Have a Beautiful Day

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Today I'd like to share with you what it's really like here. Not some sanitized, candy-coated, pretty, inspiring view of this city with false promises.

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Smile by Fire

On May 15, 2008, I wrote Mesmerized about my childhood fascination with fire. On April 29, 2009, in Little Stuff, I told of my play with bottle rockets as a young adult. In And You Can't Make Me, I recounted my short-lived defiance of my father while playing with matches.

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Overblown

My father used to find news coverage of snowfall in Connecticut to be comical. Coming from northern Maine, one of the most inhospitable winter environments imaginable, the warnings, preparations, and particularly the news coverage of snow seemed rather ridiculous in comparison.
On Saturday at Union Square, I had an encounter with a woman of similar mind - originally from Florida, she considered the concern to be overblown.

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First, Last, and Only Patient

Time flies, and nothing better illustrates that in New York City than the realization that it has been 10 years since 9/11. It seems much more recent.

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The Comfort Zone

Comfort Zone: Range of minimum and maximum exposure or risk within which an entity can operate without coming under undue stress.

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That's What You Pay For

A Shocking Story of Discarded Peanut Shells

I was told by a friend who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, about the throwing of trash into the air shaft outside her building. She told me that not only was there an accumulation of trash at the bottom, but also that many articles thrown out find their home on her window sills, air conditioner, etc.
On a recent visit to her apartment, I was able to look at and photograph the mess. She encouraged me to do so - documenting this would aid her in any action to remedy the situation.

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Rhino Rolling in Mud

Although well acquainted with Webster Hall, in 40 years of living in New York City, I had yet to step inside the place.
Webster Hall is one of New York City's most historically and culturally significant large nineteenth-century assembly halls. The building, at 125 East 11th Street, was designed by architect Charles Rentz, Jr. and constructed for Charles Goldstein in 1886-87, with an eastern Annex in 1892.

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Wonder Why

I grew up in a family with limited means. However, we triumphed through brute force and tenacity. My father, originally a woodcutter, once in Connecticut, worked a handful of blue collar jobs, often maintaining more than one job at a time. One of his brothers, in addition to his full-time job in construction, worked a second job - mowing grass on highways until 3 in the morning. Work defined a person's worth. Certainly this ethic has been a factor in my survival in New York City for the last 40 years.

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Mine

One of my earliest childhood experiences wass flying simple balsa model airplanes with my friend Jaime. Portuguese in ancestry, Jaime's English as a very young child was virtually non-existent. I only remember him using one word in English, and that was when we flew our planes in our yards together. As we chased them to recover them at the end of their flights, Jaime would run for his saying, "Mine." What better word to learn for a boy playing with his toys?

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A Story About Nothing

I have been told that in Switzerland, people will always wait for a walk light, even in a small rural town at an intersection with no visible traffic in any direction.

I have been told that in California, if a pedestrian steps into a street, cars will stop.

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Not For Tourists

At my business, we have a showroom which adjoins our offices. The separation between the two is an open doorway and a windowed wall, so nothing is hidden from our clientele. We typically have various prototypes, samples, or products for evaluation in the office area.

Regardless of how much inventory or diversity we have in our showroom, invariably people will fixate on some sample in our office, craning and straining to see the object of their desire from the doorway and being careful not to overstep the demarcation between showroom and office. Upon inquiry, we inform them that the product is not for sale. Then the interest really escalates. On occasion, we have had begging, with the customer making the case that this is, in fact, exactly what they need.

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'Tis a Sight to Behold

I have made another secret discovery.

You could easily find millions of New Yorkers who have no idea that this spectacular structure at 8 Spruce Street exists or that it is the tallest residential structure in the Western Hemisphere. I would be included in that group. However, as I approached the building, I began to recall the media attention surrounding this highly applauded residential tower, formerly the Beekman Tower and currently known as New York by Gehry, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry.

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Not Of Them

We live in a time when there is a perception that you can find everything on the Internet. Shopping, dating, socializing, employment, video, film, TV, music, travel arrangements, reviews, activity listings, books, and massive information. Certainly it is one of the most transforming technologies in humankind.

However, from a different perspective, it is only a tool to better the human condition and facilitate those things that humans love to do. Many still do not use the Internet at all, and others feel that it is a crippling, not enabling, technology. Some who hold these beliefs are quite young - not just old curmudgeons, as one might expect.

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Buy Magnesium

Once lit, magnesium produces light so bright that it will burn the retinas in your eyes. It burns so hot that if water is sprayed on it, rather than putting the fire out, the heat will break the water down and separate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which in turn feed the fire. This is the whitest light produced by burning a substance.

I think So Good Jewelry must be using magnesium to light their stores. They are BRIGHT.  When I say bright, I don't mean what you think may be bright. I mean magnesium so bright that it burns the retina and wakes the dead. For photographers, this place is a perfect tutorial for overexposure. Walking down 4th Street at night, I was astounded by the brightness. The place beamed me in.

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I Doubt It

The story behind 95 Bedford Street is befuddled. Not astounding, really, because no one wants to do primary research anymore. Actual pieces of information, misinformation, conjecture, and extrapolation are all blended together. Pieces are copied and recopied. Variants on all these mixings can be found everywhere. Good luck sorting them out.

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Read Between the Lines

We had the grounds to ourselves - there literally was not one other person in sight. The city block that fronted the school was entirely free of cars - always worrisome. In New York City, the appearance of numerous legal parking spots (or an entire streets worth) is a warning sign - this typically means you have misinterpreted the signs. I reread the street parking signs carefully several times before parking.

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The Envoy Motel

My first big family trip was to Washington, D.C. at the time of the Cherry Blossom Festival. This was also the first large city I was to explore and a major event that greatly influenced my desire to move to New York. Though only 12 years old, I had planned the trip, itinerary, and accommodations and even navigated the driving. I had mailed for brochures and maps and had searched our local library. I was so excited.

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Unforgiving, Ye Who Enter Here

I recall seeing physicist Michio Kaku speaking against nuclear power after the Three Mile Island incident. His central argument was that the risk was too great and that nuclear power was an UNFORGIVING technology. Whether or not someone agrees with his assessment, in a world where forgiveness is the hallmark of the loving person, unforgiving is a very powerful word.

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Mzuri Sings

Have you ever been assaulted by greatness or arrested by talent? In a city where greatness is everywhere you look, one must use superlatives sparingly, lest one robs them completely of any meaning. But everywhere you look, excellence abounds, often hidden behind unassuming exteriors. It may be a homeless person versed on every subject imaginable, or a man so eccentric-looking he literally stops traffic but has a Ph.D in music composition from Columbia University.

Perhaps you have spent summers on park benches with Dave, a gentle, kind and humble man who, you learn only on his deathbed, has two doctorates in pharmacology. We chat often with a physicist who regularly spends evenings on a park bench, as does park architect George Vellonakis.  I once found myself staring in awe at a man who not only played guitar well but learned to play a lap steel on his first encounter, only to learn that the man was Will Galison - a well-known musician who has a Wikipedia entry and has played with greats such as Barbra Streisand.

These encounters have inspired me to write series of stories with themes such as Abandon All Preconceived Notions Ye Who Enter Here, Only in New York, and Meetings With Remarkable Men. 

Last weekend, an unknown woman dropped by Washington Square Park very late on a quiet Sunday night. I met her eating a salad, sitting elegantly on the granite benches with her agent, Lisa Williams. I had seen her sing the previous Friday and was enthusiastic about speaking to her personally.

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Signs Were All Around Us

One of my best friends is a Brooklyn-born Jew turned Christian. How he got there is a long story, perhaps for another time and place. We have a long history, he knows my position, and although he does not proselytize, we do often discuss religion.

On one occasion, we spoke generally of whether or not I believe in God. I said that essentially, I am agnostic, and that I would like to believe, but I so wish for a sign, any sign at all. He responded that the signs are all around us and that I just don't see them. I am sure there are signs, but are they really from God or a product of one's mind?

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Segway, Anyone?

In 2001, geeks were abuzz, speculating on the secret invention of Dean Kamen, an award-winning design engineer with hundreds of patents and revolutionary products. The invention was codenamed IT or Ginger and had received the endorsement of Steve Jobs of Apple and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. No small achievement.

IT turned out to be as rumored: an electric, self-balancing human transporter with a complex, computer-controlled gyroscopic stabilization and control system. The remarkable device senses and responds to subtle body movement and can even be controlled hands-free. Kamen claimed that the Segway "will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy." Many predicted a billion-dollar industry overnight and nothing short of a world-changing technology.

Perhaps the only thing more arrogant than the claims of Dean Kamen about the future impact of the Segway was my email to him, explaining point by point why the Segway would fail in cities and certainly in New York. I received a return email confirmation stating that they would follow up and answer my objections, which they did not do.

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Keep Flying

I spent my childhood with a best friend exploring. This was our mission statement, and our summer quests knew no bounds. Only my mother's distant call for dinner would bring our daily expeditions to an end.

As young boys, we were never content to just observe. There was a desire to possess. We captured (and typically released) all manner of snakes, tadpoles, salamanders, frogs, wild birds, and butterflies.

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Don't Bet Against Many Goods

In the 1980s, I was introduced to a man who had worked various outdoor markets and planned to open a large magic/costume store in a prime Greenwich Village location. I found it a ludicrous concept, really, for such a limited clientele for the products in a very high-rent district of Manhattan. I was also not very impressed with this man overall. He was really quite crass, unsophisticated, and very oriented to making a buck. A huckster.

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