May 31, 2006

A Day in New York City

 


Walking to have lunch yesterday, my friend and I came across a man lying in the street – dead for all I know – with a paramedic heaving his body weight into the man’s chest. I assumed the man was dead when the paramedic took off the oxygen mask, but I’m not sure; the rest of us kept walking. This scene made me feel sick while I was there, but it didn’t interfere with my lunch, a plate of pernil with rice, beans and sweet plantains at my favorite downtown Cuban place.


I imagine in most towns you would never get to see if the man was dead or not because there would a crowd hovering, but here we’re fairly unfazed by the lives of others around us. This phenomenon sounds worse than it is. We cloister in very tight groups here in this naked city and innately recognize the futility of trying to impact others lives by gawking – so we keep moving.


So last night I’m out to dinner with an old friend at Lima’s Taste in the Village, eating amazing ceviche and talking crap about the stuff we love, and who do I see out of the corner of my eye? Will. Will from Will & Grace. I only put in about two seasons of that show, but Will  – whatever his real name is – has star quality about him. Of course, here we don’t make a scene over celebrities of any kind – although I once accosted Lou Rawls for his autograph – but I did get in a cab later and call my wife: “Oh-my-god, guess who I just saw…”


But herein we get into the cab story. Never in my dozen years of living in New York City have I come across a cabby greener than this one. Some time ago it was sporting to give your cabby explicit directions to where you were going, but that was then. Now there’s very little character in a New York City cab ride; you just get in and go.


Of course, I needed to be home at a specific time, so I was doomed from intent, but I should have known I was in trouble when the driver asked me to write down where I wanted to go. I should have just gotten out of the cab. He didn’t know where to go and I had three too many pisco sours and we ended up going up-town instead of down-town and I couldn’t convince the guy that everyone in New York City makes u-turns even when there’s a sign saying not to.


I’m not good at giving really simple instructions, but I felt bad for the guy and thought of myself as an emissary for our good country (this after earlier in the day mangling the distinction between Croations and Bosnians, etc. for Zoran, a very nice guy), so I gave him very explicit directions to navigate to a dreaded outer-burough, like “ignore the one-way only sign, just go left when you get past that white line in the road.”


In the end, everything worked out okay. I gave the guy decent instructions on getting back to Manhattan from Brooklyn, so hopefully he made it home safe.

Comments

Discuss this post.


I had a very similar experience last summer.  I was on my way to K-Mart and about half-a-block from the entrance was a guy begging for change, holding a sign that said “Won’t Lie, Need Beer.”  I considered giving him some change, really, I did, but moved on.  Returning from K-Mart, I see the guy with a cop on one side and a random citizen on the other giving him CPR—violently weighing into his chest. It was a very strange experience. The guy had entered my thoughts, however briefly a moment before, and now he was dying or dead. It’s something I remember very clearly.


*Feel free to not post this, just thought I’d share.

    – Mike (06/01 01:14 PM)



The Will guy is Eric McCormick. He’s from Scarborough, just outside Toronto, Canada and was a classmate of Mike Myers.

    – Sandra Turnsek (06/11 08:42 PM)


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"A Day in New York City" was posted May 31, 2006 and written by Bud Parr.

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Recent Comments

Hi Bud,

This is so bittersweet to read. I wish U of Penn more than luck in tackling the collection and making an exhibit for the books. I can’t wait to see the store again. I used to work at Gotham (all too) briefly, from the summer of 2001 to the fall of 2002 when I was 19 and in school for illustration. The building, the books, and especially the people (I had amazing co-workers, plus some really lovely customers) have a special place in my heart. I’m was hoping the link would mention Andreas (Andy) Brown, the last owner of GBM, but no such luck.

I was going to venture a guess that if the old man you met at the store was a GBM employee it might have been Phillip Lyman, but my understanding was Mr. Lyman was notoriously well-read (and had substantial library himself) so I suppose he would not have been reading Dante for the first time when you met him. More likely it was one of our splendid customers. It happened more than once that one customer on the floor would ask me about an author or title and I would meet them with my perfectly hopeless stare ‘n stammer—until another customer that had overheard the plea would effortlessly proffer the desired answer or suggestion. I learned so much working there, from everyone, but was a pretty useless specimen while the learning percolated. One of the more useful employees (our resident poetry expert) recently got a shout-out over at the New Yorker’s book blog after being made famous at the splendiferous Kwik Meal #1 cart:

New Yorker Link

One more book nerdy bit before I cut off the nostalgia trip. The above-mentioned Marc was the first person to Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino in my hands; I read it up in the 2nd floor gallery on my lunch breaks (lunch from Kwik Meal #1, of course), surrounded by art books and Edward Gorey paraphernalia. That book took (and takes, I’ve re-read it many times) me so many places, but when I’m lucky it takes me back to Gotham’s gallery, by the 2nd floor window where the constant refrain of the gold and diamond sellers coming in through the window mingled with the dulcet tones of NPR from a radio bigger than a microwave and the smell of old paper—all unchanged almost more than a decade later. At least in my mind. It’s still one of my favorite books (and authors), ever. Marc also blessed me with recommendations of Wallace Stevens’ Palm At The End of the Mind, Moby Dick with the Rockwell Kent illustrations, and my first ever NYC apartment: a little studio over in Astoria, Queens. Everyone at that store was overflowing and generous with knowledge, stories and history.

Places like Gotham do more than provide fodder for sentimental blog comment drivel though; I hope the lessons learned from the ongoing troubles are shaping a new generation of booksellers and customers that can find ways to thrive. Bookstores don’t belong in museums. Wise men fish there.

– (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
on “Well That's That”


Best wishes for the holidays, Bud.

I used to work in the Pan Am/Met Life Building in Manhattan.  I would walk over to Gotham at lunch and browse, browse, browse.  Books were the only thing I ever bought on that stree.  It’s a shame it’s gone.  Thanks for the update for those of us no longer living in NYC.  Atlanta is not so much a book haven.

Best,
Jim H.

– Jim H.
on “Well That's That”


Yeah, for all of our technology - which is great - I mean you and I are talking about this from two ends of the country - but there’s nothing like being there.

– Bud Parr
on “Well That's That”