Category: Observed (Page 19 of 24)
I have, in my years living in New York, turned into a true New Yorker, to the extent that I look and act the part when out of doors. Something about the way I traverse the city—purposeful, distanced look in the eye, fast gait, a tendency to read the newspaper even while walking—flags me as a local. As a result, I get asked a lot of questions.
Summertime in Union Square brings out the visitors, and I have found myself giving directions more and more often. Often, I am walking my dog when I am stopped, which makes sense. On occasion I will be out solo and someone will just look at me and ask me to help find their destination. I am always happy to oblige.
But I was taken completely by surprise last week. Crossing Park Avenue South mid-block in traffic, a man in a Toyota called out from his car. It didn’t register that he was looking for me until he called out a second time. I doubled back to the driver’s window from the front bumper.
Me: “Yeah?”
Him: “Do you know where the Toys ‘R’ Us is?”
Me, businesslike and without hesitation: “Next block up on the right.”
Him, unfazed: “Thanks, man.”
I made it across the street before the light turned. He took off, presumably to find a parking spot.
Jaywalker as information kiosk. Who knew?
Although he’s a male and he lifts his leg, Charley has the useful ability to pee once and be done, rather than feel compelled to wander the neighborhood marking all the tree stumps. Our trainer told us we got him to operate in this manner by encouraging the behavior. We just think he’s a good dog and leave it at that.
Tonight was a quick pee walk, where I am outside for all of 45 seconds while the dog does a three-quarter turn on the grate in front of the building, goes, and heads back home. Our neighbor and fellow dog owner was in the lobby, and often-shy Charley pulled me to her to say hello. I had him roll over—his latest trick—while Shiela grilled me about his habits and invited us to visit and have him play with her two Yorkies.
I went out without a jacket. A Fresh Direct truck was double-parked in the street. Shiela and a friend made themselves comfortable in lobby chairs. The rain was gone, and only the easy spring evening remained. Upstairs, business school homework awaited. I took my time getting upstairs.
The rain had stopped, after days of continuous precipitation, making a blustery evening feel surprisingly pleasant. We took our usual route, hanging a left out the door of the building, pausing to pee on the grates, then meandering down the block and across the street into Union Square Park, where we do laps on the walkway fringe until the business occurs. A tall pile of remaindered excrement, left by another dog and a careless owner, resembled a pile of mousse to my dog, who had a bite (and a toothbrushing upon our return home).
In the aftermath of the rains, the park and the street were subdued. The newsstand and the corner entrance to the subway were closed for the holiday. Alone on the park benches in Union Square, a young Asian man sat practicing a speech, papers on his lap, staring at nothing as he recited, likely as glad as I was to have a rare quiet moment in the square.
Sanford Levine, owner of the Carnegie Deli in New York City, calls himself an M.B.D.—”Married the boss’s daughter.”
The Carnegie, the quintessential Jewish delicatessen, smokes its own meat at a 22,000-square-foot facility in Carlstadt, New Jersey. The work was once done in the restaurant’s basement.
Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami, Florida, is the third-highest-grossing restaurant in the United States. And it’s not even open in the summertime. The first? Tavern on the Green in Manhattan’s Central Park.
Perhaps the best deal in Manhattan, Gray’s Papaya on Sixth Avenue has a “Recession Special” of two hot dogs and a glass of papaya juice for $1.95. The cost of a single prix fixe meal at Alain Ducasse on Central Park South (the city’s most expensive restaurant) would buy 164 Recession Special hot dogs at Gray’s.
I step into the elevator this morning. A boy, around 8 and playing with a ball on a stretchy string, is complaining to his father, in his business suit and carrying dry cleaning plus spare clothes for his son.
: Mom—ma—muh—m—mommy is mad at me.
: She’s not mad. We just get exasperated sometimes.
Florida holiday trip two weekends ago. My two-and-a-half-year-old nephew-to-be, Noah, is on the patio wanting to go inside. My dog, Charley, is standing next to him, waiting for the door to open.
Noah is too small to open a sliding glass door by himself, so he appeals for help.
“Charley! Open!”
Charley looks up at Noah expectantly: open the door, human. Noah looks expectantly back at the dog, then repeats: “Open! Charley, open!”
Grandma let them both in the house after she stopped laughing.
“Being different is good. And no intelligent man will ever hold it against you.”
—from Nowhere in Africa
“It’s very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth. Well, I don’t think any real damage has been done here. Because I don’t really know what the truth is. No one ever will, I suppose. Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we’re just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard which has enormous value to our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it’s SURE. We nine can’t understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us.”
—Juror #8 in 12 Angry Men
From World New York and Caterina.net: difrasismo, “the linking of two nouns to create a new idea” in the Nahuatl language.
Like “web log.”