What's In A Name? If It's Cornell Edwards Way, Quite A Bit: Part Two

Bill, Cornell's partner of five decades is collecting signatures supporting the co-naming of 13th Street "Cornell Edwards Way". Stop by at 143 E. 13th Street and sign the petition!

In the meantime, settle in, get comfy and read Part Two of the story of how such a simple request to acknowledge Cornell's 43 years of contribution to New York City came about.

"You helped turn this neighborhood from a war zone into a community." - Lynn (Her father was a well known African-American clarinet player, and their family lived down the street from the Flower Stall. Cornell gave her brother his first job helping out in the store.

Cornell and his Christmas windows

The beginning was like any beginning of great things - a bit bumpy. There was that garbage can that got thrown through one of the front window. A flower store could be bad for certain businesses. Like drugs, prostitution, porn theaters. "Well, it was a dicey neighborhood," Bill dryly observed. And then there was that flower refrigerator system that got built half way but never finished because the money ran out. This eliminated selling flowers.

However, somethings went well. In a neighborhood rife with crime, Cornell never got robbed.

So with some agricultural leanings from the one side of his family still farming in North Carolina, and armed with a degree in English from NYU, Cornell set about doing what he had to do, starting with the tome of all plants tomes, Exotica. "Self-taught," Bill said.

Soon the plant peddlers, mostly from New Jersey and Staten Island, who serviced plant and flower stores from their trucks found Cornell. Every week or so they'd pull up their trucks and show their wares.

But it was the Manda Brothers that changed everything. Famous horticulturalists educated in London the three brothers' New Jersey greenhouse, established in 1910, was legendary. And even better, it was accessible by public transportation, an important detail since neither Bill nor Cornell owned a car. Cornell began to do business with them which would continued for decades until the brothers retired. After his visits to pick out items for The Flower Stall, the Manda Brothers' old 1936 pick up truck, painted green with house paint, would swing by 13th Street and drop off his order.

The shop was now open and thriving, with a specialty of exotic and colorful plants. Bill remembered a day when Cornell bound up the stairs to their apartment, excited about selling a bromeliad for $4.50.

There was also a special hi-fi system from Bill's college days in the store. Those were the days of tubes and wires and sensitive dials you had to tune carefully to get your station. Digital hadn't been invented. The old system sat on the wooden counter. Because the 10 watt Bell amp ran hot it needed to be turned off every night. Well, one night, Cornell forgot to turn it off.

The next morning Fire Station #3 from down the street was on its way to another fire when they saw the smoke pouring out of the store front. They couldn't stop because they were on their way to another fire and that was the law. So they called Fire Station #5. But #3's fire turned out to be a false alarm, so they headed straight back to Cornell, shooed away #5 and took care of things.

However, everything inside the store was destroyed. Counters, equipment, fixtures. As well as every single plant.

Perhaps a week or two, later, as the store slowly got fixed up, the Manda Brothers' old 1936 pick up truck painted green with house paint pulled up to the store. Before you could say 'bromeliad' those brothers jumped out, restocked the store with every possible plant imaginable, jumped back into the truck and drove away.

And it wasn't just the neighborhood looking out for Cornell. Cornell looked out for the neighborhood. And he didn't miss a thing. Like a sudden increase in odd activity at a certain doorway. People coming and going at short intervals but too short a time for brothel business. A simple question from Cornell to the owner of the building - "What's going on?" - quickly slowed down the growing drug business. "He didn't say much, but his words had terrific power," Bill noted.

There was also that time when Lynn, then in high school, decided to cut school one day. She headed down 13th Street to illicit teenage freedom. Catching Cornell at the doorway of the store she ducked down behind the cars and made a dash to the corner. Just as she got to the end of the block, there waiting was .... Cornell.

The teenager Lynn was not happy at all. But the adult Lynn knew the precious value of a neighbor looking out for the kids in the neighborhood. Like many of us who were running a bit too wild on the streets, those moments reminded us caring eyes who knew our mothers and fathers were keeping us in line and keeping us safe.

Cornell wasn't just a neighbor to the people on his block. Cornell was a neighbor to his neighborhood.

Part Three: New York was Cornell's neighborhood.

What's In A Name? If It's Cornell Edwards Way, Quite A Bit: Part One

Bill, Cornell's partner of five decades is collecting signatures supporting the co-naming of 13th Street "Cornell Edwards Way". Stop by at 143 E. 13th Street and sign the petition!

In the meantime, settle in, get comfy and read Part One of the story of how such a simple request to acknowledge Cornell's 43 years of contribution to New York City came about.

Once upon a time...
...maybe in the 60's if not before...


... Second and Third Avenue around 13th Street and 12th Streets and perhaps other streets in our little neighborhood were peppered with SROs and "hotels" with names like Dover, the Village East, the Regina, and the Sahara. Even Schneller's had SROs.

The neighborhood was filled with businesses and families that had been there for years and years and generations and generations. Hudsons Army and Navy took up most of Third Avenue between 12th and 13th and the 97 year old founder still worked the cash register. (I remember this place well, the sagging floors, the floor to ceiling shelves piled high with jeans and the couple of times a then-friend shoplifted there). The barber shop school was there too, a wide expanse of many chairs and many beginner scissors and buzzers.

Across the street was Harry's Haberdashery where you could get two suits for $29. The rest of Harry's was uninhabited but in his building on 13th Street, Harry rented a room it an old man, maybe 100 years old. Once a week the old man would appear and take fifteen minutes to cross the street. Cars had wait until he got far across for them to scoot around him.

Manufacturers lined 13th street which is why the American Felt building is called the American Felt building. There were felt manufacturers there. (Now it's just famous for luxury lofts and Tom Cruise.)

Bill and Cornell lost their apartment on Second Avenue, and were exiled to Yorkville. But they wanted to come home. They looked around the neighborhood and found 143 E. 13th Street.

At the time, it was SROs and perhaps a "hotel" that was rented by the hour. A older gentleman was entering his third decade of leasing the building when he had an unfortunate meeting with a gun from someone who might have been visiting one of his rooms. Well, the older gentleman's son put his foot down. That building and its business was too dangerous.

Bill stepped forward with an offer to buy out the rest of the lease for $2000 and take over the monthly rent of $225. This rent was not for one apartment. This was the rent for the entire building. He and Cornell moved in. As Cornell worked in the boy's department at Abraham and Strauss, Bill replaced the broken coal boiler, the water lines, patched up the apartments and every week would put another piece of rooming board furniture in the empty storefront with a sign "Furniture of the Week". The sales covered some expenses.

And then one day in 1966, Cornell quit the boy's department and said to Bill, "I want to open a flower store. It's going to be called The Flower Stall." And with a name but no store, the adventure began.

***
Part Two: The neighborhood

Sunday Memories: The Outrageous Life and Times of Florence Deutsch Moed

On Saturday, December 20, 2008 at the Henry Street Settlement in New York City's Lower East Side over 60 people braved bitter cold and ice to celebrate Florence Deutsch Moed's life.

The stories were as outrageous, funny, poignant, riveting and thrilling as any letter from or visit with Florence herself.

My sister and I are forever grateful for all the incredible stories shared and the love so freely given.

Claire Olivia Moed
Louise Althea Moed

***
video by E.M. Smith and Adrian Garcia Gomez
video edited by Lola Kalman

A New Year Encore: In Lieu of Flowers...

In Lieu of Flowers... was originally posted on October 1, 2008 as an obituary for Florence who had died the previous morning. Since Rosh Hoshanah appears in the English calendar differently each year, she in death has become as unpredictable as she was in life. Wouldn't have it any other way.

In Lieu of Flowers...



Tell the truth.

Tell yourself the truth.

Don't let your bullshit compromise either of the above.

Don't lie. Unless you're drunk. Then really don't lie.

Don't steal.

Accept hand-me-downs.

Look fabulous in your own clothes. They may have started out as hand-me-downs but they're yours now. Proudly recount their lineage. Never feel ashamed about that.

Never take a taxi.

Walk everywhere.

Don't wear a coat in winter.

Carry your own weight to the point of pathology. Better to err on independence than not.

Refuse to lose at the hands of cowardliness, mediocrity, stupidity, and the need to blend in.

Suffer aloneness at the risk of fitting in with any of the above.

Refuse to feel fear. If you do, ignore it and keep going. Just like Florence did that night during a World War II blackout under the Manhattan Bridge by the movie theater (now a Chinese market).

Always put your work first.
Always do your work.
Always put your work first.
Always do your work.

Rage against the Machine. Even when it looks like it's related to you.

Risk being laughed at by morons when you do something no one else is doing. Just like when Florence put on those roller skates in 1972 and skated up and down Grand Street and all those people laughed at her and then a couple of years every one had disco skates.

Start your entire life over at 60 like you were a 14 year old. Because on some level, you still are.

Fight back just like Florence did all the times someone mugged her or tried to mug her during the 1970's.

Don't EVER quit.

Know that that beer, that sandwich, those shoes, that jacket, those pants, that avenue, that movie house, that proper grammar, that street, that bar, that woman, that dance, that etude, that sonata, that scale, that subway, that bus, that hotdog, that boardwalk, that beach, that ocean is Your New York.

It Was Hers.

Sometimes You Get To Go Back To Your New York

The minute I saw him taking a picture of the front door, I knew this was His New York.

The gate of 217 hasn't changed he told me. It was just like that when he was a young man of 18, fresh from Brazil, right after the war, working for the United States Consulate.

Of course, pointing up to the second or third floor, he had just a small room, enough space for a bed. The toilet and anything else he might desire was outside his tiny habitat.

It had taken him 18 days on a ship to arrive in a city so different then. After a very brief stay on Ellis Island - a letter from the Commanding Officer on the U.S. Base in Brazil made sure it was brief - he got a lift into the heart of the city.

"Where should I drop you?" asked the driver.

"At a square," he replied.

There, smack in the middle of the sidewalk, filled with the milling crowd of New Yorkers on the run to someplace else, was the sergeant from the very U.S. base in Brazil where his journey had begun. In a city of millions, what were the chances of him, all of 18, fresh off the boat, finding a familiar face at rush hour?

"I'm writing a book about my life," he told me.

"I can't wait to read it," I replied.

In the meantime, I quietly gave thanks that, while rushing to someplace else, late as always, blasting music, I too got a million-in-one chance to do something I rarely do. I stopped and asked a complete stranger about their own New York.

Sunday Memories: For My Sister's Birthday

Somewhere there's a pictures of my sister, Louise, then twelve years old, sitting at an upright piano in this bandshell. She won third prize in a city-wide competition of all the kids in public school taking music lessons and dance lessons. At least that's how I remember it.

That bandshell was part of all our lives when, the arts were in the public school system along with the three 'R's. So Louise being up there was normal. And because she loved playing so much it was normal she'd get a ribbon or a little statue or something heralding her accomplishments.

On a recent day of fading summer, while a ragtime band played nearby and babies and dogs bounced along to the swing, the chiseled inscription on the lip of the stage stood strong and unwavering. It was written in stone.

Presented to the City of New York and its music lovers by Elkan Naumburg

And just as it had welcomed my sister then, it welcomes now any and all the kids and parents and neighbors and passerbyers and anyone and everyone who graces its presence.

Welcome To His New York. Got Kidney?

This is Juan.

And he needs a kidney.

He's New York Mitchell Lama houses on 95th and Amsterdam. When he was growing up there, you still could see New Jersey from Amsterdam. Never lived anywhere else but New York (and you can't count those 8 months in Kansas City). His high school job was opening-the- doors-closing-the-doors at the Planetarium. TWA flight attendants, then glamorous heroes of the sky, in full length fur coats taught him the difference between a silly drink of vodka and orange juice and the sophistication of a kir royale. Christmas finery in those days was skinny jeans and a shirt unbuttoned down to there. Well, after all it was the 70's.

Then Tom met him.



Tom is not from New York. He's from Missouri. He moved to New York and went to a Buddhist gathering. Took one look at Juan and that was that. And that was 26 years ago. Tom is the only reason Juan lived in Kansas City for eight months.

I ask Juan, "What about you is New York?"

"I experienced everything. We didn't grow up with money, but I experienced everything."

This is my friend, Juan. And what I want him to experience is something he hasn't before - a new kidney.

So if you are B+ or maybe even O or O+ or 0- and you got a kidney, my friend needs your help.

And if you are not any of those things, would you help and pass this post forward? Post it to your blog, post it to your facebook, send it out with your pigeons, let your friends know.

Spread the word. And welcome to His New York.

The Lights of Autumn

Sunday Memories: The Last Days Of Summer

Coney, on a Friday morning


Before Google there were these guys.

Straight out of one of my adventure books, I'd watch, mesmerized, as they use mysterious rays to penetrate the earth's surface seeking, in waning days and emptying beaches, a buried treasure.

A Day On 23rd Street

It was the fifth thrift store and like most of the other places, dogs were allowed.

Several of us recognized each other from previous shopping stops where collaborative efforts and group participation was part of the process in making wise fashion decisions.

We were all on the ferocious hunt for something under $10 that made us look like a million bucks, only five to ten pounds thinner.

But finally after patient waiting by full racks, like many two-legged male companions, including the very tolerant one with me that day, Louie stopped for a break.

Save The Books!!! A New York City Kickstarter Project That Isn't A Film!!!!

The Quartchyard


Somehow, despite all, Clayton Patterson has given the history and the events of the Lower East Sides haven in his work, photos, films, videos and archives.

Somehow, despite all, he and Dr. Mareleyn Schneider have completed a three volume anthology, JEWS, A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE.

And somehow, despite all, including the distributing publisher not having the funds to print, only to distribute, they are determined to get this important collection published.

Clayton was kind enough to include the story I wrote about Cindy and home, The Land Of The Quartchyard in this magnificent collection.

Other pieces include:

• Emma Goldman – First Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side
• Jewish Boxing in the Lower East Side
• Public Baths on the Lower East Side
• Tuli Kupferberg: The Meaning of the Jew in the Dictionary of Anarchism
  

Irresistible!! So please join me in supporting this project by joining in and kick starting it!

Every bit helps!

Thank you so much!

Sunday Memories and Encore: Brief Peace in Late Night

A Tibetan Monk had been tortured for years by the Chinese authorities. When released the Dali Lama met with the Monk. His Holiness asked the Monk if he was ever afraid during those horrific years.

"Yes," the Monk answered. "I was afraid I would stop feeling compassion for my torturers."

Peace, wherever, whenever and however we can welcome it into our hearts and our world, should never become a memory.


November 18, 2010



It was past the world's bedtime. No one was really there.

Still, the remaining countries who had waited days to speak stepped up to the podium, and in the formal shoes of a tired man or the polite heels of a fatigued woman, addressed the empty seats.

World, they said, let's give peace a chance our country is hurting your country is hurting we are all hurting there is no need for this...

If the seats could have nodded they would have and they would have made sure something was done to make it better. But instead, each word bounced and banged against walls and ceilings.

We, the scribes, though, we made sure the words didn't shatter against hard surfaces.

We, the scribes, noted stressed stated said and urged.

We, the scribes, made sure even in empty spaces peace was recorded and thus given a chance.

You Could Even Hear The Food

Neither of us had realized what was different until the guy next to us at the bar said "Do you hear any loud rock music?"

There was none.

Which is why we had been able to eavesdrop on his fascinating conversations with his friend on his left about the 32 years at the Daily News working delivery...

...his neighbor on his right about the 1950's magazines he found in the trash right next door...

...and then finally turning to us about how the neighborhood had gone downhill it wasn't a neighborhood anymore and all these expensive restaurants how the hell can you eat with all that noise...

...and then his neighbor on his right joined in...

...and soon we were all talking, complaining, comparing, and one-upping...

"I got my mother's old New Yorkers."
"My mother IS an old New Yorker."

...Because that's what New Yorkers do. Talk to anyone anywhere we are. Like here at this old West Village establishment where it is quiet enough to taste to hear to connect.

Autumn In New York

St. James Place, near where Gramma lived, Jonathan, Raymond, and Stephen grew up, right by where Dad took us for pork buns, always on the way home from the ferry.

Sunday Memories: Luxury Is In The Eye That Beholds It

A new chocolate shop beckoned. Delicious plans were afoot. "Gourmet chocolate vending machines!" the handsome young owner shared.

Oh, but we had those too. Sprinkled across subway platforms, for a nickel, then a dime and then for a precious quarter, a small delight of luxurious heaven awaited.

Avant Et Après Le Déluge

Sunday Memories Encore: "Let the rain kiss you... Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops..." Langston Hughes

Even the homeless man wheeled his hand truck under the awning. But I threw myself forward hoping the clouds growing dark were lying or at least not telling me the truth for a few more blocks.

and then it rained and the two old ladies cared tenderly for one another as they prepared to step into the storm.



their love I cried later after the storm had finished.

Love Letters From The Most Beautiful Harbor In The World

Until I got on the Ferry I had forgotten how the smells and sounds were as intimate with me as Florence's music.

Lucy Is In And Giving Advice On Staten Island

It started with the ladies at the pool who needed swim tips and some goggles... And then someone said something maybe it was Karen and someone else said something else maybe it was Lorie and before you could say "Ask Anything - Free Advice" tee shirts were made and you know when you make a tee shirt that's it. You're committed. So one afternoon in between the comings and going of the Ferry, the sea rising and falling, the storm warning it was growing and the skyline wooing anyone willing to stop and look, Lorie and Karen set up shop and, from expertise hard-earned-hard-won because they know their borough their city their own lives, answered for free any question asked...

• What do I do first to start over after prison?
• How do I make peace with my adult daughter?
• Would God forgive me?

And of course the only question always there... love and love and love and... a marriage betrayed, a boyfriend loved, a girlfriend desired, a couple's confusion, a hope for union... and love and love and love and...* *Earth Wind And Fire-That's The Way Of The World

Encore - Sunday Memories: THE LOOK OF LOVE

Today is Judith's birthday. She is 90. The elegance and spirit from which she has built her life continues to emerge each day, paving the way for the rest of us to rise and become just as extraordinary.


Judith

She escaped from Hungary to England as the Nazis began to round up the Jews. In 1950, she sailed on the Queen Elizabeth into the New York Harbor.

It was morning and the crescent moon glimmered on the water.

The Lady beckoned.

The boat horns blew welcome.

Then the city unfolded before her eyes.

It was love at first sight.