I was walking on Union Avenue in Brooklyn, humming a song about Memphis. 

Americans like the theme of unity, articulations of which are emblazoned on long-haul trucks and brownstone stoops. Unity, united, union: such is the rhetorical glue which binds the last Empire to itself. 

Despite being in New York, the mention of Union Avenue had brought me to the high bluffs of the Mississippi, and to one of the great songs of the 1990s. 

Marc Cohn’s gospel romp is perfect for high-volume earbuds and low-stakes strolling. The protagonist recounts his titular Walking in Memphis, doing so with his ‘feet ten feet off of Beale’. 

“Saw the ghost of Elvis

On Union Avenue

Followed him up to the gates of Graceland 

Then I watched him walk right through”

I once travelled to Beale Street in Memphis to trace the experience of that song, and was disappointed to find no pilgrims there, with no similar plans. I seemed to be the only one seeking out the ghost of a King along the long expanse of Union.

***

Brooklyn would be my New York sanctuary for a few days. I had hopes that looking out on Manhattan might just trump being there. This borough has been the subject of many PowerPoint slides of mine over the years, attempting to capture the early codes of culture which, in turn, inspire consumers to action. 

In the world of brand-building, knowing the contextual chords being strummed makes it easier to write a winning tune. 

My first evening quickly turned Hasidic. 

Arriving during a Williamsburg late afternoon, I took myself to the nearest supermarket which transpired to be a sort of Little Israel. Among mothers dressed in demure black with white scarves, children clad to hip and shoulder, I stood in line with a bottle of water and some Elite Chocolate Lentils – Israel’s answer to M&Ms. Elites don’t melt in the hand either – hardly surprising given the surfeit of candy coating and the paucity of chocolate. 

‘Is that all?’, the man with long ritual fringes asked me, first in Hebrew and then in a Brooklyn drawl. He seemed bemused that I would queue so long for so little. 

His store reminded me of the myriad ‘baqalas’ of the Middle East with which I worked when once I called Jeddah home. These, in my memory, are places of commerce dominated by people, not price-points; and by a poetic, casual disorder which would make Whole Foods break out in hives. 

***

And so I wandered along Union, gaming the café reviews authored mostly by friends of baristas. I trust two real seconds at the window of any café over that establishment’s online appraisal. 

Brooklyn, this birthplace of the mason jar, seems a little exhausted to me. Perhaps no place leads culture longer than a summer storm; the act of recognition has within it the seeds of destruction.

***

Coming to a junction with an old bike, painted white and tied to a pole, I stopped. 

The visual impact of such a functional machine dressed like a mime artist disrupted my pace. 

‘Cyclist killed here’ read its sign, brief and brutal. 

I have biked many miles in America and know the vicissitudes of a cityscape which caters to the cyclist, only to forget the commitment once it becomes burdensome. There is something giant in vehicles built to traverse a continent. The cyclist is dwarfed in their shadow. 

The man who died in 2007 was Craig Murphey (sic), then twenty-six years old. 

I could not shake his fate from my mind as I walked. Over breakfast oats with raisins, I found out what had happened at that Brooklyn junction. 

Parts of the story are disputed. What is clear is that Craig was cycling home at 4am. 

He was a young man of fresh aspirations, volunteering full-time at a West Harlem organisation tackling food poverty, and also at a charity offering women a safe escort home whenever they found themselves walking alone. 

‘He was the most stand-up guy I knew’, a friend said, in the days following his death. 

At that dank early morning hour, an oil truck was taking a corner, and Murphey fell under its axles. The police report noted that he was cycling the wrong way up a one-way street. His friends claim otherwise, arguing that such a direction would make no sense, given his route. 

The degree of his injuries is uncontested. Craig died on the street, right here where his ghost bike stands. 

***

The practice of marking the spot where cyclists have lost their lives with a white bicycle, or ‘Ghost Bike’, has gathered momentum since 2003 when the first was placed by a witness to a cycle accident in St Louis, Missouri. 

The grassroots practice is particularly well-established in the New York area, though fresh to my eyes.

In the wake of tragedy, Craig’s father offered his son’s spare bike for the purpose. It was painted, festooned with flowers and secured to a pole at the accident site; to act as a memorial, perhaps also to stir reflection on the unequal risks borne by the cyclist and motorist. 

In 2013, the bike disappeared from Union and Ten Eyck. Happily, in some manner unreported, it was either returned or replaced. 

Here it stands. A painted Brooklyn monument to a Brooklyn loss. 

Craig Murphey would have been forty-five this year. With his energy and passion, he might well have reimagined his famous neighbourhood. 

It is a sunny and sorrowful thought. 

Once again, I am laid captive to a ghost on Union Avenue.