Picture this: I’m over-dressed in my goose-down winter coat this morning looking like the goddamn Stay-Puft marshmallow man. My backpack is loaded with gifts that I’m bringing to my family’s Chanukah party tonight. I’ve got two shopping bags, one with more presents, the other with the cabbage salad I prepared last night. By hand, dammit, I sliced four heads of cabbage–thin!–by hand.

“Why don’t you just use the machine?” said the wife.

“Tradition!” I say, referring as much to the masochism as the end result.

So I get on the subway with all my junk, neck still sore from leaning over the cutting board, and sit at the end of the car, next to the wall, so that I’ll only have a person to my right. In no time, the train is crowded. And then, at 181st street, the subway moment I dread–hot food.

Two people, two sausage, egg and cheese sandwiches. Nowhere for me to move. Trapped.

And they housed that shit by the time we got to 137th street. Believe it.

It’s hard to figure that it’s almost been five years since my Dad passed away. I got to thinking about him on the subway this morning when a man came on the train with a bible in his left hand and started talking about Jesus. The man through the packed car slowly and was ignored by the passengers. I smiled as I remembered something Dad once said to a subway preacher. Dad looked up from his book when the preacher got close, looked up at him and in a loud, clear voice said, “Sir, your arrogance is breathtaking.”

Ah, the old man was a good one.

The street photography of New York in the 1980s by Jamel Shabazz still sings.

Peace to How to Be a Retronaut (the gift that keeps giving).

Bruce’s Garden is a beautiful spot in my neighborhood. When my wife and I went looking for an apartment, the vibrant garden nestled onto the “pro” side of our decision-making process without us even realizing it.

On Wednesday night, Bruce’s Garden hosted our annual holiday tree-lighting ceremony. Hot chocolate, cake and carols, then a roaring countdown. Then more carols. Sometimes, there are even rosy cheeks and suggestions of snow, but not this year.

As we sipped our hot chocolate and waited for the countdown, I saw a police cruiser with lights flashing speed down the dead end of Park Terrace East toward Isham Park. The car did not come back out. Nobody else seemed to notice. There were five police officers in attendence for the festivities, but I didn’t see any of them leave the garden.

About a hundred yards away from where we stood, four thieves attacked a man walking through the park on his way to meet his family in the garden. He’s a big man and he fought back, but he couldn’t prevent the mugging. He was injured but he drove around the area with the police officers looking for the muggers. They didn’t find them.

I don’t want to speculate on the nature of the crime, the criminals, nor the victim other than to say that it was clearly brazen. The ceremony was well publicized. The police were prominent, the crowd vocal.

The things that keep us close to the city crash into the things that push us away. I can pretend that by choosing the right route home, or by carrying myself a certain way that I can avoid being jumped. That’s a fine delusion when I’m only thinking about me, but I’m not thinking about me anymore.

Someday, I’ll celebrate my last Christmas in New York City. Maybe it will be this one.

 [Photo Credit: Carla Zanoni Dn’Ainfo]

Last night I was on Broadway and 103rd street buying flowers for the wife before I got on the train. Who should come out of the bodega but an old friend. My cousin’s best friend for more than forty years (this is my cousin, the film editor, who was responsible for hooking me up with my first job in the movie business). The two of them told me about “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and took me to see “Valley Girl” when I was a kid, a big deal because it was a rated R movie; I covered my eyes every time there was a nude scene.

I remembered seeing that movie with them just a few days ago and now here was my cousin’s friend in front of me. I don’t remember the last time I’d seen her.

We caught up and made plans to get together. Then a woman I worked with in the movie business walked up to us.

My cousin’s friend said goodbye and now I was talking to another old friend. We’d worked together on “The Big Lebowski.” I was in the picture department and she was in the music department. We too caught up on old times–she still works in sound editing, is getting married next month–and when it came time to say goodbye I quoted her favorite line from “Lebowski,” a line we used to say to each other all the time during the post-production of that show.

I started down the subway steps and said, “Gave the Dude a beeper.”

And she said, “Gave the Dude a deeper.”

I was halfway down the steps when I heard a male voice, guy walking down the street, say, “Gave the Dude a beeper.”

How odd yet cool to have worked on a movie that became a cult hit. And how wonderful to have a New York Minute with old friends.

[Photo Credit: digger-cb]

Living in New York I have developed great appreciation for long lines. Only rarely have I been disappointed after waiting (I’m looking at you, Matrix 2 & 3) and have found that if you bring a cheery attitude to the queue, that it becomes an enjoyable part of the overall experience. I ate the best breakfast of my life when, across the street from the Tokyo fish market, I chose the Sushi Shop with the longest line. I’ll wait out any Shake Shack location with a smile.

My family stood in one of those long lines at the Bronx Botanical Gardens this weekend. We queued up for the Holiday Train Show outside the main entrance under a big tent. It was cool so we were comforatable in our winter jackets. They even gave us tickets and broke us down by entrance times. Scattered around the tent were information placards describing what we were about to see. We learned that all of the building models are made entirely of plant parts. As far as lines go, I was impressed.

When our time arrived, we walked into the main entrance. But instead of entering directly into the exhibit, we came upon a large vestibule. There were a couple of spectacular models of a mansion and an air port, but they were impossible to access because of the chaotic mob of people. We only had to navigate a 50-foot curve around a fountain to get into the exhibit, but the mob had to funnel to single file while standing still. Inside the greenhouse, it’s 80 degrees.

All around us people were disintegrating. A old White woman pushing a wheelchair barked, “You people need to move!” The young Black father directly ahead of her asked her pointedly if she wanted to run over his two young kids. She yelled back that she didn’t run over his kids so he shouldn’t take offense. He kept his cool, though he was not giving her the last word on the matter. I noted to the woman that neither the father nor the kids, nor anyone else in the vestibule could move anywhere and that they would move when they could. It didn’t help. She was lost in the semantics of the argument and the father, who I thought was justified to take offense in the first place, let it drop and moved away from the wheelchair when he could.

We were already single file out in the tent! Why on earth they allow hell-on-earth to take shape inside the vestibule, I’ll never understand, but armed with the proper cheery attitude we shed our jackets and shuffled our feet occasionally until we finally tumbled to the base of the funnel.

The models of the buildings and bridges were incredible, but I expected the trains themselves to be cooler and omnipresent. The buildings require a lot of scrutiny to figure out which plant parts comprise the structures, but when two kids are bolting from train to train, scrutiny is not an option.

Cheery had wilted to ho-hum in the heat, but then, just after the midway point, I heard Jude shout out, “Yankee Stadium!”

Long live the long line.

Where’s that bus? I don’t want to miss the train show.

Where’s that bus? There’s a cold rain falling.

I might fall asleep and miss my stop.

I’m thirsty and the water bottle is empty.

CC will throw the first pitch soon.

I need to make dinner for the boys.

I don’t want my wife to walk home in the dark.

He’s already held it in for so long.

I’m gonna end up in the first fucking row and my neck’s gonna be sore for a week.

Where’s that damn bus?

Technology exists underground, for most of New York, that tracks the trains along their route. Screens display the time of the next arriving train. And then the next one after that. No such service on the A Train. Nothing doing at the bus stops. You wait unknowing or you walk.

I guess the Blue Line doesn’t utilize that technology for the same reason that A and C Trains are the oldest, crappiest trains in the system. Nobody wants to spend any money on the A and the C. And I’m sure there is some preposterous reason why the MTA can’t develop an app that will track a bus as it inches through traffic as the frozen darkness descends upon your stop.

But c’mon, man. In this day and age, there’s no way we should be helplessly wondering where’s that bus.

Broadway and 116th street, Columbia University.

Family time on the 1 train.

Parking lot in Soho. Wait, what?

Honey, hang on a sec, I’ll be right there, I just need to take a picture.

It’s cold in New York today. I saw a dude on the train on my way to working this morning. He was not wearing a coat. I looked down.  Sandals with no socks. Really, man?

When I got to work and, I said good morning to Big Lou, one of the security guards in my building. I told him about the guy on the train.

Lou said, “Well, you never know, he could have a foot problem.”

“No, Lou, I think some people are just Herbs.”

“You never know, Al. Who are we to judge?”

I stopped and looked at Lou and told him that he was right. I thanked him for pointing out the facts. Won’t be the last time today that I need correcting.

Good to have people like Lou in your life.

Sitting on the train this morning at 125th street, the light pours in from the east. It’s always good to have someone blocking the sun.

One small move on their part and:

Blinded by the Light.

What’s a matter with you, boy?

Getting sick on a train is tough business. I’ve seen people pass out and throw up, usually in tight quarters. One time on a crowded train, a woman feinted into the unsuspecting lap beneath her. The person attached to the lap made a move to quickly give up his seat, but in his haste to make space he dropped her on the floor.

I’ve never been that kind of sick, but I’ve felt a fever creep over me in those hellish depths. It was winter, hat-and-scarf winter, and that icky warmth spread out from the center of my thick jacket. It traced the outlines of my shoulders and neck until it erupted in sweat down my back and out towards my hands.

I wrenched my scarf free. I would have left it for trash on the floor if there was enough space to let it fall. I jammed the wool hat in my bag and wedged the bag between my legs. I unbuttoned the jacket. Even the warm, dank subway car air was welcome inside the jacket.

I pivoted slightly so I could wiggle one arm free of its sleeve. And then the other. The jacket slid down into my arms and I folded it over and over until it looked more like a pillow. I tied the scarf around the jacket like a sweaty parcel. Then I reached down to reposition my bag over my shoulders.

I thought to myself, if there is snow on the ground when I get out of this subway, I am going to bury my head in it.

I stood there sweating for a few minutes, holding the jacket package and feeling eyes on me from all over the car. The train slowed down to approach 125th St. I had about a hundred blocks to go.

By 168th St, I was shivering.

 [Photo by Lesley Steele]

Over at the New York Review of Books, here’s Bruce Davidson on taking pictures on the Iron Horse in the early ’80s:

In the spring of 1980, I began to photograph the New York subway system. Before beginning this project, I was devoting most of my time to commissioned assignments and to writing and producing a feature film based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel, Enemies, A Love Story. When the final option expired on the film, I felt the need to return to my still photography—to my roots.

I began to photograph the traffic islands that line Broadway. These oases of grass, trees, and earth surrounded by heavy city traffic have always interested me. I found myself photographing the lonely widows, vagrant winos, and solemn old men who line the benches on these concrete islands of Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

I traveled to other parts of the city, from Coney Island to the Bronx Zoo. I revisited the Lower East Side cafeteria where I’d photographed several years before. The cafeteria was a haven for the elderly Jewish people surviving the decaying nearby neighborhoods. I photographed the people I had known there, survivors from the war and the death camps who had clung together after the Holocaust to re-root themselves in this strange land. I walked along Essex Street to visit an old scribe who repaired faded Hebrew characters on sacred Torah scrolls. He and his wife, both survivors of Dachau, worked together in their small religious bookstore. Occasionally, he’d allow me to take a photograph as he bent over the parchment with his pen. When the flash went off, he would wave me away. I would return later with prints that he put into a drawer, carefully, without looking at them. Sometimes, returning from his shop during the evening rush hour, I would see the packed cars of the subway as cattle cars, filled with people, each face staring or withdrawn with the fear of its unknown destiny.

Dig the book, a cherce holiday gift.

Oh, hell, and while we’re at it:

I stood over a young woman on the train last night. She had a narrow face and it looked like she was sucking in her cheeks. An open book rested on top of a big leather bag that was on her lap (the subject of what women put in their bags, and how often they change their bags merits its own discussion). Soon, I sat in a seat across from her. She was wearing black boots, and a long skirt and her hips were wide though I couldn’t make out her figure from the way she was sitting. I tried to figure out how a girl with a big body could have such a slender face.

As the train pulled into the 125th station, she closed her book and looked up. I saw that she was reading Diane Keaton’s new memoir.  That was when I noticed that her blazer and the big, decorated scarf that was wrapped around her neck. You know how some people look like their dogs? She looked like her book, a real Annie Hall. As I wished that I could take a picture of her, she looked at me. I raised my eyebrow and she titled her head, smiled, and walked off the train.

[Poster by Mike Oncley]

Check out this gallery of New York City photographs by Stanley Kubrick.

From How to Be a Retronaut, where else?

A rainy day in New York always makes me wish I was at a movie theater. Or maybe a museum, or a cozy restaurant. Or hey, what about an indoor batting cage? Yeah, taking bp with my brother, Ben, Jon DeRosa pitching. Something like that, yeah. Unless, I was just chillin’ at home, laying on my ass reading a book or watching a movie on TV. Or in the kitchen, cooking. That’d work, too. I suppose there is lots to do on a dark, wet day in New York, isn’t there?

[Photo Credit: Tall Kev]

As a kid, the scariest neighborhood I could think of outside of Harlem was Alphabet City. It was a world away from the Upper West Side, which had its tough blocks and dangerous stretches. I heard about Alphabet City in frightening terms, as in “You don’t want to go down there.” Then, when I was thirteen, I remember this movie poster:

I never saw the movie and it would be years until I went downtown to that neighborhood. By the time I got there it was called the East Village.

[Photo Credit: Ribonyc]

I’ve never gone to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade but I have an uncle who used to go every year. It was one of those things that he couldn’t imagine not doing and didn’t understand why everyone didn’t feel the same way he did.

The floats are cool, though, aren’t they?