Since 1995, Francisco Pablo Garcias has been living his dream. He wakes up in his two bedroom apartment shared with three other men, bikes six blocks, and begins his seven hour shift. He is a restaurant dishwasher in Williamsburg, and he loves every part of it. “I run up and down the stairs, every fifteen minutes. I throw away steaks, bones, potatoes, and clean. It is so simple!” he says asking me to correct his English for the rest of the interview. Garcias genuinely loves his job and speaks enthusiastically about it: “my friends in the kitchen are Spanish so we can all talk and we go out after work.” He says the boys enjoy soccer games in the large McCarren Park soccer field, bowling, and drinking some beers with friends.
I met Garcias when we worked together at a hookah bar that had closed down a few years ago. He is now employed at a neighboring restaurant and this is where we met to chat. Garcias says this job is what he relies on to live in Williamsburg, and to also supply his family back in Mexico. For the last fifteen years he has been sending money to his wife and daughters promising that they will join him soon. Missing his family for fifteen years has been something he has learned to live with. His strong trust in American-Mexican relations is what he thinks will rejoin him and his girls. He sees his girls coming off a plane at JFK, hugging him, and coming to live in Williamsburg. He says, “I will have to move out of my apartment, but the guys understand. My family comes first.” His roommates have become Garcias’ family for the last fifteen years and they relied on him staying and helping pay the rent. Garcias honestly confides in me that he was hoping to win the lottery for water view apartments. Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced Williamsburg to low and moderate-income housing on the waterfront. Since the rich were still able to buy up a lot of the apartments, he created a lottery system that chose people at random to “win” an apartment.
Although Garcias is disappointed he did not win, he still wants to stay in Williamsburg. He calls the neighborhood his “second hometown” and “the place where I grew up.” At age 39, he saw the neighborhood as it morphed from a poverty-ridden neighborhood, to one of artistic liveliness. Living amongst about thirty different nationalities in his area, he has learned to deal with them all. His least favorite is the Hassidic Jews because “they always stick to business strictly and are tough negotiators” but he loves the Polish neighbors saying “they always invite me for vodka and are nice tippers.”
First seeing the neighborhood at age 24, Garcias hated it. He wanted to go back to Mexico and escape the filth he saw every night in Brooklyn. He told me stories of seeing teenage girls smoking marijuana on the way home from school as if they were walking home with their Dunkin Donuts coffee and gossiping about their crushes. He remembers warm nights sitting on his fire escape with some friends and suddenly hearing a gunshot. Although drugs are still a problem in Williamsburg and the surrounding neighborhoods, they are much less public now than in 1995.These stories spook Garcias and he looks visibly transported back to a happy place when he looks around his restaurant.
The restaurant acts as a sanctuary for Garcias and keeps him busy every day. He rarely takes days off, but when he does, he does so to “connect” with himself. This means that he tries to take time to find himself like he was when he left his family. He says he wants his girls to remember him as he was the day he left. Another thing Garcias tells me is he wishes to connect to the Williamsburg of years ago. The neighborhood was generally Hispanic, and had a lively Spanish culture. He remembers his friends living in homes where stainless steel apartments now stand begging to be rented. Garcias’ job is something he worries about. Since numerous local restaurants have closed because of sanitation violations, he worries his job may be next. Finding another job may be difficult for him and he says this restaurant is his “lucky” third job. He has dreams of one day having an office job. He tells me that he imagines his children running into his arms as he drops his briefcase and knowing that they have arrived.