Endings and Beginnings

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. As I type these words, the year 2019 is several hours away. And it’s 2019 in some places already! Time. Today, for some reason, I thought of this psychotic local businessman, whom I regularly patronized, saying to me on the eve of the new millennium: “Remember when we were kids and would calculate how old we would be in the year 2000?” Indeed, 2000 then seemed more the stuff of science fiction than an eventual reality. As I traversed the ever-changing metropolis that I call home yesterday, the passage of time was—not surprisingly—foremost on my mind...

All roads may lead home...but tracks?

Mr. Lundberg is going to be in for a big surprise the next time he rides the subway. I hope he's wearing a mask when he does. And he just might want to designate a new favorite daughter in the New Year.

A dearly-departed older friend of mine used to mimic a youthful crony of his who salivated at the prospect of a night out. "Tonight, we drink!" he would exclaim with anticipatory glee. Stay inside tonight.

It's not your grandfather's pizza parlor anymore...

As a youth in the oh-so-colorful 1970s, I helped a neighbor brainstorm a name for a potential restaurant business that sold salads and only salads—a trailblazing idea at the time. The consensus choice was “Salad King,” with the runner-up “Land of a Thousand Salads.” I'd really like to know what the runner-up was here…

When in Rome...or in this instance hipster New York City...

The vanishing old of old New York...

How long can this building survive? I wonder...

It's destined to be shuttered up—just like its neighbor to the south, I fear—and then demolished.

And there used to be a deli where the sandwiches were large and tasty...Now the children try to find it…and they can't believe their eyes…Yes, there used to be a deli—the A & A—right here.

Gentrification...

Even the dog breeds are getting hipper...

Looking at least to break this glass ceiling in 2019...

"H" marks the spot...

Take the road less traveled, I say...

Baby, it's cold outside...

When you come to a fork in the road, take it...

Be it ever so crumble, there's no place like home...in 2018 and 2019.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Occupying Wall Street and Rockefeller Center

The holiday season is nearing an end. And it's supposed to rain on the New Year's Eve revelers in Times Square tomorrow night, which would be a fitting end to a pretty rotten year. By historical standards, 2018 was a sorry spectacle. As an American, especially, it was a series of never-ending embarrassments with the limbo bar of basic decency lowered and lowered some more with each passing day. But life went on for me this past week as I occupied Wall Street, Rockefeller Center, and other hot spots.

If George Washington were alive today, he'd be turning over in his grave.

Warren Buffett once said, "Wall Street is the only place that people ride in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway."

Thinking of Jerry Mathers...

Rumor has it that next year's tree will be decorated with popcorn strings, scrap-paper garland, and empty Red Bull cans. 

Obviously the handiwork of Lord Marmaduke Ffogg...

With "cheese home frice"...who could ask for anything more?

Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out...

Rest easy...

Glad to see that Max Headroom is still finding work...

An annual tradition in my youth involved a Christmas shopping spree with an aunt. In the shadow of the Empire State Building, it commenced at Macy's at Herald Square and ended at a little Woolworth annex store on 50th Street.

It also included taking a gander at Lord & Taylor's famous Christmas window displays.

Suffice it to say: It's not my or your elderly aunt's Fifth Avenue anymore...not by a long shot. In fact, Fifth Avenue is unrecognizable from that simpler snapshot in time.

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.

Nice to see Jeannie in the Big Town...

Beware of people dressed in Disney costumes wanting to have their picture taken with you...

And, too, faux-monks bearing business cards...

Officer, you might want to keep an eye on the aforementioned...

The tree in front of The Tree.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

So the Last Shall Be First

Well, that’s definitely the case with the Number 1 train. The last car going downtown is the first car coming uptown. I ride the first car going downtown and the last car coming uptown. It’s a matter of science based on the various cars’ locations vis-à-vis the subway station entrances. Typically, they are among the least crowded. Anyway, this is my story of another first—in December—with my random observations of what I encountered along the way.

Foremost, the holiday season is in full swing. Signs of the season abound. Christmas tree sellers are—to use an old phrase of my father’s to describe a busy retailer—doing “a booming business.” From the looks of things, a lot of people buy their trees quite early nowadays. Once upon a time, selling trees before Thanksgiving—which I saw in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago—didn’t happen. But that was then and this is now. What I would like to know is how these trees survive an entire month or more indoors without drooping, drying out, and becoming a fire hazard? As a youth, the family tree went up a few days before Christmas. It was almost always a Balsam fir, which couldn’t wait, as I recall, to start shedding its needles.

Recently, I read of a Manhattan tree seller charging twenty-five to thirty dollars a foot. He claimed the extreme pricing was the consequence of an industry shortage. On the city sidewalks, busy sidewalks yesterday, I just didn’t see it. Shoppers had a bumper crop of trees from which to choose. When I spied a young woman with a Charlie Brown-sized tree awaiting a train, I calculated she would have paid—using the price-gouger’s arithmetic—at least fifty dollars for the privilege. When I snapped a Christmas in New York shot of the tree, what I got was an unintended image of straphangers one and all mesmerized by their devices and not the Charlie Brown tree. ‘Tis the season to stare into your smartphone.

Prior to these unmistakable signs of the season, a woman sat beside me on the subway in what are—in practical reality—Billy Barty-sized seats. Sitting with her back to me, this gal found it necessary to speak with her husband—eyeball-to-eyeball—on her right. With her big head of hair practically in my face, I assumed the role of the back of a seat for what seemed like an eternity. It was all very annoying but, regrettably, par for the course. Fortunately, there were more uplifting encounters in my journey, like coming upon belching steam pipes. There’s something about these things that cry out: “Take my picture!” And no two shots are ever the same!

For some reason, I associate New York City steam pipes with Christmastime. An annual holiday tradition during my childhood involved a Manhattan shopping jaunt with my aunt and brothers. Upon exiting the subway directly across from Macy’s main entrance was, as I remember, a billowing steam pipe, which always seemed to complement the December cold. Toss in the sounds and scents of Christmas—sidewalk Santas ringing their bells and street vendors peddling hot dogs, chestnuts, and pretzels—and that’s a festive ambiance if ever there was one.

One such year—just before entering Macy’s—we bore witness to an accident involving two yellow taxicabs. A passenger in one of them exited with a streak of blood running down the topside of his bulbous nose. I must admit that this was all great theater for a kid and made the outing particularly memorable. Of course, that was about forty-five years ago. The fellow with the bulbous nose is no doubt long gone—and not from injuries sustained in the fender bender—and so are the stores we patronized, with the sole exception of Macy’s at Herald Square. Gimbel’s, Korvette’s, Woolworth’s, Kress’s, and Brew Burger, too, are in the dustbin of history. Brew Burger, by the way, was a 1970s chain specializing in—you guessed it—charred hamburgers and beer in the pre-craft era. Sans the brew, we patronized the place a time or two. But Christmas future is far away. And Christmas past is past. Christmas present is here today. So, I'm grateful that—at the very least—the steam pipes endure in the here and now.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Never Play Leapfrog with a Unicorn

Walking along the not-so-mean streets of the Bronx—in the tony Fieldston neighborhood—I encountered a unicorn looming high above the roadway in somebody’s front yard. Not the genuine article, but the unusual visual nonetheless resurrected thoughts of a 1970s detective show called Banacek, one among several in the rotating NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie wheel. The show’s lead, the always-suave Thomas Banacek—played by the always-suave George Peppard—recited Polish proverbs at the drop of a hat. While they more often than not left those in earshot befuddled, they typically supplied all concerned with food for thought. “A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn,” Banacek said almost a half century ago. True dat!

I wonder what Banacek would think of contemporary society? His proverbs for any and all occasions would no doubt assume new and more urgent meanings in the zany new millennium. For instance, I just read a news story concerning tomorrow’s lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. The piece detailed the enormous security measures now taken—by necessity—in the world we know, not the world we knew. In the latter, Depression-era workmen once upon a time raised a twenty-foot Balsam fir—and decorated it with paper garlands, strings of cranberries, and a smattering of tin cans—unintentionally inaugurating a renowned yuletide tradition.

But that was then, 1931, and this is now. The Rockefeller Center website describes the annual ritual, hallowed location, and—its centerpiece—tree as “a gathering place and reflection of what was happening in the world around it.” I suspect that reflections on that consecrated soil in 2018 will be worlds apart from those who reflected in that considerably smaller tree’s luminous shadow in 1931. “When an owl comes to a mouse picnic, it’s not there for the sack races,” Banacek opined in a decidedly different time. Traveling around New York City nowadays, we are regularly reminded to be ever vigilant—for that owl in sheep’s clothing.

Security checks notwithstanding, Christmas has yet again been unleashed in the City that Never Sleeps. The Grinch movie is not only playing in various theaters around town but being advertised everywhere from underground subway stations to tacky floating billboards. One such promo featured the Mean One with the words: “Rude. Loud. Angry. New Yorkers are my kinda people.” I know there are some individuals on Facebook—New York natives—who take genuine pride in being “rude, loud, and angry.” My free advice to these Big Apple neighbors of mine is this: Exhibiting those aforementioned traits, as a rule, is hardly a badge of honor. Seek therapy, perhaps, or, at the very least, recite, “Pins and needles…needles and pins…it’s a happy man that grins.” Of course, feel free to change man to woman to suit the moment. Remember, too, what Banacek said, “A wise man never tries to warm himself in front of a painting of a fire.” 

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Big Wave: Then and Now

Tomorrow is Election Day. As has been the case—unstintingly—since 1981, I intend on exercising my civic responsibility by voting. What’s very deflating, but not unusual, is that I will be doing so with little to no enthusiasm. Why? Simple arithmetic: Each and every contest on my ballot is not a contest at all, but a foregone conclusion. There are some initiatives on the ballot’s flip side, but as of this moment I haven’t a clue what they are. Perhaps I will finally peruse the non-partisan “Voter Guide,” which arrived in my mailbox a couple of weeks ago, and find out. It’s been sitting—unopened and unread—on my kitchen table. 

With the historical mid-term election of 2018 as a backdrop, permit me to briefly return to a decidedly different time, 1973, and place: Sister Joanne’s sixth-grade Language Arts class at St. John’s grammar school in the Bronx. More specifically, her reading to the class Pearl S. Buck’s The Big Wave. Now, let’s fast-forward forty-five years where there is talk of another big wave. Will it be red or blue? I sincerely hope it’s the latter. If the Land of the Free ever needed checks on the executive branch of government—presided over by an unhinged bad seed—it’s now. Nevertheless, I am not—and have never been—a fan of Team Blue’s penchant for identity politics and insistence on wearing the PC straight-jacket. Why do so many people vote against their best economic interests? That's why!

All of this is playing out on social media, an exasperating, but very revealing, portal into the American psyche. Recently, I came upon a series of hysterical back-and-forth wrangles on Facebook. The American Civil War was said to pit brother against brother. Now it’s brother against brother; brother against sister; and sister against sister. Some time ago, I was asked if I wanted to be a moderator in a benign Facebook group devoted to old photos and memories. While I appreciated the offer, I declined, knowing that I couldn’t stomach what sometimes needed to be moderated—political turf battles that quickly turn ugly in a place that they don't belong. There are a fair number of people out there who obviously have no self-control, no sense of decorum, and no sense of decency. Three strikes and you're out! These folks believe that freedom of speech means they can say anything, at any time, and anywhere. Sorry, Charlie and Charlene! That’s not how it works.

Just yesterday, I encountered an intelligent, thoughtful post by someone from the old neighborhood. His abiding message was to—come what may—vote blue on Tuesday. The response to him was fast and furious from others from the same old neighborhood. What many of them said in reply to their old friend was grounds—in my opinion—for a permanent divorce. Brother against brother. I’ve seen this kind of thing play out time and again. It’s why, I suspect, reunions of all stripes are going to be sparsely attended in the future.

Case-in-point: I have a Facebook friend who regularly rails against liberals and progressives. He calls them all kinds of names—Democraps, libtards, and commies for starters. When I met him in person just prior to the last presidential election, he assaulted me with a political rant, not knowing or caring where I stood or whether or not I agreed with him. I didn’t by the way, but opted not to engage him in political debate, which would have been futile on one hand and increased my blood pressure to dangerous levels on the other.

A flashback footnote: Thirty-five years ago, I referred to Republicans as “Re-poop-licans.” The wind beneath the wings of this word play was a government professor of mine in college. From the former Czechoslovakia, he pronounced "Republican" with phonetic flair, emphasizing the second syllable, the poop part. My father’s rebuttal to me was calling Democrats “Dumbo-crats.” Those were simpler times indeed.

To be fair there’s the equally maddening other end of the political spectrum and another friend for example. This particular woman is wont to go on and on about diversity and white privilege. And where does this white gal choose to live? A tony, lily-white town—that’s where! And what kind of lifestyle does she enjoy? I’d venture to say a textbook one of white privilege. Free advice: You can find much more diverse places to call home, if that is what you truly desire. And if you are feeling guilty about your white privilege, live a life of less of it. It would be a lot cheaper. 

Okay…no more politics, please. Autumn is in full swing with the holidays just around the corner. I think I’ll go back to recounting memories of days gone by—when walkie-talkies were all I wanted for Christmas, when grammar school trips on the subway to Radio City Music Hall were an annual tradition, and when Ronco products for that special someone could be purchased at the local Woolworth’s. Oh...and when there was no social media and friends were really friends.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)