It took me a full half hour this morning to get into position to park: a twenty-minute walk to the car (in a distant 11:30-1 spot) and an agonizing ten-minute drive to a nearby 8:30-10 block. By 8:50 A.M., I was double-parked and waiting for the broom. It came at about nine, later than usual, and by 9:02 I was happily situated in front of a building whose doorman kept popping out to sweep up ginkgo leaves. A generous spot in front of me was claimed by a silver Lexus at 9:09.
For a while last week, I was a two-car family. A friend came down from New Hampshire late on Thursday, and we were up at eight on Friday to find her a spot. I didn’t want to worry her, but I was not that optimistic. Friday was Veterans Day, and alternate-side parking was suspended: it is never easy to find a spot under those circumstances, because no one moves. Then again it was a Friday, when people sometimes leave town early for the weekend. Still, Veterans Day meant a Veterans Day Parade, and veterans driving into the city to march in it.
My friend was at the wheel, crawling along, looking for a spot on blocks where I know there is no legal parking, and I kept waggling my fingers at the road ahead and saying, “Zip along.” We drove east, we drove north, we drove west. “Stop!” I said. “I thought I saw a spot. Back up.”
“I don’t like backing up,” she said, and she inched backward reluctantly to the spot I had seen, in front of a fire hydrant I had not seen. Oops. Zip along.
We drove west, we drove south, we drove east again, and I saw a possible spot near a fire hydrant and directed her into it. I swung open the passenger door, intending to hop out and see if we were too close (we were), and a car that was squeezing past us had to swerve to avoid getting doored. I apologized left and right, literally: to the driver on my right and to the friend on my left, who had had visions of a delightful weekend spent shopping for a used car door. I never don’t look when I open the car door. There must have been something about driving around with my friend that made the streets feel like my own driveway.
Yesterday, the Times ran an Op-Ed piece about how the alternate-side parking calendar fosters tolerance ( “Alternate Side Parking Brings Peace”): it “is actually a model for managing the challenges of diversity.” It is true that car-owning infidels are fine with Islam if it means we don’t have to move our cars on Idul-Adha. Occidental parkers love Asian New Year, and parkers of all persuasions celebrate the Jewish holidays. Perhaps Jewish car owners feel more kindly toward the Blessed Virgin Mary when alternate side is suspended for the Immaculate Conception (coming up, on December 8th). Many religious holidays—Passover and Easter, for instance—are determined by the sun and the moon. Parking (or, rather, not having to move your car on these precious days) makes you feel you’re part of something bigger than you are—a part of history, a child of the universe.
But as a religion in itself, Alternate-Side Parking has a major disadvantage: it doesn’t offer much in the way of an afterlife. About the best you could hope for is to be reincarnated as someone who can afford a garage.
We drove south, we drove west, we drove east, executing a U-turn as necessary.
The author of the Op-Ed piece, Alan Draper, is identified as “a political scientist at St. Lawrence University.” His idea is that the European Union, some citizens of which have exhibited xenophobia, could use a little of the spirit that animates alternate-side parking. In fact, on Veterans Day my friend and I were thinking about Europe. Our fathers were both veterans of the Second World War. My father was in the Infantry, and was part of the Normandy Invasion. Besides England and France, he did a tour of duty in Alaska, and after he got home he never wanted to go anyplace again. Her father was in the Air Force, a bomber pilot who got shot down over enemy territory and sent to a German P.O.W. camp. He traded the cigarettes in his care packages for chocolate and sugar to scrape together the ingredients to make fudge. After the war, he was famous for his prisoner-of-war fudge.
Finally, at the far end of the block, between a car and a crosswalk, there was a space for us, in the last spot before the river. I realized later that we two daughters of veterans of foreign wars were parked in the same spot, two blocks apart. Talk about parallel parking.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Bicyculture
If the weather report featured a beauty index, last Sunday would have set a record. It was dazzlingly clear, sunny but not hot, with no humidity and barely a breath of wind. It was the day of the New York Marathon, in which I was not running, though I always get the urge, during the marathon season, to buy sporting goods. This year it was bike accessories: a copper bell (ding-ding!) and two lights (it’s the law), on rubbery straps, which can be removed to foil thieves.
So on Sunday I was riding my bike on the boardwalk, having given up an excellent parking spot to spend the day at the beach, when I came upon the birth of a new sport, one that I think may be indigenous to Rockaway: duneboarding. Sand deposited by the hurricane had been bulldozed into three big hills on the beach just west of 116th Street, and the neighborhood kids were “sledding” down them on their Boogie boards. Some kids were sitting, some were doing belly-flops, others were lying on their backs, in the luge position. The sand made for a nice soft landing, and then the kids dragged their boards back up the hill to go again. There were dozens of kids, from toddlers to teens, climbing and sliding and shrieking on the artificial dunes. Maybe they’ve been doing this in the Sahara for millennia, but if so why has there never been a bid to make duneboarding an Olympic sport?
I was back in Manhattan by a little after sunset, which occurred at 4:47 P.M. on the first day of standard time, cruising for a spot. I was determined to find a Tuesday-Friday spot, to take advantage of the High Alternate Side Holidays—Idul-Adha and Election Day on Tuesday, and Veterans Day on Friday. I spurned a Monday-Thursday spot, hard as it is not to take the first spot you come to. I have been trying to figure out how to combine bike riding with car parking. On days when I have to sit in the car, should I ride my bike over to where the car is parked, lock it up there, and come back for it in order to ride to work? Or do I dare to put the bike where I hope to park the car, so I won’t have to backtrack? Last Friday, I couldn't decide, so I took the train to work.
The new bike lanes were the subject of an excellent article in the Times this week, in the Arts section, by Michael Kimmelman (“Pleasures of Life in the Slow Lane”), who made some of the same observations that I was just about to make. For instance, now that Janette Sadik-Kahn, Mayor Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner, has built more bike lanes, the same thing is happening with bikes as happened with cars when Robert Moses built more bridges: there are more of them.
The last time I biked to work regularly was during the Koch Administration. He had painted some lines on Sixth Avenue and called it a bike lane, but by the time Rudy Giuliani took over, those lines had been erased. No one took them very seriously anyway. The new bike lanes are more permanent-looking, and some of them are downright dedicated, with medians of potted plants or lanes of parked cars between the bike lane and heavy traffic, and even an extra lens in traffic lights to regulate both bikes and cars in turning lanes. I was curious to see if I would actually feel safe in a bike lane. And the answer is:
No, not particularly. And it’s not because of the trucks double-parked, or the taxis dropping off passengers, or the jaywalkers popping out like Jack-in-the-boxes from between parked cars. It’s because of the other bicyclists. With rare exceptions, they are as cut-throat as speeding taxi-drivers.
My model for bicycling is European: I think of the matrons I saw in the French countryside, pedalling serenely into the village for a cabbage or whatever, wearing flower-print housedresses, bedroom slippers, and maybe an apron. In Ravenna in winter, Italian women in fur coats cycle majestically alongside the canals. New York City is not exactly the People’s Republic of China yet, but there are throngs in the new bike lanes. O.K., I exaggerate: at one red light I counted nine bikes waiting to cross the street. But I do not exaggerate when I say that everybody is trying to get ahead of everybody else.
Biking in the city does have its aesthetic pleasures. If not for the (unprotected) bike lane on Sixth Avenue, I would probably not go out of my way to visit the flower district. And from the (protected) bike lane on First Avenue I admired a brick wall with ivy growing nine stories high and changing color. The bike lane on Broadway below Times Square is a joke, clotted with oblivious pedestrians, tourists lugging wheeled suitcases, and panhandlers in Minnie Mouse costumes. But Robert Moses’ Law also works in reverse: if you narrow Broadway down to one lane and have it dead-end at Herald Square, the cars go elsewhere, leaving a few precious blocks of midtown wide open for bicyclists.
The first day I rode to work, I got all the way to Times Square before realizing that although I had remembered my Kryptonite lock, I had forgotten the key. I had been planning on checking out this garage that rents parking spots for bikes, so I went over there: the Hippodrome. “Sure, we can lend you a lock,” the manager said. I gave them my credit card, they lent me a chain and a lock, and I signed up to park my bike in midtown for twenty dollars a month.
Am I crazy? Who would have believed that a car owner who goes to so much trouble to find free parking on the street would pay to garage a bicycle? The fact is that it’s not so easy to find a pole to lock your bike to in midtown. There are no more old-fashioned parking meters—they have all been replaced by bulky MuniMeters. The bike racks that the city has provided are always at capacity, at least in midtown (another example of “Build it and they will come”). Twenty dollars a month for a safe place to park a bike seems like a bargain—it costs ten times that to garage a car in the city. And I enjoy coasting onto the smooth floor of the Hippodrome, past the arm lowered to keep cars from leaving without paying.
Bike parking is vertical: you heft your front tire over a hook high on the wall and line up both tires along the groove of a rod that extends below it. It is not without its surprises. The other day after work, I went to get my bike and found a huge heavy chain on it, like something that belonged to Marley’s Ghost. I went to the office to see what was up. I still had time to get where I was going, so I wasn’t unduly upset. “Someone has put a big heavy chain on my bike,” I told the attendant. He came to take a look and then went back and checked the computer. Apparently, the monthly fee had not yet been charged to my credit card. He took care of that, and put a little blue sticker on my bike, so the inspectors would not incarcerate it again. Now I know what happens if a cyclist tries to park for free in the Hippodrome. It’s the bike equivalent of having a boot put on your car.
Meanwhile, back in the car, cruising for a parking spot last Sunday evening, I set my watch to amuse myself by seeing exactly how long it would take: twenty minutes, including a few minutes spent in a spot that I thought was a bonanza until a study of the signs revealed that it was in a No Standing Monday-Friday zone. Finally, at the far end of my range, in the last spot before the river, I got lucky. While I was getting my stuff out of the trunk, a car pulled up and the driver asked if I was going out. I smiled and shook my head no. He gave me a thumbs-up to acknowledge my triumph in finding a spot that would be good for the next nine days. In the morning, I rode my bike back to the car to get a jar of mayonnaise and some Kalamata olives out of the trunk (I had cleaned out the refrigerator in Rockaway) and passed a tow truck removing a car from the No Standing zone.
So on Sunday I was riding my bike on the boardwalk, having given up an excellent parking spot to spend the day at the beach, when I came upon the birth of a new sport, one that I think may be indigenous to Rockaway: duneboarding. Sand deposited by the hurricane had been bulldozed into three big hills on the beach just west of 116th Street, and the neighborhood kids were “sledding” down them on their Boogie boards. Some kids were sitting, some were doing belly-flops, others were lying on their backs, in the luge position. The sand made for a nice soft landing, and then the kids dragged their boards back up the hill to go again. There were dozens of kids, from toddlers to teens, climbing and sliding and shrieking on the artificial dunes. Maybe they’ve been doing this in the Sahara for millennia, but if so why has there never been a bid to make duneboarding an Olympic sport?
I was back in Manhattan by a little after sunset, which occurred at 4:47 P.M. on the first day of standard time, cruising for a spot. I was determined to find a Tuesday-Friday spot, to take advantage of the High Alternate Side Holidays—Idul-Adha and Election Day on Tuesday, and Veterans Day on Friday. I spurned a Monday-Thursday spot, hard as it is not to take the first spot you come to. I have been trying to figure out how to combine bike riding with car parking. On days when I have to sit in the car, should I ride my bike over to where the car is parked, lock it up there, and come back for it in order to ride to work? Or do I dare to put the bike where I hope to park the car, so I won’t have to backtrack? Last Friday, I couldn't decide, so I took the train to work.
The new bike lanes were the subject of an excellent article in the Times this week, in the Arts section, by Michael Kimmelman (“Pleasures of Life in the Slow Lane”), who made some of the same observations that I was just about to make. For instance, now that Janette Sadik-Kahn, Mayor Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner, has built more bike lanes, the same thing is happening with bikes as happened with cars when Robert Moses built more bridges: there are more of them.
The last time I biked to work regularly was during the Koch Administration. He had painted some lines on Sixth Avenue and called it a bike lane, but by the time Rudy Giuliani took over, those lines had been erased. No one took them very seriously anyway. The new bike lanes are more permanent-looking, and some of them are downright dedicated, with medians of potted plants or lanes of parked cars between the bike lane and heavy traffic, and even an extra lens in traffic lights to regulate both bikes and cars in turning lanes. I was curious to see if I would actually feel safe in a bike lane. And the answer is:
No, not particularly. And it’s not because of the trucks double-parked, or the taxis dropping off passengers, or the jaywalkers popping out like Jack-in-the-boxes from between parked cars. It’s because of the other bicyclists. With rare exceptions, they are as cut-throat as speeding taxi-drivers.
My model for bicycling is European: I think of the matrons I saw in the French countryside, pedalling serenely into the village for a cabbage or whatever, wearing flower-print housedresses, bedroom slippers, and maybe an apron. In Ravenna in winter, Italian women in fur coats cycle majestically alongside the canals. New York City is not exactly the People’s Republic of China yet, but there are throngs in the new bike lanes. O.K., I exaggerate: at one red light I counted nine bikes waiting to cross the street. But I do not exaggerate when I say that everybody is trying to get ahead of everybody else.
Biking in the city does have its aesthetic pleasures. If not for the (unprotected) bike lane on Sixth Avenue, I would probably not go out of my way to visit the flower district. And from the (protected) bike lane on First Avenue I admired a brick wall with ivy growing nine stories high and changing color. The bike lane on Broadway below Times Square is a joke, clotted with oblivious pedestrians, tourists lugging wheeled suitcases, and panhandlers in Minnie Mouse costumes. But Robert Moses’ Law also works in reverse: if you narrow Broadway down to one lane and have it dead-end at Herald Square, the cars go elsewhere, leaving a few precious blocks of midtown wide open for bicyclists.
The first day I rode to work, I got all the way to Times Square before realizing that although I had remembered my Kryptonite lock, I had forgotten the key. I had been planning on checking out this garage that rents parking spots for bikes, so I went over there: the Hippodrome. “Sure, we can lend you a lock,” the manager said. I gave them my credit card, they lent me a chain and a lock, and I signed up to park my bike in midtown for twenty dollars a month.
Am I crazy? Who would have believed that a car owner who goes to so much trouble to find free parking on the street would pay to garage a bicycle? The fact is that it’s not so easy to find a pole to lock your bike to in midtown. There are no more old-fashioned parking meters—they have all been replaced by bulky MuniMeters. The bike racks that the city has provided are always at capacity, at least in midtown (another example of “Build it and they will come”). Twenty dollars a month for a safe place to park a bike seems like a bargain—it costs ten times that to garage a car in the city. And I enjoy coasting onto the smooth floor of the Hippodrome, past the arm lowered to keep cars from leaving without paying.
Bike parking is vertical: you heft your front tire over a hook high on the wall and line up both tires along the groove of a rod that extends below it. It is not without its surprises. The other day after work, I went to get my bike and found a huge heavy chain on it, like something that belonged to Marley’s Ghost. I went to the office to see what was up. I still had time to get where I was going, so I wasn’t unduly upset. “Someone has put a big heavy chain on my bike,” I told the attendant. He came to take a look and then went back and checked the computer. Apparently, the monthly fee had not yet been charged to my credit card. He took care of that, and put a little blue sticker on my bike, so the inspectors would not incarcerate it again. Now I know what happens if a cyclist tries to park for free in the Hippodrome. It’s the bike equivalent of having a boot put on your car.
Meanwhile, back in the car, cruising for a parking spot last Sunday evening, I set my watch to amuse myself by seeing exactly how long it would take: twenty minutes, including a few minutes spent in a spot that I thought was a bonanza until a study of the signs revealed that it was in a No Standing Monday-Friday zone. Finally, at the far end of my range, in the last spot before the river, I got lucky. While I was getting my stuff out of the trunk, a car pulled up and the driver asked if I was going out. I smiled and shook my head no. He gave me a thumbs-up to acknowledge my triumph in finding a spot that would be good for the next nine days. In the morning, I rode my bike back to the car to get a jar of mayonnaise and some Kalamata olives out of the trunk (I had cleaned out the refrigerator in Rockaway) and passed a tow truck removing a car from the No Standing zone.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
King Tide
Sitting in the car at high tide on Thursday felt like camping in the rain. Hopes ran high that the streetsweeper wouldn’t come, but why would a little rain stop him? The cops were out: they waddled from car to car like members of the Wide Family, their chartreuse foul-weather gear stretched over the multiple items of police equipment padding their hips.
The Broom comes early on this block. On Monday, it rumbled around the corner at 8:40 A.M. Thursday it showed up at 8:44. That means that if you get here at nine looking for an 8:30-10 spot, you may be too late. But if you happen to be sitting here already, in a nice, single-car spot between a No Standing sign and a curb cut, once the Broom has passed, the pressure is off. You can turn off the lights and the windshield wipers, move the seat back, and enjoy the view: gingkos (still green), an ornate tower top, a line of pigeons silhouetted on a roof.
Last week, after getting the water shut off at the bungalow (let it snow!), I went down to the boatyard to turn in the lanyard—the red coil with the black plastic ring that fits over the ignition on my outboard—so that the motor can be put away properly for the winter. The boat has been out of the water since the hurricane.
I went out on the bay three or four times this summer: visited the BOATEL, the art project/hotel made of boats at the 59th Street Marina, and ran aground at low tide off Broad Channel (I had to use the oars as poles to get out of the muck and then row). But I had no engine trouble, and that, combined with being away a lot, made me decide not to put the boat back in the water. I like having a season where I can say I had no engine trouble.
Ahead of me, a car left its spot and zipped across the street to take a spot that that had just opened on the Tuesday-Friday side. No sooner had he pulled out than another car swam in. It was strangely silent in the car: I had to keep the windows rolled up against the rain. The only sound was the swish of tires on wet asphalt.
The marina boss had left for the weekend, so I put the lanyard in the office with a note and called to make sure he'd found it. I also wanted to ask if he'd heard about the king tide. It was in the Times on October 26th: “A king tide will be running Wednesday and Thursday because gravitational forces of the sun, the moon and the earth will be lined up in a cue shot of fleeting geometry and rare power.” (The article, by Jim Dwyer, was about how this extra-high tide was a harbinger of things to come: the ocean level has been rising and could be this high all the time by 2080.)
The Boss had not seen the Times. “That’s all I need,” he said. “Another high tide.” During Hurricane Irene, he had had a foot and a half of water in his house. “Did they say how high it would be?”
"One to two feet above normal."
“Didja hear I got robbed?” I had heard, but I wanted him to tell it. “The restaurant barge. Twice.“ The barge, formerly a restaurant, is moored behind the dock. I've been dying to get in there; I see that they've been working on it, but it doesn't look much like a restaurant yet.
"What did they get?" I asked
"Tools and liquor. There were five of them. They saw the liquor, so they came back for more. My good tools. We’re trying to catch them. We got cameras. We took fingerprints.” There are cops living on the dock, so they may very well catch them. He didn't sound as mad as he must have been when it happened. I heard he was in a really bad mood.
The garbage recycling truck pulled up alongside me and started crunching glass and plastic. When it moved on, the garbagemen followed it, on the sidewalk. One of them was wearing big orange gloves, rubber boots, and gold earrings—she was a garbage girl.
Across the street, in a pile of bulky recyclable items, was a memento mori: the grille off a small truck or an S.U.V., silver gray. “Don’t look at that,” I wanted to say to the Éclair. The rain had tapered off by the time I got out of the car, at ten. I'd been sitting there so long that in Jamaica Bay the king tide would have begun to ebb already.
The Broom comes early on this block. On Monday, it rumbled around the corner at 8:40 A.M. Thursday it showed up at 8:44. That means that if you get here at nine looking for an 8:30-10 spot, you may be too late. But if you happen to be sitting here already, in a nice, single-car spot between a No Standing sign and a curb cut, once the Broom has passed, the pressure is off. You can turn off the lights and the windshield wipers, move the seat back, and enjoy the view: gingkos (still green), an ornate tower top, a line of pigeons silhouetted on a roof.
Last week, after getting the water shut off at the bungalow (let it snow!), I went down to the boatyard to turn in the lanyard—the red coil with the black plastic ring that fits over the ignition on my outboard—so that the motor can be put away properly for the winter. The boat has been out of the water since the hurricane.
I went out on the bay three or four times this summer: visited the BOATEL, the art project/hotel made of boats at the 59th Street Marina, and ran aground at low tide off Broad Channel (I had to use the oars as poles to get out of the muck and then row). But I had no engine trouble, and that, combined with being away a lot, made me decide not to put the boat back in the water. I like having a season where I can say I had no engine trouble.
Ahead of me, a car left its spot and zipped across the street to take a spot that that had just opened on the Tuesday-Friday side. No sooner had he pulled out than another car swam in. It was strangely silent in the car: I had to keep the windows rolled up against the rain. The only sound was the swish of tires on wet asphalt.
The marina boss had left for the weekend, so I put the lanyard in the office with a note and called to make sure he'd found it. I also wanted to ask if he'd heard about the king tide. It was in the Times on October 26th: “A king tide will be running Wednesday and Thursday because gravitational forces of the sun, the moon and the earth will be lined up in a cue shot of fleeting geometry and rare power.” (The article, by Jim Dwyer, was about how this extra-high tide was a harbinger of things to come: the ocean level has been rising and could be this high all the time by 2080.)
The Boss had not seen the Times. “That’s all I need,” he said. “Another high tide.” During Hurricane Irene, he had had a foot and a half of water in his house. “Did they say how high it would be?”
"One to two feet above normal."
“Didja hear I got robbed?” I had heard, but I wanted him to tell it. “The restaurant barge. Twice.“ The barge, formerly a restaurant, is moored behind the dock. I've been dying to get in there; I see that they've been working on it, but it doesn't look much like a restaurant yet.
"What did they get?" I asked
"Tools and liquor. There were five of them. They saw the liquor, so they came back for more. My good tools. We’re trying to catch them. We got cameras. We took fingerprints.” There are cops living on the dock, so they may very well catch them. He didn't sound as mad as he must have been when it happened. I heard he was in a really bad mood.
The garbage recycling truck pulled up alongside me and started crunching glass and plastic. When it moved on, the garbagemen followed it, on the sidewalk. One of them was wearing big orange gloves, rubber boots, and gold earrings—she was a garbage girl.
Across the street, in a pile of bulky recyclable items, was a memento mori: the grille off a small truck or an S.U.V., silver gray. “Don’t look at that,” I wanted to say to the Éclair. The rain had tapered off by the time I got out of the car, at ten. I'd been sitting there so long that in Jamaica Bay the king tide would have begun to ebb already.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Milestone
It happened in Mifflinburg. Or was it Mifflinville? No, it was definitely Mifflinburg. I had taken my usual detour off I-80 on the way back from Ohio, cutting south in the middle of Pennsylvania to state route 45. I was poking along, sharing the road with the occasional horse-and-buggy, watching on the right for Wenger's Discount Grocery Outlet, where I like to stock up on dented cans of soup (I don't know why I get so excited about half-price dented cans of soup; it must be genetic). And then it happened: the odometer flipped over to 77,777.7.
Soon after that, my detour sprung a detour, because of flood damage along the Susquehanna River. I drove north along the river to Milton, a small but industrious town (home of Ettore Boiardi, a.k.a. Chef Boyardee), and when I got back to I-80 I found out that I had been on something signposted as the "Blue Detour." After another hundred miles or so, there was a massive traffic jam near the Delaware Water Gap, so I got off 80 again, and found myself on the "Green Detour." I have been seeing signs for these detours for years, and can report that they are indeed quite colorful.
I have been taking full advantage of the traditional fall parking holidays—between Columbus Day and Succoth, I didn't have to move the car for a week. But on the way home from New England last weekend, I was kicking myself for not having a copy of the alternate-side-parking calendar on me. I knew there were more holidays coming up, but I didn't know which side of the street to park on. I found a Tuesday-Friday spot, behind a huge Army truck, like something that had gotten separated from a convoy. It turned out that either side of the street would have worked, since both Thursday and Friday are religious holidays.
I was hoping the Army truck would be gone when I returned to do my civic duty on Tuesday morning. But no. It made for a dismal prospect: the back of a huge convoy-style armored truck, with tires as big as office cubicles and a dipstick the size of a pool cue. Needless to say, the US Army does not observe street-cleaning rules, so when the Broom came, I expected to have trouble squeezing back in between the tank and the lineup of S.U.V.s behind me.
The Broom came at 7:40, and I was able to zip back across the street and get in position (albeit about two feet from the curb) while the S.U.V.s were still lumbering around, holding up traffic. I had to pull up practically under the Army truck so that they could parallel park, and then ask them to back up so I could get closer to the curb.
Actually, I will be moving the car on Friday anyway, because I have to go out to Rockaway. It's time to turn the water off for the winter. My wonderful neighbors, who for the past two winters have been parking my car in exchange for getting to use it, recently told me that they're getting their own car, a GMC Jimmy. "We'll still take care of your car!" my friend T. said. I know they love my car. Who could resist her? Here she is enjoying a ferry ride, surrounded, as usual, by S.U.V.s
I am going to have to come up with a new plan for the winter.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Wundervoll!
I got a dose of German this week, because Baby Dee played Berlin the same night as the Pope. (Here is an interview from the Berliner Zeitung: http://www.babydee.org/press/the-pope-is-on-the-guest-list.php). Luckily, she has lots of alternative hymns. She went from Berlin to Leipzig to Vienna, and tonight she is playing Hamburg. A few days ago, another piece ran in the Berliner Zeitung, a column (Die Warheit) by Michael Ringel, in which Baby Dee meets the Pope. Here's the the English translation, on Dee's Web site: http://www.babydee.org/press/rupture-in-being.php
Parking this morning was a breeze. There were two spots available upstream. Two cops came by (black chicks in white hats, with about twelve pounds of equipment hanging from their belts). The Broom turned the corner at 7:42 A.M., and the exercise went off like clockwork.
Parking this morning was a breeze. There were two spots available upstream. Two cops came by (black chicks in white hats, with about twelve pounds of equipment hanging from their belts). The Broom turned the corner at 7:42 A.M., and the exercise went off like clockwork.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Chaos and Recognition
It started off slowly: a guy in camouflage pants lovingly washing his hubcaps; a black fellow pulling a boom box on wheels; a young father pushing his little girl in a stroller (I recognized them from alternate-side parking last spring). Then an orange Tasty Hot Dog truck pulled in behind me, blocking a previously unobstructed view. A Move It … 
Yourself rent-a-truck parked across the street from the hot-dog truck, and a garbage truck double-parked behind it. Then there were sirens and flashing lights and a fire engine turned the corner. The garbage truck pulled up next to me and started grinding away.
I got out of the car. I had just found myself thinking that the day is coming when I'm not going to want to sit in the car anymore, even for a half hour. I joined two men, fellow-parkers, who were standing on the sidewalk observing the chaos.
We had not been standing there long before one of the men asked me, "Do you have a blog?" I was thrilled—he had recognized my car! "I work around here," he said. “I’ve noticed your car before.” He lives in Long Island and gets into the city at five-thirty in the morning. His car, a late-model Honda Civic with those cool retro license plates, was parked three cars up ahead of mine. As we talked, I was dismayed to see first the fire engine leave and then the garbage truck. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to move,” I said.
“Here it comes,” my beloved reader said. The street sweeper had turned the corner. “We’re not moving,” my friend said. “It’s eight o'clock. They can’t make you move.” Actually, it was seven-fifty-five, and they could make me move. Maybe we girls are more easily intimidated, but I got in my car and started it up. I tried explaining to the driver of the street sweeper that there was no one in the car ahead of me and it was pointless to make me move, because the curb was parked up all the way to the end of the block. But he stayed behind me, all but pawing the ground like a pent-up bull.
Because I had not backed up preemptively, to give myself room to get in again, I was in a bad way. There was an interloper, a Subaru Outback, double-parked just ahead of me on the opposite side of the street, hoping to squeeze in. The hot-dog truck had moved up behind him. Damned if I was going to go around the block and let the Subaru usurp my place. But I couldn’t just sit here and refuse to move. Then the hot-dog truck backed up, which gave me room to pull out diagonally. I was still blocking the Broom from getting around the unoccupied car in front of me, so I honked at the Subaru. Miraculously, he moved up. The Broom swept through, followed by an endless stream of traffic.
That was when my beloved reader, who was still standing on the sidewalk with the other alternate-side parker, stepped into the street in front of a taxi and held up traffic while I reversed into my spot. Sometimes a knight in shining armor looks a lot like a businessman in a Honda Civic. Chivalry is not dead. Thanks!
Yourself rent-a-truck parked across the street from the hot-dog truck, and a garbage truck double-parked behind it. Then there were sirens and flashing lights and a fire engine turned the corner. The garbage truck pulled up next to me and started grinding away.I got out of the car. I had just found myself thinking that the day is coming when I'm not going to want to sit in the car anymore, even for a half hour. I joined two men, fellow-parkers, who were standing on the sidewalk observing the chaos.
We had not been standing there long before one of the men asked me, "Do you have a blog?" I was thrilled—he had recognized my car! "I work around here," he said. “I’ve noticed your car before.” He lives in Long Island and gets into the city at five-thirty in the morning. His car, a late-model Honda Civic with those cool retro license plates, was parked three cars up ahead of mine. As we talked, I was dismayed to see first the fire engine leave and then the garbage truck. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to move,” I said.
“Here it comes,” my beloved reader said. The street sweeper had turned the corner. “We’re not moving,” my friend said. “It’s eight o'clock. They can’t make you move.” Actually, it was seven-fifty-five, and they could make me move. Maybe we girls are more easily intimidated, but I got in my car and started it up. I tried explaining to the driver of the street sweeper that there was no one in the car ahead of me and it was pointless to make me move, because the curb was parked up all the way to the end of the block. But he stayed behind me, all but pawing the ground like a pent-up bull.
Because I had not backed up preemptively, to give myself room to get in again, I was in a bad way. There was an interloper, a Subaru Outback, double-parked just ahead of me on the opposite side of the street, hoping to squeeze in. The hot-dog truck had moved up behind him. Damned if I was going to go around the block and let the Subaru usurp my place. But I couldn’t just sit here and refuse to move. Then the hot-dog truck backed up, which gave me room to pull out diagonally. I was still blocking the Broom from getting around the unoccupied car in front of me, so I honked at the Subaru. Miraculously, he moved up. The Broom swept through, followed by an endless stream of traffic.
That was when my beloved reader, who was still standing on the sidewalk with the other alternate-side parker, stepped into the street in front of a taxi and held up traffic while I reversed into my spot. Sometimes a knight in shining armor looks a lot like a businessman in a Honda Civic. Chivalry is not dead. Thanks!
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Season's Greetings
Wow. I can't believe my luck on this first day of the new parking season. I left a Monday/Thursday 9:30-11 spot at about 8:45, to be well in time for a spot that would be good at ten. Last week at this time (given the time difference), I was sitting in an outdoor cafe in Rome with Mr. Zimmerman (pronounced TZEE-mare-mahn in Rome), watching Smart Cars zoom around. Also, the Segway seems to be enjoying a vogue in Rome—I saw whole fleets of them. The Eclair was safe in Rockaway, having survived an earthquake and a hurricane while I was on terra firma in Umbria, of all shaky places. Just before leaving in mid-August, I had the car inspected and got her air-conditioning fixed. It cost a month's rent (which, fortunately, in my guise of capitalist landlady, I had collected, not paid), and I had to think about whether to go through with the repairs, but not for long: not to get the air-conditioning fixed would be to admit that the Eclair was on her way out.
So I'm on my way up the avenue, snarling at Mayor Bloomberg for having reconfigured traffic so that I would have to commit myself to the left-hand lane in order to turn in case I saw a spot in the Sanctuary, when, lo and behold, I saw a spot in the Sanctuary! It was well clear of the fire hydrant, one of only six spots available in that sacred space. The spot would be good at nine, and it was 8:53. I didn't even need the takeout coffee and the Times I'd brought along. So, I would like to give something back to the city for bestowing this gift on me. Accept these figs, the first picked from the tree in the garden behind the house in Umbria, where I spent a fruitful couple of weeks.
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