Mulberry Street

When in Rome

2012-01-11T17:04:00.000-08:00

It was not an unusual summer day for Rome, warm, sunny, with a soft breeze. I'd had lunch alone, standing at the counter in Berado's tavola calda in Galleria Calonna, where the food was always good, and at that time, in the 1960s, also very reasonable.

I ordered a glass of Barolo. When the counterman picked up the wrong bottle (Barolo, but the wrong year) I told him, "No, the ’64, please." I remember two Italian businessmen eating at the counter looking over at me with an expression that said this straniero knows his wine.

The silent comment made me feel confident and more than a little smug. It was a good life in Rome. The city had a gentle, slow rhythm to it, then. No hurry. The banking system was not about to collapse. There’s plenty of time today to get something done. Today or maybe tomorrow, I thought. Piano, piano.

After lunch I walked through the Galleria and down the narrow cobblestone street that led to the Trevi Fountain.

Earlier in the day, I had done a little work. I covered a press conference for a film that was about to go into production. Sergio Leone was the director. I don't remember which film or who the star was. I went with my friend, the restaurant owner and writer, Alfredo Viazzi, who had just moved from New York to Rome with his new wife, the actress, Jane White. Now I just wanted to sit by myself in front of the fountain for a while and enjoy the sound of Trevi’s cascading waters blended with happy voices of visitors to the ancient city.

Yesterday, here in New York, here, 12 years into a new millennium, I had an Italian lunch that was very bad indeed, with an almost-undrinkable glass of red wine. It cost me over $25 plus the tip. I bet the chef, who is not Italian, of course, could have made me some tasty Mexican food. Other restaurants on The Street have a Dominican staff, still others an Albanian staff. Most Italians have moved on.

Why do I eat there, you wonder. I’m a romantic, a believer in miracles. This time they’ll get it right. This time they won’t screw it up. Alas, the disappointment is only made sharper by my faulty optimism.

It's That Time Again

2011-12-11T18:46:00.000-08:00

No, I don’t mean Christmas. I’m talking about the fact that again I don’t have a barber.

And I really need a haircut.

I’m particular about barbers. Not about the way they cut hair; I don’t care much about that. It’s just that I like them to speak Italian and, if possible, be named Bruno.

The first Bruno operated his own shop right around the corner from me. He didn’t exactly speak Italian. He spoke a patois of English, Sicilian and Italian. And he wasn’t really interested in having a conversation. This Bruno would just talk non-stop in this strange mix of tongues. I would daydream and utter the occasional appropriate agreement to whatever Bruno was saying: sounds good, bene, si si.

A lot of Italians think of Sicilian as a dialect of Italian. I don’t know. There’s another group that consider it to be the oldest of the Romance languages, born out of ancient street Latin. None of these lofty linguistic theories helped me understand much of what Bruno was saying.

Then at one point Bruno started to get strange. Well, he was always somewhat strange. His barbering business had been thinning out (forgive the pun), and he was looking for additional sources of revenue. One day a group of young Asians arrived at the shop and a huge neon sign appeared in Bruno’s window. It said: Bruno’s Professional Removal of Freckle. No, he did not consult me or any other English speaker on this matter.

I was more than a little disconcerted by the use of “freckle” in the singular and wondered if Bruno had some sort of as-yet-unknown medical license and level of expertise that would allow him to use the term “professional” with regard to operating on the human epidermis.

I decided to look for a new barber.

Bruno number two worked up on Second Avenue in what was mainly a salon for moody older women. He knew how to cut hair, but he was expensive, and he spoke no Italian.

I found the third Bruno in that haircut factory on Astor Place near Broadway. He was from Rome, so everything was in Italian. Home at last, I thought. And the house price was a flat $15. I always gave him a $5 tip.

But again, it was not to be. The first three visits went well. Then he got bossy. With a very serious tone in his voice, he told me I needed to come in more often. “Really?” I asked. I already looked like a Marine recruit. After I left that day I knew there was no way I was going to let this guy run my life.

I’ve had three more barbers since the last Bruno. I’m giving up on the need for an Italian speaker, and frankly I don’t even remember why I wanted the guy with the scissors and the hairdryer to be called Bruno.

Searching for a Better Way

2011-11-19T08:03:00.000-08:00

This past week I bought not one but two how-to books: Steven King’s On Writing is one. The other is Food Rules by Michael Pollan. Obviously I want both to write better and to eat better.

These days I read most books on my Kindle e-reader. There are a lot of people who hate e-readers and profess a love for printed books, love them physically, the way they feel, the way they smell. Okay. There are people who love jewelry, too. And there are those who love furniture and crystal and shoes and silk. It’s all good.

E-readers have many pluses and a few minuses, but they work for me. Normally, about halfway down the first page I get into the story and the medium disappears.

The last time I read a how-to book on writing, decades ago, it was How to Write a Novel, John Braine’s brief and thoughtful guide to writing a first novel. This is one way to do it, he said. “There are many other ways.” Mr. Braine’s method didn’t work for me. There was a great deal about preparation, outlines, synopsis, choosing characters’ names, and a detailed method of putting together a coherent plot. But my brain doesn’t work that way. It is a valid way forward that makes good sense if you’re a left-brained, academic person. I’m not. I’m right-brained and intuitive. I do a bit of hemming and some hawing, and then, with only the germ of an idea, I just start writing. When it works, the only way I can describe the process is that one part of my brain is telling another part of my brain a story.

But I’m enjoying both Mr. King’s and Mr. Pollan’s books. They both write well, and it’s reassuring to read things you already know and agree with.

I also like to read recipe books on different cuisines and the Paris Review interviews on writers. These interviews have been grouped together in a series of volumes called Writers on Writing. The info that I’m absolutely passionately curious to know about each and every writer is (1) What tool or tools do they use: computer, typewriter or pen or pencil, (2) How long are their work sessions, and (3) What time of day do they write? Most writers write in the morning, which makes sense; they get into their fiction world before the real world screws up their day.

Steven King is fond of quoting The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. My only problem with that is I’ve been reading this thin volume at least once a year for as long as I can remember. It's good to know that Mr. King values it too.

Michael Pollan says things like, “Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” Very folksy. Unfortunately, both my grandmothers were Irish, and they both died when I was still a child. I do not remember either of them preparing or consuming food.

Sometimes it's not so easy to close a posting. I had ended this one with a lame potato joke. My good friend, my reader, an Irish woman from Dublin, told me she was not that happy with my insensitive cliche. So I reread the facts of an Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger, where a million of her people, my people, starved to death and two million more were scattered to the winds. Not a joke. Not funny. I'm sorry.

Once Again, the Tallest

2011-10-19T19:13:00.000-07:00

The three young women stood on the edge of the sidewalk in front of Angelo’s, leaning out, aiming their new, colorful snapshot cameras at the Empire State Building to the north. The skyscraper was framed by neon and colorful streamers along Mulberry Street. I had taken that same picture myself many times, so I knew just where to stand for the best angle. Part of me wanted to yell out, “take three steps out into the street, girls!” But I said nothing. Let them figure it out. They had the latest, smartest know-it-all digital gear, right? They didn’t need me. I’m from the film world. Old school.

Old school, yes, but I do own a couple of Apple computers, a half-dozen digital cameras, an e-reader, and an iPhone. Like us all, I’m trapped in this Brave New World. And it’s never enough. They are always moving the goal posts. At first I thought they were only after my money. Now I know it’s my soul they want.

As I age, I realize I’m becoming a Luddite. Perhaps I’ve always been something of a Luddite. I remember when I lived on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. They had this terrible, antiquated phone system. To call New York or Rome was a challenge: one never knew how long it would take to connect . . . or if there would be a connection at all. I’d stand there in the phone booth at the edge of the marina, trading fragments of Spanish with the operator’s equally poor English.

Then one day, unannounced, there was a shiny new booth on the dock with a completely new phone system. And it all worked perfectly. Some super-tech company had installed this new telephone system almost overnight throughout Spain.

“Edo, you sound as if you’re in the next room!” said a friend in New York. And the new operator’s English was damn near perfect. She retained just enough of an accent to cause me to wonder what she looked like. She had this charming little laugh that was just at the edge of flirting. Yet after a week or so, I started using the phone less and less.

“How is your friend Jimmy in Rome?” someone asked me at lunch one day, and I realized I had not called him in a while. And than a shocking thought occurred to me: I missed the old phone system. How could that be? It was terrible. But it was also exciting. I missed the static, I missed being forced to try to say a few words in Spanish, I missed the unknown, the wondering if my call would go through or not. I missed the exotic adventure that came with calling long distance in Europe.

9/11

2011-09-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

Paris Pub Crawl

2011-06-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

“Can I get a glass of Sancerre, please?” I asked the bartender at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. That’s the full, correct name of the place, but, like Harry’s Bar in Venice, it’s usually referred to simply as Harry’s Bar. Harry’s Bar in Venice belongs to the Cipriani international conglomerate and looks out on the Grand Canal. But it’s easy to tell them apart. One is in Venice and the other one is in Paris.

Immediately I thought I should have said, “May I have a glass of Sancerre,” or should I have said it in French, perhaps? Could I have said it in French? Maybe not, but I can pronounce “Sancerre” every bit as good as Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The bartender turned out to be a very nice, soft-spoken young man with perfect English. And since I seemed to be the only customer in the bar that afternoon, he was able to give me his complete attention. And what he told me first was, “We are an American bar, sir. We do not serve wine.” There was no attempt at one-upmanship, no Gallic putdown of any kind—just information.

“No wine at all?”

“Only spirits, sir.”

I was trying to think of a bar in America that served no wine, but I could not. Maybe the one out in Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back by Jack McCall.

“A double Jim Beam with one lump of ice, please,” I told him. The first sip tasted very . . . well . . . not at all French. I should have had a Bloody Mary. This was, after all, where that concoction was invented.

The walls of the backroom of Harry’s were a poisonous yellow-brown, possibly from decades of heavy cigarette smoking or a clever mix of paints by some romantically minded decorator. Framed and faded photographs covered the walls. Somewhere on the premises was supposed to be the piano George Gershwin used to compose An American in Paris.

After Harry’s Bar, I had just one more spot, just one more drink, in order to complete the circle of Ernest Hemingway’s main watering holes. I’d already visited a lot of alternate places in Paris—Le Select, Le Dome, Deux Magots. They wouldn’t let me into the Bar Hemingway at the Ritz. I not sure why. Maybe I had too many cameras hanging on me.

I’ve drunk Valpolicella at the Gritti Palace in Venice, Sherry and Rioja at Botin in Madrid, and something at that silly, tacky tourist trap in Key West. The only obligatory spot left for me to visit is La Floridita in Havana, Cuba for a daiquiri. I suppose I’ll have to have a mojito at the Bodeguita del Medio, too.

Does the present generation of young writers and readers still retrace the steps of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Joyce in Paris? Or is that all forgotten now, passé? Maybe. For me the echo of that time is still there, still lurking in the streets and cafes of Montparnasse. Paris in the ’20s was a rare coming together of ideas, energy, creativity, literature and culture all in the perfect setting. Magic.

Other People's Dogs

2011-04-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that young men who walk dogs almost always look unhappy about it? I’m not talking about professional dog walkers. I’m talking about a young man who is probably the dog’s owner. Or maybe he is the husband or boyfriend of the dog’s owner. Once in a while you’ll see a young man who seems to enjoy these dog walks as much as the dog does. But not often.

Around the corner from me, across from the Old Police Headquarters Building, there’s an animal shelter, a place that saves dogs. Volunteers, mostly compassionate-looking young women, walk theses dogs. The dogs wear orange vests with “Please Adopt Me” printed on both sides. Most of these dogs are tan pit bull puppies. They are very friendly, and if I stop to say hello, they will give me a doggie kiss.

A doggie kiss is a very quick lick on the hand. When a dog does this, it transfers a person’s taste and smell to its memory bank, so that if we were to meet again, the dog will remember that I’m local, a pal and a good guy and I’m not Michael Vick.

There used to be more large dogs in the city—Labs, Golden Retrievers, Rhodesian Ridgebacks were popular for a time, and we’d see a lot of German Shepherds. But these big dogs need serious exercise and enough space to run. So little dogs have taken over. It makes sense.

I met an Affenpinscher today. They always look as if they’re having a very bad hair day. And I said hello to the big English bulldog that belongs to the Asian man who sits out front of the bar where Al Pacino met Johnny Depp in the opening scene of Donnie Brasco.

I guess you’re thinking I should get a dog of my own. The thing is, I live on the fourth floor of an elevatorless building, and I’m not getting any younger, and . . . well, there might have been a time for a dog, but I feel that time has passed.

The mixed terrier above is Riley. He doesn't like it when I put my Nikon in his face.

Sol y Sombra

2011-04-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

I was looking through some of my older slides the other day and came across this blurred shot of a bullfight. It was deliberately blurred. I guess I was channeling Ernst Haas and a show of his I had once seen at MoMA in the 1960s.

On the cardboard sleeve that held the chrome was my copyright stamp for 1973, Malaga, Spain. In the lower right-hand corner, faded now, I had penciled in three initials: LMD. My god, I thought--that blurry figure is Luis Miguel Dominguin . . . Dominguin, friend of Hemingway and Picasso, lover of Ava Gardener, and one of the greatest matadors of the 20^th century.

I remember seeing him fight, of course. As if it were yesterday. I had asked the clerk at our hotel in Marbella that morning, “That’s an old poster, right?” The great matador had retired from the ring more than a decade before. “No, Signor. That is for this day. Dominguin has returned to us.”

I started telling this tale once before but then abandoned it. Many people are offended and repulsed by the killing of bulls. I find that I have an ambiguous attitude. The skill and the color and the danger are exciting. But I love the bulls. I found that most aficionados say they love the bulls.

When a brave bull enters the arena, he holds his head high and attacks the first thing he sees moving. I used to think that the bull was going to die in the ring---that it was a foregone conclusion. But it’s not. Once in a great while indultado is called into play: the crowd waves white handkerchiefs to ask the ring’s president to pardon the bull because of his exceptional style and bravery. (Okay, most bulls die in the ring.)

That summer afternoon on the Costa del Sol I watched as Luis Miguel Dominguin knelt in front of his second bull of the afternoon and reached out and placed his hand on the beast’s head. Then he turned his face away, looked off to his right and held the pose for what seemed a lifetime.

In his book, The Dangerous Summer, Hemingway seemed to imply that this was some kind of trick. Perhaps. But it’s not any trick I’d want to try. How about you? Any of you want to try it? How about you, Papa?

I’m so sorry that I was feeling arty that afternoon. I wish I had made the picture as sharp and clear as my memory of the day.

Passing By

2011-02-27T10:31:00.000-08:00

A restaurant tout stopped me on the Street today. Normally they don’t bother with me; I’m usually alone, and the regulars know where I normally eat lunch. But he said hello and gave me a price on a couple of the lunch specials.

“Ho mangiato, grazie,” I told him. His accent said he was in fact Italian, so I answered in Italian, telling him I had just eaten. You might assume, since I live here in Little Italy, that I speak Italian all the time. Not true. First of all, I would categorize my level of fluency in the language as . . . useful travel Italian. That is, if you should want to discus politics, medicine, religion, mathematics, philosophy, soccer, the Renaissance, computer hardware or software, the difference between democracy, communism and socialism, well, frankly I would not provide you with much conversational satisfaction. Add to that the fact that most of the Italian residents of Little Italy are third or even fourth generation now, and the words they spoke with their grandmothers are from one of the countless village dialects that Dante Alighieri never encountered.

So Salvatore, the restaurant tout, and I were making idle chat, slipping into a mix of Italian and English, when he mentioned he was bored. Then he shrugged his shoulders (a Neapolitan?) and added, “Ma è un lavoro.” Lavoro, yes. Work. A way to earn some money.

It was at this point I became somewhat overly ambitious, linguistically. I tried to explain that when I was an actor, many many years ago, that we theater people referred to casual labor as “job-jobs.” I knew right away that I had drifted into Lost in Translation land. And I thought the point I was trying to make was perhaps insulting. No, it was insulting. Luckily, for Sal and me, a party of four Japanese tourists walked by, and my new Italian friend went to work on them.

“How are you today?” he said in pretty good Japanese. “Hungry?”

Weather or Not?

2010-12-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

Here in Manhattan, we had 20” of snow dropped on us yesterday. It fell all last night, and into the morning, but seems to have stopped now. At dusk yesterday, I grabbed a Nikon, put on my coat—the Big Coat—and prepared to go out and take some pictures. On my way down the stairs, I was reminded that I’ve been suffering from vertigo over the past week. It was just slight at that moment, but I remember NPR’s weather report having said the winds would be gusting to 50mph. I stepped outside to see what it felt like. Nice. But also it was a reality check.

I remember racing up to Times Square during a storm last winter or the one before, trying to capture some images of our city center in the first hour of a storm, when the snow is fresh and white. I took the No. 6 Train up to Grand Central Station, and as I stepped out onto 42^nd Street, the snow stopped. I walked west against the wind, and by the time I arrived in Time Square the snow had magically vanished. How could they have done that so quickly? “Damn you, Mike Bloomberg!”

Obviously my priorities differ from the Mayor’s.

Anyway, yesterday on my doorstep, I decided, after a moment or two of very fresh air, that I would in fact stay home, thus choosing personal safety over art.

It wasn’t always that way. I’ve done many dumb, risky things in order to get a picture I felt was important. What can I say? My bones are more brittle now, my balance less than perfect. As my time grows shorter, I take more care. I’m not concerned about dying exactly. I'm okay. But I am anxious about how the end might happen. I have this image of myself in a bright, cheerful hospital room, looking more saintly than ill, slipping into a long sleep after having uttered a few wise, memorial words to my friends gathered around me. I mean I would rather that then being hit by a 103 Bus on a snowy street, flying 32-feet through the air and landing on the hood of an old Ford Escort. As for long illnesses and pain, I’d rather not, thank you.

To all who are stranded and homeless at some strange airport—good luck. You’ll be home soon.

Things to Come?

2010-12-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

I know not what fiscal fate awaits us all, where the next sharp turn will lead. Paul Krugman doesn’t seem to be smiling that much these days, although Derek Jeter ended his week well. Personally I try not to concern myself too much with events that take place further than a leisurely twenty-minute stroll from my front door.

A feeling of wellbeing settled over me a few days ago when I finally found my winter coat. (It’s been missing for more than a year.) I’m not talking about the Big Coat. That’s for a rare New York blizzard. I hope the Big Coat will make very few appearances in the next few months. The Big Coat is really for late January in Montreal or Northern Minnesota. My regular winter coat is warm, sure, but not too warm--perfect for days and nights when the temperature ranges from 28 to 42 degrees fahrenheit. And it’s rainproof! Well, rainproofish. This coat seems to have a name: Rainforest. It’s made in China. My guess is the Chinese who named this coat were not thinking about the Amazon or the upper regions of

the Mekong.

So I put on my winter coat yesterday and walked around to see how things were going in my own neighborhood.

Mulberry Street was teaming with people. It’s not that close to Christmas, is it? I couldn’t get into Il Fornaio. I couldn’t even see in, so many customers had clouded up the windows. All the restaurants were full, full of Europeans waving their euros around. I walked up past the Old Police HQ, said hello to a friendly pit-bull pup in an orange “Adopt Me” vest, and then on to the little Spanish gourmet deli near the building where Heath Ledger died. The deli seems to be about to double its floor space. Hmm. Maybe they’ll open a tapas bar?

Over on Mott and on Elizabeth Streets a new store-front boutique seems to open every other day, and so far I have not noticed any of them closing. But a corner restaurant on Mulberry closed early in the fall. Signs in the windows said it would open again soon, but I see no evidence of that. The menu was totally wrong for the area. Too bad. They had really nice pastries.

Downtown has become very neighborhood conscious. I guess it always was. Where I live now used to be part of the notorious Five Points, a sprawling slum made up mostly of Irish immigrants fleeing the Potato Famine in the 1840s. But it was always a melting pot, as it is today. It was in the Five Points that the blend of Irish dancing and African music created what became known as tap dancing.

But now there are neighborhoods within the neighborhoods--Little Italy has morphed into Nolita (North of Little Italy) and Noho (North of Houston). Yesterday I actually saw a lighted banner stretched across Broadway that says: Welcome to Noho! What?

My Short and Uneventful Career in Italian Films

2010-11-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

I was just reading the new edition of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. The editor of this edition—Patrick Hemingway, I assume—cut a bit out and added some. He stuck in a bunch of short scenes that were not in the original publication. The scene I was reading was a playful dialog between Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, about a plan for them to wear their hair at the same length—long hair for Ernest (long by the standards of that time) and short hair for Hadley. It reminded me of a dramatic haircut I managed to avoid in Rome in 1970.

In 1970, everyone who was hip . . . or a hippy . . . or artistic in some way . . . had long hair; men wore their hair down to their shoulders. At that time you were forced to pick a side. Long hair said you were a nonconformist of some kind. Short hair identified you as a member of the establishment. I had long hair.

In 1970, my marriage was falling apart, and my expatriate life in Rome was in shambles. As the summer ended, my wife Eloise and I had come to our parting day. It was terribly painful for all. I would go back to New York, and Eloise would stay in Rome.

I had almost no money, and a friend told me that they were hiring extras for a film being made about Sacco-Vanzetti at Cinecittà. I thought: I’ll work on the film and use the money to repatriate myself.

I rode a trolley car out to the studio. It took forever. I remembered when I worked as a still photographer on a Lina Wertmuller film out there when I first arrived in Rome, and they would send a car and driver for me.

Step by step, I went through all the things that an extra must go through. The film was a period piece, set in the 1920's, so I was fitted for an early twentieth-century suit in the wardrobe department.

The last stop was the barber.

I sat on a folding chair, waiting my turn, while the barber used his clippers to remove most of the hair from two young Roman men. Now you might think the length of my hair would be a small matter, considering that my life was falling apart, but in 1970 hair did matter. I could not go back to New York City and try to get work as a photographer with my hair cut short. That’s just the way it was back then. The Romans stood up, looking at themselves in the mirror, looking as if they had been radically circumcised.

I asked the barber, “How much do you have to remove?”

“Tutti,” he answered. All of it. I walked towards the exit, giving him the Roman slang for “that’s not going to happen.”

“Buona notte,” I said. Good night.

Am I Really Me?

2010-09-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

A new law was passed in Albany sometime in the last year or so. Simply put, there is now only one legal form of identification in New York State: a NYS Driver’s License. No, wait--there are two. The second is a Non-Driver’s ID. You get each of these extremely official forms of ID at the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. Yes, a trip to one of these offices is every bit as much fun as you remember from your first trip, except when I went, I didn’t need to do a test drive.

Maybe you’re thinking of using your passport as your ID in New York State? A valid U.S. Passport? What could be better, eh? I’ve carried mine with me to 57 different countries. It was my official ID when I lived in Italy and when I first lived in the UK. Later, in Oxfordshire, I had an Irish passport—both were legal passports and both were legal identification.

But not in New York State, my friends.

This is how I was made aware of the new ID law. My bank, JP Morgan Chase, called me one morning and told me there had been an attempt by someone to use my ATM bank card. I told them the card was in my wallet, but they told me they needed to cancel the card and issue me a new one. It might take a couple of weeks for the new card to get to me. I rang off and decided that I better cash a check.

Now understand that I’ve had an account with the Chase bank for decades, since they called themselves Chemical Bank. I greeted the teller, and explained about the phone call from security and that my bankcard has been cancelled, and I gave her the card with my picture on it, the check and my passport. Then she asked to see my driver’s license. I told her that I don’t drive anymore, so I don’t have a license.

She suddenly said, “This bank card doesn’t work!”

“Yes, I just explained that to you.”

“Well, where is your NYS Non-Driver’s ID?”

“My what? You’re holding my passport in your hand.”

“That’s not legal ID. Only a NYS Driver’s license or a NYS Non-Driver’s ID are legal ID in New York State.”

That’s when I pulled out my old actor’s voice, the one I used in my youth to bounce “friends, Romans, countrymen” off the back walls of the theater. A manager quickly materialized.

Over the past month I’ve been to the NYS DMV twice. The first time I was on line 1.5 hours, the second about the same. On my first visit, when I finally got to the head of the line (It’s my turn!!!), I was told that I needed a birth certificate. You can do that online now, like most things. Most things, yes, but not getting a NYS Non-Driver’s ID.

On my second trip, I was sure I had everything I needed, but the clerk pointed out that the name on all my lesser identification documents—credit card, Social Security card, Health Insurance card, etc.—had to exactly match the name on my birth certificate. My name on everything official is Edward Patrick Rooney. The name on my birth certificate is Edward Rooney.

“But . . . but . . . I was born Catholic! We don’t get our middle name until we’re about 10 or 12 years old at Confirmation!”

“We don’t get into religious matters here,” she told me.

In the end, I was sent to her supervisor, and that woman okayed my form.

I am now officially a legal New York State Non-Driver. I’m so proud.

The Feast

2010-09-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

Today, the 84^th Annual Feast of San Gennaro begins here on Mulberry Street, just outside my door. I had planned to tell you all about The Feast, but then I realized that, since I would be getting most of my information from their own Website, why not save some time and just give you the San Gennaro link and a few others.

I may have to adjust my goals and post monthly instead of weekly.

http://www.sangennaro.org/index.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/dining/15torrisi.html?_r=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_San_Gennaro

If I Were in Charge of the English Language

2010-09-09T07:46:00.000-07:00

I would have to make a few changes of course. Some of these changes would be immediate, others could be phased in over time. I’m referring to American English here. It might be better if someone else does British English and Australian English.

For free will be removed from all advertisements. What does that mean anyway? Just say “free.”

The phrase we’ve got to talk will be disallowed in all television dramas. Have you ever once heard anyone say that in real life? Of course not! Yet in every single weekly drama two characters are having a conversation and one says to the other: “We’ve got to talk.” They are talking!

No problem will no longer be considered a suitable substitute for “you’re welcome.”

Double negatives are not used in English, and I will see to it that that remains the case . . . except for certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn, like my old neighborhood, where saying “He don’t know nothin’,” and similar phrases that are based on Romance language construction are still in use.

If Cormac McCarthy wishes to continue enjoying the wealth and fame writing fiction has brought him, he will have to attend punctuation classes. I have some similar issues with Hemingway and ee cummings, but since they’ve both passed on, I’m willing to look the other way.

Who and whom: whom has got to go, and the quicker the better. Face it—half the time, as you’re about to say who or whom, you think to yourself should that be who or whom? So no more whom. And as far as that person who’s been spreading the rumor that I don’t know which term to use myself, they lie, whomever they are!

A Nolita Restaurant

Before I’m accused of never writing anything helpful or practical, let me tell you about a relatively new Italian place to eat downtown.

Emporio is a new-generation Italian restaurant featuring food from the middle of the peninsula. The cooks and the people who run things are young Italians who have come over here recently for the purpose of opening this wonderful place and a couple of others.

The food at Emporio is not flashy or overly inventive—it’s subtle, authentic and delicious. I say that and then I remember the amazing cold soup they’ve been serving this summer. They call it gazpacho, and there is a hint of Spain about it, but it’s made with watermelon and there’s a couple of mysterious wrist actions that let you know real Italians are nearby.

When the average American thinks Italian, they think red-sauce, southern Italian. This is what you’ll find outside my door on Mulberry Street. That’s not Emporio . . . except that Emporio does do great pizza.

231 Mott Street, below Prince

Brief Encounters

2010-09-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

I guess the most important, most famous figure I ever met was Harry S. Truman. We didn’t meet exactly, and no words passed between us. We touched. That is Harry stepped on my foot.

President Truman and I were on board the battleship USS Missouri in the autumn of 1945 reviewing the fleet in the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey. My father had become a US Congressman just before the war ended, and that’s how Harry and I became shipmates for the day.

I know the President did not step on my foot on purpose. But he didn’t stop to ask if I was okay either.

In the summer of 1953, I was staying with my sister (half-sister) Virginia in New York. My father and his new wife had moved the family to Washington DC, and at some point I had decided to run away from home. (Another story for another time.) Virginia was a jazz groupie. I remember one night that summer, when she and some of her friends had taken a large table at Birdland for a night out, and I was introduced to Erroll Garner, Billy Holiday, Count Basie and Charlie Parker.

Both Bird and Lady Day looked sick and lost . . . and they were of course.

Early in the 1960’s I met another great musician—Tony Bennett. Tony had a reputation for being one of the nicest, warmest people in show business. We met on the set of an Arthur Godfrey Thanksgiving Day special. I was doing a PR shoot on one of the other guest stars, a woman whom I had followed around all that day, yet she had never asked me a single direct question, only spoke to me through Sandy, the PR guy. After speaking with Tony for about two minutes, I felt as if we were old friends.

The film and stage actor George C. Scott and I once shared a dressing room at the Circle in the Square theatre. George was starring as the father in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms, and I had a small part in Jean Genet’s The Balcony. The theatre alternated performances of these two plays. My wife, Eloise, was in both of them.

I taught George the basics of photography, even loaned him one of my cameras, developed his film and gave him critiques. Later on, for a while, he became a pretty good photographer. In the end he went back to his original hobby: drinking.

George and I were not close friends, but we always got on well. And he hired me to do pictures for him. I treated him with respect but never fawned over his celebrity. I think he liked it that way. And he never showed me any of his famous temper, not directly, although I saw him point it at others. As the director Mike Nichols once said: “Everyone’s afraid of George.”

George C. Scott designing his own makeup for the part of Abraham in the film The Bible.

Point and Shoot

2010-08-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

I think the pocket-size digital camera, the ones that most tourists carry, is the most amazing invention of the new millennium.

Over the past few years, at least a half-dozen people have consulted me about which P&S pocket marvel they should buy. “How much do you want to spend?” is always the first and most important question I ask. Canon, Nikon or Sony are the brands I suggest. (A famous name builds confidence, don't you think?) I do a quick research update on what’s new and better, and I try to steer them towards a faster lens, like an f/2.8, rather than a lens with a wider zoom range.

I warn them to fully charge the battery before they install it in the camera. I tell them to buy a SunDisk 4GB memory card and to look in the manual to see how it’s installed.

“Okay, let’s turn the camera on. Wow, look at that! Now press the menu button. We want to select the largest image size (L). That’s 12MP on your camera. Now we want to choose the format and file quality: JPEG Fine. Okay. Time to put this sucker on Full Auto. That’s right—the thinking part of your job is over! Oh, one more thing: turn off the flash.”

Sometimes a camera will have a mode called Intelligent Auto. We don’t want that. What we want is Mindless Auto--Everything Auto. I've had decades of experience with cameras, yet I often feel that I'm just one shaky half-step in front of my students.

With this pitifully limited information, I waved farewell to my friends and their new little cameras and then consider changing my phone number and email address.

But lately my conscience has been bothering me. I was schooled by nuns, you know? If they knew nothing else, they knew how to attach guilt to your soul. So I want to add a few more important tips for those of you who are still out there using Full Auto on your Point & Shoots.

Learn How to Focus with Autofocus: On all the P&S cameras I’ve handled, you can and should capture images in two stages. First you point the lens at the important part of your subject and push the shutter release half way down and hold it there. When the focus aid is where you want it, squeeze the shutter the rest of the way down.

Learn Your Minimum Focusing Distance: Look in the manual on the Specifications page and find the minimum focus point. Then get a tape measure and measure from where you normally hold the camera while shooting. It is likely to be about 1.5 feet. You want to get a feel for that distance so you don’t hold the camera too close to the subject and get out of focus images. Don’t worry about being exact. We’re aiming at improvement here, not perfection.

Use the Frame and the Zoom: I once interviewed the great art and advertising photographer, Eric Meola, and he told me that the last thing he does before releasing the shutter is to look through the viewfinder one last time and ask himself, “Is that the picture I want.” I have one friend who's had a P&S a full year now and just realized it has a zoom lens.

Try to See and Understand Light: If you find yourself at a family gathering, a drunken party, any kind of event where record images are needed, turn your flash back on. The pictures will look like crap, but you will have pictures. And please don’t be so silly as to use your tiny flash when taking large cityscapes at night. That tiny light is not going to illuminate New York or Paris. It’s only effective to about 15 feet.

One Last Point: If you want to make an attractive portrait of a friend, don’t shoot in bright sunlight. That is ugly light for people (like direct flash). Move your friend into bright, open shade. Have I left anything out? Of course I have. But I'm already two-hundred words over where I wanted to be. Happy shooting!

The woman and her daughter are in Guatemala City, on the shady side of the street.

Unreliable Memories

2010-08-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

Too often, my memories differ from facts and history. I don’t mean that I’m making things up here, or that I don’t intend to tell the truth. I do. It’s just that a person’s memories are made up of many things, many things besides facts and history.

A memory is how you recall a past event. But included in that memory might be parts of a dream or two, things that you’ve been told over the years, other things that contradict what you’ve been told, other people’s versions of the event, even other versions of things you might hold yourself. An example:

I see myself as a small child, preschool, playing in my front yard, which was a very small space with dirt and a little grass, and I’m playing with these three-inch-high plastic figures, cowboys and Indians, making up adventures for myself, when I hear a sickening thud in the street and a yelp of a dog. I knew right away it was Boots, our dog, our black Cocker Spaniel. My dog.

I dropped the plastic toys and turned as Boots came running into the yard. I could see no cuts on him, no damage on him at all. But he stopped in front of me, whimpered softly a couple of times, and then he died. Why was he out in the street running around off the leash? I don’t know. That’s not part of the memory.

A while ago I was talking with my younger sister, Mary Ann, and she remembers the death of Boots exactly as I do. Exactly that is . . . except that it was in her arms that Boots died. That’s her memory.

My memory is what I stated. Obviously one of us is wrong. My sister is four years younger than I, so if I were four or five at the time, she would have been a baby. But as I think back, I recall playing with those little plastic figures quite late into my childhood. And my sister and I even played with them together. In fact I don’t think I stopped playing miniature make believe until I discovered baseball.

So what’s the truth? I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter, because I’m not writing about truth. I’m writing about my memories.

I’m sorry for being so introspective this week. I had intended to talk about some of the new restaurants opening in my area—new ones open all the time. Here’s one: Torrisi, just below Prince Street on Mulberry. I had their generous turkey sandwich for lunch, $9. It was real turkey. I didn’t know real turkey was available anymore, unless you lived on a farm in northern Vermont. It was totally delicious. But dinner is what Mario Carbone and Rick Torrisi’s place is really about. For $50 a head, the boys do a four-course dinner with a different menu every night but Monday. They draw from all the Mediterranean cuisines and sometime from further afield. Be aware, this place is really tiny. There are just eight tables and no reservations, so you can wait up to two hours for your turn. No, that’s not my idea of fun either.

The dachshunds are Len and Jen, who are not allowed to play in traffic.

Mode Change

2010-08-10T12:47:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed how colorful everyone is dressing this summer? Yellows, reds, blues, bright greens and blinding whites. Yes the white T-shirt is back, with and without messages on them. People look so cheerful!

In my closet there are 34 black or navy summer shirts, T-shirts or golf shirts. Some of the navy ones are darker than the blacks. I need a makeover, an upbeat mode change.

I used to work with this guy who wore a different Hawaiian shirt everyday . . . Hawaiian style shirt. So he didn’t just wear a single bright color—he wore multiples of bright colors. He lit up the hallways at the magazine where we worked. While I, in my all-black outfit, looked as if I was coming from a funeral . . . or going to one. (Do people even wear black at funerals anymore?)

Somebody should have told me this was going to happen. Vampires still wear black, right? And vampires are very much in fashion. Every other film that comes out has a vampire or two in it. But I’m not sure that those young, wispy vampires wear black all the time. They might wear Hawaiian shirts, for all I know.

And have you seen the new hats, those tiny-brimmed fedoras like the one the young man in my picture is wearing? They’re cheap and ugly . . . but they’re also bright and cheery. Wearing a hat like that makes you look as if you know how to have fun. And I seem to be the only one still wearing a baseball cap anymore, except of course for the players. I tried to buy a bright-red cap at Republic last week, but they were out of red. The only thing they had left was black.

I’m afraid to go out. Look at the guy in the black shirt carrying a camera—he could be a terrorist. Or maybe: has Ed been wearing that same shirt for two years now? Maybe we should call a social worker? Something has to change.

I need to shop. Maybe this calls for a trip to Honolulu? That would be fun, but these days online shopping is the way to go: http://www.goodhawaiianshirts.com/

In the ’90s black was obligatory here in New York, especially downtown, and I think the practice spilled over into the new millennium. But somewhere in there, when I wasn’t paying attention, colors began to creep into the monotone spectrum. “Look at that guy in the green shirt. Hey, rube!” I’d shout at someone I assumed to be an out-of-towner (if he was small and far enough away). Now we’ve come full circle. I’m the guy others are pointing at and snickering.

I watched a rather cartoonish sci-fi film with Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman last night. Ben is this tech genius who agrees to be locked in his lab compound for three years to work on a secret project. When he starts his first day of work, he’s wearing a suit, a white shirt and a tie. I’ve never seen a techie wearing a tie. There were a lot of silly things in the film. For the last scene, Uma brings him a change of clothes: gray slacks . . . and a black T-shirt. Let me tell you, Ben looked fabulous in that black T-shirt! Hmm.

Is It Possible to Live Without a TV?

2010-08-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

It is. Even in America. I haven’t had television for more than a year, never made the transition to digital or high-definition or whatever it is you’re watching now. I had planned to buy one after a month or so, but the longer I put it off, the less needy I felt about it. When I go over to Brooklyn to dog sit Jennifer Lopez and Leonard Cohen, my friends’ lovely little dachshunds, I get to watch Yankee games and shows that I’m unfamiliar with, but I find that . . . well, I’m unskilled at watching TV now. When a dramatic moment is interrupted by a commercial, I’m incredulous. Hey, I was watching that!

When I lived in Rome, I lived without television. In Oxfordshire, I had no TV until the last few years. But I liked television in England in the ’80s. There was a choice of just four channels back then, but it seemed to me that that was more than enough. Now they have all the pointless, unwatchable stuff that we have.

The manager at Il Fornaio here on the Street says I’m being un-American by choosing my computer with Hulu and Netfix over television. And maybe she's right. At the very least, I’m being nontraditional.

I remember as a small child in Brooklyn when my family got our first television. It was an Emerson. Housed in a large brown wooden box, the picture was the size of a postcard—and black and white, of course. The set was placed on top of our refrigerator, since the kitchen was the main room in our house, the first two floors of a brownstone on Congress Street, across from Saint Paul’s Church, in the area they now call Cobble Hill. Cobble Hill? The name always makes me smile. We never called the neighborhood anything.

It was the summer of 1946, and my father had invested in the new medium in order to watch the much-hyped second Joe Lewis-Billy Conn fight. I don’t remember much about the fight itself, but it happened on June 19^th at Yankee Stadium, and was the first heavyweight title fight to be televised. They estimated that 141,000 people watch Lewis fight Conn that night, and it seemed as if half of that crowd was in our kitchen. Our neighbors, people on our block we hardly knew, rang our bell and asked if they could watch the fight. My mother graciously invited them all in until there was no more standing room.

You would think that I, being like Billy Conn both white and Irish, would be rooting for him to win. But Joe Lewis was the world’s most famous athlete at that time. He was an American hero, and my friends and I wanted to see if he was real.

Looking back now, I realize that my father was not home for the fight. He must have slipped out when our neighbors began to arrive in bulk. I’m sure he watched the fight at the Hole in the Wall, where he hung out and drank with his political friends.

So maybe I’ll buy a television. And maybe I won’t.

Bad Habit

2010-07-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

The Saturday before last, Little Italy’s very own phony nun, so-called Sister Milindia, was arrested for soliciting donations for “the children of St. Joseph’s,” and pocketing the money. She’s been doing this for as long as I remember. Sometimes I would warn tourists about what she was up to. Most of the time, I’d just roll my eyes and walk past her. This woman, done up in a full nun’s habit (except for her running shoes), pretended to be an Episcopalian sister. I didn’t even know the Episcopal Church had nuns, especially nuns in traditional dress at this point in history. I guess it was one of the many traditions they kept after the break from Rome. Should I have dropped a dime on her? We don't do that in this neighborhood.

But even the Good Fellas found Sister Milindia’s behavior offensive. It was a reporter and a photographer from the New York Post who outed her in a front-page story with lots of pictures. I asked an Albanian waiter (who passes himself off as an Italian . . . maybe I should out him?) if the fake sister was in fact arrested. He assured me that she was, but then when I asked if they took her away in cuffs, he again confirmed that she was, and I realized he was making the story up or passing it on from someone else: there’s no way a streetwise New York cop is going to cuff a nun, real or fake, in the middle of Mulberry Street on a Saturday afternoon.

I always liked nuns. Well, most nuns, anyway. I still remember the day my mother bundled me off to Saint Paul’s School in Brooklyn and presented me to the Sisters of Charity, a platoon of Catholic teaching nuns from the convent on the corner of Clinton and Congress, and told me that she would be back for me soon.

Soon? What was that, soon? Was it five minutes, hopefully? Or was it longer? It turned out that I spent eight years with the good sisters in their tightly wrapped, no frills black bonnets, long, wooden rulers and chalk-laden erasers.

They were good women, these real nuns, dedicated and hard working. They tried to teach me basic skills and a love for Jesus. None of it worked. But sometimes I miss them and would like to tell them thanks for trying.

Mr. Heineken

2010-07-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

“Mr. Heineken!” Sun-sun greeted me from half-way across the room in her high-pitched, multi-toned voice. Heads turned. Sun-sun was making fun of me. It’s a ritual, and there is no heat behind it. The nickname she branded me with a few years ago is based on the fact that I always consume two bottles of Heineken beer (a U.S. pint) with my spicy Malaysian lunch. Pretty much the entire staff at Nyonya enjoy calling me Mr. Heineken.

It’s a cultural thing. I’m Irish, and I lived in the British Isles for almost a decade. Having a pint of beer (a larger British pint) with (or as) lunch was close to a legal requirement. Down here in Chinatown, I almost never see my Asians neighbors drinking alcohol with their lunch. They drink tea.

Nyonya gets its name from the Baba Nyonya, the ethnic Chinese who settled in the Southeast Asian Straits communities of Singapore, Malacca and Penang. A waitress at Nyonya told me the restaurant’s name refers to the short batik sarongs the female staff wear. Maybe. But I’ve been to Malaysia, if briefly, and it seems I recall that the native Malaysians were the ones wearing the batik sarongs, not the Chinese.

The restaurant was originally on the north side of Grand Street, between Mulberry and Mott. Some people complained about the rickety, uncomfortable interior (I thought it seemed . . . well, Southeast Asian). Last year Nyonya moved across Grand Street to new digs right next to Ferrara. Everything was new, if only slightly more comfortable, but right from the beginning, something was noticeably wrong. The food seemed consistently less fresh, often greasy (stir-fried noodles can be greasy). And portions were smaller and remain smaller: the mee siam has only half of a hard-boiled egg now, where they used to serve you the entire egg. I don’t mind smaller portions; I prefer to eat less. But, Nyonya--where is the taste? What happened to the flavors? To my taste buds, quality has gone downhill.

Malaysian cuisine is a mix of Indonesian, Thai, Indian and Chinese culinary ideas.

I noticed yesterday that there’s a 2010 update of the recommendation from the Michelin Red Guide for New York City on the wall, so maybe it’s me?

Yes, I still eat there. It’s my Asian Cheers. Where else are they going to call me Mr. Heineken?

Little Equestrians

2010-07-16T09:54:00.001-07:00

“Say hello to George,” Mr. Rafferty, the chief horse trainer at Paddington Stables told me. George was enormous, a tall brown gelding with one ear that flopped over like a cocker spaniel’s. He was fitted with the classic English saddle. I had specifically asked my mother for a western saddle, either in gold or silver, like the ones Roy Rogers and Gene Autry used on their horses.

“Hello, George,” I said to the horse. He totally ignored me.

“You and George are going to be great friends,” Mr. Rafferty told me confidently. “He’s one of our friendliest mounts.” I reached out to pet the animal.

“Don’t touch him!” Mr. Rafferty hissed. “He doesn’t like that.”

He doesn’t like to be touched? How was I going to get up in the saddle without touching him? I articulated my concern to Mr. Rafferty.

“Oh, we’ll get you up on him, Laddie. Don’t you be worrying about that.”

My sister Mary Ann was standing with Buck, Mr. Rafferty’s assistant, on the other side of the ring next to her horse, Miss Grumble. Miss Grumble looked even bigger than George. I hoped the mare was more tolerant about being touched. Mary Ann was a toucher. She petted everything and everybody. She even petted dogs while they were growling at her.

Without warning, Mr. Rafferty reached down and lifted me up in one smooth move and placed me in the saddle. George moved nervously from side to side, blowing air out of his nostrils like a fire-breathing dragon. Mr. Rafferty inserted my boots in the stirrups, one by one, carefully moving around the front of the horse to get to my other leg. He told me to take hold of the reins.

“Don’t pull on the reins or slap George on the neck with them!” he said. Yeah, right. Friendly George doesn’t like being touched, I thought.

Mr. Rafferty was speaking softly into George’s ear, feeding him a lump of sugar, calling him “Old Fella.” When he thought he’d won the horse’s confidence, he took hold of a short piece of rope attached to the bit and began to lead George and me around the ring.

“Here we go,” he said, as if we were about to embark on some great odyssey.

The whole thing seemed ridiculous—me sitting on George’s back, passive, helpless, walking around this dark, dreary ring of dirt. Was this horseback riding? Was this supposed to be fun? As usual, I was out of my element and confused.

As near as I can remember, the whole horseback-riding adventure was my mother’s idea, a misdirected attempt by her to prepare her children for a rapid assent up the social ladder. She never said anything to me personal about it, but it was rumored that Mom had been a devote equestrian herself in earlier days. Looking back now, I doubt that there’s any truth in that. The one time I recall her coming with us to the stables, she seemed anything but comfortable around the horses. Mary Ann and Miss Grumble and George and I were walking around the ring, side by side, when Miss Grumble turned her head and leaned over and nipped me on my leg. My mother was furious. In the scene that followed, she cross-examined Mr. Rafferty about the culinary habits of his four-legged friends.

“Why did that animal bite Edward’s leg?” she demanded. “I thought horses were vegetarians.”

Eventually, Mary Ann and I and the four other children in our class were taken out of the stables and across Parkside Avenue into Prospect Park.

Crossing the avenue was a harrowing experience for both horse and rider. We would bunch up at the light, waiting for it to turn green, then dash across before the traffic started up again. When I say “dash,” I don’t mean we galloped or cantered or even broke into a trot. Dashing for George meant walking a little faster. (Did I mention that George was a somewhat elderly horse?) Nevertheless, for me, crossing Parkside Avenue was always a heart-rending dash, with the sound of horse-shoed hoofs clattering on asphalt mixed with the growl of idling engines and blaring horns. I didn’t like it and neither did George.

Finally, somehow, we would make it into the park. Buck would be in the lead atop Lightning, a spirited pinto no one else could ride. Once or twice, Mr. Rafferty himself came along as our chaperone. On those rare occasions, he would ride the stable’s only Arabian, Ali Baba, a glossy-black stallion who liked to shake his head from side to side as if he was saying no to all of Mr. Rafferty commands.

Once we were in the park, the situation improved, at least temporarily. Our family’s equestrian activities were reserved for spring and summer, and the fresh, green foliage of the park helped to lift our spirits. It wasn’t exactly Big Sky Country or the Red River Valley, but Prospect Park was the closest thing to them that we Brooklyn kids knew. So we walked our horses along the path, beginning to relax, becoming one with our mounts and the great outdoors, almost enjoying ourselves. Almost.

We couldn’t actually see the zoo from the riding path, but when we were downwind, the horses could smell the animals. And they didn’t like what they smelled. As far as their olfactory glands could tell, George and his pals knew that there were predators--wolves, lions, tigers and bears--over there just behind the trees, ready to pounce. So every time the horses would reach a certain point in the ride, and the wind was right (or wrong), they spooked.

Most of them just turned around and headed back to the stables, and there was little we junior riders could do about it. This was when Buck would earn his pay, riding ahead of the herd, or pack, or whatever you call a bunch of scared horses, and corralling the escaping mounts, turning them back around on the path. George had a somewhat different reaction to the wild animal threat he perceived. He would roll.

Looking back, I see logic in George’s behavior. As slow as he was, he must have figured he didn’t need any extra weight on his back while he was fleeing the wild predators. Fortunately for me, it took George a good long time to get down on his knees and roll over, so I was always able get out of the saddle and clear of him without being hurt.

The first time George rolled on me, we were walking along the path alongside Miss Grumble and Mary Ann. I turned to see how my sister was doing, and instead of her face, I found myself staring at one of her boots. It took me a second to figure out what was happening. Buck yelled, “Rooney, quick! Off that horse!”

I slipped my feet out of the stirrups and swung around and jumped clear. I ran twenty feet away from George and turned to see him on his back, thrashing around in a cloud of dust. He struggled to his feet and immediately set off in the direction of the stables, with Buck in hot pursuit.

I don’t think George was trying to hurt me with his rolling routine, and after the second time he did it I was always ready for him. In fact, I began to look forward to George’s zoo roll, and looking back now, I see it as my favorite part of the entire equestrian experience.

Selling Off Your Stuff

2010-07-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful 80-degree Pacific-island day, with a soft hibiscus-scented breeze blowing just hard enough to move the folds in my aloha shirt. I was sitting in a small, outdoor area in the airport on the island of Kauai, waiting for the PA system to announce the boarding of my Hawaiian Airlines flight to the Big Island.

I’d been sitting there alone for ten minutes, when a man in his 40’s walked up and sat across from me. He was dressed in a light-weight business suit and carried an attache case. His tie was undone, and he looked disheveled and irritated.

“Where you going?” he asked. His tone was not friendly.

I looked up and counted to two before answering. “The Big Island,” I told him.

“Where are you staying? Which side?” in that same demanding way.

“Hilo,” I told him and left it at that.

“Hilo?” he shook his head and laughed, a bark of pure distain. “It rains there every day. Every day. What are you gonna do there?” It was almost time to tell him that it was none of your business. Instead I said I was going to be photographing orchards.

“You’re a photographer? What kind of cameras you got?”

“Nikons,” I said, looking around over the hedges to see if there was anyone wearing an airport uniform.

“Nikons,” he repeated. “They’re good, right? How much do you want for them?” he asked out of the blue.

“What?” I said.

“How much do you want for them--the whole kit and caboodle?”

“I’m not interested in selling my cameras; I need them for my work.

“Five K. How’s that? $5,000.”

“What are you talking about? You don’t even know what I have in the bag.”

“You can take the money and buy all new cameras in Honolulu,” he was telling me.

I wondered what the psychiatric term was for people who want to buy strangers’ personal belongings. “Nut job,” I decided.

But just how nuts is this guy? I asked myself. Would we soon be rolling about on the ground, fighting for photographic gear? He didn’t look like a football lineman, thank god, but he was a bit taller and carried 25 lbs. more than I did at the time.

Finally, they called my flight, and I quickly gathered my stuff and headed for the departure gate. No, this guy was not joining me on the flight to Hilo.

This bizarre scene came to mind a few weeks ago, when, right around the corner from Mulberry Street, someone wanted to buy my wallet. My wallet. No kidding. Okay, it’s a nice wallet. Not fancy, but it’s real leather and came from Leading Edge. Remember that retail chain? What makes the wallet special, is it’s a front-pocket wallet, theoretically safer from pickpockets.

I was in the process of paying for a beer and pizza when this guy next to me said, “Wow! That’s a great wallet. You want to sell it?”

Here we go again.

100 Degrees in the Shade

2010-07-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

A family of four Americans from the midwest stopped to ask me if I knew of a place where they could get a soft drink. I felt so sad for them that they had picked me . . . perhaps the only person in the city of New York who did not really know the answer to this question.

“I’m local,” I told them pathetically, as if that were a valid reason not to have any simple, basic information about anything in the area. Reverse logic? My brain was running 1,000 miles a second (maybe not that fast), trying to think of an answer. Where the hell do they keep the damn soft drinks around here? If they had wanted coffee, a cappuccino perhaps, I could have sent them down to Grand Street to Ferrara. The Subway--people are always asking me about the Subway--was just one block north of where we were standing. I’m always telling people how to get to one Subway or another. I try my best to be helpful, honest.

I started to explain why I didn’t know where they could buy a soft drink, but thought better of it. The fact is I never drink soft drinks. (The last time I remember drinking a Coke I was 18 years old and at a gas station in the Mohave Desert.) The two teenage girls looked as if they were going to dry up and burst into flames right in front of me. I didn’t think a long, convoluted story about how it came to be that I did not drink soft drinks was what they needed. Both were hovering near the edge of puberty, one about to enter, the other having just had a rather scary first year or so.

Across from where we were standing on Mott Street there was a banh mi shop called Saigon. They sold Vietnamese sandwiches and soft drinks. I knew they had cold cans of soft drinks, so I pointed at the place. They didn’t say anything, and they didn’t move. And just for a second, in the back of the father’s eyes, I thought I read the question: “We’re not going to be getting involved with the Viet Cong, are we?” Oh boy.

The look was probably my imagination. I’m sure it was. These four people from Ohio or Idaho or St. Louis were just hot and thirsty and maybe a bit annoyed that I seemed to be so dimwitted. They were good people I’m sure, just a bit out of their element.

The truth is, here in Lower Manhattan, there are many things missing that people in middle American take for granted. But if things were the same here as they are at home, they’d probably stay at home. We have Little Italy, a faux Italian neighborhood that echos back to the 1950s and before, now with Mexican cooks and Albanian waiters, a very real Chinatown that is growing every day and stretches to the East River. We have a SoHo, a NoHo, Nolita, Tribeca . . . and it all changes weekly, almost daily. A century and a half ago, much of this area was notorious and known as the Five Points.

And at this point you probably want to know why I don’t drink soft drinks. I’m not sure. I just don’t.