Moments of clarity

It was a beautiful day today. The sun hid behind low clouds and the temperature was in the shirt-sleeve range so I caught the train up to 96th Street on the West Side and walked downtown. At 66th Street, I shrugged off my pack and sat in one of the chairs under a tree.

I was filled with life's joyous love, so I spread my arms, threw back my head and ... found myself looking straight up a pigeon's ass.

Clarity hit.

"Keep moving."

Dog owners in the city ...

The weather was great on Christmas day so I took a looping bicycle ride through Brooklyn and the Lower Eastside. It has been a while and I was a happy, happy guy.

Just before I started back across the Williamsburg Bridge, I stopped for coffee at New Punjab Deli on 2nd Avenue, just north of Houston Street. New Punjab was voted, according to the newspaper article taped to the window, to be the best Pakistani Cabbie Chow place in the city. I don't know about that, but I do know there were half a dozen Pakistani cabbies blocking my way to the coffee, and the food looked pretty good.

I fought my way through the throng, got my coffee and went outside ... to keep an eye on the bicycle because I only had my light chain ... and to get out of the way of the cabbie parade. While I was there, this older gentleman walked past with his long-legged, skinny, twitchy little rat dog -- a whippet, I think, but it doesn't matter because the thing was wearing a puffy vest and thereby relinquished it's right to be part of any breed. The dog started to pee on my bicycle tire while I stood there. I pulled the coffee cup from my lips.

"Oh, man, don't let your dog pee on my bicycle," I said.

The dog heard me, lowered its leg and moved on to a mailbox. The gentleman snapped his head in my direction and ... and ... and GLARED. His dog was about to pee on my bicycle and he glared at me. And then he muttered under his breath, something I couldn't quite make out except that the words "bladder problems" was in there. ... the dog's I presume, but maybe (and this would make me feel a whole lot more happy on the holiday) he meant he had bladder problems.

I like New York City because there are so many people who honest-to-God think the whole damn world belongs to them. It's like a high-rise asshole convention, a surreal circus where a dog's bladder problems are more important than my right as an American to keep my bike pee-free. And maybe they are correct, these dog owners. Maybe I shouldn't expect a sidewalk that isn't seeded with doggie landmines and a tire that isn't sticky. Maybe I shouldn't expect another human being to have the slightest regard for ... for ... hell, I don't even know what to call it. "Manners" comes to mind, but that's too weak a concept. Respect? Decency? Basic consideration?

The dog at least stopped. It showed more humanity than it's human. Maybe this city should go to the dogs. The gentlemen have been measured and found wanting.

Been gone so long

Been gone so long because I've been doing nothing worth reporting.

Since I'm still doing nothing but playing in the dirt (the neighborhood community garden just got a whole lot of dirt that needs pushing around. I'm no gardener, but I can push dirt. Each according to his abilities, each according to his needs, eh?), reading and writing nonblog stuff ... which sucks, by the way. Thanks for asking. ... I thought I'd drop a couple of quick hits here so you'll know I'm alive.

Two days ago, I was walking down 2nd Avenue at 95th Street and a well-dressed gentleman came toward me saying, "I was sitting on the toilet and my butt started hurting. 'Oh, my butt, my butt, why does my butt hurt?'" By then he was close enough for me to see the Bluetooth in his ear so I didn't have to answer him. Small favors, dear Lord and thanks for them.

A week ago I passed a guy sitting on the sidewalk behind a cardboard sign. "AM HUNGRY. AM HOMELESS. PLEASE HELP." I would have asked him what I could do to help, but by then I was close enough to see the cell phone he was talking on.

Everyone who knows me knows I'm an animal lover, provided those animals are bigger than a bread basket, so I was torn yesterday when I saw a yorkie fighting his harness and the large bald gentleman walking at quite the clip talking on a cell phone. (Ah, themes!) At first I thought the little thing was trotting, but upon closer inspection I saw that it was skidding along on, almost skipping like a flat stone on a calm pond, back legs firmly planted against the forward motion of the gentleman. I was going to laugh ... but then I thought maybe it was being hurt. Then I realized it was just being a yorkie. It could have walked if it had been in pain. It wasn't even trying. It was just being cantankerous.

So, there was this really big black guy walking toward me on the street this morning, a scary guy with a ragged scar on his face, one dead eye and hands like Kitchen Aide mixers. He was walking a damn yorkie. "Oh, yeah, tough guy," I thought, and suppressed a smile. I didn't need a yorkie up my ass.

Death wears a Christian face

City officials in Brooklyn, like the rest of New York City, are making an active effort to create bicycle friendly streets. They are designating bike lanes and paths all over the place. These things are well marked and there is a map telling cyclists where the routes are. I follow them when possible, primarily because they are well placed to take you from one part of the borough to another.

The problem is that traffic hasn’t entirely caught on to the idea that bicycles are part of life now and need to be respected. It isn’t unusual to have a couple of near death experiences anytime you ride for any distance. Some one is going to run a red light or swerve into the bike lane. Something is going to happen to keep a cyclist on his toes.

And that’s fine. After all, we are traffic and traffic is a dangerous place for anyone.

Yesterday was actually a good day to ride. Traffic was light and there weren’t too many assholes parked in the bike lane. I was on Bergen Street, in the bicycle lane, making pretty good time. Someone up ahead decided to double park in my lane, so I glanced over my right shoulder. Plenty of room. Things were swell. I started to move into the car lane and heard the van 30 feet behind me stomp on the gas to race me to the squeeze point. I put on the brakes and dropped back. It was too nice a day to die, even though I was in the right. A “Christian Ambulette Inc.” van shot past me, side mirror whispering past my right shoulder.

I’m a positive guy, always looking at the bright side. I’m sure the driver of the Christian Ambulette was just trying to help by sending me to meet my maker a little early. Why extend the suffering on this mortal coil when there’s glory and eternal life on the other side, right?

Except it is rather presumptuous. First, I’m not a Christian. There’s no snowy bearded father waiting for me on the other side with open arms. Second, I’m in good health … even great health, for my age. This mortal coil is treating me quite well, thanks. If the Christian driver really wanted to help someone, he should have considered his passenger and slowed down for me. After all, the person in the ambulette was already ill and most likely Christian. Why rush to get them medical treatment? Send them home, obey the law and let the atheist live. Everyone wins.

I would have explained this to the driver, but he was disappearing into the distance. Instead, I just fruitlessly flipped him off and shouted “Jesus Christ!” into the wind.

Ah, grandparents taking the babies to breakfast … how charming … urp.

I stopped at Marine’s Coffee Shop (Bergen and 5th Avenue, Brooklyn) in Park Slope for breakfast yesterday. The menu on the window said they had a Spanish breakfast. I’ve never had a Spanish breakfast. It seemed like a prime opportunity to break two fasts at once, and at $4 it was cheaper than a plane ticket.

I settled into the corner table – after stripping off three layers of bicycle gear – and ordered cassava and eggs. (There’s a short review on Marine’s in the Google map on the main page of www.neoflaneur.blogspot, if you care.) About five minutes after a tucked into people-watching mode, a couple in their late 40s or early 50s came in with two girls under five.

My initial thought was, “Aw, grandparents out for a day”. But this is Park Slope and I forgot to take into account a particularly New York disease. One of the girls was whining about how she was cold, she didn’t want to eat eggs, she wanted ice cream.

“Mommy doesn’t like it when you talk that way,” the crazy woman said.

“Daddy doesn’t like it either,” the idiot with her said.

I got a little throw up in my mouth. I took a sip of coffee to clear away the bile and shook my head to clear it. People smart enough to make enough money to live in Park Slope aren’t smart enough to know that children are either the result of youthful indiscretions or, if deliberate, a young person’s sport. Not in New York. It is something you see all the time. Grown people completely out of their minds and ill-equipped for the physical and emotional abuse that come factory stock with children. If the damage was localized to the reproducing idiots, I’d have a problem with the disease but I’d get over it. The thing with late parentitis, though, is that it has an impact on everyone … for generations

Hillary Clinton was wrong. It doesn’t take a village to raise a child. It takes a clue and a cattle prod.

Mommy looked at this whiny little creature she’d deliberately conceived at Lord knows what cost and, in what can only be one of the best examples of clueless parenting I have seen in years, said in a high-pitched, goo-goo voice best reserved for pocket dogs and the mentally thin, “BABY, you’re a big girl now, not a BABY.”

Urp. Fuck me. I could taste where this was going the way I could taste the bile in the back of my throat. There is nothing sadistic little bits of the human variety like more than mixed messages and this cute little Satan spawn was just handed an Tech 9 and a full clip. She sprayed the restaurant. Her sister, not to be left out of the firefight, reached into her own arsenal gathered from a lifetime of over-entitled “Daddy loves you. Please stop. Really, please stop. Ah, baby, pllllllleeease. Have a candy bar. Daddy loves you”, loaded up and fired two rounds into the ceiling.

“Alright, everybody, on the ground. This is an emotional hold-up.”

Fuck me.

At this point, I should have done something constructive. I should have handed daddy a pair of balls, maybe, or mommy a pamphlet I’ve not yet written titled “Never Let Them See You Sweat: An adult’s guide to raising what seemed like a good idea at the time”. I didn’t. I just stared and shook my paternalistic head in a condescending way every time one of the parents scanned the room in a panic. It didn’t help, but I enjoyed myself and that’s what I was out and about for.

I’m a bad man.

Here's a google view of the joint.


View Larger Map

A bike ride through Brooklyn

The weather was clear and cold yesterday, so I bundled up, hopped on the bicycle at 8 a.m. and took a ride through Brooklyn. I’m finding that the way to discover Brooklyn – even more so than Manhattan – is on a bicycle. And in the process, I’m starting to develop a deeper love of the borough. For one thing, more people live in Brooklyn (1.8 million) than on the island (1.3 million), and these are people of all stripes.

My neighborhood, for example is pretty heavily West Indian. About a quarter mile to the south, Hasidic Jews take over. Two miles to the northwest, the hipsters have the helm. To the southwest about three miles, the yuppies have taken over my old neighborhood. You’ve got the Irish to my east and five miles south it’s Russian. The list goes on. There are pockets of ethnicity and class with blurred lines between.

I don’t know Queens yet, so I can’t do a compare and contrast … yet. I’ve made a couple of contacts and have heard the stories though. I will get there one day. I do know that the bicycle has stripped away the physical restriction of convenient transportation and opened all these neighborhoods in Brooklyn up for me.

That’s not to say mass transit fails in Brooklyn. The system works. The job is just different. In Manhattan, the subway is designed to get people around the island. In Brooklyn the subway is designed to get people to the island. This is a critical difference for a wanderer. And Brooklyn is not really a walking town … too residential and sprawling for that.

But the bicycle is the right tool for the job. Yesterday, I used it.

I rode from my flat in Bed-Sty to Cobble Hill, then down to the Gowanus Canal on the fringe of Red Hook and up 9th Street to Park Slope for breakfast. The trip took me through dirt poverty to industrial waste to big money in about two hours.

Can you think of a better way to spend a crisp Saturday morning? I can, but not flying solo.

Two-wheeling through Brooklyn

Here's a birds-eye view of today's ramble.

Music to my ears

One of my favorite things about wandering New York ... and anywhere people gather, for that matter ... is the music they make as they rub their collective body parts together (figuratively).

All those voices melding, and serving as counterpoints, with each other; all those accents dancing in and out; all those fragmented conversations intertwined in a 300-square mile tapestry of sound makes me wish I composed grand, vast symphonic works.

Sometimes the voices are just crickets in a distance. Other times they cicada in the trees above me.

The other day in the glen everything fell eerily silent, and one note broke free and soared into my head.

It was a man's voice ... Queens, probably, but maybe Brooklyn, possibly on the cusp of both ... a little on edge, not at all happy.

"No, Bro, you don't get it! I fuckin' lost Jimmy in Times Square! ... I don't fuckin' know ..."

That was all I got. It floated in the air for a second and then was swallowed by the rest of the crickets as they brought their legs together and started critching again.

I don't know if the mook ever found Jimmy or if Jimmy really wanted to be found, but I wanted to thank both men publicly for adding a single golden thread to my sonic wall-hanging.

Thanks, guys.

Number 1 reason my mom needs to visit New York City

If my mom ever comes to visit AND if she brings her heart pills, I'm going to take her to only one place, a place where every Asian piece of crap ever imported into our beautiful country can be found in a single Chinatown big-box store.

Pearl River Mart (447 Broadway, in Soho) is the Wal-Mart of Asian crap. … Three floors of Buddhas, beaded curtains, Chinese dragons, tacky clothing, silly shoes, free-standing screens, paper lanterns, Samurai swords, incense holders, cookware and other stuff my mom LOVES.

If your thing is, like my mom's, cheap, Eastern and in one place this is a must do-do.

I love you ma, and I'm kidding. I'll also take you to the wholesale bead stores around Penn Station ... but that's it! You are getting kinda old and I worry that you'll over do it.

Prix Fixeing food in New York City

The phrase “Prix Fixe” scares me. Too French, maybe and it pushes my “too fancy” button.

That’s exactly what restaurants want you to think, sans the “too” part. They want you to think “fancy.” But in fact, it’s really just the sit-down eatery version of the fast-food value meal.

And, it’s all the rage in New York City right now. You’ll see “Prix Fixe” everywhere. And it can be some of your best deals for mid-priced food, ranging from $8 on up to “don’t ask”.

The reason it’s a smart thing for the tourist on a budget is that it sets up before you even get into the joint, what the bill is going to be when you leave – less the cost of beverages, if they aren’t included (and sometimes they are).

The meals are usually pretty tasty and pretty filling for the non-gourmands among us. I say that, because you’ll need to remember that you just ordered the buffet version of the menu. The cooks know the fix is in -- what to prepare in advance -- and will do just that.

Prix Fixeing has another advantage. It is a short cut for wanderer decision-making. The meal and price are always spelled out on a chalkboard outside the restaurant, so you can scan them as you wander past and make you decision without having to scour every menu taped on every window. When one hits your fancy and price point, just mosey in, grab a seat and ask. In short order, your courses will arrive and you’ll be out the door before your feet forget they were made for walking.

So, if you can’t make it to the fringes of the city where prices fall, but don’t want to blow your budget on fuel, look for the prixed fixe. You might find the price is also right.

Bicycles in New York City

If you are a fan of roller coasters, you might want to give New York City on a bicycle a try. Between the automobiles, the potholes, the construction, the pushcarts, the pedestrians, the cab doors, the delivery trucks in the bike lanes, the squeezes you get from buses, the side mirrors, the occasional cobblestone street and the other bicyclists, it never gets old.

And, New York is trying hard to make this a bicycle friendly town. They’ve laid out 70 miles of bike lanes and in Manhattan they’ve created a path that runs from The Battery (that’s all the way downtown) to the northern tip of the island on West Street. Their efforts have earned them a “bicycle friendly community” designation from the League of American Cyclists. And they have many more miles of lanes planned.

The West Street bike path is a good place to cut your teeth if you are a bit nervous about playing Death Race 2008 on the streets. The path is separated from traffic, well marked and there is a beautiful view of the Hudson River. You can also try a run or two around Central Park. The ride is beautiful. But not flat. This is a city of hills, particularly as you head uptown. It is never San Francisco, but if you are a flatlander, you will find your work cut out for you.

The real fun is on the city streets. That’s where the thrill-seeker in you gets a chance to play. And, while it is possible to get hurt, with 100,000 other cyclists on the road, the odds are in your favor if you keep your wits about you … and obey the traffic rules (which everybody should do, but nobody does).

A bicycle also really opens up the city for you. You have speed that almost compares with a cab and mobility that compares with your feet. You can also slow down and take in the sites (with one eye and both ears out for incoming traffic).

Consider Red Hook in Brooklyn. There isn’t an easy subway stop in Red Hook. You have to hike in and hike back out. … Unless you are on a bicycle. Same holds for the edges of Manhattan. The subway system tends to run up the spine of the island except where the Brooklyn and Queens bound trains make their respective escapes.

A lot of Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side, for example, are a bit of a distance from a subway stop. If you plan to really explore those areas and are on a time schedule, a bicycle is the way to go.

Bicycles will also carry you quickly through residential districts that don’t have a whole lot to see.

If you are bicyclist, consider bringing your wheels with you. Bicycle rentals aren’t cheap. You can pay $30-$50 a day.

If you can’t bring your own wheels, it’s still worth the expense. Consider this. If you go to The Top of the Rock or the Empire State Building observation deck ($20 each), the panoramic views may make you say, “Wow.” But a bike ride down Broadway will take your breath away. It’s a New York experience you will never forget.

NOTE: You can pick up a free bicycling maps at the NYC Department of City Planning bookstore at 22 Reade Street, NY, NY, 10007, in bicycle shops, libraries, and schools. This is a good map for cyclists, but it is also a decent map for walkers because unlike the subway map, most of the city streets are marked.

Taking a week off the streets of New York

Back in the day, when the backs of my ears were still wet and I thought life was spread out before me like some sort of birthday cake waiting to be wished upon, my dad told me he wouldn't pay for me to go to college, but he would pay for me to go to bartending school.

At least bartenders can find work that pays is the way he looked at it.

Bartending? That sounded great. You've got the keys to the kingdom if you are a bartender, behind the stick, master of your domain. And the flexible hours fit the night owl in me.

But, bartending? Frantic nights, blaring music, no insurance, counting on others to put money (good when it comes, nonexistent when it doesn't) in your pocket. Come on. That's not the smart career choice.

So I got a college degree and a corporate job.

Last week, I took time off from my wanderings and this blog (didja miss me?) to go bartending school. My dad's offer had expired, so I ponied up the $700 and went for it.

It was a blast. Best vacation ever.

And now, I am a certified mixologist. That's right. I aced the test AND put 22 proportionally correct drinks on the bar in 5 minutes -- which means I know how to keep glass out of your glass, a glass in your hand and I'm carrying the recipes for 200+ drinks around in my head.

What I'm not yet is a bartender. That requires a bar to tend and it will come. Right this second I have something in common with every bar owner and bar manager in New York City. We are all looking for "New York Experience." They want it wrapped in a bartender and I want it in this mixologist. If you have a lead on a gig, let me know. If you don't, get yourself a beer and hang around. I tell you about the job search.


And, I'll keep you posted as to where I work so when you come to the city you can stop by and say hi.

A grand experiment on the mean streets of New York

After considerable effort and no less considerable personal expense in this great city, I have come to a shocking conclusion of great importance to fellow wanderers.

The only way to screw up a slice of greasy New York pizza is to charge too much for it.

So, the results of my experiment have been input into the following chart (not much of a chart, really, because that would require graphic arts skills. This is more of a list).

Cost to taste
Cost: $2.75 -- Taste: Bad
Cost: $2 -- Taste: OK
Cost: $1 -- Taste: Great

Using science then, I can without doubt answer once and for all a major point of contention between New Yorkers. I can tell you, scientifically, where you can find the best pizza in New York.

"99-cent Pizza" at 43rd Street and Third Avenue.

They sell pizza for 99 cents a slice. It is greasy. They let you sprinkle your slice with grated cheeselike substances, red pepper flakes and that powdery green stuff that looks like herbs. You get a napkin and a paper plate that becomes translucent as the slice drains. It is a true New York experience you can actually afford to experience.

And, while you are eating it, you can walk the block and cut through the Art Deco wonderland that is the lobby of the Chrysler Building.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

Molly’s Pub on Third Avenue has no Molly (love ya, miss ya, Molly), but …

In a town flush with the latest hot bars and coolest cool clubs -- all of which would bore me out of my mind if I didn’t have the game of “this is like being stabbed in the (fill in the blank) with a (fill in the blank)” to play in the wrinkled front part of my brain – Molly’s Pub & Shabeen isn’t unique, but it also isn’t common.

It isn’t the club scene. It isn’t a tourist joint. It isn’t a student hang out. It is modeled after an Irish pub, from the white stucco store front to the dark wood paneling and the fireplace with mantle I saw an actual patron rest his arm on like he was going to sing a ballad badly or box with John Wayne, but it isn’t really all that Irish, either.

It’s just fairly quiet, mostly comfortable, usually a bit crowded so you feel at one with the people but not so crowded you can’t find a seat.

This is a dining establishment … and the fare runs to the Irish. I haven’t tried the food and probably never will. I steadfastly avoid eating at restaurants with “atmosphere.” If you happen to stop by and grab some grub, let me know what you think. I’ll add it to the map.

Back in the 80s, when I lived off Union Square and whiskey, I used to stroll down to Molly’s and stagger home from Molly’s on a regular basis. Now, I have less money and more years, but Molly’s is still a nice, gentle bar on the fragile senses … if not the wallet. That’s better. I don’t stagger out anymore. I can’t afford it.

It would be perfect if Molly worked there (seriously, love ya, Molly. Miss ya, Molly ... and the rest of you. I didn't forget about you. It just wouldn't have fit so well in the blog. The bar ain't called John's or Brad's or ...), but no one said this is a perfect world.

TO GO
Molly’s is the white-fronted building on the east side of Third Avenue between 22nd and 23rd streets. You can’t miss it.

Yeah, I took the photo across the top of neoflaneur.blogspot.com.

I rock. That's all I think needs to be said.

High culture and low class at Juilliard

The thing about concert halls is they are designed to get sound from the front of the hall to the back. The thing about human beings is some of them don’t get this fact. The thing about free concerts is there is no barrier to entry.

I took in a free concert by Juilliard Ensemble of a tribute to contemporary composer Luciano Berio (1927-2003) at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater on Tuesday night. It’s a pretty big house and it wasn’t packed, so I found a nice spot with five seats between me and my nearest neighbor, settled in and was prepared to be enthralled. About five minutes before the show started a gentleman sat down in the row in front of me two seats to my right. He was followed by another gentleman who sat in the row in front of me two seats to my left.

As the lights dimmed and Emi Ferguson, a young flautist, took the stage for a solo work created in 1958, the gentleman to my right decided to have an emphysema attack of Biblical proportions. He wheezed and coughed and snuffed and snorted and shifted and flapped his program for the next two hours.

A couple of minutes into Ferguson’s piece, “Sequenza I”, a frantic piece of music in which Ferguson held a musical conversation with herself, the gentleman to my left – apparently no fan of contemporary composers – decided it was time to balance his check book. He took out all his bills for the month … still in their crinkly envelopes … and went to work.

The second piece, “Corale”, written in 1981 for a dozen highly trained musicians, became “Piece for musicians and two assholes in the audience”, written in 2008.

They were a team (in fact, I asked them as I took to my feet, "Are you guys a team?") They drove me from my seat and deeper into the back of the theater. I found a spot in the second to last row of the Muppet Theater, right in front of two older gentlemen talking to each other between pieces.

“I don’t like this.”
“It’s not for you to like.”
“Oh, it’s for the younger generation then?”
“The kids like it.”
“I don’t. It’s for the younger folks.”
“Well, look at the audience.”
“I see a lot of white hairs, but I don’t like it.”

So, they left.

And I finally did get a chance to like it. Berio seemed hell-bent on making his musicians suffer over the ugly tones he forced them to create from their beautiful instruments. There was a 1969 solo piece for oboe, “Sequenza VII”, played by Jeffery Reinhardt, in which Berio forced Reinhardt, who he’d probably never even met, to make sounds like blowing your nose into an already-full snotrag. This is not something I imagine comes naturally to a young man studying at Juilliard, but even the uninitiated such as myself could tell the kid was playing his ass off.

The came a piece of interesting – again, played brilliantly by a quartet including vocalist Carin Gilfry, harpist Jane Yoon and percussionists Molly Yeh and Sam Budish – in which Gilfry sang three e.e. cumings poems (two of the poems twice) while Yoon played counterpoint on the harp and Yeh and Budish banged the shit out of everything but the tag-team assholes in the audience.

It was great, a 16-minute theater piece akin to Blue Man Troupe in evening wear.

And then, David Huckabee came on to play the 1980 solo piece “Sequenza XIV” for cello. It was like watching Buster Keaton. The piece sounded like the cello would escape, running around insanely and crashing into itself and every note in the musical realm, and Huckabee was right there in the middle of it, stone faced.

I’m not a fan of contemporary concert music, but the thing about making a point of seeing New York City on the free is you never know what you are going to get, so you need to be prepared to enjoy yourself. And, for the love of God, leave your checkbook at home.

Fricking on a Sunday afternoon

The Frick Collection (70th and Fifth Avenue) has Sunday "Pay what you wish" day, and while I wished I had the wherewithall to pay the $15 regular admission, I could only pay $5 and spent a couple of hours wandering yet another former abode of the very, very rich and very, very dead.

This time it was the New York City home of Henry Clay Frick, who made his money in steel and union busting. His artistic tastes leaned to portraiture and Romantic frippery (including five J.W.M. Turner pieces that I liked, having a frip of the romantic in me when it comes to sailing vessels). But, most of it zipped past me, even though I tried really, really hard to like looking at paintings of rich old people.

There were a couple of standouts, though. One, El Greco's "Purification of the Temple", was the reason to show up. I kept moving away and then finding myself drawn back into it. The link above doesn't do the piece justice. The color is gone. The energy in Christ is muted, as is what I perceived to be a wicked sense of humor in El Greco's mind when he painted Christ as gleeful.

Another nice work worth spending a little time in front of was Jan Vermeer's "Officer and Laughing Girl", which according to the Frick web site will be on display until Nov. 2. The sun in this piece grabs the wall from the other two Vermeer on display. There's also room in the piece for you to imagine the backstory ... one of Vermeer's hallmarks.

A sad thing happened at lunch today

Yatagan raised its falafel price to $2.50. It hit me like a fist as I crossed MacDougal Street.


It is still the best falafel I've tasted in the city, but with the price gap closed I'm free to try others.

Even with the culinary freedom this creates, my heart is broken.

But, it does relive the time pressure Wally has been under.

Obscene wealth for the arts?

Between 7 and 9 p.m. on Fridays, The Morgan Library is all kinds of free (for a listing of other free days at other museums, check the calendar at the bottom of the NeoFlaneur main page). I love free stuff and art stuff, so I packed up and hiked to Lexington Avenue and 35th Street.

The place was built by J.P. Morgan -- a really freakin' rich guy back in the day -- to keep his books and other pretties in so they didn't clutter his castle next door, is huge.

The exhibit I saw was Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors, because I like kids' books. They are usually easier to read, so my lips don't get tired. Not this time. Apparently Jean de Brunhoff and his son, Laurent, are French. Not only that, but they wrote their books in French. It was not easier to read at all.

It was, however, pretty. And there were subtitles. And it was free. And there was a highbrow drum circle. And three ... count them ... three Gutenberg Bibles (the meek may inherit the Earth, but rich guys like Morgan get all the hot bibles).

It all got me to thinking, not about French colonialism -- which may be what the Babar books were all about -- but about obscene American wealth -- definitely what J. Pierpont was all about.

How much is too much and how much difference does it make that I can look at all the pretty stuff for free two hours a week? For the record, the rest of the time, admission is $12.

I'll admit I'd rather the cash go to art than to the fifth generation of J.P.'s pet poodle (I don't even know if he liked animals), but is the legacy enough to override the damage caused by the pillaging Robber Barons and their bankers? Or should we just have eaten the lot of them when we had the chance?

I don't do the "Spot-a-Celebrity Freakout"

"OMG! I just saw ..."

Whatever. They are just people, doing a thing to make a living. I don't want an autograph. I don't want an audience with them. I don't want anything from them, except for them to get outta my way*.

Usually.

There are a few of exceptions (in no particular order):

Winona Ryder (I confessed this years ago in a weekly newspaper column)
Hillary Swank (You read it hear first)
Kurt Vonnegut (he's dead, but I'd still love to bump into him on the street)
and
The Dali Lama (He's sooooo cute. Doncha just wanna take him home? OMG!)

Those are in no particular order.

In very particular order, there's just one celebrity on top of my "OMG!" list, light years from the crowd.

Janeane Garofalo. She's got it all. No shit. ALL.

OMG!

And guess who I saw in the Village yesterday!?!?!

OMG! Oh-My-BigGee-odd!

Janeane Garofalo -- stridin', talkin' gesturin' -- just like Janeane Garofalo. That sounds kinda ridiculous when typed out, but it isn't a given. Daryl Hannah, for example, required a double take. "Is that? Maybe? Yes."

Not Ms. Garofalo. Straight up, no doubt about it. In the flesh. Right there. Yessiree. Wow. OMG ...

The best thing about this casual brush with celebrity has to be that I didn't falter, trip, exclaim, get arrested, run into anything or even wobble. But I had a really good day.

Thanks, Ms. Garofalo.

And thanks Trader Joe's ... where I found a pretty decent $3 bottle of wine about 30 minutes later. Coincidence? I think not.





* Back in my first stay in New York City, I lived for a while off Union Square. I ran into Andy Warhol ... twice. Knocked him over. Come on! What the hell? Get outta my way, Andy. "I'm walkin' here!"

Here's a fun game called "Follow the ..."

It's harmless when you get beneath the creepy surface, but sometimes I play a game called "Follow the (insert occupation here)".

This sounds pretty easy. Pick a stockbroker. Follow the stockbroker. Game over.

But I like things to be more challenging so I modify the rules. I don't know what the person does when I start following. I just have a hunch.

"That guy's a college student."

"That woman works retail ... probably accessories."

"That guy's a dental hygienist."

Once I decide who that person is, I try to follow until I prove or disprove my assumption.

NOTE: The law sometimes uses the word "stalk" here, but I prefer to use "stalk" when the following lasts several days/weeks/months, which it never does, for the record. I wonder how many ADHD stalkers are out there anyway. Very few, I'm thinking.

I lose a whole lot more often than I win, but it kills a couple of hours. Yesterday I was feeling a little blue, so to give myself a little pickmeup, I needed a big check mark in the win column.

I played "Follow the dancer."

Soooooo easy. For those of you playing the home game, here are few tips. Duck feet + super posture + neutral expression = Dancer.

Two blocks after I picked up the target, she neutrally duck footed erectly through the stage door at Radio City Music Hall.

And the winner is ... ? ME! I did a victory lap and then had some Korean food from a street vendor to dampen the excitement a little. Worked like a charm.

Race in New York City

This is arguably the most global city in the world, with more measurable ethnic groups and countries represented. That should be enough to deflate the idea of "stranger" and "other". But race is always at the very tip of the frontal lobe, unspoken, but seemingly ready when the need arises.

Today, for example, I was walking across the street at Allen and Stanton. It was a fine morning. The sun was shining, but there was a cool breeze. I think I was even whistling. I had the light. I was in the crosswalk, and a man in a maroon minivan decided it was his road. I stepped back and knocked on his rear window as he went past.

"What the hell, man! I've got the light."

Apparently, his rear window was an extension of his personal space. (Understandable. We all know a man's minivan is his castle). He slammed on the brakes, came to a stop across two lanes of Allen Street and got out of the car.

"Why are you talking to me like I'm your son?" he shouted as he walked to the median where I was standing. He was cranky. And it was a shame. It was too nice a day to have father issues.

"I was talking to you like some son of a bitch who tried to run over me in the crosswalk."

"I don't give a fuck! I'll kill your ass if I want!"

At this point, a thought bubble appeared over my head. "Oh oh, not rational." (I think I even did the confused head tilt thing.)

"Qua?"

I'm quick that way. A guy abandons his vehicle in the middle of the street, during morning rush hour, after trying to run another fellow over because the other fellow somehow sparked a deep-seated father thing. That's all reasonable. Screaming "I don't give a fuck! I'll kill your ass if I want!" after having his thoughtless transgression of traffic rules pointed out? That's crazy.

Well, now we have a situation. He's sputtering something that sounds to me like ... "@&$#&@!", in heavily accented "fucking nutz" but fluent English.

"Hey! Hey! HEY!" I shouted. He stopped his fucking nutzing for a second, so I pointed behind him and said, "Your car is in traffic. Someone might get hurt."

He turned around, got back in the minivan and drove off, but before he did he shouted, "White fagot!"

White as charged, your honor. As for the fagot thing, well ... when I got up this morning I knew the full strand of pearls was going to be a little dressy for daywear, but I thought ... "what the hay? Be bold, girlfriend."

P.S. If you are reading this, Mr. Maroon Minivan Driver. It isn't always about race. Sometimes it's because you suck ... in a color-blind way.

like Earth friendly, only not. ...

Zen Burger, 465 Lexington Avenue, which pitches itself as Earth friendly with 100% meat-free burgers, will top that veggie burger with bacon for 79 cents.

"Any problem with that? Huh? Do ya, punk?"

Kinda.

Monday morning in Madison Square Park

Good Monday morning from Madison Square Park. Actually, I'm just outside the park -- which as an FYI is blocks from Madison Square Garden -- sitting in the median between Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Its a lovely little spot, with cafe tables, decent chairs, umbrellas and FREE wireless access.

The Flatiron building is 25 yards in front of me (facing Downtown). The Empire State Building is several block uptown. Traffic is rolling on all four sides. I may have the best seat in the house for a Monday morning city rise-and-shine

The air is cool,but not cold, so I don't know what that guy just now was thinking, walking his min pin with a spiked harness, red sweater and matching booties. Rediculous, uncomfortable for the animal and unnecessary. That kinda describes the 4-inch red heels, black bubble skirt and sweater vest I saw walk past a while ago. I don't know what she did for a living, but it made me a little nervous and I was just spying.

Apparently the thing to do at Madison Square Park is stand holding a map of the city while the person you are with tries to get a picture of you (where you are recognizable as you and not some random stranger) and the entire Flatiron building. There seem to be several ways to approach this.

One is to stand close to the street while your friend gets on her belly and shoots up your nose. A modification on this is to have your friend back off about 30 feet and then get on her belly and shoot so you are shown as a short, somewhat garishly colored light pole.

Another is to stand on one of the rock slabs cut from "Stonehenge, the Musical" on Broadway and moved to the Fifth Avenue side. This seems to work better, but you have to climb from slab to slab while your partner decides which up-the-nose shot is going to look best in the vacation slideshow on Flickr.

A tree? Really? In Brooklyn? No way?

I don’t understand things sometimes. (BIG UNDERSTATEMENT) For example, Betty Smith, author of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, made the statement like it was a shock.

“Holy shit! A tree grows in Brooklyn!”

Fact is, there are trees all over Brooklyn. I’m constantly bumping into them. Hell, I have one right outside my window, blocking my view.

Just one more myth busted.

Let’s talk Yataganese

I don’t give a tinker’s dam who you are, if you come to New York City and fail to avail yourself of the best value in falafel sandwich the world has ever known, I will show my disapproval by spanking the loved one of your choice with a weapon from the list below.*

Yatagan, a sweatbox on MacDougal Street just off Bleeker Street, is THE $2 falafel place. It was $2 in 1982 and it is still $2. The nearest competitor, just up MacDougal toward Washington Square, weighs in at $2.50. Anywhere else in town, you are gonna pay $3.50 to $5.

Yatagan, which as near as I can tell never closes, also offers a full compliment of other Greeky fare … gyros, baba ganoush, hummus, etc.

If you’re still not sold, how about this: Bill Cosby is also a fan (his picture hangs on the wall if you dare to go into the “dining area”, five tables at the back of the joint heated to a steady grease-smeared 100 degrees year around).

Or, this: You get to watch sweaty little men (seriously, they are really short) peel slices of dripping mushmeat off a rotating spit.

Or this: You will be connecting to a long and steady history of beats, bohemians, Bob Dylanites and beggars who have marched through on their way to oblivion.

Personally, it’s the fried chickpea sandwiches that keep me coming back.

*Spanking implements list: a retro slogan t-shirt striped off the back of a Williamsburg hipster, a dirty 99-cent store fork, a sliderule, four standard playing cards taped together, a partially inflated bicycle innertube, a peanut-butter filled latex glove, or Wally (This one requires an appointment. He’s a busy guy.).

Everyone’s a copy editor

Union Square hosts an open market several times a week. Fresh breads, cheeses, produce and meats are brought in from area farms and displayed in stalls from 14th Street to 17th Street along the west side of the park. For free things to do in the city, you can’t do much better than walk the market and enjoy the vibe coming off all that wholesome goodness.

Today, I did just that.

One of the stalls was selling butchered hog from a farm in upstate New York. There was a chalkboard sign beside fat slabs of bacon that read:

Bacon
Is
Back

A woman told the young, bearded man working the stall, “There should be an exclamation point on that sign.”

The young man looked up.

“The excitement is implied.”

And they said it’s a dog eat dog world …

Apparently I live in a tough neighborhood. I had no idea. I mean, I knew it was economically depressed and I knew loitering on street corners and stoops was the way the locals spent their evenings. I knew there were young, underemployed pseudothugs roaming the area. I even knew that once upon a time this was a war zone. But, that was long ago and I’m a “‘let-bygones-be-bygones’ is my motto”, fellow, so I was caught unaware.

It was high noon as I walked to the more distant of my three subway options, past the single-family homes and bodegas. The cutest little kitten, white with black markings, poked its head out of a doorway. I looked at it and smiled, tempted to pet it – even I am not entirely immune to the charms of kittens – but, instead, I turned my attention back to the street where it belongs. I attribute my years of wandering in good, bad and neutral areas of this world without incident to the fact that I try to keep my wits about me at all times. This time I strayed for a few seconds and it almost cost me.

I hadn’t taken three steps when my Spidey senses went on four-bells, fully engaged alert. Someone was behind me, moving fast and up to no good. My adrenalin surged. To face the threat, I spun 270 degrees on the ball of my left foot. When I planted my right foot, I dropped my right shoulder and raised my arms in a defensive posture.

The damned kitten was in the air -- paws wide, claws out, teeth exposed, ears back -- right where my right ankle had been. It had blood in its eyes and my flesh in its sights.

I shudder to think where I’d be had my survival instincts failed. … Cat scratch fever, maybe … but it ended well enough. Sure, I left a little of my cool on the sidewalk, but I learned I live in a tough neighborhood.

Tying the tie

Starting from the top and working down, the tie in this true story is setup. Working up from the ground, it is punchline. Worked in somewhere in the middle, allegory.

I like allegory, so …

I was on the subway, waiting for a train home after an evening of light drinking in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when a commotion started down the platform.

Subway platforms, whilst being the most impersonal of places, tend to be the most likely places for conversation. We are thrust together with nothing (or little) in common except for the events right in front of us. We have, probably for the only time, a shared base of conversation regardless of our race, class, education or temperament.

“Didja see that guy piss all over the floor?”
“Si!”
“What the fuck, huh? Reminds me of the time …”

Guys pissing and kids being cute are events that bind us in our universal humanity. God bless their full-bladdered, cute-being hearts. We owe them.

The commotion in this true story wasn’t about urine or cute, though. It was about a tie. Specifically a short, fat, canary yellow tie on a short, fat black man wearing an untucked canary yellow shirt, baggie, fat-man shorts, candy-cane socks and rainbow sneakers.

This specific man and this specific tie were having a hard time coming to terms. The damn thing wouldn’t tie and he was looking for help, but he wasn’t listening to it.

His first Samaritan was a ragged, old Hispanic fellow accessorized in glasses ripped off Elton John’s face. He tried, but Fat Man failed to grasp the “around and between” steps integral to tie tying. Fat Man was convinced “around and over” was correct.

Sorry, but if you have no “between”, you have no knot.

He asked me if I could help. I can tie a tie, a fact I avoided disclosing because I have a firm policy against assuming the role of Patron Saint of Lost Causes”.

“Sorry, man. If I could tie a tie I’d be a whole lot farther along in life.

Fat Man got angry … with the first Samaritan for being stupid about ties.

He said, “You’re stupid about ties. You don’t know shit.”

“I tole you, you have to go between. You don’t listen.

“You don’t have to know how to tie a tie to be a man,” Fat Man said to no one in particular.

“I tole you how to do it!”

“You didn’t tell me shit.”

The Samaritan turned his back to Fat Man, and said in low tones, “I tole you.”

A second Samaritan, a heavy set, grandmotherly looking Hispanic woman, joined the commotion by taking the tie from Fat Man and wrapping it around her own neck. In a blur of action, she’d tied the tie, slipped it over her head, dropped it around Fat Man’s neck and cinched it tight.

Fat Man looked down at his tie and showed it to the first Samaritan with pride. “That’s how you tie a tie, stupid.”

“I tole you how.”

“You told me ‘over’.”

“I tole you between.”

Ah, human bonding.

Going back to my first NYC home

On Saturday, a trip to Governor’s Island was free. Last time I lived in the city, it cost me 4 years of my life in blue coveralls and a lot of haircuts.

Some things just get better with time.

To be fair though, I have fond memories of Governor’s Island back in the day. The island got me to New York in the first place, courtesy of your tax dollars. … OK, your parents’ tax dollars. (Please give them my thanks next time you call them. Tell them I appreciate the allowance back then. Sure, I guarded their coast occasionally against drugs and illegal aliens and I was always ready to brave The Perfect Storm to save a life or two, but mostly I drank and wandered around on the government’s dime.)

Anyway, Governor’s Island was a U.S. Coast Guard base until the 21st century. It would have made a great “Eat the rich” hunting preserve. Seven minutes to Wall Street, nothing but waterfront views … the ultimate gated community for titans of capitalism.

But something crazy happened. Prime real estate was turned over to the people, wrapped up in the arms of the New York City parks department – and what a lovely embrace it is. There are concerts, bike paths, a free ferry ride, art installations, green spaces, the smell of salt air and some great views. All free.

That’s the kind of thing I dreamed of when I wandered through my service to God and country with a subscription to “The Socialist Worker” delivered to the cutter I was stationed on. And now it is covered in reality.

Some things just get better.

The park is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sunday. The ferry runs every 30 minutes when the season is high. It drops to hourly at other times. You can’t miss the terminal either. From anywhere on the island, keep working your way downtown. When you run out of land, there will be a big green iron structure. That’s it.

Steve, a security guy on the island, said there are already over 150 special events planned for 2009 and there is a push to get keep the park open seven days a week and much later into the night. Last ferry off the island now is 7 p.m.

“You think this is nice,” Steve said. “Fughedaboutit! It’s gonna be great.”

(He said “fughedaboutit.” It’s not just TV. People really do talk that way in these parts. Frankly, it’s annoying; like listening to dogs bark at each other. But Steve was a good guy. He’s proud of his park, and I’m happy he’s keeping such a good eye on my old home.)

Escape from (to/both?) New Jersey

Took a little jaunt on New Jersey Transit to visit friends in Maplewood on Thursday. Nice visit in a cute little town 35 minutes from Penn Station. I can see this being a “get away from the city for some rest and relaxation – for about three hours” destination.

Maplewood Village, a 20-second walk from the train station, has about half a dozen restaurants from cafes to sushi, a bar and several small shops. All of them are CUTE.

On the other side of the tracks is a lovely park with a stream running through it.

How: “Direct or express to Dover” … get your round trip ticket at Penn Station because you don’t want to rely on the ticket agent in Maplewood. Total round-trip cost: $9.75. Check the schedule when you get there and set yourself an alarm because the train back to the city only stops about once an hour.

This is a town that works until you are ready to go. Once you’ve seen everything and had a bite to eat, it is time to go. You don’t want to be milling around the open-air station waiting on the next ride out. The schedule does seem firm though, so don’t expect you can tarry.

Going Goth, FIT style

The Fashion Institute of Technology has three exhibits running right now. I happened to be in the area and decided to wander over and take a peek. What the heck? It was free.

There were dresses, dresses and pics. In The Museum at FIT’s main gallery, “Arbiters of Style: Women at the Forefront of Fashion” was the fashion of the day (actually the exhibit runs until Nov. 8). There were bunches of dresses from the 1700s to the present, and I didn’t see the point to any of it. Once, I cross the sarong threshold, I’m pretty much lost to fashion. Pants and shirts keep cops away so I wear them. It goes no farther, for me.

I did get a chance, however, to hear the following exchange between two tiny old women looking at a Zandra Rhodes dress (dropped that name like a pro, eh?) from 1969:

OW1: That is goooorgeous!
OW2: Chiffon.
OW1: What do you wear under it?
OW2: Nothing.
OW1: If you wear underwear, you’ll ruin the line.
OW2: Pasties.
OW1: Nothing but pasties.

That image just about ruined beauty, forever.

Fortunately, I wandered downstairs to the “Gothic: Dark Glamour” exhibit. It forced me to look deep into my bruised soul and realize … I like Goth as a fashion choice if the skulls motif is buried in a crypt like the cold, mortal flesh of my only love.

Something about corsets, I think. And leather. … The dark lust of my vegetarian soul is a 23-year-old, whip-thin junkie chick in leather, apparently. And lace gloves. What can I do? It spoke to me in a breathy, hot and pained wordless song full of major chords.

It cut me.

“Gothic” runs through Feb. 21, if you want to see the objects of my latest desire.

And then there were the photographs. …

The FIT is distinctly unattractive, a gulag on 7th Avenue at 27th Street, hewn from gray concrete by slaves of fashion, worked to exhaustion … maybe even death. Across the courtyard – in which rebel fashionistas are executed, stiff-spined and prideful, at dawn -- is an administrative building that houses, for the time being, a photographic project of Coney Island shot by students in the last year.

True art, I think, is the ability to capture the universal in a distinctly arresting way. It seems a crime, then, to turn a bunch of students loose on the most pedestrian of topics and expect them to produce anything remotely interesting. Criminal, but that’s what happened.

The photos weren’t bad … in fact, they could be called good and certainly better than I could produce. A woman in traditional Muslim dress walking barefoot on the beach with the madness of the masses a blur in the background was particularly interesting. But, they weren’t worth a specific trip to FIT. The troika of exhibits wasn’t, but if you happen to be in the area and drop in, you could do a lot worse.

Geometry matters, or it should

I strolled past Father Demo Square on Bleeker Street and Sixth Avenue yesterday and all of the sudden it hit me like a belly full of bad fish.

Father Demo Square is a triangle.

Housing Works … and so does this coffee shop

With apologies to those who are about to hear the sounds of music, these are a few of my favorite things:

a) drinking coffee
b) sitting around in air conditioning
c) looking at used books
and
d) helping people – so long as it doesn’t inconvenience me to do so

Correspondingly, then, Housing Works Bookstore Café has been one of my favorite places in the city since I stumbled upon it several years ago.

I feel like Mother Teresa – but taller … and with prettier feet – just for showing up. The catchy slogan almost says it all: “Fighting AIDS, one book at a time.”

NOTE: I said, almost, because condoms also help. Get yours today.

Housing Works, at 126 Crosby Street*, is run by volunteers and all the money, including the tips you leave, goes toward working with homeless AIDS patients.

Buy a $1.50 cup of coffee. Help an AIDS patient. Leave the change. Help an AIDS patient. Buy a used book. Help an AIDS patient. Get yourself a cookie. Help an AIDS patient.

They also sell wine and Pabst, so. ... Catch a buzz. Help an AIDS patient.

Word to the Mother. “Beatify that, Bitch.”

*Housing Works is at 126 Crosby Street. Get to Houston Street between Lafayette and Broadway. Find Crosby Street (Easy because it is the only street between Lafayette and Broadway. Head downtown about three storefronts and you are there.

Breakfast at Papaya Dog

In a city where a diner breakfast can set you back $6, Papaya Dog on 14th Street and 1st Avenue is a welcome find. If you get there while the banner is still flying on the storefront, you can avail yourself of one of the specials – either two eggs on a roll, or … and this was my find of the day … two eggs, a mound of potatoes and two pieces of toast (white or wheat, because Papaya Dog cares about your health) – for 99 cents.

Take the L to First Avenue, stick your head above ground and look around. It’s right on the corner. Service ain’t much, and the decor is, to be polite, sticky. But the eggs are cooked in your face and in something I really look for in a cheap breakfast, I didn’t puke once in the three hours after I ate.

Because I have an unlimited subway card, scooting to First Avenue for breakfast before starting my wandering is reasonable. In fact, I just turned downtown and went on walkabout in the East Village with calories to burn.

A little bit of Broadway about getting to Broadway

Took in a Broadway show Sunday night, and had a great time.

I know that’s what you are supposed to do at a Broadway show, but I usually just have an OK time. My fun center can be a little atrophied.

Part of it, I’m sure, is that I look for the wires and mirrors while the magician is performing. But part of it is that I like my theater a little less slick. If it flows too well, or, if you can tell the actors are doing a “job”, I’m unphased by the performance.

It’s like celebrating a great catch in a baseball game. Makes no sense to me. That’s the guy’s job. He gets compensated quite well for it. I may be pissed when he fails, but I’m not jumping around when he does his damn job. Just call me a member of management, I guess, but in my bitter little world, you get paid for doing your job. You don’t get points for it.

“(title of show)”, which is running at the Lyceum on 45th Street for awhile, is different. It has no right to be in the big leagues – small cast, no orchestra, no special effects -- but it is absolutely right for it to be there. I don’t laugh at comedies, but I did Sunday night. I don’t cry at drama, but I did … OK, I didn’t, but I could have, if it wasn’t a flaming comedy.

“(title of show)” is -- to flog the sports analogy a little harder -- as though a fan was called down to play the $1 million (insert brand of your choice here) homerun lottery and ended up with a contract to play out the rest of the season.

The actors – Jeff Bowen, Hunter Bell, Susan Blackwell, Heidi Blickenstaff and Larry Pressgrove (who didn’t get acting credits, but should have considering he had more stage time than anyone) -- managed to show wide-eyed “what the fuck? We’re on Broadway? Really?” fun, and the ability to knock the show out of the park.

Director Michael Berresse pulls a neat trick by rarely getting in the way. He deals with what appears to be a very light hand. The actors don’t trips over themselves, but no one looks directed either. He’s a respectable ballplayer (last baseball reference, I promise). He does his job without fanfare.

“(title of show)” is a Broadway musical about people creating a musical and getting it to Broadway. That’s stated, AND YET the book is accused of being too much Broadway geek and too little warm blood of American heartland. Idiots, of course it is heavy on theater-insider shtick. Screw it. The thing is fun.

Personally, I didn’t get a lot of the references. There was a lot of name dropping … I recognized Patti LuPone’s name (In most contests, one out of 10 sucks), but screw it. The thing is fun.

It is childlike and OH SO QUEER, but screw it. The thing is fun.

If “fuck fucking fuckidee fuck fuck” and “blow jobs” and drag-queen jokes and prancing and “didja get it, didja huh?” humor offend you, I’ve probably already offend you … sooooo … screw you. The thing is fun.

I promised to leave the baseball references alone, but I’m still free to make a medical reference. Here it is:

“(title of show)” could quite simply save your life. If you see it and can’t see the fun in it, you need some glee therapy stat. If you wait, you run the risk of getting all pruny inside.

Walking through Greenwich Village

Yesterday was a rainout, so I stayed in and did some must-do work, but today the highs are expected in the mid-70s, the sun is out and the air is scrubbed. It’s time for a walkabout.

This morning I decided the thing to do was wander across town from the Lower East Side to Tribeca then up Greenwich Street, into the West Village until I hit Bleeker Street. Then I wanted to go East to the end of Bleeker.

I got to Bleeker and Morton before I got to sidetracked – not easy when wandering is all about sidetracks. On Bleeker, between Morton and Leroy (a short block), there is a butcher shop, a cheese shop, a fish market and a bakery.

I grabbed a loaf of sourdough from Amy’s Bakery, meandered to Sixth Avenue and sat across Father Demo Park from a bad opera singer filling the air with trills and scales. People are free to follow suggestions from the mad squirrels in their heads here, apparently. “Don’t mind the pain you cause your neighbors, lady. Trill on!”

It was ok, though, because visions of E.F. Schumacher danced in my head.

Small really is beautiful, even in a big town.

The fall of Astroland

I’m not a huge fan of Coney Island. For one thing, it takes 40 minutes to get there on the yellow line. For another, I don’t eat hot dogs, not even Nathan’s Famous Hotdogs (gifted though they are with capital letters). Finally, it gives me the same sad stomach I get at casinos when I watch empty lives pass in front of insatiable slot machines.

But, Sunday was the last day of the last season of Astroland, a traveling carnival without the traveling, and I wanted to be there when it fell. Besides, it was a beautiful day for a trip to the beach.

I’m glad I went.

Beer at Ruby’s on the boardwalk. Kids diving off the pier into the green Atlantic as an international contingent crabbed and fished around them. A show by Circus Amok (more on them in a later post). A little time shirtless on a bench, face to Sol like an old-age pensioner or Russian expat. The flume rides and bumper cars and carnie tricks and skeeball arcades and sticky kids jacked up on sno cone syrup.

All OK.

Even the decay of “Shoot the Geek” -- an arcade game where a 20 spot buys you 75 shots with a paintball gun at a living, breathing human being just trying to make a living, while a professional asshole taunts you over the public address system -- seemed charming.

I was nostalgic for something that holds no memories for me. Astroland is falling before the developers’ bulldozer, and I wondered what the masses were going to do next summer without the relatively inexpensive escape of bad food, puke-inducing swirly rides and the outside chance of winning that special someone with a giant, stuffed piece of crap you won with ball-tossing, watergun-squirting, sledge-swinging skills you secretly always knew you had.

Where are the sheep to go? What are the shearers to do?

These are bigger questions for distant days. Sunday, it was all about grabbing that last gasp and riding that last Bobsled.

New York is the high-culture Mecca of the Americas (arguably, but you’d lose). Coney Island was all about wrangling the madness of the masses. Next summer, they will be released upon the city. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Hanna leaves me a present

My first Saturday night in the city in a very long time was cut short by a raging tropical washout called Hanna. Some people have all the luck and I wasn’t feeling like those people, but when I woke up Sunday morning early, it was like a grateful Hanna had left me a couple hundred bucks on my nightstand for my efforts the night before. (“Thanks, sailor. You be sure to remember me the next time you’re in port.”)

The sun was out. The smell was beaten back. The air was bright and cool.

It was a wandering kind of morning in my church. I decided to attend services in the East Village because it was, frankly, the closest pew and I had the itch, bad. … Real bad. (“Thanks again, sailor.”)

I could go on here about the feeling you get when you are in a place as it wakes up. I could continue the tawdry sex analogy about snuggling with a lover before the pressing needs of the day drive a wedge between you. I could …

But I won’t.

Instead, I’ll give you this snapshot.

I was walking on East 4th Street into the sun. As I passed a woman fussing with an infant in a stroller, she looked up at me and said in a thick Germanic accent, “Such beautiful a day. So many people missing it.”

I raised my hand to the crystal sky. “Amen, Sister, amen.”

I’ll be passing the collection plate now. Give what the Lord compels you to give.

Getting my fix in Chinatown

Saturday was a quick, very wet, “get reacquainted” day with the city. I dropped my bags at the crib and set out to meet KC for a little food in Chinatown before being driven off the streets by Tropical Storm Hanna.

I’m pulled to Chinatown like shoppers are pulled to Harold Square or Saks or 14th Street and theater geeks are pulled to theater geek stuff.

No single group in New York lingers and mills about as well as the denizens of Chinatown. No single place in the city packs as many odd smells into an area, either. You can get a short travel fix (real travel is to Chinatown, what heroin is to methadone) just by getting off the subway on Canal and heading downtown, so when I’m jonesing, that’s where I go.

Chinatown is also my usual cheap-eats destination in the city. I’m sure there are other points of sustenance convergence and I have dedicated my life to finding them, but for a fallback, I can always count on Chinatown. It has everything from tourist favorites to hole-in-the wall dumpling shops to street carts. Prices can range widely and wildly, so check the menu on the front of the shop.

I’ll be coming back to Chinatown again and again in this blog, so let me just say in this post that the inventor of “Menu on Shop Window” needs to be canonized (if he/she is Catholic … or converted posthumously and then canonized if not) so I can wear his/her graven image around my neck.

I’ve heard it was an ancient Japanese thing where actual menu items and their prices were displayed in the window because the language was so damn complicated and the society so damn stratified that most of the populace was illiterate. I’m an egalitarian, but if ever there was a reason for oppressing the common man, it is “Menu on Shop Window.”

Of course, I was in Japan when I heard this creation myth, so it may be one of those spontaneous eruptions of genius. I don’t know. I do know I want to feel someone’s face on my heaving chest, and I’ll take what I can get. If you have a different story from a different culture, please let me know and I’ll let you in on a piece of the action when I start selling relics.

Confessions of a Jetblue pervert

I left Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Gustav … on time – despite his best efforts to keep me in the state – and intact, and was greeted in New York City by a weeping Tropical Storm Hanna. Wandering from one natural disaster into another seems to be a good way to start, or a start, anyway. I’ll leave the morality of nature to the philosophers.

Besides, this is a confession of my love and sick brand loyalty, not an intellectual screed.

JFK is my preferred gateway to the city for two reasons. First, it is Jetblue’s hub and I’ve got a thing for Jetblue – a not entirely wholesome thing when you are talking about wanting a long-term sexual relationship with an airline, but I’ve said it and I stand behind my statement. Jetblue offers good service, great prices and a casual attitude toward travel that causes my wanderer bowels to twitter a little.

“We’re here to get you there,” she whispers, hot and wet, in my ear. “Come, ride me.”

Yes, yes, oh sweet Jesus, yessssssss!

Sorry about that. Can I take a second to compose myself?

Better now.

My trip from New Orleans to NYC set me back $124, because I checked two bags. That was cheaper than a bus by almost $100 and I was in the air for less than three hours, compared to 36 hours on the road by bus. And, I got to watch “Groundhog Day” on TBS, in the air, on free headphones.

Besides, when we were all waiting to deplane, the pilot walked out of the flight deck, looked at us all standing there and said, “There must be something good on TV. You can all leave. Bye. I love you.”

I love you too, Jetblue. And I pine for the time I next feel the warm embrace of your wings.

The second reason JFK beats LaGuardia and Newark – the other choices – hands down is the ease of cheap access to the city. LaGuardia is a bitch to get to and from on public transportation (subway to bus to airport, hope to desperate prayer to despair). Newark is easier, but a little more costly because you have to play with the PATH train, so a trip to Port Authority will set you back $15 and you still have to catch the subway … unless you are staying in Time Square … so you are down another $2.

JFK is on the A train, so you are out $2 for the subway and $5 for the Air Train, which takes you from the Howard Beach stop to all the terminals.

These factors are, of course, not at issue if you have the $50 to grab a cab or want to spend the $25 for a private shuttle bus. I simply prefer to use that money for a day or two more wandering … on each end of the trip (you do have to fly out again, right? Right?).

Gustav sets rambling course

Gustav was making a beeline to Louisiana, but started wandering around Jamaica. Now, no one is certain when he will make contact with these American shores.

I like the fact that the weather has chosen to define me. It is an auspicious beginning to the trek.

And then, along comes Gustav

So, that's how it's gonna be, huh? Make nautical references in a blog post, get a hurricane in real life?

Well, alrighty then. Bring it, Sister Earth.

I'm flying out of Louis Armstrong (I see skies of blue, my ass) International Airport, New Orleans, La., on Sept. 6, but Gustav -- sitting on Haiti right now as a tropical storm, but expected to get back up to fighting weight and onto attack coordinates tomorrow -- may make my plans irrelevant.

It really is no big deal. So what if I spend another couple of days in Baton Rouge ... on a friend's couch, or in a shelter. That's my kind of travel.

I expect not to expect.

Business travelers get in a panic when snow in Great Falls screws up schedules in Tucson. I get another cardboard muffin.

Vacation travelers freak when their flight is overbooked (and they are not already on the plane). I just volunteer for the bump when the price gets right.

NOTE TO AIRLINE OFFICIALS: Nothing less than a free round trip somewhere and a room for the night is gonna make me raise my hand. Throw in a couple of meals, though, and dispense with the suspense. You got yourself an open seat.

It's not even that I never travel on a deadline. I do. But, I can't stop the snow in Great Falls and I sure can't stop the gods of capitalism. All I can do is expect not to expect.

And, I do that very well.

Waiting for high tide

This project is all about slowing down and taking time to see a world most people fly past, and yet I'm willing to confess it is taking way too long for the boat to Ellis Island to sail. I've been pressed against the railing for five years, and it is time to go. Now!

What the heck. Contradiction is the human condition and I'm only human -- all too human sometimes. It will all happen. I'll land on Sept. 6, and get the wandering started.

I hope you'll stick with me. I'll try to make it worth your while.

Some of what you can expect to see, if you have patience, is a Bob's eye view of New York City. I'll hit the streets with a notebook, a cell phone, an audio recorder and a camera and explore the people, events, hidden treasures, painfully displayed tourist sites, open spaces, dirty streets, culture (high and low) that a sea of humanity like New York presents.

Right now, let me introduce the concept of the flaneur or gentleman wanderer. I'm not a French scholar, nor have I got a great grasp of literary references, so I'll let wikipedia do the technical explaining. My dim understanding is that a flaneur is a dandy who takes his time, exploring his urban environment and allowing the winds of fortune to push him through his days.

What I hope to present here is a bastardized version of the gentleman wanderer -- because I am more bastard than gentleman, even if I have the wanderer down to an art. This site is an attempt to create a personally skewed vision of New York City with enough reality to keep you coming back day after day and enough practical information about the mundane to help you plan your own wander, should you have the opportunity and inclination.