The Wandering Stranger of Schermerhorn Street

He is a wandering stranger and here he is (once again) on Schermerhorn Street. If you want to get a sense of the NYC economy, visit Schermerhorn Street in downtown Brooklyn. The food stamp offices, the welfare offices, the unemployment offices, they all have their lines, their ennui, and their quiet desperation that spills onto the streets everyday. Until recently, a homeless shelter was there also, built under the parking garage on Bond Street. I have been passing through that neighborhood on foot for several years on my way to work in the Heights. Since last spring, I noticed a number of homeless folks camped outside along the side of the garage on Schermerhorn Street, sleeping on broken office furniture, with sleeping bags, rolling suitcases, some who looked as though they had lived on the streets for awhile, others who seemed new to that existence. I read recently that the homeless shelter, I think this one, had been closed. Suddenly, the homeless folks were once again gone.

This week however, the wandering stranger was back. I have seen him camped out, surrounded by a mass of ripped black trashbags with his possessions, sitting on the sidewalk, gazing off into space, or into mysterious universes that most of us will never see. Unlike even the most scruffy of the usual homeless crew on Schermerhorn Street, the wandering stranger inhabits another place altogether. He is incredibly unkempt and filthy. His hair black, matted, skin filthy through ripped clothes. I have seen him over and over again for the past several years. He must travel around the borough, or the city, perhaps the planet. Eventually making his way back to Schermerhorn Street, never bathing or changing his torn clothes. Carrying the same gear, only more tattered than the last time, looking like he is sitting in a pile of trash but actually surrounded by what seem to be his earthly possessions.

He is like a mountain man, surviving, he finds a spot. Once he returns, he will seem rooted to the same spot until he disappears and, hopefully for him, returns again. This time I wondered, is he was waiting for the homeless shelter to reopen ? Each time, in the early morning or evenings, he sits, barely moving, his back to the canyon of new coops and luxury rentals that have popped up on the other side of the street since his last visit, a season or two ago. He doesn't beg and avoids the glances of passersby, as we avoid him. As I passed yesterday, a man was berating the wandering stranger, how he is a disgrace, what is wrong with him, etc. He took no notice. Perhaps he is mentally ill, or perhaps he inhabits a place beyond the material, beyond the need for home or clean, comfortable clothes. Does he feel free, like Jeremiah Johnson, like a mountain man? Existentially free? Pitying us poor fools with our office-cubicle prisons or welfare humiliations? It is certainly beyond my ability to tell. But meanwhile he will remain rooted to his spot, with his trash and his visions, until it is time for him to move on again.

--Brooklyn Beat

"A Cup of Tea and a Think"

Connecticut Muffins, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Ozzies, Vox Pop, the Tea Lounge. They all pass as places where you can get a cup of something caffeine, and a little nibble or nosh while you read the paper or plug in your notebook. And of course a place to see and be seen. But none seem to compare to the sheer earthy goodness portrayed in this web site by Brit Russell Davies, that positively glorifies the tea and sandwich-chip shop that seem to say "This is England" ...http://russelldavies.typepad.com/ateaandathink/

Maybe it is because I have been begun exercising again with a vengence and turning away from bread and desserts, but the charming and unpretentious ambience of these little restaurants and tea shops with their greasy foods, hearty teas, and humble comestibles seem to say "Here, you can relax and be yourself".... The above shop is on Marylebone Lane.

--Brooklyn Beat

Coda: 9/11 -

Just a note: Interesting, how 9/11, by not becoming a public day of observance for the general public, has become a more private memorial -rememberance for the families of those who died. Which is of course reasonable since they have suffered the greatest losses. However, for the rest of us, I hope that we can see the Towers of Light this evening, weather permitting, since it is a certain kind of shared experience as 9/11 was a shared experience/ reaction. Strange how, for millions of us who were touched by the events of 9/11, most of us do not really observe it formally. We go to work, to school. Am I wrong or does even the Mayor seem to be pressing the idea of "Getting Beyond It"... But it seems to have so much personal meaning for most of us; even if it was only experienced through the media. Headlines around the world still reference it. And with due respect to all who observe all other holidays and memorial days, 9/11, although not an official holiday, seems to have more deeply felt personal meaning than say, Labor day, Columbus day, Veteran's Day, even Independence Day... perhaps the fact that it is not a public, official holiday gives it greater urgency or cogency....perhaps there is something about 9/11 that embodies all of these other holidays -- freedom, service, sacrifice, and the values and costs of liberty.

Even the Towers of Light suggest the Enlightenment..

en·light·en·ment Pronunciation: in-'lI-t&n-m&nt, en-Function: noun1 : the act or means of enlightening : the state of being enlightened : a philosophic movement of the 18th century marked by a rejection of traditional social, religious, and political ideas and an emphasis on rationalism


--Brooklyn Beat
9/11/07

NEVER FORGET: Metaphors for Living: 9/11

8 years later. We never forget but the memory, and the pain, becomes slightly faded. Perhaps that is the blessing of the human condition. A colleague said the express bus that she takes through lower Manhattan was delayed today due to the 9/11 memorial. Our daughter, who attends high school in the Wall Street area was told to expect crowds on her way to school today. On 9/11, our older daughter, now a college senior, was in middle school on the West Side of Manhattan in sight of the World Trade Center. Time moves on. The NY Times published a story today about how NYC, which at first seemed irreparably damaged by the events of 9/11, in terms of NYFD casualties, changes in security, tourist fears, etc., has moved on and achieved a new normalcy of sorts. Is it better to remember or forget? I first posted this remembrance in 2007:

We had dropped our son, 11 years, and our daughters, who had just entered the first grade, at PS 321. Our older daughter had already left for her middle school in Chelsea, The Clinton School for Artists and Writers. My wife was driving as we headed down past the Gowanus; I was getting out near my office on Court Street; she was driving a little further to her school where she teaches. Somewhere, through the window, I heard two men on the street talking and one said something about a fire at the World Trade Center. As we drove a little further, that was when we first saw it, that iconographic image of a huge plume of smoke trailing out of the largest buildings in the world.We assumed, like everyone, that it was a fire, then heard on the radio that a jet plane had crashed into the Towers. We looked at each other dumbfounded. I remember in 1993, when the attempt had been made to bomb the WTC, I walked up to the Promenade in late afternoon, expecting to see some damage, smoke or shattered ruins attesting to a bombing attempt but in the cold winter day there had been nothing. Many of us assumed that it was a building that was too mighty, perhaps almost biblical in its proportions, simply too strong to be easily toppled.But here, with the first news, whatever had happened, here was a seriously damaged building. I thought about the plane that had slammed into the Empire State Building decades before, but the building had been virtually unfazed. How would they even begin to deal with what appeared to be an huge fire and the resulting damage? We drove a little further and couldn't see the WTC because of some trees but we heard another unmistakable boom. The radio told us that the second plane had hit the other tower. My wife said it first - it had to be intentional. Two planes could not accidentally smash into the World Trade Center within minutes of each other.My wife wisely said "maybe we should get the kids and go home" but I was operating within a sphere of unreality, as though this day, which would ultimately punch a gaping whole in the continuum of our lives, and which would forever demark a before and after in everyone's personal histories, was still just another day with a really insane blip in the news cycle. Plus, since it was the opening the school year, my wife's school was counting on her being there, and I had a lot going on at the office, it seemed as though the kids would be safe and OK at school. I was concerned about my older daughter, but her school was in Chelsea, a few miles north of the Trade Center. I got off on Clinton and Remsen and walked to my office. By the time I got there, it was already manifestly clear that this was the furthest thing imaginable from an ordinary day. I spoke to my wife who had arrived at her school. Shortly afterward, we spoke again, as the office building I work in was being evacuated and my wife was leaving school. I seem to remember a day where we were evacuating the building; there was some some pandemonium on the stairs, but a woman who had serious health problems and had difficulty walking, was hobbling downward slowly. Some people pushed and squeezed by. A couple of colleagues and I made our way down with her, making sure she arrived safely. How many times had this simple act of courtesy, nothing really to think about even, basic decency, been enacted in the smokey stairs of the WTC that day and in how many cases did a simple act of human kindness and decency prove fatal? Life is filled with mystery and wonder. Out on the street, people were already wearing masks, women on Court Street were in sneakers or out of their shoes, hurring through the streets, while the plume of smoke began to fill the air, traveling the short distance over the river. When my wife and I connected again in downtown Brooklyn, we learned that subways weren't operating. So we walked toward the Brooklyn Bridge where I planned to walk over to Manhattan to fetch my older daughter. Cell phones weren't working; I wasn't able to reach either school. Somehow I was able to exchange a text with my daughter to tell her I would get her as soon as I could. But when I got to the bridge, the NYPD were already telling people you could not cross to Manhattan. The masses of people trying to escape lower Manhattan were streaming over the bridge. We decided my daughter would be safe at school so we would pick up our younger kids and get them and my wife home, at which time I would figure out a way to cross back into Manhattan.We drove back to the Slope. I was still trying to reach my daughter's school by phone, but when I could find an available payphone, the school phone was busy. At other payphones on Seventh Avenue, long lines had already begun to form. I reached my mom, who is a master on "the horn" and asked her to keep trying to call the Clinton School from her home phone to find out where my daughter was waiting and let them know I would get there as soon as I could. I left my mom, who is a demon dialer in her own right, trying to reach the school and we went to 321.A lot of parents had already begun to appear at the office to fetch their kids. A couple of parents, desperate to be helpful, were making a list of kids and were about to release them to the parents who were there for them. I had a funny feeling about parents taking over what was the school's responsibility and sure enough, Liz Phillips appeared and said "What's going on?" She thanked the parents but announced firmly that no children would be released unless she or the 321 office staff confirmed who was there to fetch whom, which was very reassuring. Don't know why I remembered that anecdote.We got my son and younger daughters and brought them home to the relative calm of Flatbush. Nevertheless, the air was filled with the constant din of fire truck sirens and ambulance sirens. It was a sound I will never forget. The sound of calamity that I hope to never hear again in my lifetime. And as those of us with an affinity for remembering will recall, the alarum lasted for at least 24 hours or more, non stop. By the time we arrived home, my mother called to inform us that she had reached the school and my daughter had been picked up by a friends' mom and was at her home in Chelsea. I wasn't happy that I still did not know exactly where my daughter was but I trusted that she would be safe until we received further word.We turned on the news and began to watch the horrific iconography of the day unfold, the building, the smoke, the people leaping out of the buildings, the deaths, the huge dust cloud, the tragedy of the firemen and other rescuers lost. Finally, with tears of relief, we located my daughter when she called. Many of our neighbors gathered outside to talk and console. Around 3:00 PM I learned that the Q train was operating, so I decided to commence the operation to retrieve my daughter. Never in my long life as a New Yorker did taking the subway seem like such an odyssey, a journey into an unknown realm. I left my wife and kids with our neighbors and their kids on a blanket on the grass in front of our home; they were getting the kids McDonald's as a stab at normalcy.On the Q, when we exited the tunnel at Dekalb Avenue and started climbing the bridge, everyone in the subway car stood up as we could see the inferno, the absolute roaring fire maelstrom of the burning World Trade Center in the distance. I remember thinking "Should I take a camera?" and I didn't, feeling that my primary mission was retrieving my daughter. But personally, the image of the dense black smoke and intense burn of the Trade Center is forever etched in my mind's eye. It would not be too farfetched to say that there was something positively volcanic about the sight of the burning building in the distance, as though a fault had erupted and some intense steam and fire and brimstone from the bowels of the earth had been channelled to the surface.I debarked at Union Square and began to make my way north and west. My daughter was at a classmate's apartment on 28th and 7th avenue. When I arrived there were about a dozen girls hanging out, who this mom had wonderfully rescued from the boredom of waiting to be picked up at school. While there, I spoke to my wife and then my mother back in Brooklyn by phone. I knew the address was familiar. My mom has a cousin who lives in the same building. We managed to find her and check on her before my daughter and I embarked on the trek home.We went to one train station but it was closed. We walked further east but Union Square again had no trains running. The transit workers suggested we try West 4th Street. As we walked along the streets, the sky was filled with the huge plume of smoke. My ears rang with the desperate clamour of the rescue vehicles that would resound, non stop for what seemed like several days. There was virtually no traffic in the street except the occasional emergency vehicle.As we crossed Sixth Avenue, our faces were pelted with a fine mist of grit and dust blowing from the southern tip of Manhattan. I still don't want to think what was in that fine powder that we brushed from our faces and clothes. Miraculously, the F was running and we took it into Brooklyn to my old stop at 15th Street and Prospect Park West. A large crowd waited for the bus at Bartel Pritchard Square (or as we called it in days of the ancien regime, "The Circle"). A man saw me with my young daughter. I told him my daughter's story of the day and he kindly said his wife was picking him up, did we want a ride. We were so grateful that he drove us all the way home where we were greeted with an amazing amount of joy. After 9/11, at least for awhile the only pleasures were the simple pleasures. Coda: later that day, the first of the WTC debris incredibly blew across and made its way onto our lawn. My wife and I knew that nothing would be the same again, but why should it. Disaster, war, rumors of war, all the memory fragments of the day would fit together, eventually becoming just another metaphor for living.
Speak, memory.
--Brooklyn Beat 9/11/07
Posted by Brooklyn Beat

Fear and Loathing on Court Street

A little before 1 PM I ran out of my office on Court Street to grab coffee and food. Court Street from Joralemon to Montague was closed off. A police officer said that a suspicious package was found on the subway. I went into Court Order, a nice take out food place with great soups and salads, when the NYPD came and stretched a yellow "Police Line - Do Not Cross" tape from one of the doors of the shop to opposite side of Court Street. I left the shop without getting anything as the police officers began moving people further and further west on Court Street. I have heard of a lot of "bomb scares" before, but this was the first time that I remember actually feeling concern based on the scale of the NYPD operation, and the precautions being taken. As I walked down Court Street, I saw a woman walking hand-in-hand with her little girl and I realized the awful potential posed by modern times, how we in the US have, in so many instances, been shielded from it, but how awful, violent and frightening life in reality is for so many people around the world, in the Middle Eastern world in particular, the continual carnage in Iraq specifically. I thought about the velocity of sharpnel, nails and glass, and the fragility of human flesh, particularly that of a child.

When we were kids, back in the 60s, we worried about Wars to End All Wars. We learned about duck and cover. But the enormity of that type of conflict seemed so all consuming that it appeared you couldn't really worry about it. While that threat of "mutually assured destruction" was also a form of mutual terror, still, "Toe-to-toe nucular combat with the Russkies" (to quote Slim Pickens) had only one logical outcome. Today, the dangers seem closer, more intimate.

I saw a clip of the forthcoming HBO special on "Alive Day" with wounded young military veterans, and thought about the continuing civilian carnage reports from Iraq, and the latest promise of a "special gift" to be given on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, while possibly more psych warfare, also suggests how real the fears and how intimate the dangers this lower-tech threat can bring.

We just received word that the suspicious package was nothing to worry about. No buildings were evacuated. The trains are again running. There is nothing to worry about...
--Brooklyn Beat

Summer Days Summer Nights Are Gone

"Summer days, summer nights are gone..
I know a place where there's something going on"
--"Summer Days" by Bob Dylan from LOVE AND THEFT

We made our annual pre-first day of school pilgrimage to Staples to start loading up on school supplies and generally to begin our reality testing as to the fact that those lazy crazy hazy days of summer are dwindling down to a precious few..

Our younger kids got their school lists in June and this weekend we started to gather folders, notebooks, pens, graph paper, etc. I think we do this every year -- we like everyone else apparently, try to go the week before school begins to start to get some supplies (I think it helps the kids deal with some of their back-to-school anxiety), but so does eveyone else and the store was quite jammed. I always think of the Staples TV commercial that my late Dad adored, and I guess I do too, which is the middle aged guy whooping it up, swinging around the aisles with a shopping cart, while the holiday tune "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" plays in the background. He is followed by his drooping kids, despairing at the return of Fall and homework..

Since we are an edu-ma-cation centered home, my wife also begins to enter the mourning mode in mid August. She bought a copy of "How to Get Along at Work with People You Hate" and a magazine on ideas for starting home businesses..She is a special education art teacher who works with special needs kids (primarily autistic and emotionally disabled).. She loves the kids, but like anyone who is employed in an organization, the adults often leave a lot to be desired..

Anyway, we were remembering a fantastic summer a few years back. We had rented a place in Bearsville NY, a lovely little home with the Esopus running through the backyard. The kids were younger, 4 years through 11 years I guess. I work year round so we spent a few weeks up there and then went up every other weekend that we could. The kids had a great time. We were relaxing but in the process of selling our first home in Clinton Hill and buying our current place in Flatbush. But in between the phone calls, faxes and Fed Exes, we enjoyed our summer in the country. We went to a concert at the old Woodstock site near Monticello. We saw great outdoor theatre--- "Rip van Winkle" featuring giant puppets. My son and I searched the backroads nearby until we found Big Pink, where Bob Dylan and the Band recorded the legendary Basement Tapes in 1967. As a matter of fact, less than mile away, on Stoll Road, Bob Dylan had had his mythic motorpsycho accident in 1966. Our next door neighbors who included a volunteer fireman were wonderful and we went with them to the 4th of July parade in town. We loved that summer. Wading in the Esopus, visiting the town.

Speaking of puppets, one day that summer, we went to the Woodstock Library. I had a NYPL card and we were able to get a Woodstock Library Card and visited often. They always have amazing used booksales at the library and we have picked up many gems over the years. Everyone was very friendly. Anyway, we were browsing around the library and a young guy came in with his daughter. Our kids were in the childrens' room looking at books and playing with kids toys. The young dad, a little grungy but very friendly, started doing a puppet show for his daughter and our kids. Mostly kid-talk with puppets. I recognized the dad immediately. Suddenly, the mom shows up in a granny dress with heavy-framed glasses. "Ethan, we gotta go". And that's how our kids met Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. My wife and I were polite and cordial but frankly starstruck. The librarian lady said "Your kids had a very famous playmate". My son (you might remember him, the 16 year old autograph hound, who, by the way, this summer completed a film that was shown last week at the NYC Summer Arts Institute at the Tribeca Film Institute) still hocks me for not getting an autograph.

Speak, Memory.

--Brooklyn Beat

Hippiefest: Nostalgia for the Future

When we arrived at the Seaside Summer Concert Series, I immediately sent a text to my kids who were at home recovering from day camp and summer jobs: "At HippieFest. Must be a mistake, everyone here is old."

The free Seaside Concert Series at Asser Levy park featured "Hippiefest", an excellent if unfortunately titled, creatively packaged, rolling festival of star acts from the wonder years: Felix Cavaliere's Rascals, The Turtles with Flo and Eddie, Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone leading The Zombies, Wings' Denny Laine, Melanie, and Country Joe McDonald. http://www.brooklynconcerts.com/hippiefest.html I hate the word "nostalgia" (the 60s and 70s weren't a fantasy, it was a period of struggle and change that had worldwide ramifications after all) but it was good to be at an event where "60s" wasn't someone's looming birthday.

Country Joe, especially, who also served as host, reminded us that the Sixties weren't just about the music and the funky clothes, bringing a strong thread of political consciousness to the proceedings with songs about "Support the Troops" and "Save the Whale..Save Ourselves". Melanie, who reported that she had just arrived from "Brooklyn, Maine", strong of voice, worked through some of her hits and did an excellent cover of Ruby Tuesday by the Stones. Accompanied by her son on guitar she said "I needed a sideman so I grew my own". Denny Laine, who got things off to a rousing start with Wings' "Band on the Run" , answered a call of "Where's Paul?" with "Paul Who?, but clearly the affection for Paul (and Linda) is there..

To the Mrs and me, the Zombies featuring Rod Argent on cosmic keyboards and soaring vocals by Colin Blunstone, really set the crowd in motion with "Time of the Season" and other hits plus Argent's anthemic "Hold Your Head Up". They were rather awesome. The singer noted that Brooklyn held special affection for them as they first appeared in America in 1964 (ahem) at the a Murray the K show at the Brooklyn Fox http://cinematreasures.org/theater/602/.

The Turtles, featuring the delightfully manic Flo and Eddie (Mark Vollman and Howard Kaylan), reminded us of why, post-Turtles, Flo and Eddie fit in so well as vocalists for Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. Their great humor and energy made their brief set seem even briefer. The show closed with Felix Cavaliere's Rascals. Cousin Brucie, formerly of CBS-FM now on Sirius Satellite, who served as series host Marty Markowitz's musical alter ego, noted that the Rock n Roll Hall of Famer Cavaliere had recently become a grandpa. Oy-vey, maybe so, but close your eyes, and he is still that soulful keyboardist and singer who created those rock radio classics : "Groovin'," and "People Got to be Free".

The series in its 29th year of free shows with major acts is in itself a work of art (produced by the Slope's own Debby Garcia http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.typepad.com/the_park_slope_100/ ) Beep Markowitz who created and has hosted the event in white dinner jacket & jeans for lo these many years, holds court, thanking sponsors, welcoming show biz and political luminaries (including, last nite, Sid Bernstein, who brought the Beatles to America in 1964, and was in da house) along with other neighbors and just plain folks. I also saw Sopranos' Steven Schirippa (aka"Bobby Baccala") doing a little spot coverage for someone with a microphone. Still, at Seaside, it is Marty's world and we just get to live in it. Without getting into the inevitable heat that surrounds Markowitz (he is a politican after all), the free concert series at Coney and Wingate Field are cool institutions and 29 years isn't a bad legacy. But last night, the 1960s took center stage and reminded us that, at least while the boomer demographics are still prime, the zeitgeist was with us and the music will never die. Iraq may have replaced Viet Nam, but freedom and most of all love may still hold the key..

Peace Out.

--Brooklyn Beat

Note: This post also appeared at OnlytheBlogKnowsBrooklyn.com

Apocalypse...whaaa? - remembering the 1977 Power Failure (aka Blackout of '77)

I was in my early 20s, coming home from my job as an evening manager of Bookmasters in Penn Station (or "Bookies" as my co-worker, artist David Wojnarowicz referred to it), and the F Train stopped, of all places, half-in and half-out of the Smith and 9th Street station. We passengers somehow made our way down from the elevated station tower in the dark in one piece, amazed at the new world that had just opened up to us..

I shlepped up 9th street to my apt at PPW and 8th Street ($125/month, utilities not included)and hung with my neighbors on the front stairs, illuminated by candles (and no doubt the lights of a thousand flickering bongs)...

Interestingly, I didn't have a car then, don't think I had an AC, no computer, just my stereo and my little B&W Philco TV (on which I watched the news and the Honeymooners and in a few short years, the drama of the John Lennon murder), so I was more oblivious to the technological deprivations then than I would be now... it was darkness, uncertainty but still community..

The next day I remember seeing my sister and now late-brother in law who lived on Berkeley and 7th, and we made our way to the Coach Inn I think on Garfield and 7th where we sat at the bar with the door opened (no A-C) drinking cool (maybe room temperature) draft beer as the stifling heat, chaos and violence which did not seem to touch our little corner of the world at that time, unfolded, before any of us had kids, or careers, before the Slope became the mighty economic engine that it is today,and we sat and sipped and laughed and gazed into the distance at this glimpse of apocalypse and our own unknown futures and the sheer wonder of it all...

Speak memory

Why the Excitement Over WCBS-FM ? Here's Why

I'm back. Miss me? Spent a couple of weeks doing stem-cell research in Indochina, but now I am back and going, going, gone...the excitement of today was the return of 101.1 FM in NYC. WCBS-FM. Wow, when it went away two years ago it seemed like another post- 9/11 casualty in some perverse way.

After 9/11 Bloomberg was elected and New York was going to turn modern, corporate and bad to the bone. Let's start by getting rid of all of those old fogey institutions and replace them with something..well, "Youthful". Well, it turned out that youth (or "yutes" to quote Joe Pesce in My Cousin Vinny) don't listen to the damn radio when they have Ipods and Iphones and Idon't know what else. There was something so New Yawk about cbs-fm..It was always there (kind of like NY1 is there, I guess, or the Drudgereport), every season, at work, at home, in the car even , or when you are exercising. And it was like a particular kind of musicology lesson, where you honed your musical knowledge and chops. Tonite, I was on the elliptical for an hour in the basement and I was hauling ass & I Listened to 101.1 and there was not a song that was not wonderfuly familiar, memorable, and touched you in a special place. I know all of you young uns are moving in, with your inspiration, your derivate musiques, your wishes lies and dreams and you would like nothing more that us older 50s to take a powder or generally move off stage and that's what theoriginal removal of 101.1 was..I tried to listen to Jack, I really did, but it had no personality..to remove cbsfm, which had so much New Yawk brassiness and pizzazz and that was kind of a melting pot for the diverse, black and white pop musics that were new and fresh in the 60s-80s and that we grew up on, well, to remove it and replace it with the weak Jack FM was a repudiation of all of us who were young once too, damnit, young just like you, ya fools...

While we didn't take to the barricades over cbsfm, it did represent a loss and a fear that wow, to quote Bob Dylan, Things Had Changed.. and while change can be necessary and good not everything needs to tossed in the trashbin.. so the fact that it is back is a little bit of a mystery and an unexpected joy and in this hot summer of Iraq slaughter, global warming, a weak dollar and other very pressing "gut" fears, it is great and wonderful to have this little bit of familiarity and comfort back in our lives as we make our way through each New York day.

Peace Out

LONESOME DAY BLUES - theme song for a hot n heavy week

LONESOME DAY BLUES by Bob Dylan
Well, today has been a sad ol' lonesome day
Yeah, today has been a sad ol' lonesome day
I'm just sittin' here thinking
With my mind a million miles away
Well, they're doing the double shuffle, throwin' sand on the floor
They're doing the double shuffle, they're throwin' sand on the floor
When I left my long-time darlin'
She was standing in the door
Well, my pa he died and left me, my brother got killed in the war
Well, my pa he died and left me, my brother got killed in the war
My sister, she ran off and got married
Never was heard of any more
Samantha Brown lived in my house for about four or five months
Samantha Brown lived in my house for about four or five months
Don't know how it looked to other peopleI never slept with her even onceWell, the road's washed out - weather not fit for man or beast
Yeah the road's washed out - weather not fit for man or beast
Funny, how the things you have the hardest time parting withAre the things you need the least
I'm forty miles from the mill - I'm droppin' it into overdrive
I'm forty miles from the mill - I'm droppin' it into overdrive
Settin' my dial on the radio
I wish my mother was still alive
I see your lover-man comin' - comin' 'cross the barren field
I see your lover-man comin' - comin' 'cross the barren field
He's not a gentleman at all - he's rotten to the core
He's a coward and he steals
Well my captain he's decorated - he's well schooled and he's skilled
My captain, he's decorated - he's well schooled and he's skilled
He's not sentimental - don't bother him at all
How many of his pals have been killed
Last night the wind was whisperin', I was trying to make out what it was
Last night the wind was whisperin' somethin' - I was trying to make out what it was
I tell myself something's comin'But it never does
I'm gonna spare the defeated - I'm gonna speak to the crowd
I'm gonna spare the defeated, boys, I'm going to speak to the crowd
I am goin' to teach peace to the conquered
I'm gonna tame the proud
Well the leaves are rustlin' in the wood - things are fallin' off of the shelf
Leaves are rustlin' in the wood - things are fallin' off the shelf
You gonna need my help, sweetheart
You can't make love all by yourself
BOB DYLAN from "Love and Theft"
Copyright © 2001 Special Rider Music

From Thespian Heaven... to the Lowest Rung of Celebrity Hell

CELEBRITY HEAVEN......Weekend vacation plans having gone awry, we ended up at Frost Nixon on Broadway, which was a fascinating performance by Tony award winner Frank Langella and Michael Sheen. It is closing this weekend and will be turned into a film by Ron Howard. Alternatively gripping and comic, Langella totally inhabits the persona of the shamed and scorned ex-President. While ultimately not presenting a redemptive Nixon , the play by Peter Morgan manages to find some room for compassion and a fleeting glimpse of the humanity behind the cartoonish mask that history continues to associate with TrickyDick. Michael Sheen explores the character of talk show host David Frost who early on struggled to balance his penchant for lightweight celebrity with the demands for uncovering some semblance of the truth somewhere in the opportunity to interview the former President that that he had engineered.

We lingered after the show and were thrilled to say hello and get autographs from Langella and Sheen, the co-stars, who were very gracious to the gathered fans. Also by the stage door, I said hey to actor Austin Pendeleton who has a long list of film and theatre credits. He mentioned that he had seen the play but was here after the performance "To see Frank" which was cool. Michael Sheen also lingered long and patiently, chatting with the crowd, before disappearing into the night.

AND CELEBRITY HELL: Recently, my son and I visited the National Comic Show at Penn Plaza over the weekend. He is a comic fan, I am more of the occasional graphic novel snob. My favorite comics growing up were Classics Illustrated, and Superman from time to time.

We scouted through the boxes of comics, toys, junk and ephemera for a few hours. We made it to the celebrity area which was a total awakening. Lines of folks ready and willing to plunk down cold, hard, mazuma for an autograph by comic book artists I'd never heard of or one of the other assorted celebs on hand. First to catch my eye was Larry Storch, Corporal Agarn of F Troop fame. He was sitting there in his F trooper hat, looking a bit long in the tooth, reading the NY Post with a publicist nearby. Autographed poster: twenty bucks. If I had a decent camera I would have taken of photo of him and tried to sell it to the Post. But even Larry boy might be not a prime marketing image for them.

Opposite him was Golden Globe winner Paul LeMat. I really wanted to say hello, and how much I enjoyed him in American Grafitti but especially Melvin and Howard, but I could not get over my discomfort with the economic exchange here. I didn't want to pay him for an autograph, but I felt that the point of him being there, besides his appearing on a panel, was to make a few extra bucks pocket change for his effort. Paul was there, chatting with a publicist or comic show aide, totally ignored. I wanted to tell him that he was the most interesting thing about the comic show. But how could I do it and not feel like I needed to fork over money for a poster. I would feel like a shnorrer if I tried to take a photo of him without paying. Paul looked good, but was showing his years (aren't we all) with that dyed reddish hair and leathery tanned skin showing the signs no doubt of a half century of sun-and-surf. My son scoffed at my reluctance. I thought of George Constanza's remark on Seinfeld about paying for sex or parking: why pay when, if you apply yourself a little, with a little effort, you might be able to get it for free?

Anyway, my son thinks like George Costanza and charged over to David Harris, an obsure thespian whose major claim to fame here was his appearance in Walter Hill's version of the Sol Yurik book "The Warriors".

My son charged over and started chatting to him, deftly changing the subject and using non-sequitars to avoid buying the DVDs and posters he was selling. After awhile, an aide came over to assist the actor who was clearly having a hard time closing the sale here with my son, but my son turned on his heel before they could do a used-car salesmen number on him. However, when he came back to me, he comented that the actor hadmade a partially audible but rude remark about his unwillingness to spend any money after the exchange. "That's why you didn't wanna talk to the other guy, right?" My son was hyped up and hopeful because at a prior convention he had gotten autographs from director John Landis, actor Gary Coleman, and Stuart Copeland of the Police for nothing. But here in the lowest rungs of celebrity hell, it was clearly pay to play.

Only the Dead Tired Know Brooklyn

On a beautiful Friday morning in June, walking up Joralemon Street to my office. Here in the late middle of life, kid in college, kid in high school, kids in middle school. The first of a neighbor's children getting married. My other neighbor going to Italy for two weeks. The other, heading for the summer home. We are still climbing out from the death of my wife's mom last summer, which sent us tearing back up the turnpike from our only vacation for the year after she suffered a massive stroke...8 years before the youngest are out of college and I am retirement eligible, but for now, no thought no freedom, no pleasure. .

Just "makin' shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot... I and I in creation's way man's nature neither honors nor forgives..."

The only brightness, for a moment, is in mixing with the downtown crowds, one of my favorite spots in Brooklyn, Joralemon between Boerum/Adams street and Court..the guys in front of the Brooklyn municipal building with their cameras and bouquets, waiting to snap pictures of happy brides and grooms coming for a marriage license and a civil ceremony...

...all of the messengers, attorneys, office workers, bureaucrats and power brokers, lining up at coffee wagons in the sunshine...the Yemenite fruit guys and Chasidic stationers, where else can you find four newstands within a few short blocks in Brooklyn..everyone with a little extra spring because it is Friday Friday Friday and we are all here and I think how I & I and we are all linked somehow back to that Brooklyn historicity...

...old Walt Whitman tromping these downtown Brooklyn streets in his day as we do in ours, the civil war raging then, as the Iraq trauma and maelstrom explode now....

I remember researching and learning that Walt Whitman lived around the corner from our former home in Clinton Hill when he wrote "Leaves of Grass"..We lived on Hall Street near Myrtle Avenue until 1999..I found the Whitman home, a little worknig man's townhouse like we had, three floors all wood..and what should be growing in front of the home, a lilac bush..."When lilac last in the dooryard bloom'd"

I don't know what the future will bring, just as I don't know what the past holds...the fog envelops, and through the haze I can only struggle to glimpse a few shadows of courtship, marriage, children, 1, 2, 3, 4...all laced with the travails of the workingman's life crammed in the strugle to keep my creativity and voice alive..meanwhile, parents die, friends and lovers disappear, and I am left with a few moments where I struggle to the surface in an effort to achieve clarity, and even if I fail, I am able to see, in the distance, despite the ultimate loneliness that is each of us our fate, some of the ties that bind...

Speak Memory...

GothamCityInsider.com

I have been mesmerized lately by a new blog, Gotham City Insider.com, which is the frighteningly edgy and comic product of my multi-talented nephew. His motto: "What the world needs is a stronger blog"--I say, say amen somebody.

From Martine Rothblatt to an analysis of Hitler's role in the development of the VW Beatle -- can you afford not to keep up?

Shameless thievery, an aggregate poached from sources far and wide, with a twist of lemon and a dash of bitters, this is the real thing. To quote from the film Holiday Inn, God Bless America and just go..

www.gothamcityinsider.com

I HATE FAIRWAY

There, I said it. We went to visit the (as always) staggering Waterfront Artists show last Sunday in da Hook. For variety, volume, and vision, plus the opportunity to buy some very interesting and exciting art at manageable prices (and "Support Living Artists") the Waterfront Show on Van Brunt Street and the River is the place to go.

Afterwards, we decided to pay our maiden visit to Fairway right across the street. The thought was to have a cup of joe then pick up a few nice prepared items for dinner that evening. Well, Fairway on Sunday afternoon was one of the most crowded shops that I've ever encountered. I was in Fairway on the UWS on New Years Eve afternoon and it was not as crowded as the Red Hook store. You could not even navigate a shopping cart through the aisles, that is how crowded they were. Then, it was 10 minutes on line to get a cup of coffee, another 10 to pay for it. Forget the food lines, it was insane. We found a table and watched the crowd on the much hyped patio outside. Unfortunately, except for a few folks who seemed to be waiting for the New York Water Taxi to dock so they could hightail it back to Manhattan, Fairway seemed a regrettably familiar & crowded extension of 7th avenue.. Seemed like customers, in that Park Slope manner, are so reluctant to leave the safe haven between 5th and 7th aves and Flatbush and 9th streets , finding it so hard to believe that anything of value exists outside of its borders, that Fairway represents a jaunt far afield, almost glamorous..I guess .it is OK to go there as it is an adjunct of PS almost and after all is located in even hipper red hook...

Face it people, Fairway is too darn crowded and you can get an equivalent a variety of multi-ethnic foods by visiting the various nabes that make Brooklyn the king of boroughs....let's keep it real, not just packaged and branded, people..end of rant. Thank you

SUMMER OF LOVE + 40

It's time you walked away
set me free I must move away leave you be...
time's been good to us, my friend
wait and see how it will end
we come and go as we please...we come and go as we please...
that's how it must be
Here in crystal chandelier, I'm home
too many days, I've left unstoned
if you don't mind happiness
purple-pleasure fields in the Sun
ah, don't you know I'm runnin' home...don't you know I'm runnin' home...
to a place to you unknown?
I take great peace in your sitting there
searching for myself, I find a place there
I see the people of the world where they are and what they could be...
I can but dance behind your smile...
I can but dance behind your smile...
you were the world to me for a while
-- "D.C.B.A. " by Paul Kantner, Jefferson Airplane



Wow, besides "The Sopranos" finale (which my son is already tired of hearing my digressions and speculations on) suddenly the Summer of Love, 1967, is popping up in the media, as a culutral icon of the Summer 2007. 40 years ago this summer, I was a 12 year old, the age that my younger daughters are now, and I was an elementary school kid at Holy Name on (as we referred to it) 9th avenue. Music of the era made its way to my consciousness thanks to the radio and the lps that my older sister, then in high school at St Brendans, brought into the house.Although the music and the culture were exploding around me, it would still be a few years until I started writing and pursuing publication in earnest as a student at Bishop Ford HS and before I began to select and buy music much less dare to make critical assessments of it.. But then, back in 1967, I was still an elementary school brat at HNS (or, as our Windsor Terrace crowd later referred to it in our rebellious teen years, at "The Mission"). Music was everywhere, New York City, at least the mainstream and parts of the city locked into the media maelstrom, was undergoing waves of change, but Brooklyn, my Brooklyn, was still dormant.I grew up on 17th Street between 9th and 10th avenues. I remember a young couple moving into the basement apartment of home across the street from us. He had the hip look, long hair and beard, dressed for business during the week if I recall correctly, but most noticeably, on the weekend wore jeans and high leather boots, the first time such cool and radical fashion probably trod these Brooklyn streets.. We referred to him simply as "Cow Man" and I sincerely hope that we were not teasing or mean to him, although, children being who they are, we probably were and came off as dumb Brooklyn urchins..He lived next door to the "Stretzelmeyer" (pronounced by us as "Stretchemeyer") home, which was a remnant of old Brooklyn, a large Victorian house, like we live in now in Flatbush, but it was on a large piece of land, fenced in from 17th street to Prospect Avenue, behind a fairly high grey fence..two elderly ladies lived there, largely out of touch with the rest of us Irish, German and Italians working folks who had moved into the neighborhood in succeeding waves. We would see them occasionally when a ball went over the fence and they were patient enough to allow us into the yard to retrieve it..I imagined the house and the sisters were from "Arsenic and Old Lace" and I assume the house had been there from the 19th century when Windsor Terrace was more open land, farms, etc., and the brownstones and row houses of 17th street and beyond had simply grown up around them. That reminds me of another childrens' book, about a little cabin in the woods, that becomes a small home, and is eventually dwarfed by the City structures and skyscrapers built around it. Years later, when the homes was taken down and new construction was built on the site. The home and fenced in land were easily replaced by four or five attached homes on 17th street and an equal number around the block on Prospect Avenue...But the Summer of Love to me at twelve years of age in Brooklyn was a brand, a distant concept, almost a vision, something perhaps aspire to, as I got older, as though perhaps with time, and movement out of my parents' home and sphere of influence, I too could dare to step into this new world of music, excitement and Love...As always,

Speak memory...