Tag: New York City

  • Masks and Coverings are Optional Now

    You know how, sometimes, your day will start, and you feel quite assured that you know the direction you will be heading. And then something unexpected happens, and you get sent in a whole new direction? I am sure that has happened to you, and today it happened very much to me.

    See, I was heading out to do the grocery shopping, which takes me down to the Trader Joe’s at Columbus and 93rd. It’s the closest one to our apartment in Harlem, and to get there I have to take a downtown local to 96th. I have been doing this for two and a half years now, so I have this route down. I know the best times to hit the stations to catch a train, and the best place to be on the platform to get in a relatively empty car.

    Now, the governor last week lifted the mask mandate on public transportation, so there are no more COVID restrictions in the City. So, when I decided to go run my errand down to the 93rd Trader Joe’s, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to ride the subway mask-less and write about what my experience was like. You know, blog stuff.

    I headed out for my local station. It was a cool morning that was also stupidly humid. I’m talking Miami or Houston at the height of Summer. Like you clothes just stick to you the second you walk out the door. I’m feeling a little gross, but hey, it’s the end of Summer around here. Fall will show up any day now.

    I walk down the staircase from the street to get to the subway station, and there was a guy taking a leak on the stairs. He had no shame. He made eye contact with me and nodded. I don’t think he was drunk or high, just a rough around the edges gentleman who needed to relieve himself. But, being that he had no shame, his penis was on full display.

    Sadly, a guy taking a wiz in NYC is a rather common observed action. It is truly frowned upon by society, but I have a feeling that public urination was a problem for the Dutch, and it will remain a problem for this town going forward. It’s annoying, and people like that guy do make NYC not the best place to live, but I wasn’t about to stop what I was doing to yell at the guy. I had places to be.

    Anyway, I catch the train down to 96th, and get off. And as I am walking down the platform headed toward the stairs, unfortunately, there was a homeless person sleeping on the bench down there, with a granny cart filled with items and clothing. The Mayor is claiming they are cleaning up and helping the homeless that call the subway home, but they really aren’t. I just went along my way up the stairs.

    And at 96th, if you don’t know, it’s a stacked station, meaning that the downtown tracks are on the lowest level. Above them are the uptown tracks with the turnstile entrance and MTA booth. From there you take the stairs up to the street.

    I’m coming up the stairs to the uptown level, and I see lots of clothes spread on the uptown platform. My first thought is that these clothes must belong to the homeless guy sleeping on the bench. But when I get to the top of the stairs, and head for the turnstiles which lead to the MTA booth, and the street level stairs, there’s a naked guy on the other side of the turnstile in front of the MTA booth. And he’s a big naked guy. Taller than me. With his penis hanging out.

    Oh, the guy in the MTA booth was doing a heroic job of saying, “Sir. Sir. Sir!” It was like a Meisner acting exercise, with the “sir” taking on a new inflection every time the MTA guy yelled.

    And for a very fast second I thought, I could make it past this guys. I could squeeze through the turnstile, and avoid this guy touching me. I mean, he was naked, so I knew he wasn’t hiding anything.

    Then New Yorker Matt reappeared. “Yeah, fuck this.” I started to turn to go back down the stairs for the other exit that was further down the platform.

    But before I could get on my way, the naked guy yelled at me, “Could you thrown me my clothes?”

    “No, man.” I said. Honestly, he could easily just jump the turnstile and get his clothes himself. I mean, he was already in trouble, skipping a fare was the least of his concerns.

    So, yeah. I saw a whole lot of penis today. Wasn’t expecting that. And I would like to add, still not the weirdest situation I have been in on the subway.

    (And, you should like this blog post. Also, feel free to share it, and if you have a story about the MTA, please share it in the comments.)

  • School Has Started! AGAIN!

    School started today in New York City. I know we start later than most of the country. My nieces and nephews back in Texas started school in the middle of August, and just about everywhere else gets their kids back into class before Labor Day. Either way, today was the day that the kid went back to school.

    The kid was ready to explode this morning! When I went to wake her up, she was buried deep in her blankets. I opened the shades to let in the sunlight and got a weak groan from her. But when I announced in her general direction, that today was the first day of school, she shot up in bed, eyes wide, and told me what friends she was hoping would be in her class. Her backpack was packed, and lunch made. She picked out what she wanted to wear the night before. This kid was ready.

    It was a calming reassurance getting ready for school. We brushed our teeth and took the first day pictures. We held hands as we crossed the street, and said hello to the same crossing guard who has been on that corner for years. We saw friends and parents of friends walking to the school. It was a cool, slightly cloudy September morning, but it felt perfect for going to school.

    A few things were different about this first day. There were no masks. We didn’t have to fill out a health screening. The kids weren’t kept three feet apart as the lined up to go into school. It was what I would come close to calling normal, though I am aware that this will not be a normal year. COVID isn’t fully gone, and the ramification of the past two years are still present. Students are still playing catch up, both academically and emotionally. There’s a lot that we all need to pitch in and help with.

    But, the tumbler of life has clicked into another season of the year, and things begin anew.

  • The Late Night with David Letterman Opening

    If the kid is on Summer vacation, then I am on Summer vacation.

    This is a rule that I made up for this Summer. What this really means is that I am not going to the gym, and I am staying up late at night. In both respects, it has been very successful. My pants are getting tighter, and I have watched an enormous amount of odd and entertaining things off of the Roku when I should be sleeping.

    Last night, like a bolt of lightning striking a tall tree, I had a thought, “I wonder if the old opening from Late Night with David Letterman is on YouTube?” We all know the answer is yes, but what I was looking for was the specific one that I saw when I first saw in the late 80’s. I found this one, which feels correct.

    Watching it last night, a couple things came back to me. First, it was remembering my older brothers telling my Dad about this show. All of us in my family have a good, if slightly off kilter sense of humor. They were trying to explain to the old man about this talk show that did these weird bits like Top 10 Lists, a monkey with a camera on its back, a Velcro suit, and the host was this smart-alecky guy. It sounded like it was right up our alley, but it came on during the week, really late.

    Growing up in Texas, Carson was on from 10:30pm to 11:30pm, followed by Love Connection from 11:30pm to midnight.  Then Dave came on, when it was way too late for any normal person to be up. My brothers are nine and seven years older than me, so they were in college, and had the time and constitution be to loyal viewers. I was still in grade school, and our home only had one large tv in the livingroom. But, in my 6th grade year, which made me 11 or 12, my parents bought me a little 18” black and white TV, for the purpose of playing my Nintendo, thus avoiding confrontations of who was going to watch Cheers or play Legend of Zelda. And I did play video games on that little TV.

    And I also started watching Dave.

    I was probably the only 6th grader in my school district that could hum the Late Night theme song, and knew who Larry “Bud” Melman was. I was able to hide my clandestine viewing from my parents, but I think they caught on, yet didn’t care. (I kept making good grades, so where was the problem?) That show started influencing me on how I thought about humor, about being just a little strange and idiosyncratic, and also being a little normal while having a few things that are off. Like, how Dave dressed. He wore the talk show host’s uniform – shirt, tie, sport coat. Yet, as Dave wore that, he also had on sneakers, and khaki pants, and his hair was short but unkept. He had all the pieces of normalcy, but was still a little off.

    The second thing that came to me when I watched the opening of Late Night, was that this intro is still how I think about New York City. When I envision this place, I think about it at night – the buildings shutting off their lights, the cabs rolling down nearly deserted streets, and the bars during the week when it’s late and there are just a handful of people in there. And the bar in the opening, “Old Town Bar and Restaurant” I now realize that I have been in there a handful of times, and it still looks the same. In fact, I noticed that at the end of the L shaped bar, there is a guy in the corner sitting with a drink and talking to the bartender. That’s my favorite spot in any bar to sit, which now makes me wonder if this is where I came up with/stole the idea?

    After watching the intro, and getting a heaping helping of nostalgia, I started to wonder when I started my fascination with New York City? I feel like I always wanted to be here. Was it watching Ghostbusters? Night Court? Was it because this is where artist came to be artists, and I wanted to be an artist? I’m sure it was a compounding effect of all of these influences.

    Either way, I live in New York City now, and I don’t know if I can live anywhere else. It’s the only City where a subway ride entitles you to rub up on strangers.

    (And, hey, ummm… If this is blog is making a fancy tickled, then if you could take a moment and give a like, or a share, and comments are always welcomed.)

  • Odd Start to Summer for the Kid

    New York City is just weird compared to the rest of the country, so let’s just start right there. I say this because around here, kids are off from school for July and August. The month of July is when all the camps happen, both sleep-away and day camps. August is the vacation month, or at least that’s when most people take their vacations, because August is honestly the worst month to be in NYC; it’s hot, humid, and there is this tar/urine/wet-garbage smell that is everywhere. Last Summer, in the month of July, the kid was in a day camp for the first two weeks in July, then we spent a couple of days with friends in Vermont. Following that, the kid took the last week in July to visit a friend in Virginia. It was only when we got to August that we started running around the parks and playgrounds again, and the kid made some friends that she ended up seeing most days, so she had someone to play with. We left on vacation right after school ended, and now that we are back in the City, the kid is running into the problem that there aren’t any kids her age to play with at the playground. There are little kids under six years old, but very few kids over that age. And today, it finally clicked in why that is; all the older kids are at camps. And it is really hot out, too. It’s an odd start to Summer in the City for the kid. Added on top of that is the inevitable let down of coming home from after a vacation. Home just seems very dull after a week of staying up late, eating ice cream, and going to amusement parks. She’s a little bored, and I am okay with her learning how to deal with boredom. Yet, I also had hoped that there would be a few kids she could run around with.

  • Walking Around New York

    I don’t get to walk around New York City like I used to. The advantage of having a job in the City, at least for me, was that it would take me to a different neighborhood than where I lived. On lunch breaks, I would go for a walk.

    When I used to work off of 54th Street, near The Ed Sullivan Theatre, it was fun to walk among the Broadway houses and Times Square. There were a bunch of tourists, but it was fun to watch people from all around the world be amazed at the buildings and signs. I liked walking around on matinee days, and seeing chorus members out running errands. You knew they were in a chorus because they had normal clothes on, but their faces were made up in stage makeup. Another cool thing about being around the Ed Sullivan was that, depending on who was a guest on Letterman, you might see that celebrity walking around the area before the show.

    When I was down on 18th Street, that wasn’t too far from Union Square, and if I felt really adventurous, I could walk down to the north end of the Village and experience the tree lined streets filled with Federal styles row houses. Unions Square was great for people watching, as it wasn’t filled with tourists, and more just local people. Especially on Farmer’s Market days, when there was a great mix of local upstate farms selling all kids of produce. But walking on the Village streets was always a calming experience for me. I would look at the brick homes, and the converted brownstones and wonder what it would be like to be able to walk out your door, and have everything you need only being three blocks or less away.

    My other favorite memory of walking around the City was a long time ago in the Fall, when I was in a puppet show in the Lower East Side. It was a three-week run, and we did a double show on Sundays. The show wasn’t very long, about an hour, so we would have a long break on Sundays, and when we did get out at night, it wasn’t too late. I loved zigzagging through the named streets, and the converted tenement buildings. There was miles of sidewalk scaffolding for inaccessible condo towners that shot up like weeds. It was a cold Fall that season, and everyone was bundled up, and walking hunched over. Some nights, the cast would get a drink together, and then I would wander around, a little drunk, hearing the laughter and shouts falling and spreading out of the bars onto the narrow sidewalks. It was like hearing a million possibilities and adventures calling out.

    I tried this morning to walk a bit. I dropped the car off for an oil change, and I took the long way home. Hell’s Kitchen on a weekday morning isn’t exactly the hive of excitement it was ten hours earlier, but it was a nice change from West Harlem. The Supers were out spraying down the sidewalks, and piling up garbage bags. There was a buzz about the people moving along to where they were going, as there is always something to do, or needs to be done, around here.

    It’s not a perfect place, but I do love living around here. I have begun to think I might not live in this town much longer. So on days like today, I try to enjoy the simple act of walking the city.

    (SAY! If you enjoyed the blog, then please give it a like, or a share, or leave a comment. I can only take over the world, one “like” at a time, and I need yours!)