason you pass out? But I couldn't find a place to sit, so I passed the garden center, not the garden center, the outdoor section, and so I went back over there, bypassed the AT&T guy who was trying to suicide.
Speaker 2:
I'm like look, leave me alone. I'm having a medical emergency. I don't want any phone service right now. That won't help me. The only phone service you needed was to dial 911. I can't, I don't know. I'm sorry, I can't, I just can't, I just can't, I just can't, I just can't See. We can laugh about that now.
Speaker 1:
I'm like you really want to leave me alone. Sir, you really want to leave me alone. But anyway yeah, but I found a place to sit and I didn't feel better, but I didn't feel worse.
Speaker 1:
And I needed to get out of there because Isaiah was coming to help me do a little more moving, anyway. So something interesting that happened. So I got my utilities turned on and I got my cable provider internet provider and I opted to do the installation myself because of course. So I went to the store to pick up the equipment, the first thing I noticed is that there were a lot of people in there. Not that strange, really, but I thought I would just pop in, pick up my equipment and leave. So I didn't know the protocol. I went up front and he said, oh, you have to sign in. I said okay, I went and signed in and then I'm waiting.
Speaker 1:
So it's all black folks who were waiting, I noticed most of them were elderly. These are just things that I noticed, nothing profound about that. So people were being called, were being served and I was called and I was at the walking to the representative and this white woman walked in with some equipment. She had a box and she took it up to just where I was standing at this point and he said to her oh, you have to sign in and I'll take care of you. And she said I'm not going to do that. And then she said I'm just dropping this off. And he said well, I need to get your information. I'm not going to do that. And she just kind of walked out.
Speaker 2:
Did she drop off her stuff and leave it? She left it.
Speaker 1:
She just leaned it up on the side. He doesn't know who she is from, adam. She left it there and she walked out. Okay, okay, go ahead. So I'm thinking welcome to urban, welcome to an area that's predominantly black and brown Black, I would say Brown, black and brown. And I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but I'm just going to be honest about how I felt, how I, how I, how that hit me. I felt it was so privileged, right, and I thought about what, what would that look like if that's how black folks acted, meaning I'm not going to do it the way that you said and there's nothing that you can do about it, because I know you're going to take care of it. I know that I'm not going to have any recourse. They're not going to have any recourse for me breaking the rule.
Speaker 2:
I see what you mean when you say that's privilege. You know it's like it's going to get taken care of and it's going to go about her way.
Speaker 1:
And I'm sure, whether it's true or not, she felt this is all me. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
I don't need to do that.
Speaker 1:
I don't need to follow protocol and there were people there who I'm sure were in her situation dropping off stuff.
Speaker 1:
Right, right, um, so that really hit me like, um, I wonder. I didn't know this for sure, or any of this, but I did wonder whether, um, why, why, why, why she would choose to do that, like why she wouldn't want to stay in the space and and and do. What is I mean if, if she walked into a restaurant or if it just it just really struck me like this is, this is what I am probably going to see, more than more than I've seen in a long time because of where I live now.
Speaker 2:
So my question and welcome to the neighborhood, you know but my question to you is, let's say, we only speculate. Obviously, if you take the same person and take her to the cable store in the suburban area where you just left, would you guess that her behavior would have been different had it been an all-white area and perhaps the workers at the store look like she did?
Speaker 1:
I am going to venture to guess yes, she would have acted differently. I say that because I think she knew that she was out of line, meaning she didn't queue up like everyone else did.
Speaker 2:
Well, she definitely knew, because she was told to do one thing and said no, I'm not doing it. So, of course, she's aware that she's now.
Speaker 1:
Right. So for that reason I don't think she would have done that to people who look like her Really, Do you?
Speaker 2:
I don't have well, I've started to say I don't have enough information to really give a good guess.
Speaker 1:
Of course, but I mean, I've lived in America a long time, a long time. And this is all guessing and we're just being honest with how we feel.
Speaker 2:
I don't know her from you know the wall, I know what white what white privilege looks like, but I also know what being just a jerk looks like. You know, yeah right, independent of white privilege.
Speaker 1:
So if this but, Leslie, close your eyes close your eyes.
Speaker 2:
Close your eyes. If this woman was just a jerk, then she's a jerk wherever she goes. But I have seen not just this woman, but with other people you've never seen this woman. I'm saying I have seen people act like that because of their privilege and status and they know that. You know it's their world. They, you know it's my world, you know yeah, I don't need to follow the rules. Right, I was thinking I'm in a rush, you know, or accommodate me.
Speaker 2:
Of course we've all seen that. Yeah, it would. My rush is more priority than somebody else's rush.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, Anyway, that really kind of hit me and it's one of the reasons why I moved to the area that I moved to is because I wanted to be in communities where I would hear music and I like, or music that I'm used to hearing. One day, when I came to speak to the property manager, someone drove by and I heard the Isley Brothers and I'm like this is my people and I told you about I was going to see another apartment, not the one where I actually moved to and this elderly woman elderly she may have been 10 years older than me, if I were to guess and she was like oh, why are you going to that one? Come over here, and if he can't show you the maintenance person, just ring my doorbell and I'll let you come and see mine. I've been here a few months and it's wonderful.
Speaker 2:
Wow.
Speaker 1:
And I'm like those are people that I want to live around.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
You know, and so this was.
Speaker 2:
Much more of a sense of community.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, this was deliberate and I think that it's kind of like For some reason. I'm thinking about how it was for me at Penn and very few black students. You can imagine there were 400 black students in a class of 8,000, something like that.
Speaker 2:
Wow, and so this was in the 80s.
Speaker 1:
Why'd you have to say that?
Speaker 2:
Because we're boomers, people didn't know that it's our brand.
Speaker 1:
They couldn't do the math, they couldn't do the math.
Speaker 2:
They were challenged, but anyway set the scene.
Speaker 1:
So we were accused of self-segregating because we would sit together. You know, really, I mean, it was never a thought that, oh, maybe my friends are black and so I want to sit with my friends. Or, you know, maybe I feel really isolated and I want to be around people who I feel really comfortable with, because it's hard to be here, and we used to. Locust Walk is the main strip down, the center of campus, and I remember when Kay and.
Speaker 1:
I were roommates, you guys. Some episode back we had Kay Benjamin on. We went to high school together and to college together and we were roommates and when we had to determine what the weather was like, to see what we were going to wear, we had to wait until. We would wait until we saw a black person walk, because people would wear shorts.
Speaker 2:
Right dad you can't tell.
Speaker 1:
In other words, the black people would wear the real parameters of what we should be wearing because there were some people that wore shorts all year long. They would have all of their parkas and we would know it's too cold because we were high up, we were like in the 20-something floor, so it was one of the. At the time it was one of the newer high-rise.
Speaker 2:
They're wearing shorts up. Don't look at him. He always wears shorts. It's 10 degrees outside, we can't tell. That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny.
Speaker 1:
But I'm just so. The idea that we want to kind of cluster around each other is something that I've been challenged about in my experience being in predominantly white spaces.
Speaker 1:
And so I choose this for myself because I want to hear random drumming. I do, I want to. There's a community center at the top of the hill that we're on and I want to become a part of that community center. I saw these little children. They looked Somali. First I saw a little girl and she just had her hood on her head and the rest of the coat was like swinging in the back. And then an older, probably your sister came, and then her mother came, and first of all, where I used to live, you don't see a lot of people walking. Everyone drives everywhere.
Speaker 1:
You know what I mean. When the children were small they would all play on our cul-de-sac and things like that. But when you come out of neighborhoods you don't see anyone walking you don't see anyone walking.
Speaker 1:
If you see someone walking and carrying a shopping bag or supermarket thing, it looks odd. Well, I like to see people. I like to see people at the bus stop, I like to see people using public transportation and I wanted this back in my life and it feels so good and I know there are going to be aspects of this that are annoying as heck.
Speaker 2:
Different yeah, you're going to need to get used to it, but I want to be annoying.
Speaker 1:
I want to be annoyed by these things because there were a hell of a lot of things that annoyed me about where I used to live too.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, mention again about the laundry. You opted not to get them, okay, so I know you think I'm nuts, still a little farmed to me, because you know me and laundry, we go way back.
Speaker 1:
My first board is the same way. Mom, what do you? I need storage more than I need a washer and dryer in my apartment. I do, okay, and I'm not into laundry like you, and I'm into laundry. Okay, I don't have this whole ritual around.
Speaker 2:
I'm into it.
Speaker 1:
You're totally into it. I know that laundromats are community spaces.
Speaker 2:
They're gathering places. They're gathering spaces Like barbershops and hair salons.
Speaker 1:
When is the last time I had an opportunity to people watch? You don't do that where I used to live.
Speaker 2:
That's true. You know such thing.
Speaker 1:
What is that? Nothing I like to people watch. I miss that and I will be going to the laundromat, which is a block away. All right, and you'll film me everywhere. I'll drive there, probably because I did not enjoy as a child Pulling the cart. He's getting the cart and doing that there.
Speaker 2:
But I look forward to You're going to turn into the cart lady.
Speaker 1:
No, but I look forward to meeting people there and maybe you know, oh, you come on Sundays, oh, I'll come on Sunday. Maybe we could discuss this, that the other oh boy Families, I am sure this will be another podcast episode about the laundry man and the stories that we've heard.
Speaker 2:
Oh, much like the moth or this American life or whatever, this laundry life, you know yeah.
Speaker 1:
Dryer talk, leslie, not the Dryer talk. That's hilarious, no, but seriously, I want community and I I get it, I desired it and God said yes, and I have it now, and I'm so looking forward to this and I am as pleased as punch. I can't wait to not feel exhausted so I can Appreciate what you have and I can walk. You know what I mean, because I need to rest a little bit.
Speaker 2:
But I'm really looking forward to it. Well, rest up, because I'll be there in six days, no, five days.
Speaker 1:
Five days, five days. I'm so excited. I'm really like I'm looking forward to.
Speaker 2:
These, we're going to get some stuff done All the things.
Speaker 1:
What?
Speaker 2:
are you?
Speaker 1:
going to do. I plan to do.
Speaker 2:
I plan to do it all wallpaper. I plan not to sleep, that's for sure, so I'm going to get my sleep now. In fact, this has been another. No, I'll show sleeping now. Sleep is for suckers, no, but we're going to take care of our stuff.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
I'm going to make it, make your place feel like home.
Speaker 1:
Oh, I'm looking forward to it. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I got a new couch. It's just. I like the bones of everything already and I there's a lot of sun, sunlight, and I'm just really excited.
Speaker 2:
When is it?
Speaker 1:
This is the first apartment that I've had. Is it since I moved, since I got married? Yeah, I think it is. It's been house, house, it's a new adventure.
Speaker 2:
It is.
Speaker 1:
It's a new adventure. I'm excited.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the world, welcome to the new world, welcome, welcome Do you think I'm nuts, no, no, this is great. I look forward to this, this part of your new being.
Speaker 1:
Okay, all right, me too, me too. That's all I just wanted to share that. I wanted to get it out. I wanted to have everybody hear about this new stage of my life and because I'm going to be sprinkling stories, I'm sure I am an observer, so I'm going to be watching people and just getting all, all a lot of juicy stories to share on the podcast. As the time goes by, at least a year, I'll be here until God tells me where to go next.
Speaker 2:
I love it. Well, I want to say that Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn is published by Angela Fraser, our editing team is from Matt Dershowitz and our media and social media person team is Couture Copywriting. So this has been another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.