The Park Bench

"When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe. " John Muir

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  • OK What’s Up With This Supermarket Song

    A simpler early version with a lot less show-boating…

    I'll confess I may have been living under a rock because I never heard of Jason Mraz although I did hear this song in the supermarket, oh, only about 5,427 times before I realized wait…this isn't James Blunt, this isn't Bobby McFerrin, this is somebody else (say wouldn't those two or three songs make a good mash-up hehe).

    So I then looked it up and I can see the appeal. First, the Hootie and the Blowfish black and white thing — it's rare that you find black and white people making music together unless they are in an old staged John Cougar Mellencamp video named Paper in Fire from MTV in the 1980s. Then, there's the sort of salt-'n-pepper thing where the blandness of white people's dippy Randy Newman James Taylor sort of goofy romantic lyrics are mixed with black people's Jamaican beat — and that cool, sharp, brisk gesture that the drummer makes when he makes a downbeat on the djeme or silences the cymbal.

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  • What You Can Get For Only $759 In NYC

    Loren_feldman Loren Feldman alone is worth the price of the ticket.

    I wish I had $759. Then I could do two things:

    1) Pay $200 to go to The Nation event about what will become of the news media (hint: what will become of it  is that we will need to all pay $200 to keep it going).

    "Toni Morrison, Tony Kushner, Walter Mosley, Dan Rather, Jane Mayer and Marcy Wheeler are helping to ensure The Nation's future."

    Like The New Yorker and The Economist, I buy the Nation on a case-by-case basis. And like a lot of freeloaders on the Internet, I read the emails and the articles on the website for free. So now I'm supposed to make up for that with a $200 event, but it's just beyond me. There needs to be a way of leaving $5 really easily in a tip jar by first buying a monthly wallet of $50 that I spend on my blog and mainstream media reading. Why doesn't somebody invent that.

    2) Pay $559 for the early-bird ticket within the next 1d 12h 52m
    to go to The Audience which is a high-powered new-media event you find out about by being a Facebook friend of @1938Media, one of the most witty and insightful dudes scorning social media you will find on…social media lol. (Hint: and the way they pay for all the freeness on social media is by $659 events like this one LOL).

    That's news media on the first one, and new media on the second one, see, they dropped the "s," it was taking up too much space on Twitter. Maybe it's become new media only seems to have one piece of news on it so far, which is "Hello, we are new media and boy are we cool".

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  • So-So Street Fair in Jubfor

    Stilts 

    Photo (c) by Hals

    So there we were walking along just below 14th Street in that neighborhood that is called…uh…what *do* they call that area? You know, where there's the Strand and Grace Church and some crappy pizza places and that one shoe repair store remaining for 50 miles and that guy's bagel shop that used to have the Internet but doesn't anymore? You know that area, right? Let's call it "Jubfor," the "Jumble Below Fourteenth Street" until somebody corrects me.

    I didn't catch the name of the organizers, but it was an exact cookie-cutter stamp of every single other street fair we've seen for years. The funnel cakes. The momo caps. The $1.00 Thai food that turns out to be only a $1.00 because it's microscopic. The Pashnina scarves. And the New York State Lottery with a roulette wheel. Wait, is that *legal*? That, and the Kettle Cooked Corn were the most popular booths, but you know, something is missing. I tried to think what it was as I drank the fresh-squeezed lemonade that I watched the guy make out of a huge containor of ice and liquid, and predictably, it gave me stomach cramps about five minutes later.

    Used to be, street fairs had more "character" and weren't all identical. There'd be somebody with funky little antiques or used books, real finds. Somebody else would have homemade granola cookies. Yet another person would have unique art made out of old pieces of broken pottery. Your hardware store might come out and sell flashlights. The whole reason you'd go is because the off-brand remainder socks with the minor flaws, 6 for only $1.00, and who would notice the flaws?

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  • September 15 Elections: Vote for Yassky as Comptroller

    Yassky1  
    David Yassky is running for NYC Comptroller    .

    September 15 will be election, and if you are like me, you're getting
    mighty sick not only of all the robo-calls, but the mounds of junk mail.

    I think nowadays, like a lot of people voting, I pay more attention
    to email and Facebook than junkmail which aggravates me. So I pay
    attention to the Freelancer's Union e-mails, which say:

    "Christine Quinn
    has been a strong ally for independent workers, championing our
    Unincorporated Business Tax proposal, which was just signed into law,
    and she will continue to fight for us to meet the needs of freelancers."

    She's in the Murray Hill area.

    In
    our area, a candidate who also supported reducing the harsh impact of
    the Unincorporated Business Tax on freelancers and home workers was David Yassky.

    Says the Freelancers' Union:

    "We’ve endorsed David Yassky for Comptroller for all that he has done—like tax reform—and all that he will do, like creating unemployment protection for freelancers."

    The
    flyers are geting bigger and more colorful and glossy and more frantic
    about the "hate" in "negative campaigns" of the other guy (itself a
    kind of hate) — and the cost in designing and producing and mailing it
    would likely be enough to put some people without health insurance like
    me on at least some minimal plan…

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  • What Used To Be Here?

    Mapping Project #3 from nicholas fraser on Vimeo.

    Walking over on E. 14th Street across from the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary I came across a guy who was methodically sticking up little post-its on the wall of what looked like an abandoned or closed store-front painted in lime green.

    Somehow, I could just tell that this was one of those “art happening” conceptual things, ya know?

    I went up and peered closer and saw the notices, which had little stock sayings like “What used to be here” or “I went to the owner’s funeral”.

    These were stories that you were supposed to select and mail or email to this artist, who is collecting ephemera of closed sites. His name is Nicholas Fraser and we discussed some closed and seemingly closed in the area and he pointed me to his website. If you find an empty storefront in this area or find his art work/installation on E. 14th and 2nd, you can write [email protected] with your thoughts.

    He handed me one of the cards, that said, “Did you leave your keys in your apartment?” — because that would be the story that would connect to the storefronts in one of two ways, I surmised — either you’d get to know the guy downstairs who ran the candy store so well that you’d leave him your keys in case you ever lost yours or locked them inside OR he would run a hardware or stationery store that would have a locksmith that could come and pry open your door for you.

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  • At Last, A Place to Sit Down: Cafe Green

    Logo
    We're all still mourning the demise of Broken Cup, the cafe that was down on First Avenue and E. 22nd Street, with the great home-brewed coffee, pastries, Scrabble games, used books — and the famous artwork up on the wall made up of lots of broken porcelain and found objects.

    The rent got too high for the owners and they moved out. After that, there was nowhere to sit down and read and just have some good coffee along First Avenue in the neighborhood, except Starbucks, which often is so crowded you can't get a seat (and not everybody likes that burnt-tasting brew there anyway) — and of course Moe's, always welcome, especially as they shout "Welcome to Moes!" every time you come in and make you feel at home. You can order something inexpensive and sit there for awhile, but you'll be tempted into one of the heart-attack options if you linger too long.

    5606610055

    Photo (C) By Hals

    So I was thrilled to discover on one of my meanderings around the neighborhood that a new little cafe has opened, Cafe Green, which is organic and healthy — yet a little more innovative than the plethora of yoghurt-and-fruit smoothie joints that have invaded our area in the last few years.

    It's at 377 First Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Street, and the friendly owner, who was sitting outside on a park bench when we strolled by, said there was "NO FRYING!" of any of his dishes, quite an accomplishment in a world of fast-food drenched in animal by-product Fry-Max, of course…He's starting a backyard seating area soon — you'll have to try it.

    I was on my way somewhere else, so I didn't get a chance to try the fascinating multi-colored macaroons or fresh, tasty looking sandwiches like "Fresh goat cheese, Korean pearl, raisins, pine nuts, green leaf lettuce, and honey sauce" for only $5.50 — but I will definitely be back, and you will go there, too, as they have lots of interesting dishes like egg salad sandwich with sprouts — and it is all gluten free and salt free and said to be made of local products. (Ok, ok, Moe's don't worry, I will be back soon!)

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  • Bristol Basin Plaque

    Bristol Basin 
    Sidewalk Story Photo on Flickr

    A plaque appeared a few years ago on the plaza at Waterside that provides an interesting story: it turns out that the stones upon which these towers were built were brought as ballast in ships from England, from the bombed city of Bristol during World War II in 1940.

    The plaque says the following:

    "Beneath this East River Drive of the City of New York lie stones, bricks and rubble from the bombed City of Bristol in England … Brought here in ballast from overseas, these fragments that once were homes shall testify while men love freedom to the resolution and fortitude of the people of Britain. They saw their homes struck down without warning. It was not their walls but their valor that kept them free… And broad-based under all is planted England’s oaken-hearted mood, as rich in fortitude as e’er went worldward from the island wall."

    Thinking of World War II, I can't help remembering our old neighbor in 40 Building, Sid, who died some years ago, who used to appear every year on Veteran's Day in his military cap and medals. If you asked him, he would tell you quietly that he had survived the Battle of Midway. Any other World War II veterans left at Waterside?

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  • Want Ads

    Ads are free. Send job offers or job searches as well as apartment sales, etc. to [email protected]  Please send real requests for real jobs, employees, services, goods available locally, and avoid the spammy “work at home & make millions” or “buy acai berries & get rid of your fat stomach” sort of stuff as it will be rejected.

    Search for Jobs on Craigslist in New York City.

    Search for jobs on Monster.Com for 10010 area.

    Search for jobs on Village Voice.

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  • World Humanitarian Day: Remembering Our UN Neighbors

    Raoul-wallenberg-nyc Monument to Raoul Wallenberg

    Our neighborhood includes a big building known all over the world, whose employees travel far and wide trying to do good. It's the UN, and if you live on the North side of Waterside you can see it out your window. A lot of people who live at Waterside are in fact UN employees, so it's part of the family.

    And on August 19, 2003, we lost some members of our family in the terrorist attack on the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, which was housing the UN compound at the time.

    At least 23 people were killed in the attack, perpetrated by terrorists who used an old Soviet bomb. Among them were  14 UN staff members and the UN's top envoy to Iraq, Sergio
    Vieira de Mello    , who also served as the UN high commissioner for human
    rights. I wrote about his life at the time in an article, "A Humanitarian in Harm's Way." The bombers were "enemies of the civilized world," U.S.
    President George W. Bush said at the time; regrettably, the terrorists associated the neutral UN with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

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  • Hello, Neighborhood!

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    Waterside Deck Chairs. Photo on Flickr by chrisgcsa

    When I think of Waterside Plaza, where I have lived for 23 years, the first image that usually comes to mind is one of my neighbors sitting on the park benches around the landscaped plaza. There are the "regulars" who come out in the evenings to chat, the new parents with babies, the Russians who never lost their habit of the nightly progulka (stroll), the kids playing some version of baseball, teens in a gaggle with their i-pods.

    What's surprising about this scene, and which we often take for granted, is that people at Waterside, far from scurrying away from their neighbors and hiding from them actually enjoy going outside and meeting them and hanging out with them. It's a very diverse area with all nationalities and races, with quite a few working at the United Nations 10 blocks away and also the low and middle income tower mixed with luxury towers — not a combo you often see in NYC.

    The enclosed feel of course has to do with the architecture of the place.

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