Handbill Handout

Hot day. “Like Vietnam out there” my ex boss used to say and he should know since he served in Vietnam, early on too years before it became fashionable for the white middle class kids to take over dean’s offices and block up traffic and smoke a lot of dope and listen to self-indulgent jam bands in the name of levitating the Pentagon and bringing peace to the world and even more years before many of those white middle class kids became cocaine-addled white collar workers steering the American economy into oblivion while listening to lite-rock radio in their German cars. So it was hot, we have established that fact. I was sitting on the ferry in standard late-week pose: book in one hand, rapidly-warming beer in the other. I felt a touch on my wrist, the gentle touch of someone who knows you or thinks they do. Instantly annoyed but trying to hide it in case the face my eyes are about to meet belongs to someone near and dear, I look up. It isn’t anyone I know. The face is attached t...

Psst. I’m not trying to get your attention. That’s just the sound of that Beck’s tall boy purchased at a Staten Island Ferry snack bar makes when you open it, which happens to be where we start today’s chronicle. I was standing outside at the back of the bottom deck of the Staten Island ferry. One of the newest boats in fact, so I was standing on the edge of the large empty space intended for the eventual return of vehicle transport. Right now that large space is fenced off and the only things resembling vehicles in the middle of the bottom deck are a few bicycles scattered at either end outside the fences. The space does make for a pretty cool wind tunnel with the boat is moving across the harbor and on a humid, disgusting, urine-scented New York City day like yesterday it is a fine place to stand and drink a cold beer. Not surprisingly, few other riders were taking advantage of this. The bottom deck is the unspoken “locals only” area of the ferry especially on the newest boats which ...

Joe Ades has departed this mortal coil . I never knew his name while he was alive, but he was a well-known example of a creature barely known in urban centers anymore: the sidewalk pitchman. I mentioned him in one of my early posts , but at the time I had no idea he had appeared in the local papers and in Vanity Fair. As I said last March, I could never pass the guy without thinking of the Twilight Zone episode where a sidewalk salesman wants to make one last pitch to “open the heavens”. I wonder now how many people would even understand that such people once worked the urban centers of this country and were not just figments of Rod Serling ’s imagination. With Joe gone, New York has lost one of the last of the breed. Yes, sidewalks are still crowded with people selling crap. Cheap hats and gloves and toys that fall off the backs for trucks, faux designer sunglasses and watches and New York City souvenirs. Those tables are generally manned by sullen types who barely speak at a...

It is another liquid-cold night in Times Square. I have just turned the corner of Broadway and am heading north toward the 50 th street IRT station when a guy hawking tonight’s comedy show at Caroline’s yells “Hey buddy, you look like you could use a laugh” as I walk by. You don’t know the half of it, pal. I keep my head down and keep walking. That’s not the funniest offer I’ ve ever had from a guy trying to drum up business for a club, I thought. The funniest was on a warm summer night as the Mrs. and I walked east on Rue St. Catherine in Montreal. As we passed by one of the local performing arts centers, the hawker out front yells to us “Hey, c’ mon in, we do couples too!” Alas we had dinner plans and did not take the fine gentleman up on his offer. Later on I am sipping a Molson on the bottom deck of the ferry zoning out and staring into space. Across the aisle from me is a guy in one of those furry toques with ear flaps and strings. You know the ones. As a kid I calle...

It is Monday night, and I am walking down 47 th street heading for the R train after another great day at the office. Broadway is an undulating mass of pedestrians and I can’t figure out why. It’s Monday, not matinee Wednesday. Then I look in Sbarro ’s and see a line of people stretching out the door and it hits me. The New Year’s tourist army has already arrived. Yes, there they were lining up for their authentic New York pizza experience at a chain joint in Times Square. Well, I suppose one person’s authentic is another person’s fraud, and in any event the pizza at that Sbarro ’s is still probably better than the local Papa John’s or Domino’s that they order from back home. Location lends a bit of credibility too; why I remember rushing to visit the Howard Johnson’s that was right across Times Square from that very Sbarro ’s when word came that it was closing. HoJos . The very symbol of the generification (and yes, I mean " generification ", not "gentrification"...

Sometimes… Scratch that. Most of the time I forget how awe-inspiring New York City can be. I don’t mean culturally or intellectually or artistically or anything like that. I mean physically. From certain perspectives the sheer mass of the place reveals itself to you in a way that literally sucks the air from your lungs. Last night I was sitting at the back of the third deck of the ferry in a corner seat. The corner seat is a particularly good vantage point because the windows wrap around from the side to the back of that deck and offer a 270 degree perspective of the harbor. The night outside was cold and sharp and incredibly clear. It had the kind of clarity and visual focus that you only get on a cloudless winter night that makes everything look hyper-real with precisely defined borders, clear angles and perfect definition. I looked at a view that I have seen hundreds of times from ballpark in St. George that faces the city but the view was different somehow. I’m only at th...

You don’t have to worry. It’s not the proverbial three hour tour. And hey, it’s free so what could possibly go wrong? A lot if you don’t know what you’re doing. Before I begin, a disclaimer: Recently there apparently have been lots of problems with evangelical Christian preachers roaming the boat during the morning rush and early evening rush hours. Because my office hours end a little later than most and because I have to come down from midtown I hit the tail end of the evening rush. Apparently these preachers have gone home by the time I get there. Either that, or my choice of seat locations is preacher-free (another reason to listen to my advice). The first key to a good ferry ride is properly positioning yourself in the terminal. Most nights I don’t care about being first on or first off the ferry because getting a seat on the Great Kills local train is not an issue. So I’ll hang back, even step outside on the patio behind the escalators and enjoy the weather. But if you m...

Scene: 2 people sitting on a bench near the slip 2 doors in the Whitehall street ferry terminal. One is 50 something construction worker, the other a 30 something male dressed in business casual attire and wearing white ear buds 30: Is this the door for the next boat? 50: Yeah, that's what they said. 30: All the renovations they do and they can't even put up a sign where the next boat is going to be. I remember in the old terminal they had "Next Boat" signs. They'd light up, and you knew where to stand; now you got nuthin . 50 Yeah well look they do all these renovations and they can't even keep the pigeons out. I mean look at the feet on those things. They ain't right. They're diseased. But you can't touch 'em or they'll lock you up 30: Yeah 50: Look at that one over there. His feet are all messed up and he's just sittin ' there. But try to take a kick at him and they'll put you away. (Bird suddenly flies to far sid...