SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! Save St. Mark's (Again)

FROM JEREMIAH'S VANISHING NEW YORK.
THANK YOU, JEREMIAH!!!

Save St. Mark's (Again)

Save St. Mark's (Again)

After tens of thousands of petition signatures, after protests, letters to Cooper Union, visits from Michael Moore, banner book-buying weekends, and celebrations of great success, St. Mark's Bookshop is back on the ropes.



Reports Publishers Weekly today:

"'We’re hanging in there, barely,' says co-owner Bob Contant. 'It’s a difficult April. Traffic is down. Without an increase, we can’t rebuild our inventory. We’re 20% short of where we need to be.' The store is on hold with a number of publishers, including Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Perseus, for relatively small sums between $500 and $2,5000. "It’s a catch 22," says Contant. 'We can’t buy more books. Up until this month we thought we were out of the woods.'

A few landlords have come forward offering the store lower rent, but moving would be costly and the store’s business credit cards are already maxed out. 'We would like to stay where we are, even at the high rent,' says Contant, 'unless an angel comes along.'

What would help, he says, is if everyone who signed the petition came in or called in and bought a book."




We've had two great "Buy A Book" weekends, and I encourage you all to visit the store again this weekend to buy some books--and keep buying books. But in this anti-book era, in this iZombie culture, what St. Mark's Bookshop needs most is a powerful new business plan--something that will sustain them in the long run, something that will keep attracting book buyers, day after day.

In Brooklyn, bookstores like Word and Greenlight are thriving in this e-book economy. What's their secret? I'm calling on them to step forward and offer their assistance and know-how to St. Mark's Books. I'm calling on the owners of St. Mark's Bookshop to follow their example and make the vital changes necessary to stay afloat. I'm calling on successful authors to show up with donations in hand.

We need St. Mark's Bookshop--now and for years to come. But it's going to take a village.

*UPDATE: #cashmob St. Mark's Bookshop, Sunday April 15, at 1:00 pm. Spend $15 on a book. Spend your tax refund! Then go drink at Bar 82 (136 2nd Ave.) Please re-tweet...spread the word.

The Walls Started Talking

I only knew that address as where that woman used to live, it was early 1980s, I thought she only wanted to dance with me which made me nervous I was interested in someone else and then I found she wanted to dance with anyone where there was a possibility to be loved. I last saw her running up Third Avenue with some guy, both lit more from alcohol than any good intentions.

Now, what's left of a place where I knew someone lived are these walls. Someone picked out that wallpaper. Someone else picked out those colors. That green, those patterns - they were part of a safety called home, who knows maybe that woman who danced with a lot of people.

It Only Hurts A Little

And with that promise (or lie depending on who's talking and who's listening) I managed to get the cat into the box with a couple of gentle shoves to his butt and carry all his 17 pounds down to the vet.

He was no dummy.

And when it was over and I let him out of the box into the hallway while I searched for my keys, he ran straight to the front door and meowed loud and clear that he had had enough he wanted to be home and there better be chicken because yes, it did hurt.

Sunday Memories: The Iceman Cometh

Florence's ice trays circa 1960-something

It's quite hard to find ice trays like these anymore.

I had already broken the plastic ones I had. So when the new tenants moved into Florence's new refrigerator and kitchen, I moved these out.

Of all the smattering of items I took from Florence's, these hid unexpected memories.

With so few treats allowed except on Friday nights, ice was as treasured as candy. And with the suspicion of doctors and the fear of hospitals, it was also as important as aspirin.

With such promises of refreshment and restoration, those trays were not to be trifled with.

The trays' handle would be pulled back like a slingshot and if all went well, the ice would crackle and break into cubes. This never happened. Tap water and a couple to many bangs of the tray on the stove loosened the frozen water enough to be enjoyed like ice cream during the summer or placed in a bowl of soup too hot to eat.

If the trays were being deployed for medical emergencies, such as a broken arm or spinal meningitis, the ice bag, the kind you'd see in comic strips like Andy Capp, would be brought out with full and firm belief that once filled from the trays, all maladies would vanish. On the rare occasions they didn't, a surrender would be hurriedly made in a taxi rushing to the emergency room, usually right before it was too late.

Now, refrigerators make ice and preemptive doctor visits make more sense.

And ice bags, needed for healing body parts, come so equipped, they make my old ice trays look like pencil and paper compared to a NASA computer.

The cat thinks the machine is the vacuum cleaner's baby, and thus the spawn of the devil. It is ravenous for ice, which has the Mariner running so frequently to the bodega for ice at all hours of the day and night, that the minute he rushes in the guys automatically ring up two bags of already made, perfectly cubed ice.

Memories may be made from time spent healing, but none will be found in cubes of such perfection. So when this is all over, those trays will be filled again with stories from Her New York.

Encore: Leaving Egypt on Maundy Thursday

As this week begins Exodus and welcomes Resurrection, an encore of the journey

Originally posted April 9, 2009

(picture by Adrian Garcia)

At Sedar we were always urged to leave behind the personal Egypt that enslaved us, be it bad habits or unhappy circumstances. And as we did, to remember all the people in the world struggling to leave whatever Egypt they inhabited, for we could not be free if someone else was still enslaved.

At His last supper, also a sedar, Christ asked the Apostles to love others as He loved them, and He washed their feet as an act of love and service.

Eleven years ago at Riverside's Maundy Thursday, it dawned on me I could forgive someone who had hurt me and, in doing so, leave an Egypt of shame, bitterness, and blame. When I left the unhappiness I had lived in for so long, I found Buddhism.

Every day since has offer freedom and liberation even when that seemed furthest from the truth. But it never was furthest from what I sought. Ever. Like the steps the Hebrews took through the desert and the feet Christ washed that night, each moment brought me closer to a promised land. And, as I stumbled forward, I remembered all those struggling and, as I grew closer to freedom, love became the bigger land within my heart.

The road to the banks of the River Jordan was made with sorrow and disappointment but traveled with hope and heart.  On this auspicious anniversary, oh, is the view just so beautiful.

Leaving Egypt On The Promise Of A Healed Knee

As this week begins Exodus and welcomes Resurrection, a look at both.

What was it about not going to doctors when something was wrong? It was like not fixing anything when it broke.

I asked Yeudi what it was. When did physical pain become normal, and doctor visits become pointless? We both puzzled over parents forged by the bitter scarcity of The Great Depression and what they insisted upon (dentists and the New York Times) and what they didn't (sometimes everything else).

Florence once kept up a full teaching/working schedule with walking pneumonia. When I yelled at her that she was supposed to be in bed, she yelled back, "It's WALKING pneumonia."

Her unique approach, in fact, practically demolished that thin cushion between health and chronic illness.

Years of pain and never really thinking much could be done also demolished that thin cushion between my constant walking on a cranky knee and barely hobbling like how the old ladies did on Grand Street.

So, after trying everything, a five minute doctor visit explains outpatient surgery and I take the 80 to 20 odds I might actually walk a bit longer without such a long-standing familiar pain.

Sunday Memories Encore: God Of My Understanding

As this week begins Exodus and welcomes Resurrection, a post of 2010 on prayer.

In the trenches, everyone had to figure out how they were going to pray. This being New York, there were many versions to pick from just in case you couldn't do the old white guy with the white beard up on a white cloud.

For a while mine was a hand on a doorknob. Somehow that seemed to opened me up to hope that the war, both within and without, would end.

This guy said his was always the Chrysler Building. He could always look up and see a beauty of lights.

Decades later, the hand on the doorknob often got dimmed by worry and fear. But with so many glass building crowding the sidewalk, I found myself catching glimpses of a beauty of lights, remembering that however I understand it, there was a greater expanse awaiting me. I just had to look up.

What A Difference An Anniversary Makes...

This is the bakery I'd stop in after visiting and caring for Florence.

On Florence's last Saturday, I pried my fingers out of her tightly held grasp and said I had to go. She asked me to stay but I had nothing left inside and needed to go home to nothing so I could start all over again. So I said what I knew she'd absolutely understand. I said I had to go home and work.

"Go. Go do your work."

She said it the way we had all been raised to say it. Your Work was more important than anything. It was more important than love or family or illness or even death. In fact, when her mother died, Florence delayed the necessary next steps because she was inundated with work and rehearsals and teaching and supporting Louise for her senior recital.

That last Saturday was balmy so I got what I always got at this bakery on Grand Street. One pork bun and a cup of tea with milk and sugar. Then I sat in Chrystie Park and watched all the men I never grew up with run around the soccer field.

Florence died two days later.

For years, I repeatedly asked myself if I could have stayed longer. A friend who is a funeral director says, "Don't chew." There are many cows in her country so this makes sense.

Now, lovely people live in Florence's old home and there are other lovely people looking to buy Florence's old home. An irreversible process has begun.

For only the second time since I cleaned out this place, I visited. I said things and I heard things. At some point there was nothing left and I headed to the Boat that took me to a quieter neighborhood and a kinder night and a bed I couldn't have dreamed of in my insomnia.

On the way, I stopped in at the bakery. It was not an homage or nostalgia. It was simply what one did after visits like that.

The weather too rainy and cold, I sat inside with my usual cup of tea and pork bun and listened to a gaggle of men talk, laugh, argue, and I suspect check the racing sheets. Their chatter of Tagalog and English felt like Christmas lights to me - bright and dancing.

One day in March of 2008, I started writing the city I knew as intimately as I knew Florence. And found I barely knew either. When you are home, when you are in family, it is as normal as breathing and yet as mysterious as prayer.

As I walked with Florence to where she needed to go, and as I continued on without her, the urgency to witness and document and make sure the New York we knew as intimately as family and as mysterious of breathing never left.

It is not an homage or nostalgia. It is, simply, what one does when one comes home.

What Work Looks like

The few remaining old buildings in the garment district are surrounded by glossy ice towers where clothes are only worn, not made. Very little life appears in those sleek cliffs. But as the evening blooms, so do the lights in this window. I don't know what is going on in there but it feels as familiar as the room that held Florence's world.

Sunday Memories: The Meal Remains The Same

It was her annual visit to her New York.


Much had happened since she was last here. She had moved from the cornfields back to family and water and light that had always been her home.

Much had happened here. Love had come to stay and what had once been harsh walls now sparkled and danced.

So a table was set for old friends and new, and, just as she had all these many past decades, she kept me company while I cooked the only dish I knew how to make, now organic thanks to Trader Joe's.

**
Northern Italian Lemon Roasted Chicken

One whole organic chicken roaster
4 to 6 organic lemons
tons of whole organic garlic cloves
olive oil, salt and pepper to taste

Peel the garlic cloves. Pierce the lemons all over. Shove as many lemons and garlic cloves as possible inside the chicken. Stick a whole much of garlic between the skin and the meat of the chicken and in between the limbs. Put in a covered roasting pan and bake until it's done. That means the leg separates easily from the body. If you want you can take the lid off for the last 10-20 minutes to get the chicken a bit crispy.

Then set the table and gather your friends and eat and drink and laugh and love, and know home is where the heart is and the heart is always home.

Spring Sprang

Out of nowhere, overnight, at the blink of an eye, the apple blossoms appeared.

The cat ran from window to window wild after birds all peppy in the warm grey of the day. And I remembered how much Spring always heralded the possibility of brief and sweet hope.

Repairing The Broken Heart Of Home

After years of banging unmoored pieces of wood back into their proper holes, the bench, a beloved place of haven, surrendered. Armrests snapped off. Legs wobbled dangerously. Sitting became a risk.

There was no tradition of home repairs growing up on Grand Street. A visitor remarked once that if there was something not working or in the way, we'd step around it or just avoid that spot altogether. In fact, unlike most of America, going to a therapist was within the realm of possibilities. Fixing a piece of furniture was not.

The healing from one's childhood reveals itself in unique ways. Some take up a new language or a new lover or a new country. I took up liquid nails.

Sunday Memories: The Luck Of The Irish And A Couple Of Others

Essa Bagel's tribute to St. Patty's

I was 17 and moving up at my first office job. Every department, except sales, was filled with bright young women wearing the latest in 70's fashion - clunky shoes and severe panty lines present in high-waist flared trousers.

It was my first day in the customer service department, and I was set to the task of checking the computer read-outs of the new, highly advanced computers. The first on the block!

Lunch loomed and all of a sudden the many young women in customer services whipped out lipsticks and purses. "You're coming, right?" one asked me. "Where?" I answered.

A billion faces stared at me in disbelief.

"The bar. It's St. Patty's."

"Oh."

"I thought you were Irish."

"Oh. I thought you were Jewish."

And with that cleared up, I found myself for the first time in the middle of a packed Irish bar, drinking a double rye and learning old songs on the spot.

Seeking Her New York

Life in Her New York has gotten sweeter and missing has gotten smaller.

Still, while forever peering into corners, wondering if I'm truly home, recognizable moments reveal themselves and I remember Her New York.

a quiet moment with an old friend and the bridge we grew up by

an old union hall

dancing in a bar

another form of mass transit

the world of the day job

everyone's second home and first, and sometime only, car

the kitty just as puzzled by Bond as I was by Star Trek

the office

Florence

Home

Encore: "She's A Native New Yorker"

Originally posted Tuesday, March 2, 2010
***
Yuki's bag

We literally met on international ground.

Even though she was being just as polite as everyone else, there was something about her that felt very familiar. I, on the other hand, was not just a fish out of water.I was a big fish out of water and a bull in a teeny tiny china shop - pick two - and it was all I could do to sit still and keep my mouth shut so I wouldn't get fired on my first day of work.

But rushing down a sweeping corridor filled with priceless art and important people, out of nowhere she said, "Have you noticed everyone here is so fucking polite?!"

To which all I could say in a flood of relief was, "Oh Thank God. You're a fucking New Yorker!"

Sunday Memories: Our Children's Stories

The bookshelf with all the Charles Addams books was in the adult section of the Seward Park Library. On the occasions I went with Florence she'd park me on a little wooden stool used by bigger people to reach higher places, stick a Charles Addams book in my hands, and then drift off to somewhere else.

I would sit there for hours, pouring over every picture, believing the secrets of life were being revealed to me.

Bloggers Gone Wild!!!

I think it was Jeremiah's (Vanishing New York) idea to "cash mob" a local business. That's when a whole bunch of people all show up at the same time and patronize the business.


Everybody wanted Ray's. That's the candy-newspaper shop where, in 1971 or 2, I used to stop by after babysitting on 22nd Street. It was often the only place on Avenue A with lights on. Ray's, being a little hole in the wall, will be another night.

I voted for Odessa over Lucy's because Lucy's had just gotten written up in the New York Times.


So with internet announcements abounding, a mob of nine gathered. Some of the best bloggers were there, including Gog In New York, East Village Corner, Tripping with Marty and One More Folded Sunset.


Between bites of challah grilled cheese, blintzes, kielbasi, pierogis and borscht, we assured one another that great revolutions often started with just a few brilliant minds and some really good food.

And Danny, happily giving out separate checks, got cashed by our mob. Now it's your turn.

ODESSA

(212) 253-1470

119 Ave A
New York, NY10009

Driving, New York Style

Not having a car or knowing how to drive one was not a big deal. My father learned late in life because he got transferred to Long Island. "A reverse commute. No traffic," he'd state Yoda-like. Still, he never liked driving, and would say as much with that unique "weight-of-the-world" terminal uniqueness that made it sound like he was preparing to face Goliath and we should never forget what he had to sacrifice in order to put food on the table.


It took me twenty years and three attempts to get my license. Branded in what's left of my 1976 memory is a certain point on 14th Street where my then-driving instructor ordered me to do a U-turn during early morning rush hour. Of course, I stalled the car smack across the dividing line.

So I have become an expert on being a relaxed, happy passenger on the rare road trips I'm coaxed into. Good at changing the radio station, maintaining interesting chatter and never participating in front or back seat driving.


All the while looking for anything that reminds me of home.

Sunday Memories: Ode To The Village Voice Classifieds: Part Three

Florence (right side of guy) on her day off at Grossingers'

During the late thirties and throughout War World II, Florence worked as a waitress. For someone who loathed domestic work, was a terrible cook and, although charming, wasn't exactly a people person, her choice had more to do with what was available to a young woman in those days rather than what she was good at.

Yet those years of serving procured her a bicycle on D-Day or V-Day or one of those victory days, and the Steinway piano she lived in until her death.

Years later, after a divorce severed a steady flow of money, Florence was suddenly faced with new financial matters as many women of her generation were when traditional structures crumbled.

As she stumbled to her independent feet, one of her first jobs was stocking cans at a supermarket and handing out teacher-evaluation forms at Hunter College, a school she attended for her Bachelors'. With a few more private students, she kept herself afloat.

The menial jobs were nothing to her. They were there for only one purpose. To support that daily battle of sitting down and being what she was - an artist.

***
A series on job hunting and gainful employment.

Ode To The Village Voice Classifieds: Part Two

Waiting rooms, millennium style

It used to be you had to show up at the HR office or the agency. Sit in waiting rooms that ranged from shabby, duct-taped chairs to sleek modern lines heralding the cutting edge of 1970s interior design. And hope the company was willing to interview you.

***
A series on job hunting and gainful employment.

Ode To The Village Voice Classifieds: Part One

The Village Voice trucks would pull up at the kiosk at Astor Place on Tuesday night. We'd already be waiting on line, hoping the classifieds were full of better paying opportunities than the shitty jobs most of us had.

That was rarely the case. Instead, escort services, sales jobs that seriously challenged what was legal and office assistant jobs that were anything but.

Now it's a daily "getting on the internet line" every morning, be it Craig's List, Monster or the New York Times. And now it's illegal wire transfer scams and ponzi schemes and office assistant jobs that are anything but.

***
A series on job hunting and gainful employment.

Sunday Memories: First Love

Captain Kirk on the starship, Enterprise
doing something important

For one thing (as Florence always said), I thought he was real. Which meant I thought the spaceship was real.

And another thing (as Florence always said) I really, really wanted to live up there with him where ever that was.

It wasn't just a nicer home I was after. In his world problems actually got solved and there also seemed to be a lot of good food literally at the push of a button.

But none of the subways seemed to lead anywhere near Captain Kirk's neighborhood. So, after our once-a-week Friday night visit to Gramma's to watch another hour of his life, I'd walk home with my older and wiser sister and have her explain to me everything that was really going on.

I wanted to be prepared for a better home where problems got worked out.

The War of the Walkers

It was mid-day and the bus was packed with walkers. Most of us sidled by or stepped gingerly over the wheels that couldn't help but protrude a bit into an already narrow aisle.

However, the lady with the cane was peeved and as she got off, complained loudly and directly to the several walker owners about how much space they took up.

I thought, well, how great it is that we live in a city where buses have these platforms that go down to the sidewalk and then rise you up like the Queen Mother on her way to christen a ship. How great it is we live in a city where people with walkers and canes and wheelchairs and just tired old legs still move through it as they always have, only now with a little extra spin.

How great it is we live in a city where it is still yours and mine and hers and his New York even when we get too old for just two legs.

Jutta's Kitchen Stops For Nothing

Even after getting hit by a car, even after years of litigation, even after failed cataract surgery...

...even after finding herself legally blind, even after her hearing got worse and worse and worse, even after....


... Jutta still paints.

And you, with your dreams and your passions, what did you do today?

***

Jutta's Kitchen: Part One

Jutta's Kitchen: Part Two

Jutta's Kitchen: Part Three

Jutta's Kitchen Revisited

Jutta's Kitchen Blooms

Jutta's Kitchen Meets The Internet