Word Travels

What better place for a bookstore to set up an outpost but at a really great bar. 

Especially if the bar is the KGB and it's the Wednesday night Fantastic Fiction series (there's also a night called Careening Drunk Writers...).

But Word travels.  At least from Brooklyn or Jersey City to the East Village where great writers get a chance to read great stories.

And tonight was no different, with Carola Dibbell reading from the acclaimed and heralded debut novel, The Only Ones and Gemma Files taking folks on a ride through hell with her Book of Tongues.

Well, like peanut butter and chocolate or jelly or whatever ones likes with peanut butter, writers hanging out in a bar having a great drink and listening to wild and thrilling stories and books on the back shelf like candy just waiting to be snapped up seems a hellava lot more fun than swiping right or left or screaming over a $20 martini.


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Related Posts:

Word Bookstores

KGB Bar

The Stork Has Arrived: The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell

A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files

The Tailors

Felix's Tailoring - now on Allen Street

The small shops are still on the lower east side, only a few left on Rivington, one or two on Eldridge, a bunch  on Allen and the famous one on Stanton. 

For a couple of bucks those pillow cases can go from king to regular and the sweatshirt zipper can actually be made to work.  The lining of the thrift-store coat can be replaced cheaper than it costs to buy a badly made new coat sold by a chain. And the seam of those pants can finally be properly fixed.

All you gotta do is walk in. 

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Felix Tailor Shop Departs Rivington

Sunday Memories Of Deep Chills On Valentines Day

The view of a cold Williamsburg Bridge
from the warm side of the window

There was one Valentines day, years ago, where Second Avenue suddenly filled with thousands of young men, arms filled with thousands of roses, who poured up the street like salmon spawning.  I was attempting to go down the street to an internship at a hip art center where I was attempting to drown heartache with menial tasks.  

Nothing said loser more than having to push pass all those young men headed to the success of a relationship I could not for the life of me figure out.

"Winter unfailingly turns to spring," wrote the Buddhist monk, Nicherin Daishonin to the lay nun Myōichi in a letter in 1275, offering her encouragement in having faith that things would get better.

And indeed, winter turned to spring.  The lay nun was able to care for her children and despite hardships, hold dear to her faith and practice.

And indeed, winter (finally) turned to spring, filling days with unfamiliar joy.  And with that, Valentines Day stopped being the barometer of winning and losing.  It wasn't winter or spring.  It was just another good day. 

This year's Valentines Day, although no different than recent past ones, comes with warnings of cold that is "downright dangerous" and frostbite risks if you stay out too long. 

But I am not fretting. 

Happy Valentines to the Mariner.

And Happy Valentines to all.   Winter indeed does unfailingly turns to spring.

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Related Posts:

Days Like This

Admiring the Moon Over the Capital

Another Walk to Hope: PartII

The Walk to Hope Is a Leap of Faith

Step into the Light and Be Known

There are times those 10,000 hours it takes to become even kinda good at my reason for being alive feels as futile as spitting into the wind.  Futile as in why do I even get up to do it again this morning? Why do I send my work out over and over again? 

Why do I keep leaping into unknowns, planting things that never seem to grow, showing up again and again and again?

Or....

I can keep keeping on, get the hell out of the wind and demand to be seen.

Like Katha Cato introducing the Queens World Film Festival.

And heard.

Like Elisabeth Lohninger, singing at a Monday night bar.

And counted.

Like Melvin Van Peebles talking to a theater full of filmmakers about making something that no one thought could be made.

A hellava lot better than spitting in the wind.


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Related Posts:

Sunday Memories: The Long and Winding Road

Queens World Film Festival

Melvin Van Peebles

Regrets of the Day

I didn't know until I walked by.

All these men were picking up pots and putting down pans and talking that fierce kind of talk that involves business and money and making deals and doing it fast.

I knew the place by its TV screens at the bar with every sports game on it and its outdoor seating where the whole neighborhood hung out during the summer with baby strollers and tons of hopeful little dogs under the tables.

I would pass by, looking for one of my favorite friends who often ate there during summer weeknights.   But I never ate there myself.

Perhaps it was fear of the onion rings. Or the noise of the street.  Or getting too involved with the game, or the little dogs.

Or the onion rings.

But just the other day, I looked at those tables outside (the upside of global warming) and thought, why not!  The Mariner and I should have dinner there some night!

Lo.  It is not to be.

Mumbles, after 22 years in the neighborhood, is packing up and another restaurant is moving in.  Lots of reasons, they told Town and Village, including rent and not enough people supporting family-owned/run neighborhood spots.

Well, the Mariner and I do, just below 14th Street.  Perhaps it was time to expand the territory. 

I watched more stuff get picked up and piled high and more men talk fiercely the way they do when they are making deals and talking money.  Then I spied the plants.

Are you taking them, I asked one of the busier guys making piles and deals.

"Oh yes, definitely," he said laughing.

So.  I did walk by too many times, never stopping by.  But who knows?  Perhaps one of those pots or the plants will begin a new life in a neighborhood restaurant.  And perhaps this time I'll stop by.


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Town &Village Blog:  Mumbles Restaurant Closes

EV Grieve: Mumbles Has Closed on 3rd Avenue

You Could Even Hear the Food

We Regret To Inform: St. Mark's Bookstore Soon to Become a Sunday Memory

The store closes its doors Wednesday evening.

Everything is 50% off (except cards and consignment books).

Jeremiah's Vanishing New York documents its valiant struggles to remain one of the most important independent bookstores in New York here.

As Jeremiah said so well in his blog, there are no words left that could do justice to such a great loss.

St. Mark's Books
136 East 3rd Street
New York Fucking City

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Related Posts:

The End of St. Mark's Books

Blessed Journey and Safe Travels

That man is getting on the bus because, even though she had just pulled away from the curb, that bus driver opened the door for him.

That's the kind of bus driver she is.

A few seconds of passing forward some good equaled a whole day of goodness for others.  I know.  I watched her the the entire way up from Fulton to 14th Street, saying hello to passengers, telling the man with the cane to take his time, answering the girl who was carrying on a simultaneous conversation on her phone about what stop was best to get to the hospital. 

And the one that meant the most to me - tell the crossing guard at 3rd Street not to rush the elderly man caught as the light changed.  "No, let him cross, let him cross," she called to the crossing guard and then she waited, because a light turning green or red was not as important as an elderly man who clearly couldn't walk faster than really slow but who needed to get to the other side of the street.

And because the bus driver told the crossing guard to let him cross, the crossing guard went out into the middle of the street and guided that old man safely to the corner. 

That meant the most.  All the times people helped Florence as she stumbled through a city she once ruled, suddenly beyond her disappearing capacities... bus drivers, train conductors, other passengers, passer-bys, Maria at the hospital who fed her.   New Yorkers heart and soul.....

"God is good," the bus driver told me as I got off the bus.

So are you, I said.

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A Visit to the Hospital: Part Two

Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Gloom of Night...Until Suddenly...

An Encore of What's the Bottom Line: The Song Remains The Same, Revisited

At a social event, the Mariner and I found ourselves huddled with a man we had just met, talking in shorthand about the moments where nothing mattered except holding the hand of the person you loved.  

This man was holding his woman's hand a lot these days.  There wasn't much to say except a couple of yes's and fierce nodding.  

In honor of the only moments that matter...

Originally posted August 6, 2013 

I recognized the number of the four missed calls right away.   It was the ER.

Rushing through dark, summer streets was like listening to a familiar song sung by someone new.   Even if it was only a dog bite on the arm and the dog had had its shots, having to step back into old space that had been the many cracks of a broken heart required a calm that wasn't there anymore.

The place was packed.  And the night, just like all those past nights, began.

"We got 160 patients so we're a little behind."
"Full moon."
"Really?"

"Maxwell! Good news!  You don't have an infection."

"Can anyone spare a blanket, miss could I have a blanket oh god bless you..."

"No, it's not broken."
"Sir, it's broken."
"No, it's not broken."

 "Where are my Cantonese, Mandarin speakers?"

"I had him just a minute ago and I lost him."

"Martha?  Martha?  Is Martha here?  Are you Martha?  No?"

"Usually, Monday is the busy day, everybody in for their work notes.  Monday and Tuesday were very quiet this week and I thought, uh oh the storm is coming."

"Oh they have people much worse than me.  They just intubated someone over there a few minutes ago."

"Do you want some chocolate?"

"They were shooting nails at each other, I asked them why were you shooting nails at each other?"

"I stopped telling my parents what I see because then they say, this is what you went to school for?"

 "Can I have a glass a water, miss can you spare a glass of water oh god bless you..."

**
Related Posts:

The ER Visit - Part One: Begin the Beguine

The ER Visit - Part Two: The Walls Of Jericho

A Visit To The Hospital: Part One

A Visit To The Hospital: Part Two

The ER Visit - Part Three: Welcome to His ER California

The Song Remains The Same
 Days Like This

Sunday Memories of Being at Home with Fish

After months of summarizing horrifying atrocities and political nightmares, returning home took weeks.  Even if I was already inside the apartment.

It was the gathering of pieces and reconnecting heart and soul molecules that took time.   Sleep helped but only so far.

Sometimes it was watching a British reality show where you could watch babies after babies after babies being born.   Sometimes that worked.

Other times it was watching documentaries about eccentric artists or stand-up comedians or visionaries.

But there was this one time, where the only thing that worked was curling up on a kitchen chair and watching every Barney Miller I could find on youtube. 

Morning coffee in hand, 12 hours would suddenly pass.  I did this for weeks.  Nothing much else happened.  Just heart and soul coming back together into a recognizable sense of self.

I didn't give much thought as to why or how or the deeper meaning.  I just soaked up every second of every story line, every actor, every character actor...

Just recently, in the midst of horrifying atrocities and political nightmares, every day announced another obituary.   It was almost like dominoes falling ... Bowie, Jean Stapleton, Paul Kantner, Glenn Frey, Alan Rickman...

...and then it was Abe Vigoda.  Detective Fish on Barney Miller. 

And why and how I had lived in Barney Miller for all those weeks suddenly became crystal clear.  

That show was filled with the accents, the rhythms, the grammar (or lack thereof) of all the people who were the adults when I was only a kid, the adults when I was only a young adult... the adults I was a peer with... 

It was where I returned to the city I remembered, the streets I ran a little wild in, the friends I missed.

 Like Det. Fish and Yemana (Jack Soo whose voice I knew intimately from my beat-up vinyl record of Flower Drum Song). 

They were where I could hear and see my New York again.  And when I was in pieces, they showed me the way back to that home, back to a heart and soul I grew up with. 

**
Related Posts:

Happiness Is Where the Heart Is and the Heart Is Always Home

Barney Miller

Sunday Memories: When the City Was A Black and White Photograph

It Was His New York Story: Ed Hamilton

Ed Hamilton has been telling the story of our city for a long, long time.

If he hadn't started posting about the Chelsea Hotel, its heart and soul would have been destroyed, along with the murals and the art and the stories and the tenants and the mom and pop stores and the affordable housing and the theater and so many, too many independent bookstores.

All those stories were gathered into Legends of the Chelsea Hotel, a book that defied obliteration. 

And he hasn't stopped.   In seven short stories and one novella, Ed's new book, The Chintz Age, goes deep into our heart and soul's attempt to survive in our changed city and our disappearing home.

Last Friday, at Bluestocking Bookstore, one of the last independent, radical bookstores in the United States we got to hear our stories.  At least for me, when I hear such stories, even ones that tell me of my loss or of my struggles, I defy obliteration.

Go here and find out where Ed is reading again or where you can buy online if you are not in where he is.

Or, go to Bluestockings and buy his book and while you are there, get some coffee, sit for a while and remember real New York.


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Related Posts:

Ed Hamilton

Bluestockings Bookstore

Radical Acceptance

This is Bluestockings.  It is one of only 13 radical bookstores left in the United States - 100% volunteer-powered and collectively-owned, fair trade cafe and activist center.

And the best books and reading series in the city!

This is Vittoria repetto, the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the lower east side.

Her poems have always stopped me in my tracks and changed my life.  I keep one near my desk to remember how a heart goes on...

She started the Women’s and Trans’ Poetry Jam series in 1999.

And 17 years later it is still going strong.   Once a month on a Tuesday night at 7pm the mike opens (women and trans only) and no matter whether you have been writing for years or just started that afternoon you can face an audience and read your stuff.

And no matter what, that mike is open and it's welcoming.  At least for eight minutes.

And at 8pm two featured writers/artists are invited to step up to that mike.  And no matter what, that mikes is open and it's welcoming.

The series flourishes at Bluestockings.  Only in a radical bookstore could a radical reading series flourish.  And because of that writers so rarely heard from get to step up to that mike and change the world.

This Tuesday, 26 January will be no different.


Women’s & Trans’ Poetry Jam
Bluestockings
172 Allen Street (between Stanton and Rivingston)
NY, NY

$5 suggested donation

Open mike at 7pm. 

Featured writers:

C.O. Moed and Alyssa K. Harley

C.O. Moed's WIRE MONKEY: it’s almost the 1980’s and Bets, all of almost nineteen, once again gets jettisoned from the ancestral home on Columbia and Broome. With nowhere to go she returns to her second home – the East Village, determined to start a new life, if you call stealing, getting drunk on St. Patty’s day, selling rings door to door, punching your best friend in the face and selling off the family possessions starting a new life.

Alyssa K. Harley’s project seeks meaning based in the music of the English language. What she has searched for most is how to create a sense of real evidence through art of the absolute smallest of hopes, the ones that matter.

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VITTORIA REPETTO

Bluestockings

Sunday Memories: Snow Day!

 The Blizzard of 2016

We always hoped snow days landed on a school day.

Our folks always hoped snow days landed on a day they wouldn't lose any pay staying home to watch us.   Or in Florence's case, lose her rare time alone or her mercurial sanity.

But we didn't care, this ragtag bunch of kids living in the Quartchyard - religious, not religious didn't matter.  Snow days meant liberation from strict rules of where we could or could not run, touch, walk, and stomp, or how loud or not loud we could shout, woop, squeal, scream and laugh.

All year round we carefully didn't touch anything like the grass or the bushes or the tree trunks.  This was nature and it was proof that you didn't need to be rich to have nice stuff.  Just like Cindy's mother's couch which was encased in plastic, those natures thingies were meant to be looked at but never touched.

But the minute that snow hit the grass of the Quartchyard we were running, stomping, wooping laughing screaming not just on the stone walkway, but EVERYWHERE.

There were no fancy outdoors clothes in those days.  There was wool.  In layers. And when those layers and layers got wet we got cold.

En masse, all of us would rush into one of the buildings ringing the Quartchyard and with more screaming and squealing and stomping and wooping, we would throw our wet wool mittens and hats and scarves onto the big iron radiator spitting out steam heat.

The smell of wet wool on those radiators was the smell of happy as we hopped up and down hoping things would dry as quickly as possible so we could get outside and run rampant all over again.

Snow days are different today.  There is no running and jumping and squealing and wool.  Instead, it is, from a safe distance, watching and worrying that the oil tanker stuck in a snow drift won't be able to get his truck out and away from our home before it blows up.

**

Related Posts:

Sunday Memories: Traveling Through

In Memory of Cindy: The Land Of The Quartchyard 

Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Gloom of Night...Until Suddenly...

Special Announcement: Wire Monkey Reads Again! At Bluestockings!

From the trilogy, WIRE MONKEY comes a couple of chapters from its namesake novella!

It’s almost the 1980’s and Bets all of almost nineteen, once again, get jettisoned from the ancestral home on Columbia and Broome. With nowhere to go she returns to her ‘second home’ – the East Village, determined to start a new life, if you call stealing, getting drunk on St. Patty’s day, selling rings door to door, punching your best friend in the face and selling off the family possessions starting a new life.

 **

The Women’s Trans’ Poetry Jam at Bluestockings, started in 1999, is hosted by Vittoria repetto – the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the lower east side

Open Mike starts at 7PM!  Bring your stuff!

C.O. Moed and Alyssa K. Harley are featured readers, starting around 8pm


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C.O. Moed was born on the Lower East Side of New York City when it was still a tough neighborhood. A recipient of the Elizabeth George Grant for fiction and a Rockefeller Media Arts nominee, her short stories and dramatic works have been published in several anthologies and literary reviews. She writes, shoots and works a day job in New York City. (myprivateconey.blogspot.com)

Alyssa K. Harley’s project seeks meaning based in the music of the English language. What she has searched for most is how to create a sense of real evidence through art of the absolute smallest of hopes, the ones that matter.

Bluestockings Bookstore

172 Allen St.

(between Staton and Rivington)

1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston

NYC

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Check Mate and a Reading

A Poem Called Home Comes Home

Sunday Memories: The Journey of a Thousand Sentences Beings With a Couple of Words

Even as Twilight Fills the Room, What Dana Says Bursts Open Our Hearts

Dana's visits to other places deep under water or far, far away now filled her days and her nights.

Yet, still, when we least expected it, her brilliant light exploded into clarity and words that change the world.

Today was no different.

The fading afternoon wasn't one of her better days.  The mushroom-barley soup from Veselka's perked her up but after a few spoonfuls she requested she not be rushed to eat more.

We sat and visited with one another, Dana occasionally returning to say a word or two.

Kathleen murmured to us that after those slips under deep water, Dana sometimes "felt like shit."

She leaned into Dana and gently asked, "How do you feel, Dana?"

And without missing a bit, Dana answered, "Like shit,"

What Dana Says is worth pulling close and holding tight.

**

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What Dana Says Starts the New Year Right

What Dana Says Is a Blessing for the Future

You Never Expect What Dana Says

The First and the Last

A Visit to Dana

Sunday Memories:  Two! Two! Two Memories In One!!

Sunday Memories of the Boy Next Door

Sunday Memories: Remembering a Determined Hope in the Face of Such Daily Awfulness

A friend came to dinner, sharing our shock and pain at more horrific news about what a government was doing to its own people, what so many governments were doing so many things to their own people, that people were committing so many atrocities against so many people...

...all over the world.
And a bright future that once beckoned change, a change that welcomed all of us to the table, seemed to fade more and more from sight each day.

How, how to continue on.  How.

Yet, for 16 years, no matter what city she is in, Jossie opens her home to honour Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday...

...and welcomes us all to remember no matter what, no matter, to allow ourselves to be lifted "from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace."*

*Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Eulogy for the Martyred Children
September 18, 1963. Birmingham, Ala.

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Related Posts:

"... That God is Able To..."

"Breathe. Look at your feet. That is where you are." - Vee at The Celebration of Martin Luther King Jr at Jossie's Home

The Power And The Powerless Of The First Step

Cold-Snap Encores: Sunday Memories of St. Marks Place

Baby, it's cold out there.  A warmer memory to stay the while. 

Originally posted 27 September 2009

That street was normal to me. It's where folks crashed either from drugs, booze or too much fucking.

It's also where people went to get the drugs, the booze, the fucking from which to crash.

If those buildings were beautiful you couldn't tell because everything was, well, normal which meant real people lived there and there were florescent lights in the hallways and if there was graffiti I didn't notice because graffiti was all over the place so how could you notice anything different?

It was part of the world we owned, from Avenue A all the way to the Nedicks on Sixth Avenue, from Washington Square Park to the youth center on 12th Street, and sometimes 14th Street when the rich merchant marine, who lived with his aunt and had really good pot, was back in town.

This street was our through-way and it's where we sauntered and stomped. It's where, before there was any way to instantly call or write or text to find a friend or a boy or a boyfriend, we had to actually show up, hang out on a favorite stoop and hope to run into whoever it was we were hoping to run into. And sometimes we did and some weeks we just waited.

In this picture on this stoop is my second boyfriend (my first was in 7th grade like years earlier). He was homeless and a runaway and crashing at Gypsy's on 4th Street. He came to New York to become a famous folk song artist. The new Bob Dylan. He was peppy and sweet and voted seriously most ugly. One night he and his best friend (also in the picture) went to Club 82 on 4th street and he thought he was kissing a woman but really it was a man who just knew how to look prettier than any of the girls we knew. He and I were already going out but I didn't care.

Years later I saw him running down our through-way screaming as some drug deal went south.

We'll Always Have the Watertower

The view has always been the same and probably will stay that way for a while since the theater across the street is landmarked. 

Still, life has been known to change unexpectedly.  Exclusive silvery high-rises could appear at the horizon.  Disasters of so many kinds could rob us of our home.  Illness could diminish sight, relegating the kitchen view to a dim memory. Birthdays loom.

Nothing is forever.

All you got is what is right in front of you.

Que sera sera. 

So when the clouds parted, I grabbed my water tower so I could have it forever.

At least until the internet or the world blow up.

**
Related Posts:

Sunday Memories: Part Nine - A View From A Kitchen

Art and Life: A Love Story

You Got Your Nature, I Got Mine

What is Normal

Sunday Memories: Cornering Joy

The famous actress's memoir had people in it I had gone to school with.  It had stories of success.  It had big names that were her best friends.  Even the lowest moments of uncertainty and failure were more fun and successful than anything I could remember.

But that wasn't what annoyed me.  But what annoyed me proved elusive.

So, I did the laundry.  That's what Florence always did when things got murky.

And, sure enough, things came out in the wash.

That famous actress was writing joy.  Didn't matter if it was the good times, the bad, the failures, the successes... the rejections.  She had joy.

Where the hell was joy?

I can count on one or two fingers...

Except...

Well, it happened a long, long time ago.  Almost 18 years.  When in a tornado of failure I said I would commit to attempting to trying to believing there might be a possibility of... joy.

It was all so last minute, I didn't have time to find the one thing I needed - a special cabinet called a Budsadan - a home for the Buddha.

Rushing home after hours of going from shop to shop, I glanced by the stairwell.

And there it was.  A perfect cabinet.  Waiting for me. 

Tonight, coming back from late-night shopping (because that's when Trader Joe's is empty), I glanced by the stairwell.

And there was Joy.

Where it was supposed to be.

In unexpected corners.  Just waiting to be openned.


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Related Posts:

Mi Butsadan Es Su Butsadan

The Walk to Hope Is a Leap of Faith

The Corners of My Mind

Ode to Food

My Mama Done Told Me

Denial Isn't a River in Egypt.

The grim news left the world more beat up than yesterday.

It was time to remember the most beautiful harbor in the world.

And have a cup of coffee with Mimi at one of our favorite stores for a brief reprieve from fear and worry, except perhaps that the curtains wouldn't work out and require a trip to return things.  Which meant maybe more shopping.

Several cups and many hours later, now with a heavy bag but a lighter heart, the harbor felt like Florence's ghost reminding me a little denial was not a bad thing.  And she was right.  When there wasn't enough bucks for a vacation or a flight off the planet, all you needed was a hearty cup of coffee, some shopping and the company of a good friend.

**
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Eating Out

It Was Also Her City College.  It Was Always Her New York

The Promise

Mishpocheh Across Time and Place

Jupiter's New Year's Day

Checked clock to make sure it really was 4:00 am.

Sat on human face.

Sat by empty food bowl.

Stared at empty food bowl.

Bumped into legs to get the can opened faster.

Stared at full food bowl.

Humped Goldie.

Stared at Goldie eating from full food bowl.

Pushed Goldie out of the way.

Stared at full food bowl.

Napped.

Humped Goldie.

Ate what Goldie left over.

Sat by front door.

Stared at front door.

Napped.

Sat on newspapers.

Bit human's arm.

Made human check food bowl.

Stared at human.

Stared at full food bowl.

Stared at new food in food bowl.

Humped Goldie.

Napped.

Curled up near human.

Licked arm.

Allowed human to kiss face and scratch ear.

Napped.

Best day ever.

**
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Walkin' After Midnight

Another Night Home on the Range

On the Way to Get the Cat Shaved

Goldie's Dog Days of Summer