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.