tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34611055324524033572024-03-09T18:45:51.367-08:00The Alternate Side Parking ReaderMJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.comBlogger375125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-28984564538943802372022-04-21T11:38:00.003-07:002022-04-21T11:39:31.362-07:00<p>The announcement that alternate-side parking will resume its twice a week schedule prompted a writer named Clio Chang to <a href="https://www.curbed.com/2022/04/mary-norris-alternate-side-parking.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=curbed.socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_content=curbed&fbclid=IwAR0mYIVDS0FB1tVIG9U0TvyjJW7vjYYwj4OcIY7SgWQHVeB1elIkI16Z27U" target="_blank">interview</a> me for Curbed at New York Magazine. Now let's see if I can still find my way around this blog site ...</p><p>https://www.curbed.com/2022/04/mary-norris-alternate-side-parking.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=curbed.socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_content=curbed&fbclid=IwAR0mYIVDS0FB1tVIG9U0TvyjJW7vjYYwj4OcIY7SgWQHVeB1elIkI16Z27U</p>MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-693711524007783792015-01-06T15:27:00.001-08:002015-01-06T15:27:10.770-08:00Found<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On the first sheet of a legal pad from 2007:<br />
<br />
Just started a blog on parking. Did it because I got frustrated trying to get published in print journalism.<br />
<br />
I would still like the blog to give me a body of work that would be publishable or lead to my dream job: newspaper columnist. It's a little like being a newspaper columnist, but the circulation is low.<br />
<br />
One conflict: I don't want to reveal my name, as it would give too big a clue as to my parking spaces. I am very discreet in the blog. Yet I want fame.<br />
<br />
Goal: Earn enough $, get book contract, put car in garage.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It took seven years, and I have yet to become a newspaper columnist, but that earnest goal? Met!</div>
MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-26090315624788317632014-09-19T15:35:00.002-07:002014-09-19T15:35:39.791-07:00Back in the Saddle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ZrnKjOE1iGRwW_JWTeqgdIgh849boB3RWuJUkEgHj1A2KbGP4-BxyEF8ExXDvCic8Oj_sLu-oafB_WawfRzzIGW46fawtEL_iztY3ToMPSwAZ1wim3W6bXNXUSPEk748WUm9qmCq1y4/s1600/PARKING+garbage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ZrnKjOE1iGRwW_JWTeqgdIgh849boB3RWuJUkEgHj1A2KbGP4-BxyEF8ExXDvCic8Oj_sLu-oafB_WawfRzzIGW46fawtEL_iztY3ToMPSwAZ1wim3W6bXNXUSPEk748WUm9qmCq1y4/s1600/PARKING+garbage.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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My new Mini fits in some amazingly tiny parking spaces! This happened to be garbage-collection day. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.</div>
MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-37313183137226981532014-05-22T19:28:00.000-07:002014-05-22T19:42:35.786-07:00Out of the Loop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It has been almost a year since I wrote something in this space, and that's partly because I've been writing a book (on grammar, not on parking) and partly because I seem to have lost my parking chops. Last Sunday I lucked into an incredibly rare spot, good all week except for a three-hour period on Thursday. I had passed up a man standing by a car with keys in his hand, and slammed on the brakes. "Are you by any chance leaving?" I asked. "Yes, as soon as my wife gets here," he said. So I backed up and idled while he touched up his car and we both waited for his wife. I should have turned off the motor, but how was I to know that she was taking a sauna or something? Finally the man came to my car window and said, "I'm going to move so that you can park, and I will wait here for my wife." He spoke with an Indian lilt. I couldn't believe he was being so nice. "It's a beautiful day," he said. "So we can be nice to each other."<br />
<br />
Four days later, I showed up at the car with a clipboard and my notes, ready to work in the car for three hours. I was surprised that most of the other cars were gone. I hadn't been there long when a cop came by and said, "You have to get out of the loop." I know I'm giving away the parking spot, which is against my religion (where else are there loops?), but that's what he said: "You have to get out of the loop." I asked for how long, and he said, "Ten, fifteen minutes—just till we clean."<br />
<br />
This was actually an opportunity: I remembered that I needed gas. I got out of the loop, and went to the gas station down by the river, put in forty dollars' worth of regular (this car has only a ten-gallon tank and used to not take more than twenty dollars' worth), and considered using the vacuum cleaner. My interior needed cleaning, and I had enough quarters in my ashtray. But there was a tiny traffic jam in front of the vacuum (someone was parked and someone else was putting air in his tires), so I headed back to the loop. Ten minutes had passed, but the cop had been so laid back that I felt I had plenty of time.<br />
<br />
I got stuck behind a truck on my way around the block, and sat at a light, and when I finally turned into the loop, every single spot was taken! Where had all those cars come from? The parkers were socializing, sneering at me as I passed. Clearly I was not in the loop. Fortunately, I didn't need a spot that was good for a full week, so I found a spot that was legal right then and there but would mean I'd have to come back out in the morning. Across the street was a full block of empty spots that would be good in an hour and a half. Judging by the leaves and litter, the sweeper hadn't come yet. I waited. The sweeper came. I moved. I waited another hour. I tried to work, but I was too distracted by having been shut out of the loop.<br />
<br />
At the time that I was interviewed for this piece about alternate side parking by Alex Dworkowitz, posted on The Awl (<a href="http://www.theawl.com/2014/05/how-the-alternate-side-lives">http://www.theawl.com/2014/05/how-the-alternate-side-lives</a>), I was still in the loop—still happy enough to take a mezzo self-portrait with the single blossom that my wisteria produced this year. It has recovered from the hurricane.<br />
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MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-53123816884345644642013-06-17T15:00:00.004-07:002013-06-17T15:11:21.594-07:00Service Restored<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="text-align: left;">Today I tried a new maneuver, one that I have seen performed but had never executed. I was parked at the end of the block, the last space before the intersection, and when the street sweeper came I pulled up into the crosswalk, not so far as to block traffic or cause a head-on collision but far enough to permit the street sweeper and other traffic to get by behind me.</span></div>
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When the sweeper had passed, I reversed into my precious Monday/Thursday
7:30-8 space, which I found last night when I got home from Rockaway, where I
dipped in the ocean for the first time this year. The water temperature was 58 degrees.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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The beach has changed, of course. The Parks Department has
heaped up dunes where the boardwalk used to be, and there are new signs, long mats at
select spots between the dunes for pedestrians to reach the ocean, and lots of
red flags to indicate swathes of the beach that are closed to swimming. There
are also many guards posted to enforce the closings. It’s sad not to have the
boardwalk, but at least now I don’t have to choose between
the boardwalk and the sand.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Éclair spent the winter in Maspeth, Queens, in the care
of my displaced Rockaway neighbors. She was parked on high ground, in
Manhattan, during the hurricane, and suffered no flood damage (thank you for asking). Those neighbors,
who have now returned to Rockaway (yay!), have a new used car, their third in
as many years. The last was ruined in the flood; the water came up to the
EZPass.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Since my car was still parked at the beach, I took the A train to Rockaway for
the first time since the storm. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirghIahImPkeeEpTvkoLY5ytlTqtjJDj9eQyqKZV0gJpuh578gOGZ4FmB4LU52Sz_OPxdk3WGbpZm8XXDnlhru899sedVzYpn9Lvuw_vOhYWatDsImp6wTquvehPKBfj1BTUzwbecf8Wc/s1600/service+restored.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirghIahImPkeeEpTvkoLY5ytlTqtjJDj9eQyqKZV0gJpuh578gOGZ4FmB4LU52Sz_OPxdk3WGbpZm8XXDnlhru899sedVzYpn9Lvuw_vOhYWatDsImp6wTquvehPKBfj1BTUzwbecf8Wc/s320/service+restored.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
Who ever would have thought we would miss the A
train? Sadly, one trip was all that was needed to remind me of the frustrations
it delivers. First, at West Fourth Street, the train marked Lefferts
Boulevard came instead of the Far Rockaway train. I got on anyway, because I
always take the first train that leaves the station. Then, while I was waiting
at Rockaway Boulevard to switch to the Far Rockaway branch, another Lefferts
Boulevard train came by. (A friend once asked, “Just what is at Lefferts Boulevard
that makes it so popular?” Good question.) At last my train came, and I glided
over Jamaica Bay. There is a new stretch of corrugated
steel along the restored tracks, rusty like a Richard Serra sculpture. It was high
tide, and there were what looked like white sacks, or swan rumps, in the water.
The Broad Channel station has been freshly painted. I always go down to the end
of the platform to peer around the station wall—not that I have ever seen
anything except swamp grass—and there on the ground beside the tracks was a
blue metal trunk stenciled with the words “SNOW DESK.” I was just getting out my smartphone to take a picture of it when another train came on—I assumed it was another Far Rockaway train, but as it approached I saw
that it was the Shuttle, and I had to run for it, because the shuttle is a
short train and the last car lines up with the middle of the platform. The
shuttle used to wait on a siding, in plain view. I guess they haven’t repaired the siding yet, and I wonder where the shuttle sits between
runs.<br />
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Fortunately, I have lost my watch, so I was not able to keep
track of how long the trip was taking, and I had brought along a copy of
Patrick Leigh Fermor’s book “The Mani,” about travelling in the southern
Peloponnese, which is completely absorbing. Still, one trip on the A train was
enough to cure me of nostalgia, and I drove back to
Manhattan. When I went out to park the car early this morning, I felt alive for the first time in months.</div>
</div>
MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-62055280645779629222013-04-16T05:19:00.002-07:002013-04-16T16:59:12.950-07:00Written in haste on April 16th<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggjICUj4dEdB5usPGeAZwqvSsMsSQlO1b7OS-DTH1kd8_rzoJA7_NkVbRr2JGawHAh_nU7t7s94g16Wj5TgO_3Xqp0Mfw5dEq1xPt-8fCteb5fl89ADfo-Zt4EjaIribMfLtGoPcUlyiA/s1600/Mahalls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggjICUj4dEdB5usPGeAZwqvSsMsSQlO1b7OS-DTH1kd8_rzoJA7_NkVbRr2JGawHAh_nU7t7s94g16Wj5TgO_3Xqp0Mfw5dEq1xPt-8fCteb5fl89ADfo-Zt4EjaIribMfLtGoPcUlyiA/s320/Mahalls.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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I have been to a lot of Baby Dee shows, but Sunday night was a
first: Baby Dee and Little Annie at a bowling alley in Cleveland—Lakewood,
actually, one of my favorite suburbs on the West Side. I drove there straight
from the airport in a rented car, with directions printed out from Google maps.
I felt like some out-of-body version of myself. For one thing, it was a
late-model car, and I am used to trolling around in a 1990 Honda Civic. For
another, I don’t usually require printed directions to get anywhere in my home
town. It probably added to the disorientation that I had flown in from Madison,
Wisconsin (I usually arrive by car from the opposite direction), and that I had
seen Dee and Annie perform in New York two nights earlier. </div>
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The bowling-alley venue was not as odd as you might think
(though I did accidentally get in line to rent shoes instead of to buy a
ticket). The lanes were on the other side of the building, past the bar, and
you couldn’t hear the pins crashing. My friend Paula was there with her sister Donna,
and my cousin Nancy brought Alice, who is also my cousin. Alice was raised by my grandmother, and as a young mother she
was our upstairs neighbor, in the house just up the hill from the
Cleveland Zoo, where the peacocks shrieked in the night and a Galápagos turtle
occasionally made a break for it. </div>
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There was an opening act: a girl called Blisse, who hopped
around like a boxer and sang to the accompaniment of her laptop. She introduced
Baby Dee, who made a spectacular entrance and vamped as Little Annie took the
stage. They did songs from their new CD, “State of Grace,” and indulged in an
occasional anecdote. One number that is not on the album but was in the show
was “The Dance of Diminishing Possibilities” (“Bobby Slot and Freddy Weiss were
not so nice but I like their names a lot, so I’ll say them twice”). Bobby Slot
and Freddy Weiss were actually known to three people in the audience: Nancy had
lived at the family compound long enough to have an indelible
memory of Bobby Slot, and Alice had lived there earlier and knew things about them that we
never knew. For instance they were brothers from different fathers. (Dee said, "I always
thought they were gay.") Freddie was the older, and he was born without testicles. When his father died, Rose, Freddie’s mother, remarried
and had Robert, as Alice called him. So Bobby Slot’s mother was Rose Slot. </div>
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As it was a home-town crowd, Dee favored us with a few extra
songs: she did “Fresh Out of Candles,” and for an encore “I’m not the only
pisspot in the house.” There was another liturgical number (“Jesus has a plan
for you”) and she finished with the Mormon underwear song. At the end, Dee, acting
as her own impresario, shouted out “Little Annie!” and the audience applauded.
Then she shouted, “Me!” Wild applause. The next morning, they were off to Toronto, and then
on to Detroit, Minneapolis, Cedar Rapids, Calgary, Dee Creek (in Washington), San
Francisco, Los Angeles, and—whew!—Louisville. </div>
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And I am on the way back to New York, worried about friends who regularly attend the Boston Marathon. Dusty, are you O.K.? Deni? Hoping to hear from you.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-57976048001124599912013-04-11T15:28:00.000-07:002013-04-11T15:29:31.147-07:00HELP!!!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUjDXgxoBe-MZkT4xkdmz1feDxTomKpIzvjt-ToW1PzDVUfKQuBnD9d_uIcQWQc1LfX7ofWelvbIlo5WeLCyEqMIplRW4uuvQ2Jdrn0rYa1-PNrhCHNsw7bqg7hyphenhyphen5as74aBcpSUZH1bTM/s1600/Peacock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUjDXgxoBe-MZkT4xkdmz1feDxTomKpIzvjt-ToW1PzDVUfKQuBnD9d_uIcQWQc1LfX7ofWelvbIlo5WeLCyEqMIplRW4uuvQ2Jdrn0rYa1-PNrhCHNsw7bqg7hyphenhyphen5as74aBcpSUZH1bTM/s320/Peacock.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I left my car with my Rockaway neighbors for the winter, so I have not gotten out much lately. I was delighted last weekend to find myself in New Jersey, in the passenger seat of a vintage Corolla, with a friend who used a GPS, but mostly to defy it. (The GPS is especially useless when it directs you into one of New Jersey's infamous jughandle turns.) We stopped at a place called Taste of Crete, which was having a moving sale (not surprisingly, a small Greek specialty shop all by itself at the side of a road did not thrive in the Shopping Mall State), and then proceeded through Princeton and past some gigantic sculptures of figures like something out of a Monet painting, set down on lawns across from manufacturers of ceramic plumbing fixtures, to the <a href="http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/info.htm">Grounds for Sculpture</a>. The forsythia and magnolias were just starting to unfurl their blossoms, amid scores of sculptures, all mind-boggling. The biggest surprise, though, was the peacocks gliding low in the shadows. Anyone who grew up around peacocks, as I did (believe it or not), knows what they sound like. We lived up the hill from the Cleveland Zoo, and once someone new in the neighborhood ran outside in the middle of the night because he thought he heard a human cry for help.MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-58387025491316634812012-11-06T05:58:00.000-08:002012-11-06T05:58:22.257-08:00The Next Wave<br />
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As you know, Hurricane Sandy made landfall at the worst possible time for people who built their castles on the sand. To quote a wise friend: You take your chances when you live by the water. Heroic friends helped me start digging out last weekend, and if I can gas up the car I'll go out again . . . after the nor'easter. It's bad, but, incredibly, the bungalows did not wash away. They stood firm on their cinder-block foundations.</div>
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If seawater were as nourishing as the floodwaters of the Nile, our scrappy patch of land would bloom like Forest Lawn.</div>
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<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/11/return-to-rockaway.html">I wish I could lift this whole piece from blog to blog</a>. This is the illustrated version.<br />
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<br />MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-49848239400787485972012-10-29T17:04:00.001-07:002012-10-29T17:04:25.869-07:00Sandy ... so far
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The only real precautions I took for the hurricane were to get my flashlight out of the car and to download some episodes of
Moby-Dick.</div>
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As I write, the tide is still rising in Rockaway. My
neighbor Tom and the dog and Dave have moved up into the loft. I haven’t heard
from the Master Plumber. If the water in my neighbors’ bungalow is up to their
stovetop, my bungalow is full of water. The posts for the pergola are floating.
Let’s hope that the worst damage is the sack of quick-set cement I left on my porch, carefully covered with a shower curtain.</div>
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Tide still coming in. Take to the lofts! </div>
<!--EndFragment-->MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-1415114733636535292012-10-05T14:29:00.001-07:002012-10-05T14:29:45.545-07:00Big Read<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5jcuJzen_uD1FzrPJWhWXpTznw_myEdwx_P2f35UXE663XmoiJwWDOttOroDQmjb4DK0ssyYZgFZxEUooy42IjSiBf5lDUxShjfeLRZJkzLL5l2sDk-1TrvQMV3_s3kpBXBfDHJ76l6k/s1600/Melville+Square.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5jcuJzen_uD1FzrPJWhWXpTznw_myEdwx_P2f35UXE663XmoiJwWDOttOroDQmjb4DK0ssyYZgFZxEUooy42IjSiBf5lDUxShjfeLRZJkzLL5l2sDk-1TrvQMV3_s3kpBXBfDHJ76l6k/s320/Melville+Square.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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If you really want something to read, dear reader, check out the <a href="http://www.mobydickbigread.com/">Moby-Dick Big Read</a>. You can listen to a chapter a day (they're up to Chapter 20), read by a different person, speaking in a different accent, every day till the middle of January. More background on the project (and my involvement with it; I read Chapter 6, "The Street"), with ukulele accompaniment, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/moby-dick-gets-read.html">here</a>.MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-15220748802747762862012-09-25T14:12:00.002-07:002012-09-25T14:55:27.911-07:00Picture Car<br />
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I was dismayed this morning to see cones along the street
where I had parked last night—blue cones and “No Parking Today” signs that were
not there last night and that meant, among other things, that I would not be
spending the next half hour in leisure mode, catching up on the <a href="http://www.mobydickbigread.com/">Moby Dick Big Read</a>. Someone had put the signs up after midnight, for no good reason (a travel
show was being installed in a nearby building). A few of my fellow-parkers got
belligerent and refused to move. I am not nearly as disgruntled as I might have been, because
I drove off and found a spot on the Monday-Thursday side of a 9:30-11 block,
squeezing between a car with a deadly tow hook sticking out the back and a
shrouded motorcycle, which I found a bit more forgiving than a car, without actually knocking it over. </div>
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On my own street, which has meters, there was no parking
because of a film shoot. Alternate-side parkers hate film shoots. Sharply dressed people (extras?) lingered at the corner, near a building that had been redesignated the Office of the Attorney General. Production assistants were all over the place. One of them was giving away miniature pastries to distract people as she encouraged them to take a different route to school or work. A cop directed a traffic jam while simultaneously munching. I could not help but notice that, for a street with no parking, there were an
awful lot of dusty-looking beat-up cars lining the curb. I looked inside the
cars. On the dashboard of each car was a printed form that said “Picture Car,”
and gave a name and contact number. I asked one of the production assistants about the cars, and he confirmed that they were
late-eighties models—old Hondas and Toyotas and an ancient Cadillac—parked
there for the film set. (The film was “The Wolf of Wall Street.”) </div>
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These were not what you would call “vintage” cars, except in a certain anonymous,
nondescript way. Most of them were unoccupied, but in others people were seated behind the wheel, behaving like alternate-side parkers: one did a crossword puzzle,
another read, a woman talked on the phone, a man listened to music. Next to one of the cars, a brunette with a clipboard was making notes, and I stopped
and said, “I don’t want to interrupt you, but I wonder if could ask you
something.” </div>
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“What’s your question, I’ve got a lot on my plate,” she said. </div>
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I hadn’t yet
formulated the question, so I said “Never mind,” and let her go back to her
glamorous Hollywood job. She was not exactly a good-will ambassador for the film industry.</div>
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But here's the thing: I have a dusty-looking beat-up car that would not have looked out of
place among the Picture Cars, and I envied their owners. They were getting paid to park! I wanted to know how they got the gig. A friendly-looking
man was getting into the passenger side of his Picture Car, and I asked him,
“How do you get to park here?”</div>
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“You have to do a lot of spinning,” he said.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Spinning?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Spinning.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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At home, I went straight to the laptop, found <a href="http://www.creativefilmcars.com/">Creative Film Cars</a>, and registered the Eclair. She has a lot of character—she ought to be in pictures. Before the money starts rolling in, I have to supply some photographs. Thanks to my friend NH for this stylish closeup of the dashboard.</div>
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<!--EndFragment-->MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-85428001078431131402012-09-08T05:25:00.001-07:002012-09-08T05:25:45.750-07:00O Possum!The first time I saw an opossum, loping along at dusk in the vegetation at Fort Tilden (it, not me, though actually it was both of us), I had just come back from Tuscany, and I thought it was a wild boar. It paused and looked back at me. I do not think it thought I was a Tuscan boar hunter. I have since viewed possums a number of times at their condominium in Rockaway. Once, after a party (ours, not theirs, although we can't know that for sure), a possum sat on the roof of a bungalow receiving slices of Wonder Bread tossed up by my neighbor. Last weekend, the possum population reached critical mass. Here is a link to <a href="http://nyr.kr/RUM6Yw">Night of the Opossum</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzhmhcVKiXTVIdXMwfVmlNT3DVgozgCua3P8pK02ROubAi6QWt5MOKpK9Y5KYQ_weRRFxWyEv1NKYvxLtkR6Xu_YKSMLHZldP7HbnxDbrEwToIQI_StQvXFyBetJMKUe2waELY-iy0BUs/s1600/possumpic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzhmhcVKiXTVIdXMwfVmlNT3DVgozgCua3P8pK02ROubAi6QWt5MOKpK9Y5KYQ_weRRFxWyEv1NKYvxLtkR6Xu_YKSMLHZldP7HbnxDbrEwToIQI_StQvXFyBetJMKUe2waELY-iy0BUs/s320/possumpic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Be prepared to scream!MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-22700579687627064312012-09-05T14:05:00.001-07:002012-09-05T14:11:18.358-07:00The Boot<br />
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The alternate-side-parking season got off to a dubious start
this week. I returned to the city late on Monday (Labor Day) and, knowing that
the pickings would be slim, passed up a Tuesday-Friday spot in the hope of scoring
a Monday-Thursday one so that I wouldn’t have to devote two hours to sitting in
the car on Tuesday morning. That is like standing on the subway platform and letting
the local go by, in the hope that the express will soon be there. Not a good
strategy. That Tuesday-Friday spot was the only one within a
twelve-block radius.</div>
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On Tuesday morning, I tried again, but I still didn’t feel
like sitting in the car for two hours, even though there was an excellent article to read in the Times about <span id="goog_2032530439"></span><span id="goog_2032530440"></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/nyregion/rockaways-parking-bans-please-residents-but-irk-visitors.html">the arcane origins of the parking rules in the West End of Rockaway</a>. I guess I’m out of practice. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjuhbV2KKsa7FgeQwpho_fbl5Q0k4X4d5ozFS5SBV3HBBp7hZKkU2jCepPoPlmRKF3y_b5K1bjXMxTDtyyrPz27gccSgSWB4vXZwO0WX2EHyu3gQwNkzIFmMSsQt2iLF4kJrA-tH9XGzQ/s1600/Rockaway+no+parking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjuhbV2KKsa7FgeQwpho_fbl5Q0k4X4d5ozFS5SBV3HBBp7hZKkU2jCepPoPlmRKF3y_b5K1bjXMxTDtyyrPz27gccSgSWB4vXZwO0WX2EHyu3gQwNkzIFmMSsQt2iLF4kJrA-tH9XGzQ/s320/Rockaway+no+parking.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No Parking Saturday & Sunday, May 15-Sept. 30<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #909090; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9px; line-height: 11px;">Kirsten Luce for The New York Times</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
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The Eclair is in pretty good shape going into the fall: new
exhaust system, new front brakes, two new tires. After a trip one Saturday to
Stony Brook, I grudgingly heeded my neighbors’ advice to put air in the left front
tire, because it was low. Running my hand over the tire, feeling for the cause
of the leak, I scraped my finger on something. A nail? A row of acupuncture
needles? Holy Camaro! I was feeling the steel in “steel-belted radials.” This
tire was not just low—it was bald. I pumped it up anyway, and the next morning the
bald tire was completely flat. (Warning: Inflating a tire may dislodge the nail
that is holding the air in.) I called AAA, and a guy came out and put the
doughnut on, after which I hobbled out to Brooklyn and got in line at Pep Boys.
This was not my idea of a fun Sunday, but the alternative was to take time off work to go back to the mechanic who, after inspecting the car just two weeks ago, had let me drive off on bald tires. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Anyway, I surrendered to the fifteen-dollar lot by the river, and
the guy in the booth was very sweet. I took a chance and left the car in the
lot overnight. This morning, after seeing off my house guests—my cousin and her
husband, with whom I had had a riotous time in Rockaway, possum hunting (stay
tuned)—I walked to the river to move the car. It was right where I’d left it—hadn’t
been towed—but the left front wheel had a boot on it. I was not that surprised.
It was almost as if I’d been waiting all my life to find out what happens when your car has
a boot on it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The same sweet guy was in the booth. I told him about the
boot, and asked, “What do I do?” He said, “You pay me thirty dollars for parking
overnight, and I take it off.” Fortunately, I had some money in my pocket. I’ve
discovered that I like having money in my pocket. “Let’s go see your car,” the
guy said. He unlocked the boot, which opened like a jaw. It was bright blue.
“It looks like a toy,” I said. “It works,” he said, opening and closing the
jaws. I gave him two twenties, and he gave me two fives. “I didn’t put the boot
on,” he said. “The night guy did that.” I gave him back one of the fives.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Now it was Wednesday morning and I was cruising for a spot, and
everybody knows that nobody moves on Wednesday, because very few blocks have
street-cleaning rules on Wednesday. That is why it is such a waste when, say, Yom
Kippur falls on a Wednesday.<br />
<br />
I carried on—somebody had to be giving up a spot
to go to work—driving to my most reliable 7:30-8 block. There were cones set up
on the Tuesday-Friday side, but on my preferred Monday-Thursday side there was one free spot
that I managed to wrangle the Eclair into. On another block where I hadn’t been
able to park yesterday, because some people were making a stupid movie, a police tow truck had been at work, removing a whole
line of cars. Summer is over.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-27455276778788603072012-08-30T15:19:00.002-07:002012-09-05T14:14:42.928-07:00Rumble in Rockaway<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3aIo-osweEGJRvokJ7EOKiHqLaAb0NVZiVe6dYZ8-SRDWh90-nwEVz-xKRsINOC-9gmHVXHQDOLkSABSaMi1bm5ESYa83vOGZMVySzg9cuTBvBj8PtrGG3Y1R9oV0XCK3ZQH9jOmBneU/s1600/Queen+Kong+(best).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3aIo-osweEGJRvokJ7EOKiHqLaAb0NVZiVe6dYZ8-SRDWh90-nwEVz-xKRsINOC-9gmHVXHQDOLkSABSaMi1bm5ESYa83vOGZMVySzg9cuTBvBj8PtrGG3Y1R9oV0XCK3ZQH9jOmBneU/s320/Queen+Kong+(best).jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Celebrating Labor Day with a piece on <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/08/mud-wrestling-in-the-rockaways.html">mud wrestling</a>! (Photo by Bryan Fraser)MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-25278826179861476502012-07-19T19:18:00.001-07:002012-07-20T02:32:15.796-07:00On and Off I-80<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Reports of the Éclair’s demise were premature. The
air-conditioning continues to put a strain on the engine, but with clean oil, a
new exhaust system, and new front brake pads she made it through Pennsylvania
and back on I-80 during the heat wave.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I hadn’t been planning on driving to Cleveland, but I picked
up two hitchhikers who wanted to go there, and one of them was my nephew, so I
took them. My nephew, Pat, is from Oregon, and it was the first time
he’d ever been in Pennsylvania. His vision lent interest to tired old I-80. Pat
had the same response that I had had to a certain sign I first saw more than
thirty years ago, when my father drove me out east to college. “Scrotum?” he
said, as we passed the sign for Scotrun.</div>
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<br /></div>
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He was also amused by someone's having plastered jolly red stickers on many of the deer-crossing signs, just over the deer’s nose, making all the deer in Pennsylvania into Rudolph. He
was not amused by the mile markers, which are actually tenth-of-a-mile markers.
“These are going to drive me crazy,” he said. Pennsylvania is approximately three hundred miles wide, so that’s three
thousand tenth-of-a-mile markers, ticking by at the rate of ten a minute. It does seem excessive. </div>
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<br /></div>
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On the drive back, I took my usual
detour off I-80 at Milesburg and headed over the mountain to Route 45, where I
stopped for the night at the Hotel Millheim. Sadly, it looks like my romance
with the Millheim is over. I had been hoping to sit outside on the second-story
porch with a beer and a book for a few hours at sunset, and although they had
the beer and I had the book, the porch had been torn off. My room was a bit
depressing, with a fake bird in a birdcage and windows that didn’t open onto
the porch that was no longer there. But the worst thing was waking up in
Millheim and remembering that there is no coffee for miles around. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I got on the road at seven, decaffeinated. After about ten
miles, I came to a McDonald’s, but I wasn’t going to settle for McDonald’s; I
held out for Lewisburg, where a friend had told me about a side-street café.
There was a parking spot across from it, but the street sign, uncannily, said
“No Parking Tuesday 7-9”: that was exactly my window of time in Lewisburg. I turned into a convenient parking lot just past the sign, and pulled into an empty spot. The Cherry Lane
Café was lively, with latte and wifi, and I stayed there for about an hour and
a half and bought an iced coffee to go. </div>
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<br /></div>
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When I returned to my car, a car had parked perpendicular to me, blocking me in. Taped on my car window was a note: “This
is a PRIVATE PARKING LOT. If you want your car, call 532-0527." Sure enough,
there was a sign stating clearly that this was a private lot and unauthorized
cars would be towed at the owner’s expense; “my” spot even had a number
stenciled on it. Oops. Caffeine deprivation can make you blind. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I called the number, mildly irritated that whoever left it hadn't included the area code. A woman answered.
I said that I felt very stupid: I didn’t know how I could have missed the sign, but I was the person who had parked her car in the private lot, and I was extremely sorry. The woman sounded nice enough. She said she was
involved with something and would be down as soon as she was free. I stood in
the hot parking lot with my iced coffee for about thirty seconds before I saw a
nice bench under a tree. I thought, How hospitable of Lewisburg to provide this
shady bench right near the parking lot I’m trapped in. After a while, an
elderly woman limped into view. I sprang up and apologized again, but she was
not easily mollified. She didn't like that I wasn't sweating in my car while I waited. “The sign’s down right now, but it could have cost you
a hundred dollars,” she grumbled.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Again, I said I was sorry. I offered her the ten-dollar bill in my pocket, but she didn't want it. She wanted to keep complaining. As she got into her car, she said, “You pay to park
here, and it’s not very nice when someone takes your spot.” O.K., O.K., I got it already. I said I was sorry. What more did she want? "You better never park here again."</div>
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<br /></div>
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She moved her car, but instead of pulling into the spot I had vacated, she took a different spot. I wasn't even in her spot! My car, with its out-of-state license plates and dashboard moose and
Buddha-on-a-spring, had made her day. Vigilante justice on the Susquehanna.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I escaped the wrath of the self-appointed Sheriff of Lewisburg
and got back on I-80, where it was business as usual: Road Work Ahead, Bridge
May Be Icy, Expect Delays, Rudolph Crossing, Left Lane Closed Ahead, All Trucks
Must Enter When Flashing, Scrotum, Expect Major Delays George Washington Bridge
to NYC.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We had gotten out to Cleveland in nine hours, but it
took me three days to get back home.</div>MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-90728151524322461902012-06-22T16:29:00.003-07:002012-06-22T16:31:24.706-07:00Requiem?<br />
The Eclair went to a memorial service without me yesterday, at the Jersey Shore, and I'm afraid the ninety-nine-degree heat and the air-conditioning and the Garden State Parkway may have conspired to put too much of a strain on her system. After meeting up with my friends to get the keys, I noticed, on the drive back to Rockaway, that she was laboring. I hope she is not a goner.<br />
<br />
Actually, I was a little surprised that my friends didn't decline my offer to lend them the car, after I started to itemize her eccentricities. (The shoulder belts are only cosmetic—don't attract attention from the police; don't open the left rear window, as it will never close again; pay no attention to the fact that the right rear bumper is hanging off—she was in a three-car accident while legally parked.)<br />
<br />
Lately I have been remembering another Honda Civic, of the same vintage as the Eclair, a hatchback that was owned by a former copy editor named Lu Burke, who had retired to Connecticut. It was red—Chianti red (she always insisted on the manufacturer's description)—and when Lu died, about a year and a half ago, I found myself wondering what would become of her car. She only ever drove it to the grocery store and the Honda dealer, and then to the gas station, to have it topped off.<br />
<br />
Lu Burke left a will, in which she did not bequeath me the 1990 Chianti-red Honda Civic. I didn't visit her often enough, which really is too bad, because she turned out to be a millionaire: she left her entire estate to the Southbury Public Library. I drove up there last month to check out the lucky library, and wrote a story about Lu Burke, the millionaire copy editor (you can find it <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/06/lu-burke-new-yorker-southbury-library.html">here</a>, on the New Yorker Web site). I refrained from mentioning the car. But I am dying to find out what happened to it.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgdn_f9HHii61v615Pd1s96cY65Prmzkc2gJh1XXwejf4P89hhQMJ9TfR00T9K4KOfLmtw765iCzh2J_2mX1GrMh-gHE4kjxGwlegGOmFl3wEv91yvFB6R6zdSH143lTjWolV71jy0jjo/s1600/Lu+Burke+Jan.+2002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgdn_f9HHii61v615Pd1s96cY65Prmzkc2gJh1XXwejf4P89hhQMJ9TfR00T9K4KOfLmtw765iCzh2J_2mX1GrMh-gHE4kjxGwlegGOmFl3wEv91yvFB6R6zdSH143lTjWolV71jy0jjo/s320/Lu+Burke+Jan.+2002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Meanwhile, here is Lu, at one of our infrequent lunches at the Friendly's in Southbury.MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-75976855096470199952012-06-16T08:02:00.000-07:002012-06-16T08:03:44.945-07:00Baby Dee's Summer Tour<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Baby Dee's West Coast Tour Dates</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWujDNmiaqlCCZXf8VMc6DZew6rzKuRyKJNmUFCOSrC_1j-4dQagJEUsgNn1VBDncHQucGObWdEKg4g0Yl1BCecffG-ELdCW8BEn8BS8kb5JYTmllChcwww8x5yl7aX5w8s2RxW5eTiRM/s1600/wvdb-baby-dee-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWujDNmiaqlCCZXf8VMc6DZew6rzKuRyKJNmUFCOSrC_1j-4dQagJEUsgNn1VBDncHQucGObWdEKg4g0Yl1BCecffG-ELdCW8BEn8BS8kb5JYTmllChcwww8x5yl7aX5w8s2RxW5eTiRM/s320/wvdb-baby-dee-5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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6/15/12 DETROIT, MI MOCA DETROIT</div>
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6/16/12 CHICAGO, IL OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC</div>
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6/17/12 DUBUQUE, IA MONKS KAFFEE PUB</div>
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6/18/12 MINNEAPOLIS, MN BRYANT LAKE BOWL THEATER</div>
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6/20/12 MISSOULA, MT BADLANDER</div>
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6/21/12 CALGARY, AB #1 LEGION</div>
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6/22/12 CALGARY, AB PALOMINO SMOKEHOUSE</div>
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6/23/12 CALGARY, AB THE IRONWOOD</div>
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6/24/12 VANCOUVER, BC THE WALDORF HOTEL W/ TIM COHEN</div>
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6/25/12 SEATTLE, WA RENDEZVOUS W/ TIM COHEN</div>
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6/26/12 PORTLAND, OR MISSISSIPPI STUDIOS W/ TIM COHEN</div>
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6/29/12 SAN FRANCISCO, CA BRICK AND MORTAR MUSIC HALL</div>
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6/30/12 LOS ANGELES, CA THE ECHO W/ TIM COHEN</div>
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7/1/12 TUCSON, AZ SOLAR CULTURE</div>
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7/3/12 DENVER, CO WALNUT ROOM</div>
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7/5/12 ST. LOUIS, MO THE FIREBIRD<br />
<br />
I just had to post this fabulous picture.</div>MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-60410017824701313762012-05-29T09:11:00.000-07:002012-05-29T09:11:00.778-07:00Reno<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Reno is not a place you want to be alone in. I was sitting
at a table at the Brew Pub on the mezzanine level of the Eldorado Hotel and
Casino. At first, I was seated on a stool at a high cocktail table, but I felt
a tremor and, as a waitress had yet to approach, I was about to flee. I’d
forgotten the reading material I’d set aside to bring with me when I left the
hotel room, and I didn’t think I could get through a meal alone at a restaurant
with nothing to read. All I had was the little folder that my key cards came
in. (My favorite sentence: “For your convenience, the servibar is
touch-sensitive, and anything that you move will be charged to your account.”)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I ran into the hostess, and the waitress said she’d be
with me shortly. Before sitting back down, I told the waitress that I felt a
trembling. “That’s because you’re on the overhang,” the waitress said. The
what? “The road is underneath.” I looked down at the floor, which was planked,
like a deck, and remembered that the driver of the shuttle bus from the airport
had told me that the five downtown casinos were connected at the mezzanine
level, so you never had to go outside. I asked the waitress if it was OK if I
moved to a low table. “Sure,” she said. Would it tremble less at a low table? “Probably
not.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWvGyhueBcgxU8GLrqp_JoMg5vEFqF5cCbIr0mw9YSS-oib2NC0-fq1gQ2znfxVFgj3E6B4lDm4TMUKycRbk17MTNdjPrAosgu60ahL1flDMGTLpKaEN5pvEtKHLKtxRxUudomA46YZ7w/s1600/Reno-view+from+hotel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWvGyhueBcgxU8GLrqp_JoMg5vEFqF5cCbIr0mw9YSS-oib2NC0-fq1gQ2znfxVFgj3E6B4lDm4TMUKycRbk17MTNdjPrAosgu60ahL1flDMGTLpKaEN5pvEtKHLKtxRxUudomA46YZ7w/s320/Reno-view+from+hotel.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was a little ridiculous: I had chosen to sit “outside.” Although
everything is inside, the architectural details say “exterior.” All the
restaurants have facades, as in a mall. There is a fountain, as in a piazza. My
eye kept falling on a narrow, pulsing, black horizon that turned out to be the
lip of the up escalator. As I watched, heads rose over the little horizon of the casino:
a guy in a cowboy hat, a couple who could have been shoppers at the Mall of
America, a lush holding a beer in a flimsy plastic cup. There was a tournament of "gal bowlers" in town.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is when you want an iPhone—I could be carrying on
conversations with people all over the world! I could be tweeting the bejeezus
out of Reno! I have a pen, but no paper. My own beer, a Redhead Amber Ale, in a
tall glass, has already left a wet ring on my placemat. As a last resort, I
reach across the table for a dry placemat, featuring all the Brew Pub
microbrews—Big Dog IPA, Double Down, Wild Card, Gold Dollar, Carano Extra—flip
it over, fold it in quarters, and start writing to keep myself company. This is
pathetic.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My day began at 4 AM. Three-thirty, actually, but I stayed
in bed. It was pouring rain. I swore I would never fly out of LaGuardia again.
It is so stupid when you have a home in Rockaway and a free place to park the
car, not to fly out of JFK. And yet I am forever trundling my suitcase to Grand
Central to catch the bus to Newark Airport, or taking a cab from Rockaway to
LaGuardia at dawn. And here I was again, up with the first robin—I could hear him
out there, singing in the rain—having to drive to LaGuardia and put the car in
a long-term parking lot before catching a flight to Reno via Denver at 7:49 A.M.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Parking at LaGuardia is more expensive and less convenient than
the Long-Term Parking Lot at JFK, no doubt because everything is packed into a smaller
area. I had checked it out online the night before. It was hard to know which
deals were legitimate, but in the end I had paid in advance to park the Éclair,
for thirteen dollars a day, in a lot behind the Extended Stay Hotel, or ESH. I found
directions to the parking lot online, but I knew they were wrong—you don’t have
to get off the BQE and wiggle around on Roosevelt Avenue to get onto the Grand
Central Parkway. My parking lot of choice was well beyond the airport. It sickened
me to barrel past it on my way to the Whitestone Expressway, in the dark and
the rain, unable even to pour a cup of coffee from my thermos without sloshing
the coffee all over the dashboard. The directions printed on the receipt I
printed out were in a cruelly tiny font, impossible to read by the roof light while
barrelling up the Whitestone Expressway in the dark and in the rain. Luckily, I
had called the Extended Stay Hotel the night before and had enough of a memory
of what the guy said to get as far as the service road off Exit 15, 20<sup>th</sup>
Avenue. There I could stop and read the fine print by the interior roof light
in the car. I had to continue to the light at 14<sup>th</sup> Avenue, turn left
and then left again onto the service road for the Whitestone Expressway
southbound, and the hotel would be on my right. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I found the driveway and went behind the hotel to the slots
numbered 1 through 50 (I chose slot No. 37), put the receipt on the dashboard,
as instructed, and lugged my stuff into the lobby of the Extended Stay Hotel. The
woman at the reception desk said approvingly that it takes “a cruel woman” to
get up early. Her Queens wisdom took me by surprise. As I waited for the shuttle
bus, I tried to parse it: The early bird gets the worm: I was early; ergo a $13
a day parking spot near LaGuardia was the worm. I guess it does take a certain
amount of determination bordering on cruelty to follow directions past
LaGuardia and make a U-turn on the Whitestone to reach the lobby of the
Extended Stay Hotel in time to catch the 5:30 shuttle bus to Terminal D, or
whatever, in the rain. But what was the alternative? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had had an extremely complicated weekend (my house guests’
house guests had house guests), and the day before leaving I had the
near-deranging experience, as I was getting into the elevator, of dropping my
keys—including the car keys—and watching them disappear soundlessly into the
gap beneath the elevator door. It was only minutes before the blessed super
restored them to me, but it was time enough to calculate the cost of taking a
car service to the airport and leaving the Eclair exactly where it was for
eight days, in its Tuesday-Friday parking spot, collecting tickets. Three
tickets, at $90 each, is $270, plus the car service, and then the inconvenience
of not having the car at the airport when I got back and not having it in
Rockaway, either. I guess it was worth it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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End of placemat.</div>
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<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-6866579097859928252012-05-01T06:31:00.000-07:002012-05-02T09:23:47.671-07:00May Day<br />
Just like old times—sitting in the car in the rain in my old 7:30-8 spot, on the Tuesday-Friday side of the street, as a predator lurks double-parked across the street. There’s always the hope that the streetsweeper overslept and the broom is still in the garage, but no: thar she goes, flashing and whirring in my rearview mirror. We move diagonally, like synchronized parkers, then jockey back into place, and by 7:40 it’s all over. We are good till Friday.<br />
<br />
Big drops of rain roll down my windshield, on the <i>inside</i>. I have sprung a leak behind the rearview mirror. The Éclair has been back in the city for a few weeks now, peacefully occupying space in the Sanctuary, which I held on to over a weekend in Rockaway with a bold maneuver: I drove to the spot with my friend from New Hampshire, and gave it to her with the cooperation of several motorists who were double-parked. (Note that I have spelled "cooperation" without the two dots over the second "o" and see my highly <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html#entry-more">controversial post on the diaeresis</a> on the New Yorker Web site.) And when Live Free or Die left town, on Sunday morning, we made the switch again, this time without an audience.<br />
<br />
The night before, I had parked on my own street. Traffic was heavy—it was the day of the Sikh parade—and I was lucky to nose into a spot at the head of the street, with my rear bumper slightly infringing on the crosswalk. I came out the next day to find on the windshield not a ticket but a slip of paper informing me that an accident report could be obtained at the local police precinct for ten dollars. I circled the car . . . the only damage I saw was to the right rear bumper, which had come loose at the flap where it wraps around the side. I could probably fix it with a large wad of bubble gum.<br />
<br />
I went to the precinct anyway, out of curiosity. I was told that the ten dollars had to be in the form of a money order, so I went away and came back, only to find out that the report had not yet been filed. The lady told me to call later, and of course I forgot. I was kind of relieved not to have to hang around there longer—it’s such a dingy, inhospitable place. They did not offer me any of the baked goods prominently on display. As time passes, it becomes increasingly unlikely that I will return for the accident report.<br />
<br />
Recently someone referred to the Éclair as the Tortilla. I hope that doesn’t turn out to be prophetic.MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-36632659288943510752012-04-13T09:36:00.006-07:002012-04-13T09:47:26.453-07:00Comma Shaker<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWg784wRh-yacSUSh8rvHlhSregm1HA9MZatTV17Oz9O04qx8u0cUXRovz-3sFZGaFnjRPHsc6KWwGrSwDE82XWQqx6IAmpURo5kxOz3iDw658dwnCAMBqsIQypjklDTX7tCKDjFn6y2k/s1600/comma-shaker.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWg784wRh-yacSUSh8rvHlhSregm1HA9MZatTV17Oz9O04qx8u0cUXRovz-3sFZGaFnjRPHsc6KWwGrSwDE82XWQqx6IAmpURo5kxOz3iDw658dwnCAMBqsIQypjklDTX7tCKDjFn6y2k/s320/comma-shaker.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730927608279967122" /></a><br />Much to my surprise, a piece that I was persuaded to write about punctuation has attracted a lot of attention on The New Yorker's Web site. Who would have thought that <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/in-defense-of-commas.html">the comma</a> would interest people as much as my other hot topics, parking spots and cleaning ladies?MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-16572349511862066822012-04-09T13:48:00.016-07:002012-04-09T19:07:55.229-07:00Easter Parade<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi5NnrKH_umgf_nZhDRoTCz3ngzLStQeRr9mWzJMTOTd8vBgfnq2ReblVw6GUHZLzWzitBwLuxKZivLW0o0wEfb27SlBmrErHkQ9alSaeLRnXvpdN6an1SfsydpRkcukDBJ34fMVSXFWk/s1600/Cathedral.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi5NnrKH_umgf_nZhDRoTCz3ngzLStQeRr9mWzJMTOTd8vBgfnq2ReblVw6GUHZLzWzitBwLuxKZivLW0o0wEfb27SlBmrErHkQ9alSaeLRnXvpdN6an1SfsydpRkcukDBJ34fMVSXFWk/s400/Cathedral.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729506559820041698" /></a><br />This was a classic hat to spot outside the cathedral.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8K10o2UM2lcsubevVdNqdozHfgFAhC8U0WzofoOwMgbOqahyphenhyphenur3c7RxegVWzJex6SFMpp_M0aYQ5EPHv0Hhyphenhyphen6DWQOmqZhVrK5UB9uixSWiNdOVvqsg2uv9G53nGkeN-r4WigAQmR8hP4/s1600/Coneheads.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8K10o2UM2lcsubevVdNqdozHfgFAhC8U0WzofoOwMgbOqahyphenhyphenur3c7RxegVWzJex6SFMpp_M0aYQ5EPHv0Hhyphenhyphen6DWQOmqZhVrK5UB9uixSWiNdOVvqsg2uv9G53nGkeN-r4WigAQmR8hP4/s400/Coneheads.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729506861624465090" /></a><br />Others were less traditional, but you still got the connection (Coneheads, the Egg Man).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj1v-PgKx8TT9R3zMtNjXhik2Q8KewaquDiWDOtCWUnD9npev2WTGedsSqhbzVKsNJ7ilATNLmZndeXLNjnU-UqVe2-ETxNLyMcXuGQP15snzkeZfe3gLpzrkvbTgkUNKsS_Q_iTK6S4E/s1600/Easter+Parade%253AEgg+Man.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj1v-PgKx8TT9R3zMtNjXhik2Q8KewaquDiWDOtCWUnD9npev2WTGedsSqhbzVKsNJ7ilATNLmZndeXLNjnU-UqVe2-ETxNLyMcXuGQP15snzkeZfe3gLpzrkvbTgkUNKsS_Q_iTK6S4E/s400/Easter+Parade%253AEgg+Man.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729578946734468658" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEnt6Dt5FGdzvTtCiFHOzWWIAkbmqLb2ysNwNFUc3Q7LSJV-AqPraOXMMQuRozq2VXt-Rx26y2vyUktdR_Nf0W4UUTuL5WVjahb4s-NvGBSaq9GO0-Iym05qxny6ebHAIMeRwtcw8WrnA/s1600/Flamingo.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEnt6Dt5FGdzvTtCiFHOzWWIAkbmqLb2ysNwNFUc3Q7LSJV-AqPraOXMMQuRozq2VXt-Rx26y2vyUktdR_Nf0W4UUTuL5WVjahb4s-NvGBSaq9GO0-Iym05qxny6ebHAIMeRwtcw8WrnA/s400/Flamingo.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729507203588676450" /></a><br />Birds were popular.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3n4_37RYQ3Co1SzcKoZT-iC9_23A-wmjewRBy4uvFgRd2aoNVnF1uEx-9fTSwdKQApq1weKnnKES7clVbYiNQc_Ie5_DC4nRFJ0dAFytHtuh0wYBTxhfd7BTlbV7nvB2hnCT8wQwDgHA/s1600/swan.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3n4_37RYQ3Co1SzcKoZT-iC9_23A-wmjewRBy4uvFgRd2aoNVnF1uEx-9fTSwdKQApq1weKnnKES7clVbYiNQc_Ie5_DC4nRFJ0dAFytHtuh0wYBTxhfd7BTlbV7nvB2hnCT8wQwDgHA/s400/swan.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729507408996551986" /></a><br />As were dogs:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglkkUEC0cWnZZidrUdxRqzK5F0qUnK_WqfuLTstogt6RRdhKx8LO9Vguu9_5cRTuI4VPhP7klJ9J6Pyfb1V22uXVf8N1V6UUgZ8OpNnM-QKV1Z32azvmtqp9dCZL3GYc6NtuDj2vzjUVw/s1600/dog.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglkkUEC0cWnZZidrUdxRqzK5F0qUnK_WqfuLTstogt6RRdhKx8LO9Vguu9_5cRTuI4VPhP7klJ9J6Pyfb1V22uXVf8N1V6UUgZ8OpNnM-QKV1Z32azvmtqp9dCZL3GYc6NtuDj2vzjUVw/s400/dog.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729507677263206178" /></a><br />And various forms of locomotion:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SSrhIYnBHJhU5l3lk-1UwSKmqD607joMMfainQB503eSuhZXv6akkdDA_GxgT2m-ahuQ1wOyxqH7jOUYlvCYIdGTmrmuQvwc1QWnF7Y2rLEFr9wD_Q_CzysM8H8EY3ajdGLjNbJ7P8g/s1600/Bunny+Hop.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SSrhIYnBHJhU5l3lk-1UwSKmqD607joMMfainQB503eSuhZXv6akkdDA_GxgT2m-ahuQ1wOyxqH7jOUYlvCYIdGTmrmuQvwc1QWnF7Y2rLEFr9wD_Q_CzysM8H8EY3ajdGLjNbJ7P8g/s400/Bunny+Hop.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729505867016237954" /></a><br />These bunnies were hopping right along. (Note the shoes.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdItGgkfzWlgDNQ4FZqpLadJubHi6UKVuhLyRktKVgphN7tNroaWnEY23SVJbEpwK-nfnHxs2ABjdjg2J-5BKefdkgztGFkcNB1kbGgGKk2ur3aqcZ04UxWcCo4l8Bj7VWdfJRV81EmGk/s1600/segway.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdItGgkfzWlgDNQ4FZqpLadJubHi6UKVuhLyRktKVgphN7tNroaWnEY23SVJbEpwK-nfnHxs2ABjdjg2J-5BKefdkgztGFkcNB1kbGgGKk2ur3aqcZ04UxWcCo4l8Bj7VWdfJRV81EmGk/s400/segway.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729506351860891586" /></a><br />Best use of a Segway ever!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm38suQj58y5cFFdxj7R5zv4h3tByLb60gL5j_NtGXztrPO_rEz8h88c_gid2cdUk478FRioKi8CDmHab_qYZGtMRwMTdOG0I-HJuisNKmFnV5korAgsGaT-1ET0W-Plx7gRl4Fcosxe0/s1600/Tin+Man.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm38suQj58y5cFFdxj7R5zv4h3tByLb60gL5j_NtGXztrPO_rEz8h88c_gid2cdUk478FRioKi8CDmHab_qYZGtMRwMTdOG0I-HJuisNKmFnV5korAgsGaT-1ET0W-Plx7gRl4Fcosxe0/s400/Tin+Man.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729506155522966290" /></a><br />The Tin Man was there (talking on his cell phone).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOmxsjDDbjZaxCUu9ySqIILvqW75O4u-naqn14go8hwhl1vXoG8EHleb2bIB0lPtEOx0NhXmQv6rdZYyE4_pzvuSHwxbl1mtEZDJPhCX31g2l0EdB2739Q9OLh8L7OQuPg4nv8uEO2gdM/s1600/walrus.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOmxsjDDbjZaxCUu9ySqIILvqW75O4u-naqn14go8hwhl1vXoG8EHleb2bIB0lPtEOx0NhXmQv6rdZYyE4_pzvuSHwxbl1mtEZDJPhCX31g2l0EdB2739Q9OLh8L7OQuPg4nv8uEO2gdM/s400/walrus.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729507939092971282" /></a><br /><br />Is he the Walrus? Is the walrus a symbol of Easter?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH1qOJIinT-ZloiSUdC93c53aA4dmPDRlK66m03w-PEX6eu6S_MIR6dnQr8EYZhvf4qdRvDUhN2OZsG36LS-8xxV703fw0Eqpaf4Qn4Xb_BU0ar9RMU5dpltRlH6CqQ9zcDelOIaIGD6M/s1600/Easter+Parade%253ALlama%253F.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH1qOJIinT-ZloiSUdC93c53aA4dmPDRlK66m03w-PEX6eu6S_MIR6dnQr8EYZhvf4qdRvDUhN2OZsG36LS-8xxV703fw0Eqpaf4Qn4Xb_BU0ar9RMU5dpltRlH6CqQ9zcDelOIaIGD6M/s400/Easter+Parade%253ALlama%253F.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729578432935522082" /></a><br />I don't get it. Is that the Easter Bunny's wife? <br /><br />I actually said this. I who went dressed as a paschal pirate.MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-20444494429851813352012-03-27T14:07:00.012-07:002012-03-27T21:19:01.323-07:00Foot Notes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMQTgaZd5B_9MicDvZhT_HVirj7aY14cQ91h_cIY-rztuHDAYCrdfTanxcUCoMRSqalptbg9WT8VJ4xuPhKogNeh21wzTZB6Zxv4blwVqnk5LdY9o1_gXUn4m8xss1mFXkqJENq7w46l0/s1600/Foot+Notes%252C+illustrated.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMQTgaZd5B_9MicDvZhT_HVirj7aY14cQ91h_cIY-rztuHDAYCrdfTanxcUCoMRSqalptbg9WT8VJ4xuPhKogNeh21wzTZB6Zxv4blwVqnk5LdY9o1_gXUn4m8xss1mFXkqJENq7w46l0/s320/Foot+Notes%252C+illustrated.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724686745678158498" /></a><br />Some of you may have been wondering what ever happened to the Alternate Side Parker’s right foot. Did it ever heal? Or did she Google her foot surgeon after the fact and discover that he was a barbaric quack? What sort of alternative therapies did she seek for chronic irritability due to minor foot pain? What finally worked?<br /><br />Answers: Sort of. Yes. Acupuncture. Herein lies a tale.<br /><br />I did not go out to the bungalow much this winter, though it was so mild. My neighbors, after scaring me last fall by acquiring a car of their own, sent that car back (it had a rusty underbelly) and kept the Éclair, using it to take their little boy to nursery school, thus continuing our winter long-distance valet-parking arrangement. The last time I saw the car was when I got my winter coat out of storage, in the trunk, in December. That day, I puttered around the house for a few hours—my friend C. had come out with me—and only when I was leaving, after I had potted up the last of the tulip bulbs and put the padlock on the door to the back porch, and had come around to insert the hook into the eye on the inside of the porch door, for added security, did I notice that there was a hook, but there weren’t no eye. Just then, C. put her hand to the screen next to the door and lifted it like a flap. Security had been breached. <br /><br />Because I am always trying to stretch the season, I hadn’t completely closed up the house, which means locking the windows by the rather primitive method of sticking nails through the frames. So anyone who gained access to the porch would be able to open the windows and climb in. I accosted a neighbor and asked him if he’d noticed anyone in my bungalow, and he said, with maddening casualness, “Oh, yeah.” Another neighbor had noticed it, too, he said, but they didn’t have my phone number, so they didn’t do anything. This neighbor, whom I call Pee-wee, and to whom I now reluctantly divulged my phone number, is the kind of guy who, when you take an old falling-apart grill that belonged to your neighbor on the other side who got evicted and that you were tired of looking at and put out on the street for the garbagemen, retrieves said grill and hauls it back and installs it on the other side of the house, where you get to look at it some more. Once, last summer, I heard someone calling my name and went to the door to find Pee-wee, on his bicycle, the basket full of pesticides—partially used spritzers of aphid poison, etc.—that he had scavenged and that he now offered to me like a door-to-door salesman: "Ma'am, can I interest you in these perfectly good insecticides?" And I accepted! So now I am indebted to my neighbor for an unwanted arsenal of bug poison. What was I thinking?<br /><br />But I digress … The stapler, of course, picked that moment to run out of staples, and it was not immediately clear how to replenish them—at least, not to me and not to Pee-wee—but while Pee-wee went home to get his own stapler, C. read the directions, inserted fresh staples, and calmly reattached the screen to the porch frame. I fretted and went around with a paper cup of rusty nails to drive through the window frames, and made sure nothing was missing (there is not much in the bungalow worth taking), and that no one had slept in my bed or defiled my space with empty Budweiser cans. I had, after all, been in the house for at least two hours without noticing anything wrong, so if there was a squatter at least he was a highly respectful one.<br /><br />It was only when we were on our way back to Manhattan that I realized the upside of the situation: it was not that I had engendered good karma by giving shelter to the Bodhisattva on a rainy day but that for several hours after the squatter, in the crazed effort to secure the place with staples and fishing line, I completely forgot to remember that there had ever been anything wrong with my foot.<br /><br />(Cartoon by Joe Dator; The New Yorker, February 13, 2012.)MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-53073649785337205272012-03-19T15:01:00.010-07:002012-03-19T20:36:31.151-07:00A Tale of Two Spots<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3PntrZuux09NaUwaNZBQ2URZGo3rNX1eYzrBZR0yEzFKvaW6heKk01X1bJOmjYWAwnu8Gk95DxBwpHiHusESx0pBip4lyombjtgirR0r-9uQ7H4qdGpbAF2Ch8aPRVuoF8TiPlXkJwhg/s1600/9%253A11+memorial.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3PntrZuux09NaUwaNZBQ2URZGo3rNX1eYzrBZR0yEzFKvaW6heKk01X1bJOmjYWAwnu8Gk95DxBwpHiHusESx0pBip4lyombjtgirR0r-9uQ7H4qdGpbAF2Ch8aPRVuoF8TiPlXkJwhg/s400/9%253A11+memorial.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5721731866060047650" /></a><br /><br />I went to see the 9/11 Memorial with a friend over the weekend. Admission is free, but you have to reserve tickets in advance and show up at the appointed time. Our time was ten-thirty on Sunday, March 18th. <br /><br />My friend had driven down from Massachusetts and was willing to give up her parking spot to take the car to the financial district. “How likely are we to find a parking spot down there?” she asked. I honestly had no idea. My friends think I know my way around, and although I used to live in the financial district, I have not tried to park there since the day I moved here from Vermont in my Plymouth Fury II.<br /><br />It didn’t begin well. The Google map I had printed out did not reflect any of the street closings surrounding the construction of the new World Trade Center or the changing traffic patterns of the Bloomberg administration, a circumstance that was complicated by my deep skepticism and resistance to authority, so that if a sign saying “Chambers St. Detour—Broadway, Brooklyn Bridge” had an arrow pointing left, I said "Turn right." After many thwarted byways, we followed the detour and eventually found an amazing parking spot on Cortlandt Street, right in front of Century 21. Too bad we weren't shopping for underwear. <br /><br />We passed Zuccotti Park, which was conspicuously empty and being power-washed, and walked to the southeast rim of the construction site. It hadn’t occurred to me until just that morning that security would necessarily be tight at the site, and sure enough: it was just like an airport, only you didn’t have to take your shoes off—the maze and the trays and the conveyor belts, X rays, and metal detectors, ending in a chaotic bottleneck. Once we were out on the open field, there was still a tendency of the people to move straight ahead in a column.<br /><br />As you approach the memorial, you see a big square pit of a waterfall in the “footprint” of one of the towers: water combs down four walls into a pool and then pours into a center well, which is black and apparently without bottom. It is an image of heartbreak. The names of the dead are carved in the stone around the edges, and you can put your hand under the slab into the water. It was a gray morning, so the elements—the sky, the stone, the water—were gray and black and silver. An identical fountain (but with other names) occupies the footprint of the other tower. There is also a building containing old beams from the Twin Towers. It is designed to look shattered.<br /><br />Neither my friend nor I had lost anyone on 9/11. I’m not even sure why I wanted to go down there. It was impossible not to be moved by the falling water and the sense of loss and the thousands of names engraved in stone. After slowly walking the rims of both fountains and running our hands over the names, we found our way out. <br /><br />I was completely turned around. “Is that where I said the Hudson was?” I asked. Back in the car, I thought we were headed north when we were going east, following that damned detour again, along Chambers Street and over the Brooklyn Bridge to Atlantic Avenue and Washington Avenue, which runs alongside the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, and where we scored a generous parking spot amid daffodils and winter honeysuckle, and saw an apricot tree in bloom on our way to the magnolias—saucer magnolias, star magnolias, hybrids, white-white, creamy-white, pale pink, vivid pink, yellowish, with that wonderful thick flesh and that faint perfume you don’t catch until you’re at the end of a very deep breath.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikv7RcfBbtte-rU051vH1gof1fqcSlqSLcnRgoxg7tTtXnTkbxbJ0iszG1vRLz1OKBxG6QL-QHj00OkiZoT-oCOq5ZCAwt7iFzw1KKTTIBlexL8kSoEEuuqMhUcX4Ip607Afvnk5ILD_A/s1600/daffodil+hill.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikv7RcfBbtte-rU051vH1gof1fqcSlqSLcnRgoxg7tTtXnTkbxbJ0iszG1vRLz1OKBxG6QL-QHj00OkiZoT-oCOq5ZCAwt7iFzw1KKTTIBlexL8kSoEEuuqMhUcX4Ip607Afvnk5ILD_A/s400/daffodil+hill.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5721733735786417394" /></a>MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-17402111498467116112012-03-16T11:19:00.014-07:002012-03-20T06:53:16.342-07:00ShoupistasFriday's Times had a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/program-aims-to-make-the-streets-of-san-francisco-easier-to-park-on.html">front-page piece about parking in San Francisco,</a> featuring our friend Donald Shoup, the parking professor at U.C.L.A. He starts one chapter of his book, "The High Cost of Free Parking," by quoting George Costanza, who, like many of us, felt it was his birthright to park for free. Professor Shoup says that, in the great scheme of things, there is no such thing as a free parking spot. His idea is that the more a metered space costs, the sooner a driver will leave it, making it available for the next guy. The most expensive metered parking spots on the streets of San Francisco cost $4.50 an hour. (On my block in New York it's $3 an hour.) The city has embedded sensors in the streets to track the popularity and availability of parking spots. Professor Shoup envisions a parking utopia, with all the revenue from the meters going toward maintenance of the streets the meters are on and improvements in public transportation. <br /><br />I looked for Professor Shoup on Facebook, seeking to "like" him, but what came up was a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVteHncimV0">YouTube video of the Professor,</a> looking all tweedy, with a bow tie and a beard, cycling the campus like Mr. Chips. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDZFZroXZ6iy3bUXtdWdAHbBvZ47Obe3Q3aieWYJjcDqv92w3BhxquT2HUUt0tJri1q2OKvmOhI-H9FMMuJ69u483EBiIr48xMrFQBFXRuYSY5U5bUZThXQ3zutfcOizAqWH328cn7Mds/s1600/Shoup.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 252px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDZFZroXZ6iy3bUXtdWdAHbBvZ47Obe3Q3aieWYJjcDqv92w3BhxquT2HUUt0tJri1q2OKvmOhI-H9FMMuJ69u483EBiIr48xMrFQBFXRuYSY5U5bUZThXQ3zutfcOizAqWH328cn7Mds/s320/Shoup.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5721976762949667298" /></a>What an odd academic subspecialty: parking theory. And yet how admirable: here is a guy who not only does not pay for parking but makes parking pay him. I suppose I should break down and buy his book to keep in the car in case of emergency—that is, in case I am sitting in the car on an alternate-side morning with nothing to read. But somehow by buying the book (a textbook, which costs anywhere from $29 to $60) I would be spending money on parking and thereby demonstrating the truth of the Professor's theories. This guy is a genius.MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3461105532452403357.post-36097798212549141842012-03-14T10:30:00.007-07:002012-03-14T11:00:35.374-07:00Second Cousins<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_jO3iryqWkB1miKGX-9bO3S77D1xOWiU5VGwXG07FrWNj0cGuiNf8x43eJtAg-JQxoNUbNCWO2ZUQBUJN4DGiJJSupJ2916sWNwpFIjWY_u6Z57CU8H4DMgPO9VENicV7PMCLiPFMC0w/s1600/Dee+and+Dennis.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_jO3iryqWkB1miKGX-9bO3S77D1xOWiU5VGwXG07FrWNj0cGuiNf8x43eJtAg-JQxoNUbNCWO2ZUQBUJN4DGiJJSupJ2916sWNwpFIjWY_u6Z57CU8H4DMgPO9VENicV7PMCLiPFMC0w/s400/Dee+and+Dennis.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5719809577788470738" /></a><br /><br />I recently posted a piece on the New Yorker Web site in which I recycled a photo from the family reunion, on the occasion of my cousin Dennis Kucinich's loss of his seat in the House of Representatives. (<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/03/cousin-kucinich.html">Here</a> is the link.) I also recycled a mistake in the nature of my kinship with Dennis Kucinich. and here is the correction: Dennis Kucinich, shown here with Baby Dee at the family reunion in 2009, is my father's first cousin once removed and my second cousin. <br /><br />Various cousins have tried to impress this on me over the years, and I hope I finally have it right. I don't know how to work in the fact that my father and Dennis's mother were double cousins without sounding kinky.<br /><br />With thanks to Nancy Saegel and Mary Ellen Nowel (both first cousins), and abiding affection for Dennis Kucinich, even though he deleted my post on his Facebook page.MJN/NYChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14090191804140640599noreply@blogger.com0