Monthly Archives: January 2015

If you’ve never seen it, do yourself and check out Arthur Penn’s very 1970s noir, Night Moves.

Here’s our pal Ivan Solotaroff on New York street football:

On the FDR Drive overpass by lower Manhattan’s Houston Street, a group of men begins assembling an hour before nightfall one steamy Thursday in late June. Some come from security, construction, or livery jobs, others from long subway rides or carpools from the Bronx or Spanish Harlem. A few have brought wives and children.

Ranging in age from 19 to 51, short and wide to superbly conditioned, they seem a ragtag group, but for the cleats around their necks, the footballs a few carry, and the insults, bro-hugs and daps they exchange as their number swells to a dozen and they head into the Baruch Projects and its 75-year-old playground. More than 90 minutes of grueling calisthenics and sprints in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, it’s clear this is an elite, disciplined group: These practices are every Tuesday and Thursday night it’s not raining or snowing, 40-plus weeks a year. As twilight falls, passersby ogle the regimented testosterone on field, though not for long: The spectacle of men bonding to face the realities of barrio life is fairly common, and it rarely lasts.

These guys do, because they’re Carver Mobb — the name from Spanish Harlem’s George Washington Carver Projects, where the core half-dozen grew up in the 1970s. A team for 21 years, they’ve been the powerhouse of New York’s half-dozen seven-on-seven rough-touch football leagues for a decade. Essentially two-hand-touch taken to bloodsport level, with two 25-minute halves, a mostly running clock, and referees to nominally control the mayhem, it’s the closest these weekend warriors will come to professional sport, though many are high-caliber athletes. Most played high school ball, but only a half-dozen of the 200-plus devotees I’ll meet made it to college; two were walk-ons for the New York Giants or Jets, one played semi-pro in Coney Island, another plays Arena football.

[Photo Credit: SB Nation]

Welcome back for another intermittent game of Where & When.  We hope that the winter hasn’t gotten you too bogged down in slush and cold; if it has, we can try to warm you up with this little challenge:

What I like about this picture is that it’s taken in front of a significant building and a significant landmark, yet we see what surrounds those features, giving a full sense of character to the neighborhood as it was at the time.  I believe you’ll be surprised by the location, especially compared to what exists today (clue).  I’m not going to give too much on this because those with good wit will be able to find this almost immediately, but again you’ll have to put on your work gloves and your thinking cap for this one (which is always my goal, thus he long intermission between games >;)

So have at it; A large mug of cocoa for the winner (location/date) and rum chocolate candy for the rest.  Bonus for identifying the two significant landmarks I mentioned earlier (as they were at the time the picture was taken), double bonus for those whom can identify what buildings are standing in place of the ones pictured here.  Hope it doesn’t take you too long to figure out, but also hope you enjoy the journey.  Talk with you later, have fun and no peeking at the credit!

Photo Credit: Ephemeral New York

Dig this fine piece on Roy Orbison by Rachel Monroe for the Oxford American:

The Orbison family moved to Wink in 1946, when Roy was ten years old, so his father, Orbie Lee, could find work in the oil fields. Though he did eventually get hired on as a rigger, the Orbisons were late to the oil boom party: Wink’s population peaked at around 6,000 in 1929; seventeen years later, when the Orbisons settled in, most of the wells had dried up and the town had shrunk to about 1,500 residents. “It was macho guys working in the oil field, and football, and oil and grease and sand and being a stud and being cool,” Orbison said later. “It was tough as could be, but no illusions, you know? No mysteries in Wink.”

Orbison wasn’t popular; later he said he felt “totally anonymous, even at home.” He started wearing glasses at age four. When he tried out for the Wink Kittens, the junior high version of the Wink Wildcats high school football team, the helmets didn’t have face guards, and his glasses kept falling off. He didn’t make the team.

Growing up is a lonely enterprise, even more so in a town that’s past its prime. Once he made his money, Orbison left for Tennessee, then Malibu. He wasn’t one to rhapsodize about his childhood very often, but once I visited his hometown, I couldn’t help but hear a telltale hint of Wink every time I listened to his songs: that sense of missing out, of having been passed by. An absence, a longing, a loneliness.

“La Chouette” by Pablo Picasso (1953)

The Wife and I were in Florida for a few days. On our flight home, a stewardess showed us a nifty trick. Squeeze a bit of lime on a Biscoff cookie and presto! you’ve got Key Lime pie.

F’realz.

I want to fly.

[Photo Via: Kateopolis]

I was a big NFL fan growing up but am a casual fan at best now. Still, I’ve watched every Super Bowl since the Rams almost upset the Steelers 35 years ago. I’m sure I’ll watch this year’s game, too, but for the first time that I can remember I’ve entertained thoughts of skipping it because I find both teams so unlikable.

Who are you guys pulling for?

Scherzer to the Nats. Jay Jaffe looks at what’s next for the Tigers.

[Photo Credit: USATSI]

And here’s another piece I’m honored to present–James Baldwin’s 1966 story about police brutality and racism:

On April 17, 1964, in Harlem, New York City, a young salesman, father of two, left a customer’s apartment and went into the streets. There was a great commotion in the streets, which, especially since it was a spring day, involved many people, including running, frightened, little boys. They were running from the police. Other people, in windows, left their windows, in terror of the police because the police had their guns out, and were aiming the guns at the roofs. Then the salesman noticed that two of the policemen were beating up a kid: “So I spoke up and asked them, ‘why are you beating him like that?’ Police jump up and start swinging on me. He put the gun on me and said, ‘get over there.’ I said, ‘what for?’ ”

An unwise question. Three of the policemen beat up the salesman in the streets. Then they took the young salesman, whose hands had been handcuffed behind his back, along with four others, much younger than the salesman, who were handcuffed in the same way, to the police station. There: “About thirty-five I’d say came into the room, and started beating, punching us in the jaw, in the stomach, in the chest, beating us with a padded club—spit on us, call us niggers, dogs, animals—they call us dogs and animals when I don’t see why we are the dogs and animals the way they are beating us. Like they beat me they beat the other kids and the elderly fellow. They throw him almost through one of the radiators. I thought he was dead over there.”

[Photo Via: Renata Cherlise]

Bunch of years ago, my pal John Schulian hipped me to “The Mongoose”, Jack Murphy’s long 1961 New Yorker profile of Archie Moore. Murphy was a sports writer in San Diego–you remember, they named the ballpark after him–and this was a one-off freelance assignment. It’s a really nice, meaty piece. Reason you won’t find it in any boxing anthologies is because it’s just prohibitively long.

Enter–the Internet! It took awhile to secure the rights–a few years of hunting around, in fact–but I’m proud to finally bring it to you. So if n your interested, head on over to The Stacks and check out this story about one of boxing’s great characters:

Moore is acutely aware of his special position as a champion—and, more particularly, as a Negro champion. “A Negro champion feels he stands for more than just a title,” he says gravely. “He is a symbol of achievement and dignity, and it is tough to be a loser and let down a whole race.” In 1959, not long after the Durelle fight, Sam Goldwyn, Jr., invited Moore to try out for the role of Jim, the runaway slave, in a movie version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Both Moore and his wife were leery of what they called “handkerchief-head parts,” and a Negro publication cautioned him against taking an “Uncle Tom” role, but he proceeded with the screen test, was offered the part, and signed a contract with Goldwyn.

Moore is unconscionably proud of the fact that he won the role in competition with professional actors as well as amateurs. (Among the latter was Sugar Ray Robinson, who was then the middleweight boxing champion. “Ray lost the part because he was too sleek,” said Archie. “They didn’t have sleek slaves in those days.”) Moore has boasted about how, although he was training for a title fight at the time, he memorized a sixteen-page transcript for his screen test and went before the cameras after only one rehearsal. The way he tells it, his performance in the test alone entitled him to an Oscar. At the end of the scene, as he recalls it, the professionals on the set—electricians, stagehands, and the like—broke into spontaneous applause. “Tears came from the director’s eyes,” says Archie. “Goldwyn was dabbing his eyes and shaking his head in wonder. An electrician told me it was only the second time in 30 years that he had seen such emotion during a test.” However accurate these recollections may be, the director of the movie, Michael Curtiz, appears to agree with Moore’s own estimate of his talent. “Archie has instinctive acting ability,” said Curtiz. “He seems to know just the right inflection to give a line, and his facial expressions are marvelous.”

When Moore first saw the script of the movie, he noted that the offensive word “nigger” appeared in it now and again, but he said nothing about this until the part was his and the contract signed. Then he began maneuvering. “I’m not a clever man, but I know how to get things done,” he said later. “The script used the word ‘nigger’ at least nine times. I went through it with a pencil and struck out the word everywhere I found it. Then I took it up with Mr. Goldwyn. I told him I couldn’t play the part unless he would agree to the deletions. I told him, ‘You are a young man, Mr. Goldwyn, and times are changing. How could I play this part when it would cause my people to drop their heads in shame in a theater?’ Goldwyn thought about it and he agreed with me. He ordered the deletions. The man who wrote the script was furious; his anger meant nothing to me. I had saved my people from embarrassment.” (Actually, the word was used only once in the movie, and then when Moore was offstage.)

[Photo Credit: Boxing Record Archie]

Dig this Serious Eats post–which I found via Kottke–by Ed Levine about diners:

There’s one more diner criterion that I haven’t previously mentioned: The food is not usually a diner’s main attraction, nor should it have to be.

When I first started thinking about this post, I tried to devise an ultimate diner test: a list of dishes a diner has to do well to be considered a “good” diner. Then I ate in 25 diners across New York City and quickly realized that good food isn’t the ultimate test of a good diner.

I’m not trying to bash diner food here. I’m just saying that food is not what you come to a diner for, and it’s not why diners remain a vitally important part of our culture. Diners are so important because they are the greatest bastions of civility, service, and dare I say grace available to all economic strata in this country. Service-oriented restaurants, like Danny Meyer’s Union Square Cafe and innumerable Shake Shacks, are all about treating all guests with equal dignity and respect. And I love them for doing so. But diners have been doing this for years, and for an even greater cross-section of the population. The only dining institutions that reach a wider audience are fast food chains, not exactly known for their kindness to customers.

So many greasy spoons in town close up shop. I hope they are never truly extinct though. They are a window into our past.

[Photo Credit: Ian Boys]

Most cool.

[Photo Credit: Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty Images]

What we’re reading…pictures by Reinier Gerritsen. 

Herbs…

“Life is a means of extracting fiction.”

The above quote comes from Brooklyn born Robert Stone, one of the great novelists of the last half-century, who passed away on Saturday at his home in Key West at the age of 77. Stone’s most recent novel was 2013’s fine The Death of the Black Haired Girl, but he’ll likely always be best known for his 1974 novel Dog Soldiers, which won the National Book Award.

Dog Soldiers was adapted by Stone himself for Karel Reisz’s 1978 film Who’ll Stop The Rain, starring Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld and Michael Moriarty. As literary adaptations go (aside from the asinine title change), it’s quite effective, retaining Stone’s strong dialogue and weary world-view. His other books of fiction included his first novel, 1967’s A Hall of Mirrors, 1981’s A Flag For Sunrise, 1992’s Outerbridge Reach, the 1997 short story collection Bear and His Daughter (which includes his widely-lauded, gut-wrenching story “Helping”) and his 1998 novel Damascus Gate.

I’ll never forget spending that Yankees-filled summer of 1998 lugging my hardcover copy of Stone’s 500 page novel back and forth to the beach. He also published a memoir of his early years in 2007, Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties, which touched on his friendship with fellow novelist Ken Kesey as well as his time spent in New Orleans as an encyclopedia salesman among other episodes. Wherever Stone traveled and whatever subjects he took on, his interests and point of view were uniquely American and not by accident. As he stated in an interview with The Paris Review from 1985:

“What I’m always trying to do is define that process in American life that puts people in a state of anomie, of frustration. The national promise is so great that a tremendous bitterness is evoked by its elusiveness. That was Fitzgerald’s subject, and it’s mine. So many people go bonkers in this country—I mean, they’re doing all the right things and they’re still not getting off.”

Earlier in the interview, he states, “That is my subject. America and Americans.” From his first novel to his last, few have ever written about them as well.

This one brings me back. A cousin from Belgium visited the summer it came out. She bought the record and my sister, brother and I listened to it until there were a few scratches. Our cousin got so pissed that she bought a new one. But we were happy because, after all, what are a few skips? I can’t even tell you that I like this song. It doesn’t matter because it is so evocative that I can’t hear it without remembering where I was the summer it was released.

[Picture by Andre Juillard via This Isn’t Happiness]

Pickle. 

“Rainy Night, Charing Cross Shops” by Joseph Pennell

Coaches.

[Photo Credit: Jon Soo Hoo]