Tag Archives: The Brooklyn Bridge

Glass

Well so far today has been a pain in the ass and not of my own doing. Someone tells me the other day in an email, of a friend of theirs who is having an art exhibit in Brooklyn. Sounds good. They say they want to go with their wife and that we have to act fast.

The only 2 days they’re available to go is today, Saturday or next weekend. I reply via email that today would be good for me, next weekend not good since I am booked to work with Lois and Rand. Do I hear anything from this someone?

No. So I go about my life.

It’s a beautiful day and I’m thinking that today would be a good day to do my ride to the George Washington Bridge and down through Manhattan, stopping in Central Park for a spell then heading down to the World Trade Center and catching the Path back to Jersey City then riding back into Hoboken.

I’ve done it the past few years, it’s an invigorating, meditative ride. Clears out the cobwebs, gets me into something that resembles physical fitness. So I fart around this morning waiting for the clouds to break.

Finally blue skies appear and I start getting psyched for the ride. No one else to join me, but that’s fine. I find riding with someone is nice, but ultimately it’s just you and the bike that matters.

I start thinking of what to bring, which route to take when the phone rings. It’s Mr. Unknown aka someone, that comes up on the cell phone. He says so I’ll pick you up today. I’m taken aback.

I hadn’t heard anything regarding this since my email and forgot all about it. I didn’t commit to anything either. I explain that to him and I get an apology for his mis-communication.

In my mind I’m thinking mis-communication is when you say the wrong thing, or tell the wrong person. This was no communication.

I feel the rope of guilt around my ankles as I’m about to be tripped by it. I give in to this plan and decide to forgo my bike ride. I really don’t want to but there is this loyalty I feel.

He senses this on the other end of the line and wonders why I’m getting upset. I explain why but it has no effect as far as I can tell. I ask how we are getting to Brooklyn and he gets a bit indignant saying ‘I’m picking you up aren’t I?’

Now this guy usually tries to get out of driving into the city any chance he can get. Let’s take the bus/ferry/Path train which is fine when it’s a novelty coming in from the suburbs, but when you use those methods of transportation as often as I do, there is no novelty and you sometimes see it as the pain in the ass it can be.

Like the other day, I was going into the city with Bill and when we went to the Path train we find the trains weren’t running due to a signal failure, so we wait on a very long line for buses to head into the city in the rain.

No novelty there, just a big pain in the ass.

So knowing this I felt I had to ask how we were getting to Brooklyn. Then I ask what time we are going. It was 11:45 and he says 1:30-2:00. Realistically that means 2:30-3:00. At that time I had hoped to be over the George Washington Bridge and enjoying a quick rest by the Hudson River.

Now I’ll be waiting for my ride to Williamsburg, which is not how I wanted to spend my Saturday afternoon.

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That was written about 7 hours ago in 20 minutes. Here’s what happened next. I head downstairs and my cell phone rings. It’s the someones wife telling me they had to turn back and get the directions which were left at home.

It is starting to look like the departure time I predicted was correct. 2:30 seems more likely. I decide to sit on the stoop and enjoy a cigar as they make their way towards Hoboken.

My neighbor Chris sees me and starts telling me about the cat problem in the backyard. The cat problem is his doing since he feeds and looks after so many strays, the cats use the entire backyard as a litter box.

I can’t smell it up here on the 5th floor but they can smell it on the third floor. He tells me of his rescue of a cat that was in a humane trap for 2 days, ready to have a litter of kittens and how he had to go to Newark to prevent it from being euthanized.

It’s a story and a half and he rambles on and I sit there puffing on a cigar waiting for the someone and his wife to show up. Eventually Chris heads inside with 5 large bags of kitty litter, I keep puffing and someone and his wife pull up.

The wife was driving, but she gets out and lets someone do the driving instead. Someone isn’t talking to me so I talk to the wife, asking about the kids and whats what.

Someone had the plan to take the Lincoln Tunnel and then the West Side Highway to get to Brooklyn. I’m just the passenger so I play along, watching bicycle riders on the bike path that I really wanted to be on today.

We approach downtown past the World Trade Center site when someone goes into the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. thinking it’s the tunnel that goes under the Battery and winds up on the FDR Drive.

I tell him we’re heading into Brooklyn but he doesn’t believe me, not even when we approach the toll to get out of the tunnel. He’s too busy trying to find the Brooklyn Bridge to show his wife. The Brooklyn Bridge is out of sight behind us.

I suggest getting off this highway heading in the opposite direction and head into the traffic in the direction we should be going. No he doesn’t think there is a spot to turn since he used to drive a taxi 25 years ago.

Anything I suggested he wouldn’t listen to no matter how correct I was. It was frustrating and occasionally voices were raised but thanks to his wife things had calmed down a bit. He kept saying that I was angry with him and I said no, I wasn’t angry, just annoyed.

Finally after driving around most of South Brooklyn, we were headed in the right direction. I came up with the idea of crossing over the Brooklyn Bridge, catching the FDR Drive north and getting on the Williamsburg Bridge as planned.

Plus I really needed to pee and begged him to stop if he saw a McDonald’s or Starbucks. Of course where we were on the Lower East Side there were no Starbucks to be found and the one McDonald’s that we did pass, he did not stop at.

By the time we were back in Brooklyn my back teeth were floating. Enough was enough and I insisted he stop and I got out and walked over to a Puerto Rican luncheonette, bought a Diet Pepsi and lost a few pounds in their facility.

Got back in the car and we drove again. I had a suggestion to head north and eventually make a left, someone decides a right turn will do just fine and we start heading towards the Marcy Projects.

Notorious for bad things happening, close to East New York which resembles Dodge City sometimes.

By deductive reasoning I start to direct someone in the right direction. Eventually we find the art gallery, missing the artist they had come to see by mere minutes. It was an OK exhibition.

Perhaps if I was in a better mood I would have enjoyed it, perhaps I would have even enjoyed being in Brooklyn, but not today. Some progress was made in the relations in the car but once we started moving again it went out the window.

An impetuous driver he is, easily stressed and ready to complain about everyone else.

Suggesting that someone get a bicycle and ride around sometime as a way of exercise was squashed when someone revealed that he doesn’t want to look like a dork wearing a bicycle helmet.

I used the ‘would you rather be a good looking corpse without a helmet or someone who looks dorky and alive wearing a helmet?’ argument which went nowhere. Eventually I got to Hoboken angry more with myself for allowing to be guilt tripped into this ill fated excursion.

I said goodbye to someone and hugged his wife telling her I loved her and wishing her good luck. I don’t plan on anymore excursions with this someone any time soon. No fucking way.

I should have stuck to my guns and said no, that I was going bike riding. I would have felt a whole lot better about most everything, now I’m just even more frustrated and bothered by how this gorgeous day turned out.

Regretful.

Rock Around The Clock

Well it’s a Saturday and it was a pretty good day. Bill was up and out this morning, he needed to go to his parents apartment to meet the latest home health care aide. Last night he had to dismiss the previous aide since she wanted $200 under the table to take care of Bill’s mother as well as what she was contracted for, his father care. Funds being tight, she had to go. She wasn’t much help either, lot’s of attitude, so it’s bye bye for her. Bill gave his goodbye kiss and was out the door. I woke up at 7:30. I wasn’t feeling that so I went back to sleep, getting out of bed at 9:00. I had my coffee and was out to get the sundries. Back home for breakfast and I plotted my day.

I was reluctant to do anything but I had planned on heading into Brooklyn to see a Samuel Beckett play, Happy Days, starring Fiona Shaw who I loved ever since I first saw her as the physical therapist in My Left Foot. She also plays Harry Potter’s aunt in the movies, in case you wondered where you might have seen her. But the scene in the restaurant in My Left Foot is incredible and quite intense, she playing Daniel Day Lewis’ unrequited love. It’s sad and scary to see the Christy Brown character go out of his mind with anguish, and the look on Fiona Shaw’s face just adds to the despair. Fantastic. I headed towards the bus so I could catch a subway to Brooklyn. Ran into Gary Jennings with his boyfriend on the bus. Don’t know the boyfriend’s name, but I met him a year or so ago at the Hoboken St. Patrick’s day parade. Nice guy though. It was a nice chat with Gary, catching up. We seem to meet on buses these days, rather than the bar at McSwells.

They and I parted ways and I wandered through the bus terminal headed across town to Grand Central Station. Midtown Manhattan is a haven for tourists on weekends and they were everywhere. I did my best to avoid them but there they were standing on escalators, not moving, and not allowing anyone to pass, or they’re having conversations on top of stairways or at the bottom, or just stopping right in my path when I have a good trot going on. I hopped on the 4 train to Brooklyn and was soon on Flatbush Avenue. I looked at a street map to figure out where the BAM Harvey Theater was but couldn’t figure it out, so I just turned the corner and there it was a half block away. I walked to the box office, explained to them that I couldn’t make last night’s performance and that I was told I could get a past date ticket in exchange. That worked out quite nicely. Whereas yesterday I would be in the balcony for last night’s show, this afternoon I was in the 10th row in the orchestra.

I hung outside the theater having a quick smoke, when I saw Kathleen Turner walk by, then Lisa Gay Hamilton, then someone who could have been Peter Coyote, but I wasn’t sure. He had one of those four footed canes to help him walk, and he looked like he could have been a Digger in a previous life. Got to my seat where I was totally mesmerized by Fiona Shaw waist deep in dirt. The stage design was decidedly post apocalyptic. A Fantastic play, bravura performance by both her and Tim Potter who played Willie to Fiona’s Winnie. It was a full house, though the three people seated in front of me didn’t stay for the second act. I don’t think they understood the play, and it’s not easily understood, it does border on the absurd. I never saw Waiting for Godot, another Beckett play but from what I understood, sometimes half the audience is in stitches and the other half deep in though trying to figure out a deeper meaning. Samuel Beckett never gave anything away and took the secrets to his plays and other work to the grave. At intermission they actually played the theme from TV’s Happy Days. ♫Sunday Monday Happy Days ♪ I swear I am not putting you on.

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Photos: Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times

The second act lasted what seemed to be about 20 minutes. I walked out into the Brooklyn daylight and saw Lisa Gay Hamilton walk by. Bill and I saw her in an episode of Law and Order a few times and she is simply amazing. She was also in The Practice years ago, and she also directed a documentary on Beah Richards another great and overlooked actress. Beah Richards played Sidney Poitier’s mother in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. She more than likely broke your heart in other shows and movies, just look her up on IMDB. I called out, Miss Hamilton and Lisa turned around. I explained that Bill and I were fans and we loved that episode of Law and Order SVU with Ludacris, which was amazingly powerful. She was great and charming and has a beautiful smile which she showed when her sister took our picture.

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I was feeling game and remembered that before the show I saw Fiona Shaw walk in the direction of what I figured out to be the stage door, and me being a stage door Johnny, I made a bee line over there. There was just one guy besides me standing around, then Kathleen Turner came out, smoking and chatting with a friend. I was going to ask her for her picture but I was intimidated actually. Fiona Shaw appeared and was talking to Kathleen Turner while trying to get in a taxi. I just asked if she would sign a copy of the play that I bought after the show in the lobby and she did, then asked for a picture and she insisted on having a picture with Kathleen Turner.
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Fiona and Me
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No problem, then I asked if Kathleen Turner’s friend would take a picture of Fiona and myself which he did. I was going to ask for a picture with both Kathleen and Fiona but once again Kathleen Turner intimidated me, not by her doing, but by her persona. After that I giddily walked away. I walked down Fulton Street listening to the Kinks, then onto the Brooklyn Bridge, still a marvelous thing, it is my favorite bridge. I’ve ridden my bicycle across it many times, but never walked across it. Still a thrill and tourists aplenty taking snapshots.

Fulton Street
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I decided to walk over to JR and pick up a copy of My Left Foot, but they were out so I bought a copy of My Beautiful Laundrette instead which isn’t anywhere near My Left Foot, but both star Daniel Day Lewis and start with My. Then I walked over to the World Trade Center Path train where I missed a train since I helped tourists figure out what train to take. That was it, all in all a really good day. I have to stop being lazy and get out more. It was all worth it, it was fun, and I finally saw my first Samuel Beckett play starring the wonderful Fiona Shaw.

What did you do today?