They called me "Shorty Rock" at the 4th Street B-Ball Court

In 1986 I became a regular player in one of downtown's craziest and most competitive street ball games. Not that i was good at basketball, i really wasn't. Let's just say that this kid had some serious ROCKS on him.

The summer i was 13 my mother moved downtown to the Village. She had met a very unique , very incredible man and decided it was time to move in with him 2 years after my parents divorced. this man, David, became my stepfather. his house, his neighborhood, and his very unique way of life were all a brand new world for me. i had never met such an interesting and strong person before, besides my parents of course. he was once the lawyer for John Lennon and Yoko Ono, he helped found a very successful photography gallery and his law firm has/had an art gallery in the front end of the office space called "The Work Space". He was one of those guys who helped form what Soho and the Village are like today. anybody familiar with advertising might take interest at the fact that he was the main lawyer for Jerry Della Femina and helped found what became MVBMS and is now Euro RSCG. he was the kind of character who wore a wrinkled and stained, yet astoundingly rare and expensive suit coupled with a pair of comfy sneakers and would confidently walk through any neighborhood without a concern to what could happen. he was self made man from Brooklyn who payed his way through Yale by doing things like working on a ship in it's engine room and was no stranger to all levels of society. he hardly ever slept and read philosophy in the early hours of the morning. he was nothing short of a genius and i miss him dearly. He died in 1997 suddenly of a heart aneurysm in a taxi with my mother, who loved him to distraction.

the townhouse he had bought during harder times in Greenwich Village's sordid past, was a historical landmark which he restored with friends by hand. He actually used tooth brushes to uncover 300 year old wood molding long since hidden by various tenants. There is actually a re-make of the living room in the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that i sometimes visit, just to feel like i am home again. sometimes i even walk by the front of the actual building and sit on my old stoop. i can usually see my old bedroom because i lived on the ground floor and my windows were facing the front. there was an old fireplace in my bedroom and one in the kitchen so big i could stand in without ducking. the floors were ancient warped wood, the faucets were pearl inlaid and read "Chaud" and "Froid". everything in it was over 300 years old and the solid construction was a testament to how much care went into materials and craft back then, at least for the wealthy. the current owner is George Soros, the guy who bank rolled John Kerry's 2004 campaign and allegedly made 3 billion dollars last year. i knew back then that it was going to be a looong uphill battle for me to ever live like that again.

to visualize this place, picture the Age of Innocence and you won't be far off the target. the backyard was full of rare plants and a pond with giant goldfish (carp) in it. no joke. this is where my graffiti writing hood-rat ass lived for a bunch of formative years. i had rapidly gone from stomping cockroaches with my Fayva generic brand wanne-be sneakers uptown, to having my own floor in what was an aristocratic merchant's town mansion in the 18th century. apparently, the first house to be built on 11th street...ever.

A funny side story is that one morning when i was about 16 i was sitting in the ground floor kitchen eating cereal in my underwear, when all of a sudden Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon walked in. They were considering buying the place and nobody told me they would be passing through. it...was...awkward. like always, i digress.

the neighborhood was ultra funky and still had the relatively beatnik and creative feel to it left over from Dylan's days in the 60's and 70's. a far cry from the wash of wealth that it is under now. and for a 13 year old, the winding cobblestone streets and endless characters that strode those streets were a very informative, eye opening environment. up until that point i had only been familiar with the upper west side which, had a bit of a creative flavor, but was already kind of claimed by jewish, puerto rican, and dominican family mini hoods and was clearly moving into the early stages of gentrification. so this place was new and even more mixed up and exciting to me then uptown.

I brought with me a skateboard and a bmx bike to use in my exploration of my new hood. i had the whole of the summer of 1986 and its sweltering hot days to kill and a huge wild area of Manhattan to get familiar with. i do believe, in retrospect, that i was a lunatic. or at least fearless, because i went everywhere at any hour. on of the benefits of living in a huge, 5 story brownstone with hip parents on the third floor, was that i had my own floor, with my own entrance under the main stoop. i could come and go without notice at any time and i did just that. plus i was in between elementary school and high school, so my old friends, who all lived uptown were no longer in my life the way they used to be. so lets just say that i was bored unless i stayed active on my own.

that's about the time i discovered the basketball court on 6th avenue and 4th street. you know, the one that always has hundreds of people watching guys slam dunk on each other. its one of the most competitive and serious courts downtown, to this day. it's where you could find various Knicks playing, like Gerald Wilkins and Mark Jackson, playing violent street ball. at first i just watched in admiration. but as i became more comfortable and more bored with my new domain, i became emboldened to join the fray. i bought a red and black Michael Jordan ball and started dribbling it to the court everyday. i would run out and start shooting in between the games when the teams were being selected and the court was momentarily open. this went on for a few weeks until i think the regular guys started noticing me. i was clearly a neighborhood kid and i think that kind of thing gets respect and notice no matter what court you go to. plus my size at 13 was, lets say, petite so i was an unusually bold sight. my dr checkup that summer had me weighing in at a paltry 105 pounds and a mere 5 feet 0 inches. i was small even for my age, something that i think just added to my craziness then and later in life. i had something of a Napoleon complex, in retrospect.

so imagine what it looked like when these huge guys were playing around me. i remember one of them was particularly friendly and inclusive, Victor, started calling me Shorty Rock, and told me to play in the games. so i did. one thing i had practiced a lot at that age, was the long shot. i had this totally fucked up and weird one handed shot, but it seemed to have a pretty good rate of success. good enough that i would actually get passed the ball if i placed myself at the top out of reach of the larger guys. of course, if i didn't get rid of the ball immediately, or if i was stupid and tried to drive in, i would get my young skinny ass handed to me in front of the whole neighborhood. so my game was pretty formulaic, i'd get the ball and either set up an alley-oop for one of the stars, or i would chuck the ball with my one handed hail mary. when it missed, it was very upsetting for me, because clearly the large audience had all their eyes on the tiny young white kid in the middle of this crazy street ball game. my right to be there was ALWAYS questioned by the large mixed group of on-lookers, and probably some of the players who were less regular to the court wondered why the hell i was there. certainly, the time Gerald Wilkins rejected my shot so hard, the ball flew in the other direction so high that it nearly cleared the chicken fence enclosure to land on 3rd street. that was humiliating and i hated Mr. Wilkins for that. especially since i could care less about the Knicks and pro sports in general.

But when i made the shot, it was extra gravy. people clapped and hooted. players would smack my ass on the way back to defence (something i have never understood by the way, seems a bit weird for dudes who clearly don't approve of gayness to grab ass on each other so much in sports, but who am i to blow against the wind :). they would yell, "word up, Shorty Rock!". the other team would yell at each other to not give me the shot so easy. they would say things like "cover Shorty man!". so, i earned my keep through under-estimation. it was AWESOME. NYU students would stare in awe, players would point and laugh at each other. i think i brought the game into a different place for these guys, after all it was street ball, not organized ball. so anybody and everybody is technically allowed to play. but nobody besides the best and the craziest dared enter that court. so i was the under dog. the kid stuck in the neighborhood that hadn't made room for kids yet. i guess, i fell under the "craziest" category at that time of my life. i was clearly the local under dog. the kid stuck in the neighborhood that hadn't made room for kids yet. i would never dare do something like that now. i don't need the recognition, or the humiliation. and i am certainly no longer a bored kid in a new neighborhood.

People and their pets

Last night I was walking down 75th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam and I saw a guy walking his dog. The dog was a big beautiful German Shepherd with grayed hair. He was clearly very old and was obviously in pain and having a lot of trouble walking. The first thing I had noticed before seeing them was a long discontinuous line of pee on the sidewalk. I had assumed it was some drunk guy peeing while he walked, something drunk and self amusing guys sometimes do :) (I haven't done that since, like high school, but i can't lie and say I've never done it) As i got closer, it became evident that it had been this old dog's laborious attempt to alleviate himself. the sight of this dog, and the owner, who was talking quietly to the dog and hugging him every few feet, caused me to lose my cool and start to tear up. it really really got to me. i had to cross the street so the owner didn't see how affected i was.

Now, I am normally a relatively stoic person. I read about the 100k people drowning in Asia from the recent Cyclone and felt horrible, but i wasn't drawn to tears. Thankfully i wasn't, because i was on the subway at the time that i read about it in the Times and that would have been awkward for an hombre like me. But historically, i break down when i see the bond between man and pet being smashed by the pet's brutally brief mortality. or when i witness a true act of love and devotion, like the woman in my neighborhood who has a two legged dog. she walks it in a stroller-like contraption that holds the dog's legless hind area in a sling and lets the dog walk almost normally on its two existing front legs. this is a dog that is getting to live a relatively normal life because this woman loves it. otherwise, in nature, the dog would have died a death of starvation and exposure a loong time ago. when i see her i get all misty. it just kills me.

When i was 19 i got a job being the doorman for a building for a summer. It was a great job because i basically sat their all day smoking and watching a little tv that was hidden behind the doorman desk. it had one of those scramblers so i had ALL the channels. and i mean all, if you know what i mean. wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more. Anyhoo, one day i was watching a rerun of Family Ties. It was the episode where Mallory's tough guy boyfriend Nick (the guy i always modelled myself after, right down to buying a motorcycle and a leather jacket) had to put his dog to sleep. there was a scene where he was in the vet's office and he had to say goodbye to the poor pooch. the dog was looking at him with such love and trust while he cried his eyes out. well, i fucking bawled. the guy responsible for a large building's security was crying like a 4 year old girl in the lobby. and this was when security was a real serious issue in the neighborhood. tears and everything, from watching Family Ties. Ironically, i didn't cry when i found out i had to put my dog to sleep when i was 9, so maybe this is an issue of delayed connections.

so last night, when i saw this connection between this guy and his beautiful, noble dog on the precipice of death. it was like a dagger to my heart. German Shepherds are like the generals of dog army. noble, smart, and strong like lions. although they can have some negative connotations because they were made in Germany recently as military dogs. that unfortunate start naturally connects these dogs to, you guessed it, the world wars and their biggest victims, the jews. but they've never chewed on me and i am jewish :) so that's good. but, for the most part, they seem very loyal and very capable of close companionship. at least this one certainly did. and so did his owner. they guy was sort of roughneck looking. he looked like a wife-beater type, you know, tank top, hat to the side, oversized jean shorts, and a low rider swagger. he must have picked the dog in his prime to go along with his tough image. but now, the toughness was gone, and he was left with a hobbling, swing hipped, old goat of a creature who could barely make it to the curb.

in the dog's brief life with his owner, there had obviously formed a serious amount of love. the guy was just so patient, and so encouraging, and he hugged the dog over and over. it seemed so out of character for him. love had cut him down and was having its way with him. i know too well what that's like. i ended up sitting on a stoop and just watching the struggle from across the street. i watched the guy help the dog, paw by paw, up his steps. it took so long that two separate neighbors walked by and each said hello and petted the dog with familiarity. each time the dog stopped and looked up and gave them a little bit of notice, but then got back to his struggle. it's this kind of thing that melts away my tough facade. its at the core of what love and death means. it plays out from beginning to bitter end in a decade more or less with these creatures. they love us with everything they are and then they suffer and die right in front of us. for my cat it was like that. it took 4 weeks from start to finish. and my cat struggled at the end like this dog. but the struggle that stings the most, is the one who loses the love and the companion. its us. we have to deal with the entirety of it, while they just have to deal with walking to the bathroom.

are they worth that kind of pain? i can't seem to get enough of it.

IRONMAN RAWKS. Marvel, I'm so happy you made it to Hollywood

I saw Ironman the other day and LOVED it. Marvel, like Tolkien, translate beautifully into films with the help of good script writing and great CGI. It has the wonderful effect of making me feel like a young unripe tomato all over again.

I was a huge Comic collector as a kid. there was a small mom and pop shop called Westside Comics down the block from where i grew up. My sister and I religiously went there knowing full well the exact days our favorite comics were due in the store and we loved to blow our entire allowances in one visit. I was particularly fond of the X-men and some random ones, like Teen Titans and Elfquest. I had thousands of dollars worth of them, which to my chagrin, were recently thrown out when new owners took over the building next door, where my stuff was in storage. Now they are all in some pile in a landfill in queens. Ehh, water under the queens bridge. At least i have Hollywood.

To be completely honest, i wasn't reading them anymore. Either my imagination has lost it's ability to make these inked pictures come to life, or i just don't have the time to kill anymore. After all, a guy who reads comics all day is probably going to end up alone and in debt. I try not to be a gamer for the same reason. i work on computers and its silly to get on them after work unless it has something to do with picture albums, friends i don't see regularly, or this oh-so-therapeutic blog. But, my love for super powers and fantasy fiction hasn't changed. My dreams are often a place full of these comic book powers and fantasy fiction adventures. Thankfully that hasn't fully abandoned me in this mundane reality.

Now my generation's turn to run shit. We are the driving force in Hollywood these days. Clearly, the movers and shakers are starting to be like minded individuals to me and mine. A quick scan through the movie channels on cable and i see, Lord of the Rings, Hulk, Spiderman, Star Wars, X-Men, yada yada, you get the picture. This is an incredible development for me. Besides the fact that i am technically in the industry of making these kinds of movies, it's also allowing me to enjoy my Comics again without needing to read them and then put them safely back in those annoying plastic bags for protection. Now they are moving pictures on the big screen. And they are so well done that my imagination can be put aside and i can just watch the magic with open mouth. So far i haven't been at all disappointed. not even with Tim Burton and Joel Schumaker's silly Batman movies over 10-15 years ago.

I know EXACTLY how its done and i probably detect flaws a little too quickly, but that doesn't negate my suspension of disbelief. I can still believe its actually happening and i go "oooo" and "awww" just as loud as the next person. I am super excited for a year full of comics. Captain America, Hulk2, the Avengers, Batman, and Thor to name a sampling. Of course there's DC on the scene too with Superman.

Ironman was the latest bundle of joy for me. Tony Stark was dead on, a highly flawed genius who had everything until he was thrust into the world of terror by a business partner. He uses his unbelievable grasp on tech to create an iron suit to escape from Afghanistan. A man saves his life twice, the second time giving up his own life. this clears Tony Stark's playboy mind and shows him the error of his ways. its almost flawless character development, laden with meaning because he shows how putting his mind and his resources into creating energy and defensive technology, rather then weapons, is a much smarter and more successful way to succeed. aww, thanks Marvel. love that one to grow on stuff spattered in between AWESOME flying sequences and fight scenes. Marvel is like "hey, Bush, science is what made us great, not the bible." and it proves it's point when the Gold Titanium Alloy suit tears over to Afghanistan and takes out the bad guy in short order. Osama, say hello to Arclight Reactor numero uno, beeyotch.

That a regular man with a developed grasp of technology can fly faster then f-22's and quickly level terrorism where our military has failed so heinously is a FANTASTIC thing to see at this point in history. it's what we used to call, droppin' science.

Zack Knight

this is Zack crossing Broadway at 112th street in 1986. he always made a big entrance.

One of my best friends from childhood died a few years ago of an asthma attack. He was with his parents at the time. They lived in a part of the Bronx where ambulance tend to take WAY too long to arrive, something that is inexcusable and yet sadly, horribly, familiar and common. I didn't hear about it until months later because I was in California at the time and I guess nobody remembered how close i was to him. the fact that I was a elementary school friend must have made my name slip through the cracks when the word of his death went out. I didn't know about it until well after the funeral.

Well, the news was devastating to me when I finally did get it, especially considering how old we were when it happened. I hadn't seen or spoken to him in a few months but I knew he and I were both in the middle of the biggest decision making phase of our lives. Everybody goes through it at one point or another, when it's time to decide what path to take after school. He was promoting some pretty big parties at the time and I was a bike messenger. We were both having fun, but we were clearly going to do much bigger things and hadn't yet figured out which way to go yet. We were in our twenties, when I was the most confused about what direction to go in. Our time-lines had certain parallels since childhood, this particularly confusing period being yet another one of them. Up to that point, it had been so comforting just to know the amount of options before us, as if the sky were the limit. It was during this young phase, right after college, that Zack lost his life.

He was an extremely sharp person, having earned scholarships to all the finest schools, Bank Street School in Manhattan (where we were friends), Riverdale High School, and then he was a star at Harvard. So there can be no doubt that he would have gone as far as anybody could in life. He was, without a doubt, a guaranteed success no matter what he did. I saw him sporadically through High School and College but always heard that he was the big man on campus no matter where he was. that was Zack. A man with only one single flaw. Asthma.

When we were kids, he and I competed to see who could kiss the most girls in our grade. We always hung out after school and went to the park to play basketball. I rarely tried to cover him in defense because at that age he could have flicked me away with one finger. But besides out sizing me two to one, he was a great friend and confidant. I remember sharing my first Beer (besides the ones i used to sip on with my Dad) in Riverside Park when we were 12. Back then a 12 year old had no problem just buying one at the deli. I remember listening to LL Cool J's first album on a boombox on our way to a school dance at a community center uptown. We were both reveling in the life ahead of us and we both knew how much we could achieve. We used to speak of how much fun it would be to grow up and do more then just kiss girls. We used to trade stories of our young conquests. As far as i was concerned, he and i were brothers.

So hearing that he died was like hearing that a close family member had fallen. It was as if a part of me died. I know that sounds cliche' but it was really how i felt, standing there, wide eyed, looking at the person who just informed me about him as if THEY had caused it. This multitude of coming-of-age memories that we shared, are now mine and mine alone. He's no longer here to remember them with me. The shining image that we both had about how we were going to share stories together when we were old are gone. There are a lot of people who i was friends with, or knew pretty well that have died in the prime of life. Some in horrible events. I know a guy who got into drug dealing and was shot in the back of the head execution style on the roof of a building, Eko R.I.P. I know another person who drowned in a lake at night after a party we were at in Wisconsin, and another who disappeared under shady circumstances, and yet another who was killed by a hit and run crossing Sunset Boulevard, Lorca R.I.P. I could go on.

But none of these shocks were as large as the loss of Zack. He was murdered by this fucked up system, and the system could only have benefited from by adequately protecting his life. One of our finest individuals died of a childhood affliction, one that shouldn't have been able to strangle him to death in this day and age. I never got to say these things because I wasn't at his funeral to tell his family how he touched my life. So I say this now. R.I.P. Zack Knight. I hope we get to play ball to LL Cool J again someday.

grey day

Gotta love the warm cozy feeling reading the NY Times gives me on a grey morning. But the news is never good. The environment is clearly something we need to address. We speak of terrorism and war exhaustively. But 100k people might have just been washed away by a freakishly large Cyclone in Asia. This is only four years after 181k died there because nobody had their eyes on the water, and a large city was almost completely washed out in America from a Hurricane. A pissed planet is nothing to fuck with, her death toll makes Israel look like a minor disagreement. In Brazil, there's a powerful land owner who was just freed after being convicted of ordering the murder of a nun who was outspoken about preserving the rain forest. In Texas, there's a man who has 25 wives while simultaneously having 34 kids in Arizona from OTHER wives. That's horrible for his wives, no doubt brainwashed and underage. But the carbon footprint of people like this is astounding, reminiscent of Attila the Hun. One generation of rabbit-people like that and we wouldn't even have elbow room. Italy wont take out its trash And good ol' America wants cheap gas. Please, Mother Nature it seems you need to WOMP our asses. From the look of the sky above me, and the news i am reading, it seems like she is just about ready to oblige.

And here i am. On mass transit like a good boy, yet super late for work because i got on a local instead of an express. There's really no way to win (i stare longingly at the freedom of the drivers on the Sprain Parkway not 100 feet from my train window).

The woman across from me, the one who needed me to move my paper even though the train is 90 percent empty, the one who apparently has a bad cough and ate something foul for breakfast. Finally ended her extremely loud phone conversation in a language that i can't even identify, and has now started to clip her nails. I guess i am just really intrigued by what sensory horrors she might have to offer next. I could have gotten up and moved or just yelled at her with my crazy face on. Or possible forced a morning fart in her general direction. But actually, the experience of her almost insanely disgusting intrusion is kind of interesting. Wow. I didn't even know this kind of person existed 20 minutes ago! My mind has been opened. I feel...elevated?

On the go blogging

I am still on the mass transit kick because i am servicing my car. not so bad considering that its sunny and warm and i am getting a brief look at pretty thorough transit system. if i weren't paying for insurance and a garage i might do it everyday. especially since i can blog as i roll out.

so last night I was watching a comedy show from the 80's and it blew my mind how much of it was stereotype humor. It was completely racist in tone. Then i remembered movies like Soul Man, Revenge of the Nerds "what the fuck is a robster craw?", Nine to Five (ludicrously sexist), and basically all the comedies i could think of enjoying at one point.

It was as if the 60's and 70's had finally integrated the popular movies and network tv programming wasn't mono-toned anymore. so the 80's were the last hoorah for pure base race humor because it had finally become aware of itself. America knew it was wrong but it loved how funny it could be. Everybody saw that it was going to change finally and wanted to go out laughing about it. It's good to re-affirm that things are changing and it's informative to look back at what we used to laugh at. but boy was it UGLY.

I think the democratic nomination race is literally a race between the different thresholds of prejudice of various regions as they pick between two riske' choices. Its just that base for a public that gets wooed by a cowboy accent and a pickup truck. If we cared about the real issues rather than some ideal image of a commander-in-chief the country wouldn't be spiraling out of control because of bad leadership that you want to drink a beer with. the whole thing irks me.

So the south is ready for a black president. Makes sense since they are so familiar from hundreds of years of close proximity and and a Clinton liberal woman who has been jilted and represents NY ain't gonna fly in such a paternal culture. The coasts are into Clinton because Bill was their hero and they INSIST on voting against the south at all costs. Plus she's in NY now. They get to fight over the rest. Looks like standing in a pickup and avoiding talking about her rich past got her the blue collar states and obama got the whites west of Chicago. I wish it weren't that simple but it really seems like it is.

I guess i should state that i can't stand Hillary because she voted to give Bush power to wage war in Iraq. Pandering and political maneuvering aside, that one vote alone is fatal. McCain? forget about it. we need MUCH more change. like a 167 degree turn. McCain is like a 10 degree turn from the current course. Plus, the two of them are trying to win voters by supporting that insane gas tax break. that's some stupid, tunnel vision shit to try.

That leaves Obama. I like him. he seems almost impervious to assault. He DID NOT VOTE FOR IRAQ. Done. I just hope he doesn't take a womping from Classy McCain. he's got a LOT of political experience battling for the prez seat. plus he's a vet and all those things that the Red States gulp down like budweiser. i'm a little worried that good old America is still not done getting our asses kicked by the GOP. yeehaw

I am actually walking while i write and i just had to run across the street to make the light and one of my flip flops flew off forcing me to chase it with one barefoot. that's even worse then chasing a hat in the wind. It was kind of an eye opener for me. I am NOT in California anymore. The sticky stuff my bare foot stepped in while i was flailing like a beach bum in uptown traffic is testament to that. I used to mock flip flops back when all i wore were high-tops to play bball, or to go skating. Now i want to live life as if i can always hear the sound of the waves crashing just a few feet away. Well, that's always a possibility, California is always going to be there. knock knock on wood.

There is really something romantic about riding a train. Not the lusty hipness of the NY subway with its people watching and its wild pace and herd-like flow. I mean the wanderlust of a real train. Like the Metro-North i am on. Getting to feel like i am neither here nor there but really everywhere at once. Like i can put everything down and just watch the planet roll by. As if it were a "show and tell" and i didn't bring anything so i can just sit and be an observer. Its really a mini vacation. And when i think about all the incredible and adventurous rides i've been on around the world, it was often the getting there that i remember most fondly. Its little moments, like passing a backyard in rural southern Italy and catching a glimpse of a family eating at a table in the garden. I will never know anything about them yet i remember them better then people i was friends with for years.

Anybody ever notice that the foliage is so dense around new york in the warm season that it compares with a Peruvian rain forest? Its DENSE. And super green. Such a contrast to winter when its just brown tree trunks and patches of ice and snow. looks like you would need a machete to cut a path just to hike through it.

on a lighter note. Graffiti is starting to get thicker and thicker as i approach the Bronx from the north. woods are being interrupted by seedy side streets. which leads me to some funny memories.

Ever try to walk past two cops at 4AM with 8 full cans of spray paint hidden in various pockets and under your pants and jacket? Its like the game of operation. You cant let the cans show, you cant let them touch each other and make any audible TINK noises. But the hardest part is keeping the steel ball inside each can from rolling around. Forget it. It takes ninja skills and Buddha style balance. Plus an iron will to keep your cool, because those cops KNOW you're up to no good. they stare at you without even blinking. but they play the game. the game of cat and mouse. if you don't peep, they don't leap.

There are whole fields of trashed cars in the Bronx. Junk. and each car isn't even stacked, so its like a car has a 1000 square foot apartment, considering that a building with multiple floors could be there. Meanwhile there are hipsters in Brooklyn paying 800 bucks a month to live in ply wood stalls in a 10 story factory building. Wow.

The last time i was in Haarlem it was 1991 and i was getting chased by 20 or more random hoods. I guess they wanted my bike. I just looked down on it from the train and it looked...different. Smaller. Or maybe i am bigger? Like 3 or 4 inches would make that kind of difference?

Now i am walking past Citarella on Broadway looking at all the huge cuts of meat in the window. I just now remembered that when i was growing up they used to do extravagant meat arrangements that bordered on art installation. On july 4th it would be a huge meat American flag with fatty strips as white stripes and star shaped steaks. For Thanksgiving it would be a huge turkey. But totally made out of steaks and various cuts. Not the actual bird. I always wondered if they were saying something about the country or just trying to sell meat? in this neighborhood it could have been both at the same time.

Bronx Graffiti, Skateboarding, and the Gas Tax Vacation and how they have nothing to do with each other

I am blogging with my Crackberry while ridding Metro-North up passed Westchester.

I can't believe it works! it's such a crazy device for a guy who grew up before cell phones and the internet. this little portal tells me where i am at any given point and where i need to go. it tells me whether or not people are getting their facts straight and allows me to prove my wild declarations when i am "schooling" somebody in a drunken argument. People tend to look at me during these wild factoid moments and right off the bat assume that i am either making up my random trivia facts or that i am out and out lying. like the old saying that 38% of all statistics are made up on the spot. or was it 48%?

but, in fact, despite being high for half of my school years, i managed to soak up a large amount of data. maybe it was that i went to good schools that figured out how i absorbed things, via osmosis, or maybe it was that getting stoned made me interested in what i would otherwise ignore out of boredom. either way, i am surprisingly good at kicking YOUR ass at trivial pursuit. but now, i have at my hands the entire sum of mankind's knowledge a' la the internet combined with a gps that can pinpoint me even if i am hopelessly lost. with my blackberry in hand, i could have skipped school in it's entirety and still had as much access to info as the professor writing his third doctorate in inertial trajectory physics. Scotty, beam me up. Bleep.

So, moving on, as the Bronx slips by me, and i spy a large TRACY168 tag on the side of a building. I suddenly realized the limitations of my Crackberry. it doesn't take pics, and i really wanted one of this most famous of tags. just seeing it made my heart warm up. Here's a guy who knows to ask for a slice rather then a cheese pizza. An Uptown original. He was the first widely known new york graffiti writer in the city in the 70's. He might have been, technically, several millennia too late to be the first graffiti writer. Clearly, writing on the wall is as ancient as the ability to draw, but he was the first to bomb all 5 boroughs with his name, and his area, and helped to ignite the whole neo-graff phenomenon that is now a global movement. Or scurge depending on your perspective.



Its SO nice to know that he's still doing his thing. He started years before me and he's still going, years after me. My hats off to Mr Tracy168. I wonder if he still lives on 168th street? With his mom? I will give him the benefit of the doubt. It has been like 30 some odd years. If he can pull off all the work he did, then he is clearly a very capable individual. big ups.

Now passing Fordham, the spot of one the first skateboard parks in the city. coincidentally, in line with the nostalgia of spring, I got a Ray Barbie Powell/Peralta re-issued skateboard on Indy trucks like it was 1988. The kid at the place looked at me and knew instantly why i was buying a retro board, he figured out that it was the latest model when i was a full blown skater. nuff respect, son. while he got all the parts together, i gave him a mini history lesson about the neighborhood and about skating in the 80's. he legitimately seemed interested. it was either that, or the fact that i hadn't paid him yet.


15 minutes later and a new board in hand, i was off. happy with nothing but newly paved upper west side streets ahead of me. Of course, the first thing i did was a girly plant in traffic on broadway not even a block away. A "girly plant" is when the back foot slips off the board and the stops, while the front foot flies away on the board. This results in a forced man-split. Very unhappy circumstance for the male groin. Well i am okay. It wasn't a devastating ripper split. Just a mild protraction. But my dustiness on the board was noted and i scaled down my maneuvers a bit. Must regain my skills i guess. it has been over 15 years since the last time i had a board.

The commute has shifted tone now. i am out of the bronx and in bronxville the woods have gotten very lush and green. Which makes me consider the gas tax vacation. How horrible are we that we think its ok for our gov't to blow all our tax money on wars over currency and oil. We mostly don't seem to care about how addicted we are to the stuff. Then, to add insult to injury, we agree when they want to stop taxing the stuff, like a drug dealer offering free hits to kids, allowing the gas companies to sell more overly pricey juice and not letting the market ween itself through high prices. So now we create an even bigger Debt and we side step the natural force of supply and demand to maintain the shitty fucked up status quo. These high prices are not only our own faults but they are a much needed effect of the cause of oil addiction. Gas needs to get pricey so capitalist forces get pushed into using alternatives. The gas tax vacation is the WORST possible solution to this problem. And anybody with any thought past this work week can see that plainly. Who is driving this fucking bus!? The Democrats ought to be ashamed of themselves for pandering like this. Don't they have children?!

Ack. it's my stop. see ya.

Cheeze Pizza?!

Of course it's fucking cheeze Pizza. is there a slice WITHOUT cheeze?

One of the more minute of the multitude of little "upgrades" that kills me about the evolution of NYC is that suddenly i can't ask for a slice anymore. the guy behind the counter says, "you mean a cheese pizza?". Geeezzus. where am i? i look around and everybody is asking for cheese pizza. i get it. there's nobody around to pass on ye olde ways, because i guess when the rest of the country says it that way and there needs to be a sort of counter force to maintain local culture. nobody in the pizza place knows it's actually a SLICE. has been for years.

this is how it works, my oddly surly yet come lately neighbor. a slice is a plain slice. if you want something with it, you say "a slice with {X=topping or many toppings separated by commas}".

if you're in NYC and you're hearing me on this then you were here before 99% of the people standing and or walking by you at this very moment. A city really needs to be more, umm, self aware and capable of having long term memory.

AAARGH. and you know what? i want at least a third of an inch of cream cheese on that bagel. not some wispy hint. i don't know if the motivation for being so skimpy is to save 20 cents for that boss of yours. the guy who pays you bupkiss so he can pay his bloated rent that the original guy who made his pizza with whole wheat back in the 70's stopped being able to afford decades ago. or if it's that you're worried about my figure. if it's my figure, then first of all thank you. second of all, rest assured, i would have ordered an egg white pita sandwich with a leaf of lettuce like that Fruzen Gladje Fluffer-nutter from Connecticut in front of me.

apparently i am Native Police Patrol, and my old grumpy ass in not happy with the way these whipper-snappers are rolling.

(this brand of xenophobia is not the usual brand of hatred, i would be more then happy if the invasion were ethnic or immigrant. please, that would be awesome. but its not. the newcomers i hate are wearing J. Crew and Banana Republic and they're not bringing culture to this melting pot, they're sucking it out through a starbuck's straw.)

ugh. my kingdom for a crime wave.

Dude, Play Guitar Hero on my blog. what woot?!

Geo Political War

There's clearly a strong message in this Food Fight.