Tag Archives: Tribeca

Lame Adventure 191: There Goes the Neighborhood

Posted on May 26, 2011 | 7 comments

Former head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is accused of moonlighting as a sex offender for allegedly assaulting a hotel maid, has found new digs following his prolonged stay in a Rikers Island jail cell.  DSK has moved into a TriBeCa townhouse located at 153 Franklin Street that happens to be spitting distance from where I work.

Thursday morning media circus across street from 153 Franklin street.

Actually, his followup home to a prison cage is two doors down from where I toil in tile.  That’s jet-propelled spitting distance.  In addition, I work on the fifth floor of my building, and his nest is three stories tall.  Even if I could powerfully projectile spit, my spit would just splat into the wall of the next building that stands at least five stories high.  Just thinking about all this spitting is giving me dry mouth.

I used to wonder who resided in that very swanky townhouse.  Sometimes I see a very sexy Vespa scooter parked out front.

It recently occurred to me that my new(ish) Jack Purcell badminton sneakers are in a colorway similar to that Vespa.

Vespa colored badminton sneaker, about as close as I'll get to tooling around in a Vespa these days.

According to The New York Times:

“[DSK’s] new home is a free-standing three-floor town house in TriBeCa that was recently renovated by Leopoldo Rosati, and had been on the market for nearly $14 million. The town house features a rooftop deck, a fitness center, a custom theater, a steam spa bath, two Italian limestone baths, two Duravit jet tubs, a waterfall shower and a dual rainfall steam shower.

Under the terms of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s bail, he can leave his home only under limited circumstances, must be under 24-hour armed surveillance and must wear an electronic ankle monitor.”

Translation: it’s highly unlikely that I’ll glimpse my new day job neighbor tooling around on that Vespa in Jack Purcell badminton shoes, as he tries to beat this rap.  What makes me most want to beat DSK with a baguette for residing so close to me that I can almost smell him eating stinky French cheese with my D-cup nose is the fact that he’s going to be living like a sultan.  I know he has to reside somewhere in the interim and it’s not going to be at a Comfort Inn, but this overt indulgence in over the top luxury living is as gag-inducing as the accusations against him.

DSK stakeout on roof outside my boss Elsbeth's window.

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Lame Adventure 187: While pondering litigation in front of a crackhouse-style doorway …

Posted on May 16, 2011 | 5 comments

Not far from where I work in Tribeca is Staple Street, two short blocks west of Hudson Street sandwiched between Duane, Jay, and Harrison Streets.  Staple Street is one of those impossible to find places in this giant metropolis, but I’m familiar with it since I’m drawn to the impossible like metal to magnet.  I also knew that this was the ideal location for my sidekick, Greg, and I to shoot a video birthday card for our friend, Albee, provided we managed to avoid arrest for disturbing the peace. We did, but by our third take, every dog in Tribeca was barking and someone was too shy to scream:

Silent Screamer:  Shut the hell up!

That someone was compelled to hammer lead pipes with religious fervor instead.

Picturesque pedestrian bridge on Staple Street that does not appear in our video.

Although Albee was not expecting a gift from either of us, which was a sane expectation since Greg and I both work get-rich-slow jobs, Greg is a musician and I am just a spewing fountain of creativity.  Therefore, I felt we had to do something, but what?  Then, I had a brainstorm.  I would shoot a video of Greg on my obsolete first generation Flip video camcorder playing Happy Birthday on his saxophone in front of this graffiti-covered doorway on Staple Street.

This must be the place doorway on Staple Street.

When I initially ran this stroke of genius by Greg, he did not do the Toyota jump.  He stood paralyzed holding a tile label and looked rather expressionless.

Greg (mulling): I’ve never played Happy Birthday on my sax before.

Me:  Then play it on your sitar.

Greg:  No, I’m not going to bring my sitar into work.

Me:  Okay, play it on your harp, your xylophone, your castanets …

Greg is massively musical.  He thought more about it and decided that playing it on the sax was the way to go.  Then, he told me something interesting:

Greg:  You know, Happy Birthday’s not in the public domain.

I did not know that.  Greg is right, but luckily for us, we don’t make a dime off Lame Adventures, and we’re both inclined to live on the edge.

The origins of Happy Birthday is as follows, in 1893 two sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill published the melody, Good Morning to All, which scored a big hit with the children Patty taught in her kindergarten class in Kentucky.  Mildred was a pianist and composer.  The kids were so taken with that song they began to sing it at birthday parties where they changed the lyrics Patty wrote from:

Good morning to you,

Good morning to you,

Good morning, dear children,

Good morning to all.

To:

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday dear (insert name here)

Happy birthday to you.

Fast forward 118 years to today where the Time-Warner Corporation now owns the rights to this traditional song, especially the lyrics.  They’re like the mob; if you sing it in a restaurant and they find out, they’ll come around trying to extort a chunk of change.  In 2008, they collected $5,000 a day from the singing of this song, or $2 million per year.  Strike up the theme to The Sopranos.  Better not for that surely is not in the public domain.

Many legal minds that tower over mine intellectually, or just anyone that did better in math, think (not necessarily in these words) that this is a steaming pile of crap.  Many logical thinkers, including Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, believe that this song with it’s long history of problems over authorship (think about it, anonymous five-year-olds essentially revised the lyrics from Good Morning to All to Happy Birthday), and problems with the notice and renewal of copyright, makes it no longer under copyright.  That means it does belong in the public domain, and should not be a cash cow for a media conglomerate that charges sky-high for Internet and cable.

Yet, to play it safe, my inner weasel is compelled to declare here and now that what Greg actually played for Albee in front of that crackhouse-style doorway on Staple Street was a free jazz version of Good Morning to All – and that coincidentally happens to be in the public domain.

Give jazz-man Greg a listen:

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Lame Adventure 182: Space Invader visits Tribeca!

Posted on April 28, 2011 | 2 comments

Generally, my energy level plummets the second I arrive at the workplace and it rockets the instant I leave.  Wednesday was no exception.  There I was, the portrait of lethargy sitting at my desk, using the little that remains of my cobweb-cluttered mind proofreading the floor tile equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  My sidekick, Greg, had just returned from taking a walk.

Greg:  You know that graffiti artist, Space Invader?

Me (groggy):  Yeah.

Disclaimer:  the name Space Invader did ring an anemic bell but at that very moment white noise was predominantly playing in my head.

Greg:  I think I just saw one of his mosaics outside the parking lot on Hudson and Worth.

Me (still muddle-headed):  What’s the name of this parking lot?

Greg:  I don’t know.  It’s the one we walk past whenever we walk south on Hudson.

That reasoning now rings the gong in my head and jars me out of my stupor.  I regain full consciousness, indeed recall Space Invader, recollect watching the documentary film about street artists, Exit Through the Gift Shop, and hack up a feather.

Me:  Yes!  I know that parking lot.

Greg:  The mosaic’s starting to crumble.  It probably won’t be there much longer.

Me:  I should photograph it!

Greg:  You should.  It’s outside the parking lot.

I hurdle my desk and I’m in my boss, Elsbeth’s office, in a single bound requesting a Get Out of Jail Free pass.  She grants it.  Within moments, I’m hightailing down Hudson.  I see the parking lot but no sign of Space Invader’s mark.  Frustrated, I am wondering what Greg meant when he said this mosaic is outside the parking lot.  This parking lot is an outdoor parking lot.  Then, I step off the sidewalk and just as I’m almost hit by a beer truck …

Looking north on Hudson at Worth and simultaneously defying death.

Keep looking.

Paydirt!

One rainstorm away from disappearing.

I return to my desk, satisfied with the sighting that was even more rewarding than the deeply philosophical street art I encountered when my friends and I were in the East Village last Saturday.

The Fickle Finger of the East Village.

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Lame Adventure 150: Billy’s Bakery to the Rescue

Posted on January 14, 2011 | 8 comments

“Nothing is easy,” could have been my boss Elsbeth’s mantra this entire week where one tile snafu followed another.  She repeated that phrase so many times, I suggested we translate it into Latin and put it over our entrance.  In addition, she beaned herself royally when she smacked her head into an elevator door.  She misjudged this door she had previously managed to walk through without incident for at least a dozen years, but apparently her successful-door-entering karma took a holiday.  When she handed out our weekly paychecks, my sidekick, Greg, looked at his baffled.  An exclamation mark popped up over his head, prompting Elsbeth to flash an expression best described as “now what’s wrong?”

Greg:  How come I was only paid for 39 hours?

Elsbeth:  Don’t you get paid the same salary every week?

Greg (in a tone reeking of feeling screwed):  Not this week.

I took a long drag on my Sherlock Holmes pipe and concluded that our payroll processor orchestrated this miscalculation straight out of left field.  Elsbeth shifted gears away from the tile challenges to plead Greg’s case for his missing fortieth hour of weekly pay.  With the going getting dumber by the day, The Boss confided to me that we needed emergency cupcakes.

Elsbeth:  Get me one with chocolate cake and chocolate icing.

Me:  That’s serious chocolate, Boss.

Elsbeth:  This is serious.

Ling and I sprang into action.  Our destination was Billy’s Bakery, a short walk up Franklin Street in Tribeca.  Ling ordered the troops to give her their first and second choice flavors.   Greg and Under Ling complied.  The Quiet Man announced:

The Quiet Man:  I want coconut or nothing.

Ling:  Last week, when we got cookies, they didn’t have your triple chocolate.

The Quiet Man:  I want coconut or nothing.

Ling:  You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.  What’s your second choice?

The Quiet Man:  I live on the razor’s edge.

I give Ling my screaming let it go glance which looks very similar to my forehead smacking you realize that this is a completely hopeless situation so why are you wasting your breath? glance.  We head out the door and trek like two mush dogs through lower Manhattan’s icy tundra.

Get cupcakes here. Now.

As soon as we enter Billy’s, a homey palace of dessert, we trample each other en route to the cupcake case and scope it out wild-eyed.

The selection.

Elsbeth's chosen one in the spotlight, chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing.

Ling:  I don’t see coconut.  Do you?

Me:  No.

Ling asks a clerk for coconut and is told that it’s a special order flavor that is sold in quantities of a dozen.  Ling is dismayed.

Ling:  I feel bad for him. You’re good with impossible situations.

Me:  Am I?  I’m two thirds of the way to the crematorium and I’ve yet to turn my dead end life around.

Ling:  Yeah, I know that, but are we really going to go back to the office with nothing for The Quiet Man?  Think of something!

Feeling pressured, I approach a second clerk, Kim the Magnificent.

Kim the Magnificent

Me:  We’re in a situation.  Our boss wants us to get cupcakes, but our colleague who refuses to come up with second choices, only wants coconut. Last week, he wanted a triple chocolate cookie when we got cookies, but his cookie wasn’t available.  We hate denying him.  Is there a compromise solution we can work out here?

Kim the Magnificent:  We have coconut cake.

Pie and Cake-land

Me:  How much is a slice?

Kim the Magnificent:  Five dollars.

Ling and I wince.

Me:  I bet that’s a huge slice.  He doesn’t want a huge slice.  Yet, I suppose if you did a half-slice that would screw up the cake’s slicing system, right?

Kim the Magnificent processes this idea.  She consults her colleague, who had previously offered the gloomy coconut cupcake forecast.

Kim the Magnificent:  Do we still do those small slices?

Gloomy Coconut Cupcake Forecast Colleague:  We do.

Me:  How much is a small slice?

Kim the Magnificent:  Two fifty.

Ling:  We’ll take one!

When we return to the office, The Quiet Man is not at his desk, so we leave him a subtle message:

A hint of cake to come.

Ling gives everyone his or her chosen cupcake that we all inhale in seconds flat.

Gone in 60 seconds.

I get my favorite, the yellow daisy with chocolate icing.  It’s a classic yellow butter cake with a generous swirl of sweet, but not gag-inducing sweet, soft chocolate buttercream icing.  On a freshness level of week old fish 1 to piping-hot-out-of-the-oven-pizza 10, this cupcake brings out the Spinal Tap grade of level 11.  Elsbeth, Ling, Greg and Under Ling, award their tasty treats with the same sky-high honor.  Until her phone rings again, The Boss celebrates 47 solid seconds of pure Billy’s Bakery comfort food bliss.

The Quiet Man returns to his desk under the false impression that his request only rated a plastic fork.  Ling explains the impossibility of getting a coconut cupcake.  The sound effect here is a downbeat.  We then hand him his cake box that weighs comparable to a kitten.

The box.

The Quiet Man:  What’s this?  [hopeful]  A coconut cupcake?

Me:  No, it’s your second choice.

The Quiet Man:  But I don’t make second choices.

Me:  We did for you.

The Quiet Man opens the box and sees his small slice of coconut cake that looks enormous to our amateur cake-cutting eyes.

The (small) slice.

The Quiet Man (excited):  Is this coconut?

Ling:  Yeah!

Me:  And they call it a small slice.

Greg:  That thing’s huge!  I want one of those!

Under Ling:  Me, too!

The Quiet Man escapes the salivating vultures and hightails to his lair in the back of the office.  Afterward, completely sated, he informs Ling and I:

The Quiet Man:  That was the best coconut cupcake I ever had!

Thanks to Billy’s that “cupcake” was about the only thing that went right in our department all week.

Billy's menus

Sandwich cookies and pies!

Pecan pie

Billy's Bakery, a source for excellent eats.

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Lame Adventure 91: Pedal Pushing

Posted on August 27, 2010 | 4 comments

I was walking down Hudson Street on a lovely summer day in the city, a phrase seldom said this steamy summer, when I noticed the carcass of the dead bike pictured below chained to a pole.

R.I.P.

Every so often when I see the remains of bikes like this one I’ve wondered how this happens.  What was the owner thinking when he or she initially chained it to this pole?  “Goodbye bike.  Thanks for all the rides.  You’re on your own now”?  When this bike was originally locked to this pole, I imagine it was intact.  It probably once looked as appreciated as this one I saw later that day on the Upper West Side.

Someone's beloved Raleigh.

When the owner of the dead bike went to wherever he or she needed to go, did the bicycle vultures promptly descend and strip it bare?  Was this a bicycle hate crime, or a case of bicycle abuse?  Should there be organizations established called the ASPCB (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Bikes) or PETB (People for the Ethical Treatment of Bikes)?  Did the owner see the ruins of his or her bike and just walk away?

Milton surmised that the owner may have originally removed the front wheel, but for whatever reason, never returned for the bike.  He thinks that over time, hungry bike vultures picked it apart.  Albee offered a more succinct observation,  “Cyclicide.”

Since I was not inclined to get very CSI about what led to this particular bike’s demise, I continued my walk and strolled past my favorite bike boutique, Adeline Adeline, located on Reade Street.

In case you blank on the first name, try to recall the second.

I would not dare enter this store, but often I have gazed at the lovely bikes within from the outside. I drool inconspicuously and tastefully.  I hold a small plastic cup under my lower lip.

It just so happened that on this particular day, they had my all time favorite bike, a Dutch model called the Batavus Breukelen, which normally sells for about $1150, on sale for $1035, ten percent off.  As much as I love the Batavus’s design, it seems like the ideal city bike to me.  The frame is lightweight aluminum.  It’s weatherproof so it won’t rust when chained outside on rainy or icy days.  It’s a solidly built vehicle that can withstand the rigors of potholed Gotham City streets.  It’s in my favorite color.  Last but not least, if I rode this bike most of the time to and from work, instead of the crowded subway, I would be in much better shape physically and mentally.  There is also the added bonus of saving the $89 a month I spend on a Metrocard.  Within 11.62 months, I will have recouped my $1035 investment and find myself the fittest I’ve been in years!

Four Dutch beauties.

Nice price.

Even though this looks like such a sweet deal, if I only had an extra $1035 to throw around, but if I did, am I kidding myself?  I’m going to buy a Dutch bike? If I had an extra $1035, I’d probably get an iPhone, a burger at The Spotted Pig, and a mole removal instead.  Even more realistically, the second the first flake of snow falls, I am certain the last thing I’d want to do is ride a bike half-way though Manhattan to work, even one as cool as the Batavus Breukelen.  If I found myself riding a bike in a snowstorm or Nor’easter, I am certain that the mantra playing inside my head would go something like this:

Me:  I’m not Dutch, I’m miserable; this is insane. I’m not Dutch, I’m miserable; this is insane. I’m not Dutch, I’m miserable; this is insane.

By December, I would sheepishly return to paying $89 for Metrocards until April.  If anyone would dare ask me if I’m still riding my Batavus Breukelen or when do I plan to resume riding my Batavus Breukelen again, I’d probably be so irked I’d beat them with a wrench.  So much for my master plan where I foresee my sexy black bike paying itself off within a year.

Yet, I am certain even if I chose to quit riding this bike I covet forever, I would never leave it chained to a pole so it could suffer a humiliating and public death.   I would not want to flaunt that this idea that appears so brilliant in August, proves to be rather boneheaded by December.  Still, that’s a nice price for a lovely bike.

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Lame Adventure 84: Street Walking

Posted on August 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

Last month The New York Times published a popular article that weighs heavy on my mind about Americans being under the impression that Frenchwomen know the secret to aging well since they seem to have mastered the art of looking attractive at any age.  Any age means still looking good over 40 and before death, but the optimist in me suspects that they can look just as lousy as their pudgier American counterparts full frontal in rude light.  What I got most out of this article is that Frenchwomen view exercise as a form of torture.  They stay thin by not stuffing themselves with crap and walking.  That works for me, so after polishing off a few fistfuls of my new favorite vice, dark chocolate covered pretzels, I went for a stroll through the streets of Gotham where I photographed some signs that caught my always roving eye.

This inviting sandwich board I saw sitting outside Puffy’s Tavern, a watering hole on Hudson Street in TriBeCa near where I work, but I resisted the invitation to chat up the bartender and kept walking.

Free - my second favorite four letter f-word.

When I crossed Hudson at Duane, this message drew my attention considering that I earn a get rich slow salary forcing me to live much more like the Flintstones.

I wish.

While walking down Reade Street toward the Adeline Adeline bicycle boutique, I encountered some more nostalgia in the guise of sidewalk snark.

Street philosophizing.

According to Dictionary.com the term yuppie originated in 1980-85.  It’s a noun for “a young, ambitious, and well-educated city-dweller who has a professional career and an affluent lifestyle.”  As with the Jetsons, this type of person is essentially another relic of the past.

Back uptown in my Upper West Side stomping ground, I traipsed over what I first thought was a sideways rocket ship before determining that it was a street penis.

Upper West Side street penis on permanent display.

I wondered who was compelled to draw a dick in wet cement, and imagined it was a guy with penis envy.  This impression made me recall the time I witnessed one cab driver rear end another on Columbus Avenue some years ago.  The Rear Ended cabbie stepped out of his vehicle, as did the Rear Ender.  They immediately got into a shouting match, with the Rear Ended cabbie tugging at his crotch and screaming repeatedly at the Rear Ender, “Suck my dick!”  Not to be undone, the Rear Ender grabbed his junk and shouted back, “You suck mine!”  My social anthropologist side found this tirade intriguing for I could not imagine two irate women in a similar situation stroking their nether regions while demanding of each other, “Eat me!”  If these two cabbies were indeed compelled to perform sixty-nine together, I was baffled how this would have provided the solution to the problem of the busted taillight.

Returning to the subject of the street penis, it is located on the sidewalk in the foreground of the grey building in the middle of the three residences pictured.

Street penis building.

I wondered if when the residents order take out or invite friends over, they identify their building by address, their apartment number and a landmark comment such as, “Look for the penis in the sidewalk.  That’s my place.”

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