Internot

You'd think signing up for broadband in Brooklyn would be a piece of cake, but you'd be wrong. Turns out that the cable my housemates used until they left last November - it comes in from the street side, after passing over the roof, the length of the far side of the building and diagonally across the yard - was disconnected, and would need to be reconnected. Still, where's the problem? The cable's still there. Well, I learned from the installer, the box for reconnection is not in the yard but on the lot beyond ours, on a pole which has, since last year, been overgrown by vines. (It's the leafy ball at the center of this picture.) Unreachable from our yard - or the one beyond! Maybe someone could access it with a tall ladder from the overgrown lot next to it, he mused... But surely someone reached it from here to switch the connection off, I said, not quite understanding. "I only do connections," was the installer's reply; "disconnecting is a different department."