Humans of Fitler Square, Part III
By Rolando Rosa
Humans of Fitler Square is our take on the long-running Humans of New York project: brief, verbatim portraits of local residents, offering a glimpse into the people and stories behind the rowhouse doors.
Tuesday Gordon, 68
My first name is Andrea [pronounced Andre]. I have five brothers, so when I was about 12 years old, I told my mother she wanted another boy and that’s why she gave me a boy name.
She goes, “Oh, no, no. It’s a French name and it’s beautiful.” I said: “Well, I’m changing my name.” I announced to everybody that my name was Tuesday, because I was born on a Tuesday.
Well, of course, my family laughed. My mother just stared at me. That’s how my name began. I couldn’t change it officially, because it cost money. So I just named myself Andrea Tuesday Gordon. It stayed with me.
When I travel, people always remember me by the day of the week. Also Tuesday is a very popular name in Africa. So with the research I did as a young person, I fell in love with it. It’s been with me ever since and now I’m 68.
I’ve had people referring to me as different days of the week. There’s Thursday. There’s April. One person referred to me as “Every day of the week, because you’re just fabulous.” Which I loved.
I don’t have any children of my own, but I love little people, and I’m always investing in them with my time. Spending time reading with them. Telling them about my journeys. I think children have taught me to be playful, to be silly, to not take life so seriously.
Bhavisha Patel
I’ve been living in this neighborhood for over 20 years now. Initially, I chose this neighborhood because I used to commute to New York City, and it was close to the train station.
One day, I fell into the train tracks and shattered my femur. And so I was in and out of the hospital. I had five surgeries.
They didn’t know whether they could save my leg. At some point I had decided I was going to go back to work to New York, commute every day with crutches and whatever it took. Take this train, take the subway and just resume life. I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from doing what I wanted to do.
It was just a way of shutting everything down and saying: “Okay, we’re not going to let this slow where we are.”
During that time, somebody gifted me a set of oil paints, and I became a painter. Eventually I started a group called the Naudain Art Collaborative. And now every 3-4 months I open up my house on a weekend and two of the artists in the group will show up.
It’s been really amazing. This weekend we had 90 people walk through the house, which is really neat. I know that the community enjoys having a space like this where they can come and see art and just talk to artists and get to know their neighbors.