Archive for Here is New York
Goodbye, old friend….
Posted by: | Commentsi left you on the sidewalk last night with a blue stickie on your face that said “free tv – it works too!”.
this morning, you were gone.
i left you last night with the guilt a mother feels when leaving her baby behind in a basket at the door of a stranger. no farewell speech, no going away party – just one unceremonious last glance down at you on the sidewalk as i turned back to my apartment to the excitement of my new relationship.
From the best of Craigslist. Link.
Brighton Beach Observations
Posted by: | CommentsA description of the locals at Brighton Beach…
And who are these worthy patrons? It is such a bewildering place. There are people ordering $95 servings of caviar and bottles of champagne, yet they dress like they shopped at PoundStretchers circa 1987. Walking the streets of Brighton Beach you see some outlandish sites. There are shops that sell both CD walkmans and fur coats, the only thing these two items have in common, as far as I can see, is their obsolescence. There are testosterone-addled men driving SUVs, windows wound down, blasting ballad music as if it was hip-hop. There are fifty-year-old woman with shock orange hair, faces sewn tight, sitting on park benches, polluting everyone’s airspace with boom boxes. Young Russian wide boys drag their dolly birds by the hand whilst talking shipments and quantities into their cell-phones. Pretty scary stuff.
I can walk around Chinatown at midnight and not feel the slightest bit out of place, but I feel like I am on an alien world at Brighton Beach at noon.
(From Simon’s Brain)
It sounds a lot like two Russian towns I lived in, Novgorod and Kazan. Maybe that’s why I love Brighton Beach so much. And why Simon’s Brain hates it…
Unsettling In – New York Times
Posted by: | CommentsYes, it could be anywhere. But it is here (NYT).
Laughter. Hawking, spitting. Cigarette smoke wafts into my room. It is night, late spring, and the air in Brooklyn already feels hot and still, foreign and oppressive. I am actually sleeping naked, which ordinarily I never do. In the heat and humidity, I can’t tolerate the feeling of a nightgown against my skin. Music from a bar across the street twaddles out plaintively like a lost child. I live on the ground floor of a prewar brick building in Bay Ridge. A group of teenage boys are leaning against the wall of my building beside my window, smoking and shooting the breeze. I turn on the light beside my bed, thinking that perhaps if they know I’m here, awake, and listening, they will go away. They don’t budge.
The question is. What does she do? The answer is here.
Guitar Lesson
Posted by: | CommentsI loved this story by Laura Longhine in the New York Times.
Cutting Edge
Posted by: | Comments
About one month ago I was sitting on the stoop when this van, it’s bell merrily ringing, pulled up outside the apartment. A mobile knife grinder! The perfect story. Only Mr Del Re wasn’t having any of it. Which is a shame really because he would have made a great City section piece for the New York Times. I let it pass. After all, you can’t force the poor, noble, knife grinder to do an interview. 
But a couple of days ago, there I was, sitting at my computer, when I heard that familiar bell again. This time, I grabbed my camera, pulled down the window, gave him some lead, and took a couple of shots.
Google-searching D Del Re didn’t bring much in the way of results, but a few sneaky searches later and I found out that Mr Del Re was profiled in the New York Times on June 29, 1997! He was born in Mola, Italy, is about 49 years old (41 in 1997), and is one of the last mobile knife grinders in New York.
Mr Del Re used to work as a commodities trader but his firm went bust in the 1987 Wall Street Crash. He did not regret losing his job (apparently he used to fall asleep on the subway on his way home) so when his father-in-law, also a knife grinder, suggested that he buy that 15-foot truck from an “uncle Frank in Montreal” he leapt at the chance.
Mr Del Re runs his business out of the back of the truck, the workings of which, according to the Times, are fairly simple:
Inside are four wheels mounted into the truck’s side and connected to an eight-horsepower engine. First he rubs the blade carefully back and forth across the rough grinding stone. When he judges the blade sharp, he buffs it. Then he uses an oilstone to remove metal scraps. Often he will banter with the customer. “You know how to keep a knife sharp?” he sometimes asks. “Don’t use it.”
The Times article was accompanied by a chart and photos with other “Voices from behind the grinding wheel”. My favorite is Giacomo Iammatteo, 68, of Staten Island.
TIME IN BUSINESS: 49 years.
NATURE OF BUSINESS: Has a truck (semi-retired).“The business is not like it used to be. The new generation doesn’t bother with it. In the old days people needed many things sharpened. The people brought out axes, scissors, knives. Before you had shears and rotary lawn mowers to cut grass. Now you have weed whackers. People just don’t need as much sharpening as they used to.”
