Sign of the Season

I walked down to Stuyvesant Square Park yesterday thinking I'd see some crocuses and daffodils -- and I did, though the crocuses there looked a bit bedraggled. Then I found this graffiti at Second Avenue and 15th Street. Who needs real crocuses, anyway?

Cinematic City Corner

Not long ago I rented a movie called “The Boys in the Band." It’s considered a groundbreaking movie, from 1970, about gay men and gay culture. By today’s standards it’s overwrought and it reinforces some undesirable stereotypes, but it was hugely progressive at a time when gay men were still considered inherently mentally ill.

Anyway, there’s a short outdoor scene with one of the characters standing on a street corner holding a casserole, trading dirty looks with a large woman. Behind them is a small park. The Empire State Building looms in the background. I paused the movie and tried to figure out where that scene could have been shot. And then I realized -- it’s on my street!

The scene was filmed on the northwest corner of E. 29th Street and Second Avenue. I live a block further west, at E. 29th Street and Third Avenue. Above is what the corner looks like today. Below are two blurry screen caps from the movie.



As you can see in my photo, there’s been quite a bit of construction in 40 years. The view of the Empire State Building is now blocked by that red brick building on the right -- the tip of the ESB's spire is just barely visible to the left of the water tower on the brick structure's roof. That tall beige monstrosity in the background (which is right next to my building) came later, too.

The mural behind the two characters in the movie was the real giveaway. A matching companion mural remained on one of the park’s walls until last year, when it was covered over with beige paint. Here’s a shot of it from 2006:


Cinematic history in my neighborhood!

If you're really interested and you'd like to watch the clip, it's here. The corner shot appears at 4:08.

Employed by a Dinosaur?

If you’ve seen my Facebook page you know we got some more bad news yesterday at work -- a pay cut and about 100 layoffs. I’m still employed, thankfully, but a couple of coworkers whose company I’ve enjoyed were let go, and I don’t yet know who else may have been affected.

I’ll try not to get all soapbox-y about the newspaper industry. Our slow strangulation is not a new development. We’ve been losing subscribers for years and years, not just since the Internet boom or the beginning of this recession.

But I do think we’re in a very unusual time right now. I’m not sure people realize how much the welfare of our communities and our nation is jeopardized by the death of newspapers.

The newspaper is literally the only place in most cities where real journalism is practiced. All that news people hear on the radio and see on local TV, and talk about around the water cooler, began in the newspaper. As a reporter I attended many, many government meetings where I was the only press person there -- TV reporters do not make it standard practice to do beat reporting, let alone anything investigative.

Now that our print business, which sustained all of our operations with its lucrative advertising sales, is dying -- what’s the solution?

The current argument is that newspapers made a mistake giving away their content for free on the Web. There’s a move afoot in the industry to consider charging for some Web content, on a “pay-per-view” kind of basis, where you pay more the more you read.

The problem is, this shifts our costs to the readers -- and that has NEVER been our business model. Advertising paid the bulk of our costs, not readers. It’s those ad dollars we need to get back, somehow, because I’m not sure readers would ever be willing to pay the true cost of their news -- particularly younger readers, who seem to think stuff on the Internet should be free. Real news gathering -- maintaining foreign bureaus, employing people who are specialists in fields like medicine or nuclear proliferation -- is expensive.

Personally, I don’t think we ever will get those dollars back. Our old business model is dead. I really have no idea what that means for our future, or the future of our democracy. Maybe we and other journalism outlets will evolve to fill the gap. Maybe the gap will never be filled.

(Photo: Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, March 2009)

Carnage

My friend Bill, who’s a theater critic, called me at work yesterday with the offer of a free ticket to see “God of Carnage,” a new play on Broadway starring Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden. Naturally, I leaped at that! The play was terrific -- hilarious yet posing serious questions about human nature. There’s even a scene where Hope Davis vomits visibly on stage. What’s not to like?

You all know how much I like spam e-mail with interesting subject lines. Here are two I got this week:

-- Get your head effectively cleaned after last night

-- Become a wild cat for tonight! Scratch him to orgasm!

I guess these were supposed to sound good -- but you know, they just don’t.

(Photo: Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, March 2009)

Stealing from Old People

Those of you who enjoy dream interpretation, I need your help. Here’s a dream I had last night:

I’m living in a beach town in Florida and there’s been a huge hurricane. I decide to go out after the storm for a cup of coffee. But as I walk to the coffee shop I realize it’s way too far, so I turn toward home, deciding to take the beach road back.

The road along the beach has been heavily damaged and eventually it disappears altogether. I’m slogging through sand that becomes almost waist-deep, and then I’m walking through waist-deep water. I’m worried about what might be in that dark, murky water. I see floating debris and, at one point, I think I see bones.

Amid the debris, I find a small pink box. I tuck it in my bag and slog on.

Finally, I come to a waterfront gift shop, also heavily damaged but intact. I go inside and an elderly man and woman are working there, trying to restore their shop after the storm. I realize that all their stock comes in pink boxes like the one I found, so I pull it out and show it to them. They’re happy that I found some of their missing stock. We open the box, and inside is a set of laminated cardboard coasters with a Chinese motif -- plum blossoms and so on.

They turn away and I’m about to put the box on the shelf when I decide I want these coasters. I put them back in my bag and leave the empty box behind. I turn to leave and as I’m walking out the door I hear the old woman exclaim to the old man, “It’s empty!”

So this is what I’m reduced to -- stealing from old people after a hurricane. And stealing cheap tourist crap at that.

(I think I had this dream because I’m reading a John D. MacDonald mystery, “The Deep Blue Good-by,” which takes place partly in the Keys and is steeped in Florida imagery.)

What could possibly be going on in my mind?

(Photo: "Very Often I Cry When Alone" by Kosbe, street art in SoHo, March 2009)

Afterlife

What happens after we die?

I asked my Zen teacher that question once, early in my practice, prepared to hear about reincarnation or karma. Instead, she said Zen doesn’t say much about an afterlife. After all, we just don’t know.

And indeed, in all my subsequent years of attending the Zendo, I’ve never heard anyone address any kind of life-after-death. Zen is focused on the living, the now.

I was primed to hear about reincarnation because Buddhists in general are often said to believe in it. The common perception is that it means coming back in a new body as a snail or a dog, or maybe even another human. Some believers do, in fact, think of it that literally.

I have a much more general sense of what reincarnation might mean. I think we come back as a part of everything. Whatever energies we possess, whatever matter is contained in our bones and tissues, goes back into the earth and nourishes the next round of beings. We are not reincarnated in an intact spiritual sense, but a more general biological one -- and hence spiritually too. We are literally part of it all. (Not that we aren’t already!)


I’m not concerned about “making my mark” or “leaving something behind.” I will almost certainly have no children -- nor do I want any -- and my work is mostly focused on the day-to-day minutiae of society, so it will be quickly swallowed up by the abyss of information that surrounds us. I’m fine with that.

In fact, I’d rather not leave something behind. You know that saying you see on signs in national parks, “Take only pictures, leave only footprints”? That’s kind of how I feel about life.

When I die, I just want to vanish. I don’t want a rock with my name carved on it -- why waste a perfectly good rock? I don’t want a grave. Millions of people before me, going all the way back to our lives in caves alongside mastodons, have been born and died and left no trace. I want to join them.

Edward Hoagland has an essay in the March issue of Harper’s magazine where, being elderly, he reflects on life and the prospect of dying. Like me, he seems to believe we merely return to the earth when we die -- no spiritual dramatics -- and he’s fine with that. He writes:

“If heaven is on Earth, it’s hardly contradictory to love sunshine chevroned with tree shadows in the woods, plus the low-slung moss, a tiger-colored butterfly, the Tiffany glitter of a spider’s web after a gust of rain, and the yellow-spotted salamander emerging from under the nearest log -- yet feel content to die.”

(Photo: Driveways in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, December 2008)

Joan and Jeremy

I had a great day yesterday, combining all the things I said I wanted to do Saturday but couldn’t. I ran errands in the morning, stocking up on Raisin Bran at KMart, where it’s $4.49 a box rather than a totally insane $6.50 at Gristedes. Then I promptly blew those savings and more on a photography book, “Store Front” by James and Karla Murray, whom I’ve met a couple of times at street art events. Great people, with a cute dog.

I went on a photography walk through Hell’s Kitchen, and stopped at the recently reopened Market Diner on 11th Avenue and 43rd Street, where I’ve long wanted to go -- it’s a very ‘60s building with a jagged roof and lots of plate glass. One of my better diner experiences, and I am a connoisseur of diners! I got banana nut pancakes, with plenty of pecans. Two thumbs up!

Then I met my friend Bill and we went to see “Impressionism” on Broadway, with Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons. It was a nice, basically unchallenging romantic play that wouldn't hold up to much critical dissection, but I like both Joan and Jeremy a lot. Really beautiful staging and art direction, which one would expect from a show called “Impressionism." I sat right behind Michael Musto and his very unusual looking, recently-laid-off colleague Lynn Yaeger, from the Village Voice.

Finally, I came home and caught up on some reading and on another episode of “The Jewel in the Crown.” I’m nearly finished -- one more disc to go.

(Photo: Maybe the happiest photo I’ve ever taken! A Metropolitan Hardware delivery truck in Hell's Kitchen, yesterday.)