Working through Labor Day.

Happy Labor Day! I'll be working all day, thanks very much. Someone has to keep the engine of commerce running. YOU'RE WELCOME.

Alas, the life of the freelancer. Assignments come in at random and deadlines are deadly. But it's all right; I had no social plans for today. Working on a holiday never bothered me unless I was missing a party I wanted to attend, and as I've gotten older, I have found precious few events that meet that particular criterion. 

Pardon me if I've told this story in this space before: When I was in college I worked for a time as a general dogsbody for a small midtown office that did a lot of mailings, and I mean a lot. They did not observe Columbus Day, but the post office certainly did. However, in Manhattan at least, the post office itself did not sleep; its windows were shuttered and its postmen were at rest, but the big sorting offices were still open. If a company wanted to get a dozen sacks of mail into the system that day, they just had to bring it to the loading dock and it would be cheerfully accepted. All they needed were the sacks, a big dolly, and a dopey college student who needed the money.

Well, if you've ever done this kind of work, you discover quickly that getting the four wheels of a dolly to play nicely together is like getting the band into the studio after the third album flopped and the tour disintegrated into fistfights. You also discover that, as smooth as they look in most places, the sidewalks of Manhattan are in fact pitted and furrowed as a centenarian's face; that the smallest amounts of litter can jam a little wheel; that the curb cuts may be and should be perfect for wheelchairs but are not wide enough for dollies; that mailbags love nothing better than to swing freely from the handle to which you tied them and drag on the ground or at least throw off the dolly's forward impetus; that the sewer grates are sinking everywhere and love nothing better than to reach out and take a bite out of a small and errant wheel. I don't remember how many blocks it was, but it was too many. Still, I got there, and delivered the goods, and the dolly and I made it back safely. 

So it's not a bad thing to work on the holidays. But it's a lot easier to do it at home, doing research on your laptop for pay, than to be shoving an uncooperative dolly through the pitiless streets of the naked city to deliver pamphlets to be mailed, most of which would be thrown away upon reception.

I still maintain that everyone in college should have a job like that. Or at food service or delivery, or something else low-paying and unexpectedly challenging. It teaches humility, but also self-respect, which is far better than ballooned-up pride that contains a deep sense of inadequacy. Plus, you might get a funny story out it. 

Subway etiquette.

[Freditor's Note: Below is an entry I wrote for the old, defunct blog, edited and updated with more current information. The parts about stupid behavior by New Yorkers are, as they say in the trade, evergreen.]

Now that winter is in full swing and the holidays are over, the subways are more crowded than they have been in months. In addition to the working commuters we have the tourists, the city’s idiot students, the unfortunate homeless, and the full-blown pants-pissing bums (Alcalde de por Vida de Blasio's favorite constituency) zipping around our tunnels and bridges. Let’s all make an effort to improve our trip by following certain rules of etiquette. Ten, in fact, that seem to require a review.

1. No more garlic, people. We’ve talked about this before, but now I’m serious. Some of you are clearly scoffing garlic cloves like potato chips. And you may want to look at your cumin consumption as well.

2. Boys, the backpacks have to come off in the car. Ridership is calculated based on the number of people, and geared up like a one-man band you’re taking up the space of three. What’ve you got in there, anyway? A piano? No one is going to steal it, although if you leave it on I may open it up to dispose waste materials. Off with it!

3. While we’re talking to the boys, remember, guys, you do have to give up your seat for ladies, especially those who are old, pregnant, crippled, or carrying babies. Not just the ones that are cute. In fact, here is the hierarchy of who gets to sit:

Old crippled ladies with packages
Old crippled ladies
Old crippled men with packages
Pregnant ladies with packages
Pregnant ladies
Anyone carrying a baby
Anyone who looks sick
Old crippled men
Crippled ladies
Crippled men
Old ladies
Old men
Little kids
Ladies
You

Note, though, the trump card: Bums who have pissed or puked on themselves get the magic pass to go anywhere they want. They sometimes exude such fragrance that they clear out entire cars for themselves. You may find this enviable, but the side effects are grim.

4. One word: pants.

5. They’re not kidding about moving to the center of the car so that others may board. I promise you we will let you out at your stop. Grand Selfish Station, wasn’t it?

6. I’m sure your text conversation is enthralling, but it’s a good way to have your phone stolen. And it makes you less aware of the people around you. Which is one of the reasons you’ll get your phone stolen. Look, it was bad enough in the old days when you just had your iPod Shuffle on and couldn’t hear anything; now you’re using your iPhone to render yourself blind as well as deaf. And people wonder why accidents happen on the subway.

7. Begging on the subway is illegal. Don’t do it. Has it ever occurred to you that you would be able to make more money for the same effort with one of those… what do you call them… jobs?

(Side note: I heard years ago that taking pictures of bums is illegal in New York. I am not sure if it's true, but don't let the cops catch you at it! And if you are a bum, don't take selfies.)

8. The rat and the cockroach you feed with your garbage today will send its grandchildren to your apartment building tomorrow. I know garbage is an issue, with the MTA recently giving up its dumb idea to remove trash cans from its stations, an idea that maybe got you in the habit of tossing your trash on the tracks in revenge.

New York, New York, it's up in your face
People throw crap all over the place
It's like they all quit the human race
New York, New York, it's up in your faaaaaace

Think of the broader issue and suck it up. (I don't mean physically suck it up, but on that topic...)

9. About food: Food? Really? You like eating in gym locker rooms too? Or on the can? Jeez. I once saw a guy carrying a full paper cup of soup, no lid (he was eating lunch), on a standing-room-only train, swaying with his messenger bag in the other hand, inches from me in my good suit. What country could he have come from where that would be considered a good idea?

10. Public displays of affection on the subway should go no further than a fist bump, handshake, or peck on the cheek. No one wants to see you get biz-zay on the D train.

Thank you, and let’s make this a better, cleaner, more polite year. Damn it.

Times Square: Bring a bag.

So we're part of the very cold weather that's gripped the East, of course, and now it's New Year's Eve. I suggest that people who want to join the celebration in Times Square bring a bag, so when their hinders freeze off they can carry them home.

Also, they may want to make an appointment to see a psychologist on Tuesday, because I think they're nuts.

crazy people in large numbers

I've lived my whole life in and around New York City, and I've never been tempted to spend New Year's at Times Square. That includes before terrorist douchebags made such events even more ridiculously miserable.

Right off the bat you have to deal with the weather. It's never balmy in Manhattan on December 31. It sometimes rains. It may even snow. Tonight the low is supposed to be 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe with wind, which will drop it considerably lower. It will be either the second- or third-coldest New Year's in Times Square since they started dropping the ball in 1907. Accuweather says, "Wind chills are expected to fall as low as 5 to 10 degrees below zero tonight into New Years morning," and few Tristate Area denizens have Antarctic explorer gear.

And you have to be in this weather for hours. If you wished to go to Times Square tonight, here's what you would have to do, according to the official Times Square Web site:

"to get the best view, arrive early in the afternoon."

"Knapsacks, large bags and umbrellas are not permitted."

"There are no portable restrooms in Times Square during the celebration."

"Public drinking is illegal in New York City. Police will confiscate alcohol."

"There will be no licensed food and beverage vendors in Times Square."

"if you leave your viewing area to dine in a restaurant, you will not be able to return to your spot in a viewing area."

So you can freeze, stand in place for ten hours, not be able to eat, drink, or pee, and for what? To see the Tongliang Athletics Dragon Dance? The Kinjaz doing storytelling through dance? Or worse, Neil Diamond?

Think of it: Forced to stand in the frigid cold for ten hours without food, water, or bathroom use, to get blasted at the end by Antonique Smithh and Mariah Carey, and endure Andy Grammer playing the worst song ever written -- "Imagine." Under any other circumstances it would be a freaking war crime. The organizers would be hanged.

One New York Post reporter wrote that it "sounds like a urine-soaked hell," and as you can guess I am inclined to agree.

No, frankly, I think I will pass on joining 999,999 to 1,999,999 other humancicles milling about with bad music playing and crowds of grumpy people who can't pee.

We'll probably stay home and avoid Alcoholic Amateur Night entirely, perhaps watch TCM's annual run of all six "Thin Man" movies. Last year we forgot to switch the TV to Ryan Seacrest at midnight, and I hope to make it two in a row this year.

Welcome to New York.

I took the photo below a couple of weeks ago; I'm sure by now the joint is all decked out for Christmas.

This is not from the factory that makes Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, but I must confess every time I see that PABT it's the first thing I think about. Which probably says more about me than anything else.

No, PABT stands for Port Authority Bus Terminal, the huge terminal in Manhattan at East 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, right near Times Square. The view above may be the first street scene you travelers by bus see after you disembark. Prior to that you'd see some street scenes between the Lincoln Tunnel and the garage from your bus window, and those would make you wish they would turn the bus right around and take you home. But what you see when you leave the terminal itself is much more exciting, if not much more clean.

The PABT itself is pretty lousy. Oh, sure, this picture makes the PABT look all glamorous and everything, but it's awful. Built in stages over the 20th century, the building includes bad examples of about every style that came along, as detailed in this article on the site Failed Architecture. The biggest sin may have been to make crap brown the predominant color. Mass Transit and Earth Tones are not really pals.

Many people hate the current Penn Station, which is buried underground at Madison Square Garden. They call it a dump. They say it's an oversize subway station. They say (as did architecture historian Vincent Scully), "One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat."

I say: It beats the Port Authority.

I've complained about the PABT before. I've called it strange. I've noted that "graceful as a bus station" would be a bad simile. I will confess that it is much less scary than it was in the 1970s, as the FA article notes.

I do have one unusual PABT story from a couple of years ago. I had attended a function in town after work, but left early to get a bus home to my Hudson Valley town. When I got to the terminal I found out that the Shortline Bus I had intended to take did not actually stop in my town, despite what the schedule online said. I had to wait for almost an hour for another bus.

There was a young couple hanging around that night who had clearly been overserved, wherever they had been. The pretty young blond lady was particularly hammered, in my opinion, and I have good reason for that judgment. While I was going down an escalator to go buy a snack, the couple got on behind me and began walking down the steps. The woman stumbled and suddenly came crashing down next to me, her long hair pouring out in front of her onto the steps, the escalator's teeth at the bottom racing up quick. Her bewildered look showed a complete lack of comprehension as to what had just happened. The man she was with was still several steps behind.

If I had not been there to grab her hand and haul her up fast, I am certain her hair would have been snarled up in the mechanism. I don't think it would have killed her, but she would have been injured.

It was pretty lucky that I was there, that I thought fast. Fast thinking is not something I'm known for. Sometimes I think the whole reason fate or God got me stuck there that night was to save that woman from her injury. Whoever she was, I hope that the evening's adventure put her on a path to a better place.

Better than the Port Authority, anyway.

Hamma time.

Got the Christmas catalog from Hammacher Schlemmer!

It seems awfully early, but to be fair, when I was a kid the Sears Wishbook showed up around Labor Day. It was highly anticipated. Then again, you'll note that this catalog is entitled "Holiday Supplement 2015," and indeed this is the second or maybe third we've gotten in the last month.

Hammacher Schlemmer is a wonderful store in midtown Manhattan (much better than FAO Schwarz, was, I think), at 147 East 57th Street, and has a longstanding catalog business. They have an excellent two-part business plan:

1) Corner the market on M's.

2) Put the strangest thing they can find on the cover and don't say where it is in the book, forcing you to page through the whole thing to find out what the hell it is.

They have the M thing covered, and have since Mr. Hammacher changed the name of their then-hardware and furniture store from Hammacher & Co. to Hammacher Schlemmer & Co. in 1883. As for the second, you can see on the image above that they have it down solid.

So, what is that thing on the cover? A pennyfarthing Vespa? A bike for hobbits? An updated logo for The Village?

No, it's a Freestyle Slalom Skateboard! Might be fun for the snowboarder in your life during the summer months. Just two hundred bucks.

I've bought less expensive things from Hammacher Schlemmer. Like the Spa Aromatherapy Blanket I sent to a beloved relation, who had an allergic reaction to the aroma.* But there's all kinds of gift choices for the person in your life that don't cause allergic reactions. Like the Superior Headache Relieving Wrap, which not only relieves headache, but also looks awesome. It puts the Sty in Stylin'.

Hammacher is flat-out the best place I know to find some crazy thing for that crazy person on your list who has everything, especially if money is no object. Video recording ball caps, distillers, RC flying drones. golf ball locating glasses, personalized bobbleheads, alarm clocks louder than a chain saw, sideways roller skates, smartphone-controlled skateboards, hand-crank cell phone chargers... It's an amazing selection.**

So, even though it's still September, you may want to start thinking about Christmas gifts, from Hammacher Schlemmer. Or just send me a Hammacher gift card and I'll pick out something nice for myself. Thanks a lot.

---

* Dammacher!

**Prices range from Up There to Astronomical. Welcome to New York!

Am I too late for Awards Season?

I have my documentary ready to submit to the Academy. It's a short-subject documentary. I think we have a real chance here of winning.

There were a lot of fights over this. The cinematographer and I went back and forth. Some of my best stuff, I argued, was going to wind up on the cutting-room floor. He sniped back that I was being a spoiled Hollywood type and losing control of my vision. I explained that genius has its privileges. Then things got fisty, and the cops showed up. But I think what we have in the end really works!

It's called "Lincoln Center Elevator," and I think you'll agree this is hot stuff.

What do you mean, where's the rest? That's it. It's a short subject, remember? And you have to admit that unlike other documentaries I could name, everything in this one is 100% true. 

Anyway, I'm very excited, and while I think it's unlikely that I'll win -- the competition is fierce! Or I assume it is, at least -- I thought I'd jot down some ideas for my acceptance speech. Doesn't hurt to do some work, does it?

Urbia.

I never lived in the part of New York with tall buildings and famous stores, penthouse apartments and Broadway shows,  nannies running babies around and hot and cold running taxicabs. Or the part of New York with funky artists' hangouts and little old shops and great bookstores. The kind of places they shoot TV shows and movies in (or at least some establishing shots while the rest is filmed in Toronto). Most people within the five boroughs don't live anywhere like those places. 

The maintenance fee alone is more than your mortgage, and if you don't tip the doorman a pile your life will be hell.

Most live in small apartment buildings, clustered houses, or dumpy housing projects.

One of the nicer dumpy ones.

I've mostly encountered four types of people who live in New York: Those who can do math and those who can't. No, I mean, I've known people like me who were born in the city and know it's not that big a deal, people who come from other places with big dreams who have a lot of money and connections from family or colleges, people who come from other places with big dreams who have nothing and barely hold on to that, and people who were born in New York with a lot of money and connections who talk a game of charity and live with a hand clutched on every throat they can reach.

I don't think it's generally true that in America the rich are always getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. For one thing, poor has a cellar -- nothing -- while rich is unlimited, so anytime rich people are getting richer there will be growing income disparity (as Kevin Williamson has pointed out). I think if it is true, it's true in Manhattan and places like that, where the rich have made rules for decades that have chased the middle class out. No one cared much when the Ronzoni pasta or Domino Sugar factories closed down, but those were places where good middle-class livings were made, not miserable food sweatshops with impoverished urchins working nine days a week. What was the middle class supposed to do, live on the dole? Like those lunch pail-toting slobs should have some pride?

Out in suburbia the middle class can roam free and breathe easier. I don't miss living within the five boroughs at all.

Odd Couple building.

When I was a kid I was a big fan of the TV show The Odd Couple. I'm still fond of it. The characters from the film were broadened for TV into readily understandable types, and the writing and acting were always fun. The TV show had a brighter edge than the original movie. And there were other reasons I liked the show. 

Although I did not grow up in Manhattan, we in the outer boroughs knew that of all the shows on television, only one did a good job of portraying life in New York at the time---everything from the high cost of parking and alternate side of the street parking, bad Broadway musicals, shoes stolen on subways from sleeping passengers, high-security buildings, vandalism, finding apartments through the obituaries... Things that didn't happen in normal cities. It was great.

Consequently every time I was in Manhattan I thought I saw the building Oscar and Felix supposedly lived in. But I never could be sure.

That's it! No, darn it.

Well, I love the Internet. According to the show's trivia page on IMDB, the address was 1049 Park Avenue... except that the address was said to be 74th and Central Park West on one episode. This is a serious conflict, as the former is on the Upper East Side and the latter on the Upper West Side, and there's a huge difference to people who live in these areas and to no one else on the planet. (The Central Park West park-view apartment would be a pretty swank address for a sportswriter and a kiddie photographer, even in the 70's.) Anyway, 1049 was used for the exterior shots in most episodes, and that's where fans flocked when Jack Klugman passed away.

That's IT!

Seinfeld never seemed like New York to me as much as a set that looked like New York, peopled with about a hundred characters that knew each other. Forget Friends and Mad About You. Various Hallmark and Lifetime movies set in New York might as well be set on Mars; they don't even look like a Neverland version of the city. The Odd Couple always felt like Manhattan. Unfortunately, it felt like a Manhattan you didn't want to live in, but in the 70's, it wasn't.

Funeral for a fine feathered friend.

Every now and then you hear someone in New York wondering where all the dead pigeons are. Or, as it might be rendered, "Wit all da f--- pigeons in dis f--- town you'd tink we'd be up to our f--- necks in 'em." 

Well, here's one I spotted, although you'll note it was not a pigeon. I think it hit the glass on one of the buildings. 

I recall the question of the whereabouts of Columbidae mortis first being addressed seriously in the Straight Dope column. The answer was that pigeons are A) quick work for scavengers when dead; B) routinely removed by sanitation workers when spotted (as this little bird was); and C) likely to hole up somewhere when sick or elderly, so as not to be killed by enemies, and in the secret place they take their last breath. A correspondent later noted that there was a pigeon graveyard in Dallas, where the birdies had gone to end their days---kind of like Florida for the fletched.

Jesus said that "birds of the skies have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head." Birds of the skies also apparently have places they go when they die, which the Son of Man also did not have until Joseph of Arimathea gave him his. I don't know why I bring that all up, exactly. I just know that it's a tough world, but mercy goes a long way in it.

The last Big City cartoon.

(NB: These cartoons were from a series I did back when God was a boy, that wound up not getting published. To which you say, "I know why." This is the last one. Have pity.)

Hipsters.

"Well, no, it's not like I like it, but I 'like' it."

All you need is love...besides money.

Here's a button. Call someone who cares.

There are rather reassuring:

It's an emergency telephone. These have been popping up in the subway, and it's a capital improvement of which I approve.

There have been emergency telephones in the subway for a long time, but they were actual phone receivers that you had to pick up---consequently they were often ripped out of the wall. Probably people used to them try to order pizza. Then they had push-button emergency intercoms, but they were hard to find. They didn't have that calming blue cop light making them stand out.

This has an added benefit in that it has two buttons, one for emergency calls and one for information. So you could push the emergency line if you lost a child, and the information line if you're lost yourself. The emergency line could report a drunk fallen on the tracks or a suspicious package left on a train; the information line could help you get tickets to Phantom. (Not really.)

You might think that these days everyone has a cell phone so no one needs such a thing, but even if that were true, there are advantages. If you are in danger and you push the button, they know what station you are calling from instantly. (So don't get the idea that you can use it to pull jolly pranks on the 911 dispatcher. Remember, there are cameras too.) It's like a harmless, immobile Robocop.

Looks well-built. Probably really hard to rip out of the wall. And you don't have to hold a receiver up to your face, which was always the worst thing about public phones. "Hello, 911? I want to report Ebola. On my face. From this phone."

Manhattan scenes.

East side, west side, all around etc.

Saw a guy in a T-shirt that said, I Miss the Old New York.

Not sure which one he's talking about. The old New York that built a wall at Wall Street as a fortification between the white settlers and the natives? The old New York of the Gilded Age, with its Astors and Coopers and big hotels and elevated trains?

This one?

One suspects that he and others like him mean the old darker, grittier one where everything was falling apart and everyone was broke and Times Square was packed with XXX movie theaters. I was a kid back then, but even I knew that you could pick up venereal disease just following Broadway up through Times Square in those days. The New York from the original Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

If that's what they miss, they're in luck! The city's rookie mayor is cut of the same cloth as previous New York politicians who have let crime run rampant, instituted confiscatory taxes, and used the whip of social engineering to drive businesses and the middle class out of the city. When you have no middle class, you have to suck up to the rich, because they're the only ones left with any serious dough. When you have no middle class, and you have nothing to offer the rich, you have to get money out the poor, and the easiest way to do that is by appealing to the lowest possible motivations---booze, drugs, sex, violence.

A lot of people hate the prettied-up chain-store-driven Times Square. A lot of people have short memories.

On the topic of seasons again...

This is an unpublished cartoon from my youth, when every spring brought George Steinbrenner back to New York like the daffodils, only the daffodils were prettier; but like the daffodils, once George opened up, he never shut. We still used to "rent" "videotapes" in those days. And the South Street Seaport was a going concern, a major tourist destination scene of massive Friday night drinking, instead of the troubled entity it is now. But obviously, many things have not changed.

Inventions.

Recycling, AT&T style.

So now we know what happened to them.

Crap track.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority likes to announce helpful things over the public address system, using the robovoice that they use now to alert riders to incoming trains (which actually is hugely helpful). One of the announcements we've heard a lot of down in the subway is that last year there were 563 track fires and 7,200 subsequent delays caused by littering. As you can see from the picture taken Monday morning, people are taking the message to heart.

Yum!

I've seen grown-up folks chuck soda cups and things onto the tracks. I've also seen rats down there on the tracks. Coinkidink? I think not, sir!

The track fire announcement is an attempt to show idiots the direct damage their own perfidy has to their schedules. Not sure if it works. No asswipe ever hears an announcement over the PA, then slaps his forehead and yells, "I've been such a foooool!!" He's got earbuds in, anyhow.

It's not who you might think, either. I always pictured the litterbug as being a Louie De Palma type, only bigger and fatter, but some of the most nicely dressed people just throw garbage around without a thought. A few weeks ago I'm at a bus stop in outer suburbia and a woman executive type yakking away with a young man chucked a banana peel into a bush. Didn't miss a beat. "Blah blah blah" Fling! "blah blah blah..." Yes, it's natural and it's biodegradable, but it's still garbage and it feeds vermin.

There are firefighters who work for the MTA specifically to combat these trash fires. Can you imagine charging into a burning garbage tunnel? I hope it doesn't involve that.

I couldn't do that job. Christian though I am, I think after the fiftieth time I had to put out a smoking pile of litterbug droppings, I would look at the people on the platform and think, Let 'em fry.

New and white.

The deck I painted looks a lot better now. Here it is after the first coat. Unfortunately, you can't see it in person because it reflects the sun so strongly you need your shades. 

The problem is that white structures are lovely and fresh and delightful when new, but nothing looks dingier and older and dirtier about, oh, two weeks later. 

Lincoln Center and the surrounding buildings are very nice at night, all lit up. During the day, a little dingy, old, and dirty.

Future home of the ballet version of Larry and the Mascots

People are aware of this when they buy cars---that if you buy a white car the dirt will show more than any other color. But not when they build massive cultural institutions (or, paint decks). It's all right if you're an ancient Greek or Roman and you're using marble. Then it's not dirt---it's patina.

Maybe I made a mistake with the deck. Maybe I should have stained it a dark brown. That never shows dirt.

Is it too late to make Lincoln Center brown?