Pillows

This may be a big deal only to me. In the City most apartment units don’t have personal washers and dryers. If you live in a loft, you may have a combination on your floor that services 5 or 6 residential lofts. If you live in a proper apartment building with a doorman and lobby, you most likely will find your washing and drying facilities hidden away in the basement. These conveniences are your basic laundromat machines, for which you will need a stack of quarters. The M&M candy tube is a great container in which to store $10 worth of quarters. But if your apartment building has none of the above, then you take your laundry to the local wash-and-dry. And I emphasize local; practically every block in the village and certainly around every corner elsewhere. Some cleaners have a wash and dry capability, but mostly laundromats are a stand-alone sort of place. You can do your wash yourself, or leave it for them to do. The charge is per pound and like a coffee shop, there are add-ons. If you want your jeans hand dried, or your shirts hung on hangers – not just properly folded – there is an extra charge. But the service I appreciate is the washing and drying of feather bedding and pillows. If you have ever tried to wash and dry a feather pillow then you know what a time consuming job it is. Here you leave it and 24 hours later you pick it up, for a minimal charge, and it is fluffed, bone dry and smelling like spring. One of life’s little joys.

It Looks So Effortless

When the ball drops in Times Square on Saturday evening, New Year’s Eve, you will see lots of people.  Pause to consider the organization that takes place behind the scene before the event.  On Tuesday on some sidewalks, the crowd-control-cement-blocks, the size of ponies, were already in place. There are many tourists here for the holidays but now the crowded streets around the Avenues of 5th and 6th and 34th to 49th have more impediments. Along the Avenues the wooden and or metal barricades stand clustered in groups at the corners, waiting to be put up to corral the crowd. There will be no live report from me on this event. As I walked by today, I saw the ball at the top of the building; that’s good enough! Being one soul in a throng that only moves because everyone moves is not in anyway something of which I wish to partake. I experienced this again at Rockefeller Center and that was small scale and of short duration. I can imagine but do not want to experience group press on a cold evening with everyone keeping warm by imbibing and well, you easily get the picture. Watch it on TV. A smart alternative.

It All Looks the Same

It’s a lovely upscale nail salon staffed by women from China.  There are no younger women, the technicians are all of a certain age. They have given themselves Western sounding names… Grace, Marie, Mary, Susie, and a Jully. Each woman wears a name tag and the letters on the tags are in a square font. So ‘Jully’ looks rather the same coming and going.  I can only suppose, this is the reason she put the name tag on upside down. Her English is very limited to: yes, no, nice, thank you, so when it was suggested that her name tag was upside down on the pocket of her lab coat, she gestured to the other pocket.  No, I shook my head, and tried to convey turning it around by drawing a circle in the air. To this and other demonstrative attempts at sign language, she just smiled and went on about her business. Of course if I was in China, with a Chinese name tag and the lines had no meaning, I would do no better.

Insane.

No other word for it. And to be part of the insanity is even more insane. Had a small visiting guest, who had convinced his father that going to the FAO Swartz toy store on 5th and 58th to spend his accumulated Christmas money was a terrific family outing. Only the small and the old can believe in such a thing. At the door, which you couldn’t see for the disgorging of people and the blocked entrance, the line to gain entry was snaking around the corner behind red ropes half a city block from the door.  We joined the throng of others equally insane, to get into the store. At the door it was a jumbled double file and that was just to gain entry. Once inside it was join the file to the escalator, keep in line through the aisles, and veer off only when you reach your department. In the desired department it was thick with parents with cameras, strollers, coats, all bustling and jostling toward the displays.  Alas, the result was empty shelves of the desired product. After making the rounds twice to be sure, we gathered together to leave. Joined in the line to leave the department, go down the escalator, and then flung ourselves into the thick of the line that was trying to squeeze out the front door. To my mind it brought up stories of deaths in night clubs, trampling, and catastrophic results. We exploded out onto the plaza, safe and sound. Not even much the worse for wear. But because the child was on a mission…. we did the entire maneuver all over again! at the Rockefeller Plaza. That is truly insane behavior.

A Jewish Christmas

That’s what they call it in New York, when you go the movies on Christmas Day and have Chinese food afterwards.
The shops and the most of the restaurants were closed [the 25th]. The streets devoid of traffic; surprisingly so. No one was on the buses either. It was a mostly shut down city, except for the strollers on Fifth Avenue admiring the retail windows.

Ask

So I did. I asked a subway rider who sleeps, how he knows when to awake. Oops, he said, if I am really heavily asleep, then I wake up 2 or 3 stops past mine, get off and take the train back. If I am lightly sleeping, I awake at my own stop, just as the doors are closing. Clearly not a sure-fire system for keeping a schedule.