I guess I live in a different world (surprise!)

I was eating lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant today and all of the sudden "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" started to play. I stopped and looked around. Nothing. The rest of the diners were oblivious. Granted it wasn't CCR -- maybe "Run Through the Jungle" or "Fortunate Son" -- but still... "Where have all the young men gone? ... Where have all the soldiers gone?" Thirty people eating pho and I'm the only one to stop and say "Qua?".

Sigh.

This weekend I ...

got nagged, beaten and degraded for "art." How was your weekend?

Black Power and Panhandlers

Two young black men in PantherWear (complete with berets and buttons with pistols on them) were hustling money at the 42nd Street A/C station Saturday.

"Support Black Power", the one holding the cardboard box said.

I waved him off, as I always do when approached for money. "Don't feed the pigeons" is my motto. When I was about 10 feet away, the kid muttered, "Afraid of Black Power, huh."

First, I have hoot owl hearing. Second, subway stations carry sound better than a tight string between two coffee cans. Third, you want power? Be a man and say it to my face. Don't mutter it like some punk with a mouth full of Tic Tacs.

I stopped. I turned. I laughed. I said, "I don't think so. It's not black I'm afraid of. It's power ... in the hands of anyone."

I don't think that was covered in Black Power Boot Camp. The recruits just sort of stood there, blinking.

Aside from the fact that young militants have resorted to raising money in a cardboard box and mumbling like 7-year-olds in the back of a classroom, it comes on the heels of another incident.

I live in a poor neighborhood that also happens to be a black neighborhood. I know this because 99 percent of the people who live in my neighborhood are poor and black. I did the math. I never have any problem in my neighborhood (outside being called an Eskimo for shoveling dirt in the community garden in a t-shirt in February, with snow on the ground ... and that guy might have a point).

A couple of days ago, I was getting off the subway and this middle-age white guy comes up to me with a story about losing his money and trying to get back to Connecticut, but being stuck in a bad neighborhood. Could I help?

You already know my policy on feeding the pigeons. I waved him off and continued on my merry way.

The next morning, the guy was out there and he approached me with the same story -- Starting with "I've been here a couple of hours and ..." I stopped him.

"Bullshit."

"What?"

"Bullshit. You've been here since yesterday because you hit me up then too, telling me you were stuck in a bad neighborhood. This isn't a bad neighborhood. This is my fucking neighborhood and the only problem with it is you. Carry your ass. Walk if you have to. Connecticut is that way."

"I'm sorry."

"Get outta here." I wanted to add "You fuckin' fuck" but I thought it might be a tad too much.

Two days later I'm accused of being afraid of black power? Well, fuck you, you fuckin' fuck.

Super dupper Easter eye candy, but not ...

I think I saw the most beautiful woman in the world as I walked through the West Village --- someone named Gisele (no curly horns that I could see). I wouldn't have known who she was, but about half a block up the street there was this gay guy gazing toward her. As I walked by, he said, "Do you recognize them?"

"No. Do I have to?"

"That's Tom Brady and Gisele."

"Sorry," I said, not recognizing either name. "I avoid popular culture like a plague."

He looked very disappointed. Apparently, Tom Brady is quarterback for the Patriots and Gisele is the "Most Beautiful Woman in the World", according to Esquire. I know this because several blocks later the cover of Esquire was shining in a shop window. There was Gisele and beside her picture was the caption, "Most Beautiful Woman in the World."

To tell you the truth, when I saw her she just looked like a somewhat haggard -- but well-kempt -- mom with her husband trying to load a family into a minivan on Easter morning. I'm still gonna claim the sighting. I'm gonna trust a gay man to recognize a swarthy 6-foot 4-inch quarterback and a super model. Besides, what are the odds there'd be a married doppelganger?

T-shirt quote of the day

For reasons of medical privacy, I won't mention the source of today's T-shirt quote of the day, but it came from a walk-in clinic.

"They treat me like I'm poor. I live in Manhattan!"

Thanks and get well soon.

T-shirt quote of the day

This one spilled from the lips of a young woman sitting at a table in a very tiny Indian restaurant. As she spoke, she was holding hands with a much older gentleman, but I don't think that's necessary.

"I guess this is what comes from not having a father."

Well, I guess.

T-shirt quote of the day

A bag lady shouted at me as I rolled a cigarette at the Sara D. Roosevelt Park (Chrystie and Delancy):

"Lick those fingers and get busy!"

I want to thank her for the first instalment of what I hope is an ongoing feature.

Dogs and cats living together in my mind

I didn’t want to think about animals Sunday. I just didn’t.

I don’t usually want to think about animals at all – one reason I don’t own any – but I certainly didn’t want to think about them on Sunday. It wasn’t a religious prohibition. There is no “Thou shalt not ponder, nor shalt thou dwell upon puppies” in any of the world’s holy texts. It wasn’t a political protest, although I like the idea of “International Forget About Animals Day”. I also like “Ignore the Children Day” and “Scratch Your Butt and Give Out With a Glorious Sigh Day”, but I doubt I can find much support for any of them.

It wasn’t anything but Sunday. I just didn’t want the aggravation. That’s right. I said aggravation.

Consider me small-hearted if you like, but thinking about animals – specifically those animals commonly referred to as pets – never fails to annoy me. If I can avoid a direct reference or blatant visual, I manage not to really see pets – more specifically those pets commonly referred to as dogs – roaming the streets being pet-like as opposed to animal-like while their owners roam the streets and being pet-owner-like as opposed to human-like. But once I’ve thought about the first pet, a chain reaction happens and I’m thinking about and being annoyed by them all day long.

I didn’t’ want that on Sunday. I was having a good day. I woke up early, wrote for a couple of hours, took a nap, woke up at noon, had a little cheese and fruit, took another nap and was ready to walk around the city I love for the rest of the afternoon and enjoy the pre-spring temperatures that had pushed into the mid-50s.

I made it as far as Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, almost four short blocks from the Delancy Street subway station, before I was pet mugged. I don’t know if it was the fact that I have a kind face (I doubt that), or if the woman unlocking the door to her apartment building was just mean-spirited. It doesn’t really matter. There I was, strolling down the street, pets the farthest thing from my mind, when she made eye contact and smiled.

I should have known something bad was going to happen. Nobody makes eye contact and smiles when they are entering an apartment building. That’s a universal moment of vulnerability in the city. Your concentration is split, you have a locked door in front of you and there’s no place to run. And yet this woman made eye contact with a stranger walking toward her on the sidewalk and smiled.

I met her eye and she said, “Say, do you want a cat?”

“Oh, good Lord, no!” I said it with a force that startled both of us. “I can’t believe you asked me that.”

“I’ve got this extra cat …”

“Stop it!” Then, and this is the truth and shows just how disturbed I was by the exchange, I clapped my hands over my ears and said, “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you,” as I practically sprinted down the street away from her.

But it was too late. I had heard her. I had been tainted. I was doomed to pet-think for the rest of the day. Every pile of dog shit on the sidewalk glowed. Every dribble of dog piss shimmered. Every yap from a little yippy dog stabbed into my eardrum. Every corner pet store shoved its most ridiculous items into the display windows and surrounded them with neon arrows that pointed and signs that flashed, “Bob, you poor bastard, look at this!”

“Look! St. Patty’s Day leprechaun outfits. Look! Back massagers for poodles. Look! Puppy strollers. Look! Spiked cat harnesses.”

But that wasn’t the end of it. Memories of every pile of shit, puddle of piss, yap of yip and stupid costume I had ever experienced flowed over me. Months of pet-related distress buzzed in my brain.

My mind literally reeled. My balance was affected. I tried to rein it in, but I was in the weeds, wobbly, trying to make sense of it all.

I was wearing a light sweater because there was a cool breeze and I’m fur deprived. Dogs were passing me wearing their God-given fur AND human-given coats. And it wasn’t one or two of them either. At several points in my trek I was literally swarmed by animals wearing clothes. Every day in this city people are homeless and hungry and yet border collies are wearing leather coats, poodles are getting back massages and English bulldogs are riding around in strollers.

Something really bad is happening, and I’m apparently the only one who can see it.

Here’s what I think has happened. Dogs have evolved a way to secrete hormones that eat away at the human frontal lobe, thereby domesticating us.

I present the following evidence:

I was standing at a corner, waiting for traffic to ebb when a woman in a puffy coat walked by with a pug in a light blue slicker on a leash. The dog trotted over to me, sniffed my foot and attempted to raise its hind leg on my shoe. I didn’t kick the dog, per se, but there was a vigorous foot-assisted relocation.

The woman glared. “How dare you?”

How dare I? How dare I? I called her glare and raised her an angry retort. “Lady, your dog just tried to piss on my foot.”

She huffed off, and I swear the pug looked back at me and winked.

Then, a couple of blocks away, outside the dog walk in Tompkins Square Park, a man had his English bulldog – a massive, meaty bulldog – stuffed into a stroller. That was disturbing enough, but the spectacle had drawn a crowd, and not the lynch mob I wanted to form. This crowd stood beaming at this disgusting public display of human debauchery, the likes of which have not been seen since the orgies near the end of the Roman Empire.

But that wasn’t the bad part. That didn’t signal the Visigoths at the gate. Another man bent over, patted the slab of meat’s ham-size head and said (I shit you not), “Isn’t he sooooo cute? Look, a big strand of drool is about to fall.” The rest of the crowd “ooooh’d” and beamed.

And the bulldog sat, a flaccid, placid emperor before his bootlicking senate.

I fled. I could smell my own fear. Out of the park, across Avenue A and east on 9th Street I ran, the kind of panic one gets in a nightmare beating in my chest. Home. Home. I had to get home. I found I was carrying the knowledge of mankind’s collapse in my head. My spine had become a sharpen pike that the weight of this awareness had driven into my heart.

Ahead, man was digging through a trashcan. As I got closer, he emerged from the waste with a magazine in his hand. I noticed he was oddly well dressed for a bum. He saw me and started to wave the magazine at me. Then he started to run at me.

Then he started shouting. “Over there! Look out! To your left! To you left!”

A quick glance to my left showed me there was nothing there but a couple of parked cars on 9th Street. I faced the charging well-dressed, magazine-wielding bum, and started shifting my backpack off my shoulders so I’d have greater freedom of movement in the impending fight.

“Step to your left!” he shouted and tore a page from the magazine. “My dog … my dog …”

And there it was; a red, wiry-haired dog of unclear pedigree, sitting serenely with its leash unattended and a trail of dog shit snaking down the sidewalk behind it. The man, for whom I suddenly felt more pity than if he had been a bum, started doing a squatty hop and plucked the shit up with the paper one piece at a time like he was gathering a bouquet of wildflowers.

I outwardly thanked him for his civic mindedness, but inwardly I cursed his self-imposed slavery.

Something snapped. The buildings buckled and oozed the blood of civilization. In every window I saw the taunting face of a “pet.” On the street, the tethered beasts spoke words of revolution and the people yipped like yorkies.

A woman on Second Avenue carried a Boston terrier in a sling across her chest. It nuzzled her breast. Her face was a pastel wash of bliss.

I wept.

I wept because I could not cry out. “Brothers and Sisters, please! Do not go down like this!”

I could not cry out because a Rottweiler was eyeing my crotch and in its throaty growl I heard “Just give me cause, human.”

I could not cry out because a spindly woman with liver-spot talons and orange hair had five teacup terriers – so many land piranha – waiting for the scent of my blood.

So, I wept. And I ran, back to the comforting embrace of savage subway rats.

At Houston Street, outside the Whole Foods and the Second Avenue F station, I passed a seeing-eye dog humming, “We shall overcome.”

When I can make myself leave my room, I am going to hunt down the woman trying to give away cats on Ludlow Street. When I find her, and I swear by all I hold holy I will find her, I am going to give her a right good scolding.

On second thought, maybe I won’t. It occurs to me I could be playing right into their hands. She may be in cahoots, infected … one of the beaming pet-tender pods. I’ll bet she is. After all, she did smile in a moment of universal vulnerability.

I just wanted a couple of t-shirts

Spring is on the way and with it, almost whispered in the sharp breezes, is the call to restock my spring wardrobe. This, of course, means I need more t-shirts – colored t-shirts: no pockets, no slogans, no brands, no designs. Just t-shirts – plain and simple.

I have five or six plain tees already (and a couple of branded t-shirts that fit and don’t offend too much), which would carry me through an average week between laundry visits, but I – apparently -- am a slave to consumerism. At a gut level, a dark level where control fails, I need to freshen my look for spring.

To fulfill this primal urge, I followed a giant red posterboard

!!!!!!
Up to
50% Off
!!!!!!

starburst into an O.M.G. store on Broadway just north of Canal Street.

Oh. My. God. … That’s the name of the store.

O.M.G.

Oh, my God?

It is Canal discount retail in a Soho boutique retail space. High ceilings, bright lights, thumping music, a dozen or so cheery young retail clerks scurrying about, hip-hop hoodies, baseball caps, $100 shoes, jeans, jeans and more jeans … and t-shirts – most with nesting skulls or white-on-black flames or 8-balls or Obama or the rest of this year’s cool symbols of urban American youth.

Granted, I’m cool. Granted, I’m urban now. Granted, I’m American. But … I can’t, with any real conviction, lay claim to youth anymore. It’s the silver in the beard, I think. Or maybe the fact that chronologically I am standing on the sidewalk in front of the dreary Manoir de Middle Age, a “For Rent” yard sign in my hand.

As I walked past the jeans, jeans and more jeans toward a stack of t-shirts that looked to be your plain, general purpose Fruit of the Loom Heavy tees near the cash register, a cheery young retail clerk woman swooped in on me … at my six, out of the sun. I didn’t even hear her coming until she buzzed my ear.

“Help you?” she asked in a cute, cheery Hispanic-swept Brooklyn accent. She was about 5-foot-6 and curvy in a blood-churning way.

“Just looking, thanks.”

I always say that, even when I’m on a genetically induced, seasonally specific wardrobe mission. “Just looking, thanks.” I wasn’t just looking. I was a driven man. I was a haunted, hunted man. I was a man consumed by a need for tees.

“Just looking, thanks.”

“Kay,” she said. “Could you look here for a minute then?” She pointed to a wall, 20-foot high and loaded with Levis 505 jeans. “I really need to stretch my back out and I can’t unless I’m talking to you. Rules …” She rolled her eyes.

“Anything to help,” I said. I’m just that kind of pro-labor fellow.

I pulled a pair of jeans out of the stack and checked the price. $48. She started stretching. It was actually closer to writhing, thrusting and jutting than stretching, but it wasn’t my place to say that. Add a pole and a mirror ball and a platform and I would have been holding a $10 beer and a fist full of dollar bills instead of a $48 pair of jeans. I put the jeans back, making sure the stack was squared off.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said with a smile.

“Yes I do,” I said. “O.C.D. Attention to detail.”

In response, she bent and touched the floor with the palms of her hands … with a smile.

O.M.G.

“Just looking, thanks.”

I couldn’t see Manoir de Middle Age anywhere anymore. It was gone in a flex and a flash of youthful sun, but a line about washed-up, middle-age salesman Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” flashed through my head. “Attention must be paid.”

And attention was paid … to the gentle curve of my cheery, stretchy stripper clerk’s tawny back at that point in reality and fantasy where shirt and jeans fail to meet.

“So, finally attention must be paid to such a person.” And who am I to argue with a classic of American theater?

Out of the thumping din of jeans, jeans and more jeans – at my six, out of the sun – another cheery Hispanic-swept Brooklyn accent pushed into my head.

“36/32,” it said, a runaway non sequitur careening into and derailing a warm train of thought. Again. “36/32.”

“Huh?”

“36/32.”

I turned to face the voice. It belonged to a cheery, short, round clerk with slivers of silver stabbed through various parts of her face. She was holding a pair of khakis, which she thrust in my face.

“Excuse me?”

“36/32. I got you 36/32.”

For the record, I wear a 32/32 … so I said, in what (upon reflection) was an amazingly girly voice, “Do I look like a 36?” I don’t know where the voice came from and I hope it never returns, but there it was. “Do I look like a 36?”

My cheery, stretchy, stripper clerk straightened up and said with what (upon reflection) was a sly smile, “Not even close.”

“Aren’t you him?” the cheery little round clerk asked.

“I’m sorry. I don’t. … What?” I asked.

Her bulb grew dim. I watched it on her face.

“He ain’t a 36, Kimee.”

“You’re looking for a rounder guy,” I added, hopefully helpfully.

Kimee threw the khakis on the rack, right next to my precious tees -- $4.25 each. “36/32,” she said.

“T-shirts,” I said to my stretchy clerk with her back like summer sun. I was very confused, grasping for something to keep me from falling down the thumping, shopping, stretching, gay-voiced 36/32 rabbit hole of hip-hop hoodies, tawny backs, high-dollar sneakers, sly smiles, jeans, jeans and more jeans.

“T-shirts. That’s what I’m looking for.” She nodded, smiled again and walked across the store to another customer. T-shirts don’t justify floorshows at O.M.G.

I was left with poor, lost Kimee.

She stood next to me as I searched for a large gray t-shirt from the stack (returning each failed attempt to the stack, squared off and tidy) and kept muttering “36/32” into thumping air. Suddenly – at my six, out of the sun – a male voice rang out from across the store. “Are those my pants?”

I whipped around hoping to see a tubby doppelganger. Instead I saw a man about my height, but that’s where the comparison ended. It was wishful thinking on the 36-inch waist for one thing. He had a full head of hair for another. And, finally, he was … old.

I threw Kimee a glance and hissed in her ear, “You thought I was him? He’s old enough to be my father. You are so off my Christmas card list.”

She threw me a blank stare. Actually, she didn’t throw it. It just sort of dribbled out of her eyes. “36/32,” she said, then went to help her old man with a pleats v. no pleats conundrum. I was left to my t-search.

That’s when I noticed another old guy – thin, balding, looking through a stack of t-shirts – in the full-length mirror to my right. And Manoir de Middle Age arose out of the mist of my mind.

O.M.G.

Oh, the warm winds blow

The other night, the weather was criminally pleasant. Nice enough for me to park myself at a sidewalk cafe off Tompkins Square for a little catch-up people watching. I don't like winter. The people are in too bundled up and in too much of a hurry for good recreational observation. The first thaw came the other night, and with it, people.

One of those people was dressed head-to-toe in black. Black wide-brim hat. Black suit coat. Black Pants. Black pleated skirt. (Yup.) Black chukka boots with toes like icepicks. The sun was well down, but his eyes were covered by black wrap-around sunglasses. Even his hands and the lines in his face not covered by a black beard were etched black. He staggered in front of me, trying to eat a slice of pizza and maintain forward movement at the same time. He was drunk. He failed.

Somewhere in the course of this aborted attempt at walking, he managed to spot me. He stopped. His eyes tried to focus. He advanced on me. There was a nasty gash on his left cheek. The blood was dried black, but it hadn't had time to completely scab up yet.

He was close enough that I could smell dead alcohol and old skin in the breeze and he said something in a blurred whisper that was so soft, I couldn't make it out.

"What?"

"You look like a writer. You a writer?"

"That's what some people call it." He was good, I'll admit. Top notch observation skills. I hadn't taken my notebook out. My pen was concealed and my computer holstered. And he still called me out. I wouldn't have pegged him.

"I could tell," he said. "I'm a writer too."

"Oh, that's great," I said. Just great, I thought. Me and you, brother. Me and you. Kindred spirits. It hurt a little.

Just as I braced for the "you got any spare change?" line that wino writers like to close with, a small man with a large voice shouted from the corner. "Al! You fuck! You look like a Goddamn ninja. Where you been?"

My brother of the ink turned away from me. Old friend trumps new comrade, I suppose. "I been busy," he said as the two men split the distance between them and collided in a free-form hug.

I wasn't sad to see him go. I'd been spared the need to tell him to fuck off about the money.

But part of me figured I owed it to him to write about our little moment.

The oddest thing happened on the way to ...

I was wandering past Saks (on 5th Avenue, oddly enough) two days ago when I found myself inexplicably stepping inside. I don't know what came over me, but it may have had something to do with the head blow described in my previous post. The old Bob would only have gone into Saks if his bladder was full to bursting or his bowels needed immediate emptying in the "Men's Lounge", but this strange new Bob ... apparently there has been a personality shift because there I was. ... Ground floor of Commerce Central, gateway to the land of the lost, Red Hell.

My eyes watered.

Perfumes. Mutants. The rubble of Babble.

Obsession. Envy. Compulsion. Euphoria. Opium. Romance. Ice. Heat. Radiance. Passion. Escape. Poison. Stalked youth. Plastic faces. Dead animals. Matrons wearing granddaughter clothes. The sticky ick of humanity adrift without a compass. Eternity. Seriously enthralling. Neato!

The stigmata on my unicorn nubbin oozed as I road the escalator up six flights to the men's department. I know because I watched the new Bob in the polished brass mirror wall, standing between a man in a cashmere overcoat below me and two 60+ women in matching Juicy Couture sweat suits above me. I don't know what the man's deal was. But I think the women were churning butter in their sweats.

But I didn't care. Euphoria. I was so looking forward to looking at suits, and shirts, and shiny black loafers.

There was a sale! I was gleeful ... full of glee (or something). I picked up a shirt that was 70 percent off -- Super sales price? $275. ...

People are idiots. But, I want to take this chance to thank Saks for setting me straight. I emptied my bowels -- it was a forced evacuation -- in the "Men's Lounge" and made a break for the street (5th Avenue, as it happens.).

Escape. Lovely. Rapture.

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

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.

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.

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.”