6:35 a.m. A cacophony of car horns. I lie there wondering what is the cause of the irregular honking. And then it stops. And then it starts up again. I look out of my bedroom window and see that the traffic light on the North corner of the street is stuck. The North flow traffic is the busiest part of the intersection and their ride is impeded by a stuck red light – vs the East to West cross traffic where the light is stuck on green. I watch for a few minutes to see how the traffic regulates itself. It is a tribute to human cooperation that no pedestrian or bicyclist is struck by North bound traffic. At 7:45 the honking dies away. Gone. I look out again and a young, blonde, female traffic cop is directing the flow. The lights are still stuck but the traffic is organized. Of course, all of us, on both sides of the street are awake and up by this time. 15 minutes later she leaves and we are now back to the car horn orchestra. There aren’t many variations on that theme, I gotta tell you.
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Sanitation trucks have a unique role in traffic. The first time I saw it was the use of a sanitation truck – you know those City specific garbage trucks – as a road block. It was on 11th Street in the West Village and it kept the traffic out while President Obama paid a visit to a wealthy fund raising person at the East end of the block. There were metal barricades along the street and then right in the middle, a sideways parked truck. What brings this to mind – Just Now – I watched a sanitation truck block the North flow of traffic – no cop/ stuck light – as I heard sirens in the background. Within a few seconds, a cavalcade of fire engines appeared, crossing East to West with no threat of their procession being interrupted by impatient drivers stuck on a malfunctioning red light.
The Day of the Drunken Santas
It’s Saturday. At first I noticed a Santa at 10 am and thought he must be on his way to a gig. Then as I was out and about I began to see other Santa Clauses, too many for one day of attending to kids in the City. I asked one white-bearded young man. His answer: basically it is a license to drink too much in as many places as possible. Oh, and it is supposed to be involved with food bank donations. However, in my experience, he says, there are a lot of rented costumes by people who never made it to the donation drop off. So, it appears to act like the disguiser-of-persons that a halloween costume allows. As I was returning home late last night, I saw indeed it is a license to get rip-roaring drunk and talk to the curb at the end of the night. But before things developed to that state, it was charming and delightful to see the City overrun with santas ho-ho-ho-ing and texting on almost every corner of the village. Look for it, it could be happening in your city.
Signs
[The bottom of the black door is visible just above the cement threshold in the photo left. The foreground in the second photo is press board, that stops one from stepping into the abyss.]
Really don’t know which part of this tickles my fancy most. Is it the wording of the sign, beginning with ‘warning’ followed by men working- for which we are warned. Are we not allowed to view ‘men working’? Or it the ‘do not enter’ on a door that is totally unreachable because 1. there is no bridge across the gulf between the door and the sidewalk 2. the pressboard is blocking you from reaching the door but if you would have to remove the pressboard you would fall 12 feet while flailing to grab the non-available door. It not only gave me pause, it made me laugh.
Priceless
The phone rings loudly, harshly. She digs around in her purse to find it. With a loud ‘Hello’, she answers it. She listens for a few seconds and then in the same loud voice, her next words are: ‘I’m sitting in a computer class, taking a test’. As she snaps the phone shut, a couple of the bus passengers smile at each other; the majority look dumbfounded.
Shopping
As I passed them in the aisle, I heard her ask him, ‘Shall I stand in line for you?’. We were all in Trader Joe’s on Saturday afternoon, which is about as close to organized madness as one will find. The line for the checkout, which is actually a double line, stretches the length of the store, then bends and is half again as long as it stretches to the side wall. I am going to assume she was his mother, as the age difference was about right and they resembled each other. Her next words to him, before I moved away were, ‘Then I’ll take the flowers’. This she said as she picked up the plastic-wrapped-bouquet-of-fresh-cut-flowers that was sticking out of the shopping cart. I continued on past them and thought nothing more of it, other than a mother’s concern perhaps for a fragile bunch of flowers in an eventually over-fillled shopping cart. I finished shopping and didn’t remember the exchange until I joined the line and saw this same women, 60 feet ahead of me, holding her bouquet in a rather good impersonation of the Statue of Liberty. She was alone as the line moved slowly but steadily toward the bank of cashiers. All of a sudden, I saw the young man rounding the corner and she must have seen him as well for from the sea of look-alikes she gently waved the bouquet above the heads of the crowd. He worked his way to the front, joining her just as the next place at a cashier was called.
More 5th Avenue
One of my favorite sights: the ultra-expensive jewel-box jewelry store with million dollar bling in the plate-glass front window while on the corner outside a hotdog-pretzel-seller at his cart is sending up smoke clouds as he fires up his grill.
It costs to walk down 5th Avenue at Christmas. Dollars to the unique percussion performer who makes jazz rhythms on trash can lids and inverted plastic buckets; dollars to the Salvation Army Bell Ringer who has brought her own sound-system with hip hop music to which she dances, while still ringing the bell; $4. for a small bag of roasted chestnuts, [if you have ever tried to make them, they’re worth this price]. All this payout doesn’t leave enough for the chocolate-covered strawberries they are making in the window of the chocolate shoppe.
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The Rockefeller Center tree is up, in this picture, unadorned. How lovely it would be to leave it naked of lights in its natural greenness. The size. Look at the 18′ tall statue of Prometheus below the tree to do the math. It can measure 90′ tall. The lights are on as of 30 November.
5th Avenue
One way to experience the Retail Christmas Season is hailing a cab at the Plaza Hotel at 12:30 am and driving south on 5th Avenue, hitting the wave of green lights and thus, not having quite enough time to look both right and left to take in the lights and sights. Your ride begins passing under the gigantic glass snow-flake hanging over the the first intersection. As you continue, you experience lights in the forms of bow-wrapped buildings, falling snow and windows lit from behind with riots of color spilling out through the glass. If the night is clear and dry you can imagine you are in a toy car whizzing around the bottom of a glamorous Christmas tree skirting the wrapped packages.
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If that is too much a ride on the wild side, then walk 5th Avenue after the sun has set. Block by block you see the details in the windows of the most expensive stores. The windows created to awaken your imagination and open your pocket book. The attention to detail the designers and window dressers put into these displays, are works of art; a temporary modern museum for the folk. Outside the windows, on the street you are surrounded by shoppers dressed to the nines. These folks, whose neighborhood this is, have not waited for Christmas as they dress this way, year ’round, bespoke in spades.
Shoes
Consciously noting the shoes on the feet around, in front of, and beside me, is thought provoking. Ballet-type slippers on girls with nimble feet, leopard print flats on sleek, hair-helmeted blondes of a certain age, gucci fabric loafers on moms in tight jeans with four year olds in tow, florescent green soles on sport shoes of the hip, battery lit soles on the surprisingly too old, and the deep-gloss of a spit-shine, on fancy feet; each pair illuminating the personality of the wearer. An entire segment of the population wears athletic/running shoes in the colors dusty to filthy white. Why these are manufactured in the lightest of colors for folks who wear them everyday; does this color make them non-seasonal? And then there are the boots: tall, slender heels supporting glove leather tubes, suede tubes on wedge heels, pull-on, lace-up, fur-lined, knee-high, ankle length, thick soled, kitten heel, all predominately in the colors brown and black. This week’s best however was walking toward me: lace-up logging-type boots in a red and black plaid that matched his shirt.
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She had to walk slowly but it worked. The rain was unexpected. Over her high heels she had created rain boots. She stepped each foot into a I-love-NY-plastic bag, then removed her feet and folded the mouth of the bag into the foot bed of the shoe. Reinserted foot. Ingenious. All she needed to complete the look was the sleeveless, gray trash bag coat I had passed earlier.
Under the Gun
To learn more I often try a different entrance to the subway. Tuesday I decided to try an unused-by-me-entrance at Christopher St. The turnstile gates appeared directly at the bottom of the stairs, which I had not expected. One needs to be able to make a choice about the direction of train travel: north or south. I figured this choice was on the other side of the turnstile gates. I run my card through the pay-bar and enter. I am standing on the narrow platform where signs read: north bound train. And I see the south bound, which I need to get to China town, is literally on the other side of the tracks. To get there from here there is no access. Since travelling is always about time in one form or another, I realize all I can do is exit, above ground cross the 5 lanes of traffic on 6th Avenue, then head down the stairs to reach the south bound platform. I do all of the above, arrive at the south bound turnstile gate and run my card through the pay-bar. On the turnstile a little message flashes: just used. Yes, I get that, I just used it on the other side, but consider this a transfer transaction. I run it again. No matter how many times I try, [each time with more conviction and a bit of frantic] it will not register as an entrance signal and the turnstile does not turn. [you may or may not know, the card reader is the only option to gain entrance, there is no cash deposit, or other ticketing form.] I hear the train whooshing into the station. I stare at the turnstile. Do I climb over or under? Opting for under, I am no sooner on my hands and knees crawling the small length of the turnstile box when the passengers from the just arrived train, approach the very turnstile that I am using as an entrance. Because I am on the ground, the turnstile box appears to be empty. A couple of people approach to use the exit side and all of a sudden aware I am there, are startled. All I can manage to say, as I crawl through, grab my bag and get to my feet is: Don’t Ask!. and I hop on the train they exited.
Signs
There it was. A key. Lying just a mere foot from the curb at the corner of 11th & 4th, a unique looking key a bit bigger than usual, ornate at the top. Monday morning. Did a female give it to a guy and he dropped it after they went their separate ways? Or some female trying to return it and it was refused, knocked out of her hand and landed in the street as they both walked off and left it. If only that key could talk.
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The sign on the side of the van, read in huge letters: O C S. As they say in marketing, if your names doesn’t convey what you do, it isn’t a good name. I look, but I don’t see any images or anything else on the van as it passes me that illuminates what the three letters mean, until I see the much smaller print underneath. It reads: Over Seas Courier. I’m still trying to figure that one out.
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