Our neighborhood: Brooklyn Bagels

Here is an excerpt from Chris Shelley’s column, Draped, which describes student break time and a trip to Brooklyn Bagels, on 8th Avenue between 24^th and 25^th Streets.

An hour and a half into each class, no matter how fascinated we are by IT bands or cross-fiber friction, our gaze turns to the clock, and to our instructor, waiting for her to tell us to take a break.

For morning students, it’s time to seek out and apply thumb pressure to coffee and bagels… But break time is about more than eating. Break time is a chance to get away from school, to lose ourselves temporarily in our chic neighborhood, in the bustling crowds. It’s a time to notice architecture, and, past it, the sky (excellent source of sun). It’s time in a busy day when we are not learning or working or being tested. It’s time to day dream and imagine. The mind takes quick leaps. Here are some of mine.

Chipotle, for example, leads me quickly to Mexico, resorts on the beach, and the thought that at the resorts are spas and in the spas there is massage.

Dunkin Donuts makes me think of Boston, where I grew up, and all the fine hospitals and medical facilities there that have massage for the sick, and the injured, and the dying. And the tourists.

The Fashion Institute makes me think of twiggy runway models twisting their ankles on the catwalk, and of all the twisted hands that knit their clothes together, and how all those twisted hands and twisted ankles could use a massage.

I see the audience line for the Tyra Banks show in the studio across the street, and I think about how I want to get us onto the show, doing chair massages for the audience (and Tyra, if I must.)

The Starbucks at 7^th and 28^th reminds me that there are Starbucks nearly everywhere, and so I remember everywhere I’ve visited, and remember the people there, and all the fantastic places to set up a massage chair to work on them: St. Peter’s in Vatican City, by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, any bridge in Amsterdam, La Rambla in Barcelona, La Boca in Buenos Aires, a beach in Bermuda, Old Town Square in Prague, next to a statue of Mozart in Vienna, or a castle in Edinburgh.

No matter where my mind wanders the same thought occurs to me: they’ve got massage there. I’ll be able to work there, wherever there is.

People walk by me on their way to wherever, carrying their bags, clicking on their blackberries, selling sunglasses, pushing baby strollers, canvassing for Greenpeace, hustling to their talk show, and the sight of them makes me think of how tired their feet and shoulders must be and how they need a massage and how we have massage here.

And that reminds me to get back to school. Once the bagels are eaten, the coffee is slurped, the jokes find their way out of our system, the important phone calls are made, and the bathrooms are visited, we’re in a different place than we were: we’re back to where we need to be.

Break time isn’t just about getting out of class; it’s about remembering why we go in the first place.

Read more of Chris Shelley’s humorous take on life in the Massage Therapy Program by going to Student Stories.

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Our neighborhood: Brooklyn Bagels