Underground Movement: My Brief Encounter with Doug Brown
New Times New York City Guest Columnist
Evelyn Sault, the newly appointed Poet Laureate of the United States
I wouldn’t call myself a native New Yorker - I have a certain aversion to this term thanks to years of networked mobile dating back in my youth in this great city of ours. Transplants, though viewed by locals as gentrifying ghouls, were widely accepted by the rest of the world. Their ideas were bold and beautiful. Ideas like the Submergence Project, proposed by one of the world’s biggest dreamers; Doug Brown.
Think about it: an underwater transportation system underneath the city. Is there anything more poetic than that?
As the recently appointed Poet Laureate of the United States, I figured I could help tell Brown’s story. I reached out to him via email, which led to our meeting at a coffee shop in Turkeytown - though as I soon learned, it wasn’t our first encounter.
My original intent was to talk to the inventive city planner about his Submergence Project, but instead experienced a blast from the past moment. As many adults over the age of 30 can tell you, you’ll never escape your online dating exes. Those brief encounters are there in your memory, but it’s difficult to recall all of them. Some were one-offs and others were torrid affairs. No matter what they were, they added up over the years and New York City is basically a city of acquaintances.
Brown told me that we went out on a date when he was 25 and I was 23. He was a clerk in the city planner’s office and I was working as a barista at a Turkish coffee shop. I started to remember the date as he described the bar where we met and the dating app we used. He was a handsome young man back then. I could tell he had an excitement in him. We met for one more date before we just kind of stopped talking.
You know how it is.
Brown and I spent our time catching up, really. When asking about the Submergence Project, I was reminded of that excitement I had seen years ago. It was a bit much, I admit, but passion is passion.
Doug hasn’t given up on his underwater wonderland. He’s trying to raise awareness with the right people, so perhaps I can help by sharing this story.
You can see my photo journal of this encounter and many of my other past encounters on my Instagram: EvelynSault.
New Times New York City is excited to announce that Poet Laureate Evelyn Sault will be a regular guest columnist with her new “Brief Encounters, Remembered” series, exploring her past love life during the start of the online dating craze.
