Clifford Browder's Blog, page 8

483. Spook Time in New York

 

                  SPOOK TIME IN NEW YORK

Yes, it’s late October and almost Halloween.  I shan’t go into the history of that holiday.which I deal with in chapter 38, "Of Spooks and Ghouls," in my book No Place for Normal: New York: Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World.  I shall merely note its presence, in the form of looming beanpole spooks and strands of stringy white stuff — probably meant to suggest spiderwebs and spiders) — fronting many residences in my slice of the city, Greenwich Village.  Probably these homes have children, which excuses these indulgences, though my door will be shut and locked against Trick or Treaters, when the day comes.  But even my podiatrist’s office has stuffed witches on the counter, which shows how far the mania has spread, though the witches did gladden up the place, balancing out the signs advocating masks and distancing, and co-pays  immediately due.

Crossing Abingdon Square Park while doing errands two days ao, I saw a low, thick pyramid of seasonal debris: the biggest pumpkins and other monster veggies I have ever seen — some of them up to two or three feet long — plus a grinning skeleton, a bundle of corn stalks, and enthroned on top, the brittle white bones of another grinning skeleton.  Hopefully this display will cheer, and not frighten, the horde of little kids soon due for the annual Halloween festival, when a horse-drawn wagon offers kids a ride around the block.  This is probably the only time city kids see a real live horse — two, in fact, with all the earthy smells that come with them.

Impressive, but the display in Sheridan Square Park goes it one better.  Recently, en route to my podiatrist and being ahead of time, I stopped off in the park.  There a young Latino in dazzling white tennis shoes, his dark hair pulled back in a short ponytail, was photographing the two life-size status of gay men, assisted at times by an older sister or aunt in a colorful dress, while the mother sat patiently, or perhaps resignedly, nearby.

This was show enough, by way of people-watching, but then the young man went to the back of the park and posed grandly, while the sister/aunt took several photos of him, with a trio of looming spooks in the background.  Until this point, I hadn't noticed the spooks.  The Latino family then left, and I went to the back of the park to get a better look.

There were three spooks, each one set up on a pole with a flimsy gown that fluttered in the breeze.  Dominating the scene was the middle one, the tallest: a female in a lavender dress with a tangle of thick white hair, shark teeth, and white-ringed eyes that seemed to fix you with their stare.  When her lavender dress rippled in the breeze, she became startlingly alive.

On the right of the white-haired female was another spook in orange, and on the left, a male with a long orange tie, and on his head a tiny top hat, tilted, ludicrously small.  The tophatted one evoked a smile or two, but the dominant female looked like she had risen from the dead — just the kind of spook to haunt your dreams and make you wake up in a sweat.

When I left the park, I saw General Sheridan in the very back, his sculpted figure looming solemnly on its pedestal, a Northern hero of our Civil War who has seen a lot in his park, little of it easy to adapt to.  First, the Stonewall riots of 1969, launching the gay pride movement and, in time, the erection (no pun intended) of the four life-size statues: two gay males, obviously lovers, with a Lesbian couple seated nearby.  

And if this foursome, now a standard tourist attraction, wasn’t enough, there is the annual brouhaha of the Gay Pride Parade marching down Chritopher Street past the now legendary Stonewall Inn, just across from the park.  Then, more recently, the whole site was designated a national monument, bringing even more tourists.  And now a trio of spooks, the wild-eyed female rendering memorably our horror of, and fascination with, the dead.  A lot for a Civil War hero to absorb.  But there he stands in martial dignity, unruffled, perhaps wondering why a park named for him should come to this.  Time, for us all, has many surprises.

Coming soon: The ever announced, and ever postponed, post on what's sexy and what isn't.

©  2020  Clifford Browder

482. Church, a Cigar, Karaoke, and a Bulletproof Vest

BROWDERBOOKS

I am now attempting to promote online my latest nonfiction title, New Yorkers: A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You.  This involves such esoterica as CTRs (click-through rates), ePub files, ARCs (advance review copies), and tweets to a 250k audience.  So far, frustration and a waste of gobs of time.  (You will find the book on my website.)

                 Church, a Cigar, Karaoke,   

                     and a Bulletproof Vest 

I love the diversity of New York,  the vast number of people and their interests, many of them --  both people and interests -- so different from me and mine.  An example: Hawk Newsome, 43, a 300-pound bearded African American, cofounder and chairman of Black Lives Matter Greater New York.  A formidable presence, he can easily be imagined leading marches in the streets, which he in fact does do.  He lives with his sister, cofounder of the group, and with his mother and his 18-year-old son in the South Bronx, but has marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in Minneapolis and New York.  His three-year-old daughter lives with her mother elsewhere.

His day, as told to a New York Times journalist:

He wakes up, opens his Bible to see what the Scripture of the day is.Next, he checks his social media messages and phone calls.Next, he smokes a cigar, "my only vice."Next, he kisses his son on the forehead, and if the son says he's hungry, he gets his breakfast.He does a form of yoga.Back in bed, he makes the necessary phone calls.He chats with his sister, the only person he can "vent" to. On Sunday mornings he goes to church in Harlem, and in the evening attends a "rock 'n' roll karaoke church" full of young people, where a preacher preaches in skinny jeans.If there's an early rally, he showers, dresses, puts on his bulletproof vest, and being too big to fit in a car, drives a truck to the rally.In the early afternoon he meets his team and they say a prayer and march to the rally.They march at the back of the protesters, the last line between them and the police, who follow in cars.They check in at the rally, do security sweeps, and give their speeches. When it gets dark, they drop out of the march as a unit.They go by truck to a vegan restaurant in Harlem and eat out of the trucks, while reviewing the day's events.Still outside, he answers e-mails and texts, including repeated phone calls from his mother, who wants him to order eats for her.Back home, he calls his daughter and sings her songs, then puts on a mask when his son comes home, so they can wrestle.
Quite a day.  And this is only a local rally, maybe involving 2,000 people.  Though he doesn't mention it, presumably he squeezes in breakfast and lunch.
Source note:  This post was inspired by the article "Hawk Newsome," in the Metropolitan section of the New York Times of Sunday, October 4, 2020, and derives most of its content from it.
Coming soon:  Are book contests a fraud?
©  2020  Clifford Browder

481. Autumn

                                      Autumn 

We are now into autumn, which means shorter days and longer nights.  If winter is night, autumn is the onset of evening.  This depresses some people, but not me.  Nudging toward depression is a line in Rilke's poem Herbsttag (Autumn Day), which I translate like this:

Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben.

Whoever is now alone shall long remain so.

This line has long haunted me with its suggestion not just of solitude but of long-enduring loneliness, defeat, and despair.

But I am more of Keats's mind, who in his poem "To Autumn" hailed the season as one "of mists and mellow fruitfulness," with apples, gourds, and hazel nuts, as well as serenades by singing crickets, a whistling red-breast, and twittering swallows.  My greenmarket is now rich in apples that will have a special sharp taste for the next two months at most, while they are freshly picked, and my supermarket has bins full of autumn gourds and mini pumpkins.

What do I look forward to in autumn?  Lots:

walnuts in the shell;roasted chestnuts sold by sidewalk vendors (perhaps unlikely here; that's how I got them in France and Italy long ago);mild, sunny days, not too hot and not too cold;fall foliage: yellow and brown elm leaves; red maple leaves; red, orange, yellow, and brown oak leaves;a special Thanksgiving meal: maybe have the main course delivered, but provide appetizer and dessert myself (a problem: lately I've had little appetite!);the last thing blooming: witch hazel, its unflowery-looking flowers blooming as late as November;if it rains a lot, mushrooms, which I used to spy out in wild places, taking samples only for identification;bald eagles, which I have seen soaring over the Hudson (rare here at other times of year);post-election calm, after the electoral bouhaha (not certain; the brouhaha may continue through the end of the year);books to read: currently, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which I read long ago, and to keep up with current trends, Elena Ferrante (in, alas, translation);the first snow, maybe this side of the winter solstice and maybe after it, when flurries of tiny flakes ping your nose and vanish.
Aside from occasional hurricanes, autumn here is a gentle season; welcome it, savor it, enjoy it.  Preceding it is the muggy heat of summer that saps your energy, and after it, the rigors of winter.
Coming soon:  What's Sexy and What Isn't.  Ratings of God, Batman, wisdom, spike heels, potatoes, and sharks.
©.  2020.  Clifford Browder

480. Trees

                               TREES

I grew up in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, and we had trees galore.  Though a nerdy little bookworm from an early age, I still climbed trees.  Climbing them was a challenge, a proof of manhood, fun, and an adventure.
                                                                                Stanley Howe

The low willow trees along a nearby canal were easy climbing.  A great oak nearby was more challenging; I and my friends climbed it, but not all the way to the top.  Also good for climbing were the apple trees in the back yards our neighbors, but they were fenced off, so we could only breathe the sweet smell of their flowers in the spring, and in autumn the cidery aroma of the apples that fell and lay mashed on the ground, soon abuzz with feeding wasps.
Towering above our house was a giant cottonwood, and every June it set adrift on any breeze its tufts of cottony seeds, to which I was fiercely allergic.  Out of presumed loyalty to his little brother, but really because his brain reeked mischief, my older brother would set fire to the thin blanket of cottony white seeds covering the ground and watch the flames with delight.  Luckily, he didn't set fire to the neighborhood.

On drowsy summer afternoons I would go out on a level bit of rooftop adjoining our sleeping porch and sunbathe.  High above me loomed the cottonwood, its green leaves flashing silver when rippled by a breeze.  The rustling sound of the rippled leaves, and the sight of the dancing dots of silver, entranced me.
At times it occurred to me that if the giant cottonwood ever fell in our direction, it would crash down on the sleeping porch where my brother and I slept on summer nights.  That my beloved tree might take me with it in its dying was exciting.  But of course it never happened.
Years later I learned more about trees: above all, how they communicate with one another, help one another, and don't stealone another's light.  We need trees.  They anchor the soilgive shadehost birdsblock windfilter pollutants from the air
When a freak storm devastated one corner of Central Park a few years ago and felled many trees, I mourned.  And right now, in California, Oregon, and Washington, trees as well as homes are being destroyed by raging fires.  
Given these losses, we need to plant trees.  Living in an apartment, I can't plant trees myself, so I donate to the Nebraska-based Arbor Day Foundation, so they can plant trees for me.  They do it in the U.S. and all over the world.  Which is life-supporting and essential.  The more trees we have, the better off we will be.  More power to the Arbor Day Foundation and anyone who plants a tree.
Coming soon: Autumn.
©   2020   Clifford Browder

478. Let's Have a Laugh: American Humor

BROWDERBOOKS

Four down and four to go.  That's the score for publishing my books, fiction and nonfiction.  Or maybe 3 1/2 to go, since Forbidden Brownstones has a publisher, is in progress, and will certainly be published. 

 

Which leaves three, all of them completed and in need of a publisher.

Lady of the Chameleons, about a fictional French actress (modeled in part on Sarah Bernhardt) who comes to these shores for a nationwide tour (she would like to meet General Custer, or failing that, Mr. Sitting Bull).Dinner of Dreams, about a glib-tongued operator who offers nineteenth-century Americans whatever they want, or think they want: salvation, gold mining stocks, town lots in Western towns that don't quite exist, stock in a railroad that has yet to lay track, health and well-being.Metropolis, a huge, sprawling novel ranging in time from 1830 to 1880.  Kaleidoscopic, it follows a large cast of characters -- the Wall Street speculator Daniel Drew and the abortionist Madame Restell prominent among them -- through four sections, each a book in itself: Go Ahead, War, Flash, and Bust.I'll be lucky if even one of these gets published in my lifetime.  The last one, being four books in one, is especially problematic, unless I self-publish it.  But it provides the epic setting for all the other novels, and in some cases the origins or final outcome of a number of recurring characters.  Only when set against it do the other novels acquire their full significance. 
So much for me and my books.  It's time for some humor.

       LET'S  HAVE  A  LAUGH:  AMERICAN  HUMOR

What's supposed be funny often isn't.  Back in my childhood, how often I and my family listened to comedians on the radio.  At appropriate intervals, blasts of recorded laughter ("audience enhancement") would assail our ears, while we sat there deadpan, unamused.  Did we lack a sense of humor?  Not at all.  A lot of the funny stuff on radio just wasn't funny.  Then, occasionally, it was, and we laughed.

Humor is perishable.  What one generation finds funny, another generation may not.  And it can be regional, inciting laughter in one region and falling flat in another.  Please keep this in mind, as I offer examples of American humor from the past.

When I used to vacation with relatives in rural Brown County, Indiana,  I heard that Eleanor Roosevelt, the President's wife, had once visited  the area and was shocked to see what passed for an outhouse in rural areas without running water: a board with a hole cut in it.  She started a movement to have such crude contrivances replaced by real toilets, even though there would be no running water.  The local name for this improvement: the Eleanor.  Local humor or a gesture of gratitude?  You decide.

Here now are some examples of American humor from an even earlier time.

A sign at the Laughing Gas filling station in the 1920s in Salome, Arizona (pop. 100): SMILE  --  YOU DON'T HAVE TO STAY HERE, BUT WE DO.An improvised charcoal sign in Congress Hollow, Ohio, where, sometime before 1842, Henry Clay and a group of Congressmen were spilled from their stage:  HERE  CONGRESS  FELL  ON ITS  ASS.
Nineteenth-century tavern guest registers -- huge calfbound books with spaces for each traveler's name, residence, destination, and remarks -- attracted colorful comments in the "remarks" column.  A prime example is from an Indianapolis inn on the National Road, a major gateway to the West before the coming of railroads.  Many visitors just identified themselves as "Stranger," and a fancy Easterner put" "C.H., from any place but this."  Another patron identified himself as "a genuine dealer in counterfeit money," and another remarked, "Still causing women to weep."  And when one traveler put "Stranger and wife," another added, "or some other old whore."
Place names in the West were often a mix of grim humor and grim reality.  California boasted such locales as
Hell's DelightJackass GulchLast ChancePuke RavineSkunk GulchLoafer's RetreatQuack HillChicken-Thief FlatMurderer's BarSkinflintChucklehead DiggingsPoverty HillLousy RavineRest assured, there was a story behind each name.
Calvin Coolidge was our president from 1923 to 1929.  As Harding's Vice President he served out Harding's term when Harding died, then was elected for a full four-year term himself.  Quiet and somber, he was the proverbial reticent New Englander.  A woman once came up to him and said, "Oh Mr. Coolidge, you're such a reticent man.  I just bet a friend five dollars I can make you say more than two words."  Coolidge's reply: "You lose."
And of course there was Mae West, as American as they come.  
A friend: "Goodness, Mae, where did you get all those diamonds?"                  Mae: "Goodness had nothin' to do with it."  
But without hearing her intonation, you get only half the humor.
And Eartha Kitt singing, 
    "I'm just an old-fashioned girl,
    I want an old-fashioned house    With an old-fashioned sink    And an old-fashioned millionaire."
And in film, the Marx Brothers.  "Who are you going to believe?" asks Chico.  "Me or your own eyes?"
And there is ethnic humor:  "Help!  Help!" cries the Jewish lady in Miami Beach.  "My son the doctor is drowning!"
Which is just a sample of modern American humor, more sophisticated than the humor of nineteenth-century rural America.  
So there it is: American humor at a glance.  Only a glance.  I haven't even mentioned Mark Twain.
Coming soon: A Queens neighborhood where 167 languages are spoken.  Can you guess its name?
©  2020.  Clifford Browder

479. 167 Languages, "Hot Beds," a Gay Pride Parade, and a Sundae for Eight.

          167 Languages, "Hot Beds,"  

             a Gay Parade Parade, 

            and a Sundae for Eight

A neighborhood barely half the size of Central Park, with 180,000 residents speaking 167 languages.

Signs in Spanish, Bengali, Urdu, and Hindi, the most interesting ones from tiny shops on the second floor, facing the elevated subway tracks.

A building with a Turkish owner, a Greek super, and Indian, Pakistani, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Muslim, and Uzbek tenants, plus some former Soviet Jews.

Romanticos, taxi dance halls where lonely Latino males go to dance with Latinas in short skirts.  They chat, they show each other photos of their families back in the Dominican Republic or Mexico, they coo over each other's kids, and they dance.  For a few dollars exchanged, they all feel less lonely.

Undocumented immigrants who are allowed to rent an apartment or get a job without a Social Security card, which lets them pay the rent and send money back home to their families.

Gentrification: Big garden apartments that once cost $300,000 now go for close to $1 million, forcing more and more immigrants into basement apartments, some of them fire traps, and some with cubicles  called "hot beds," shared by people in shifts.

Right smack in a neighborhood with very conservative religious communities -- Bangladeshi Muslims and Latino Catholics -- a thriving Latino LGBTQ bar scene, and once a year, the second biggest Gay Pride parade in the city.

A Methodist church where Scrabble was invented, and where services are now offered in Urdu, Bahasa, Korean, Chinese, and Spanish.

A neighborhood where you can come from anywhere without papers, start at the bottom, and work your way up.

The promise of America: a legendary ice-cream store offering a punch-bowl size Kitchen Sink Sundae for eight.

Such is this New York neighborhood.  Can you guess what it is and where?

Source note:  To come.

Coming soon:  Trees.

©.  2020.  Clifford Browder

477. Wall Street Is Not Main Street

BROWDERBOOKS

I have often commented on the industry that thrives by selling products and services to aspiring writers.  Skeptical as I can be, I'm not immune to their appeal.  Recently I bought a roll of 100 gold seals proclaiming NOTABLE BOOK, BlueInk Review.  BlueInk assured me that I was one of the lucky few who qualified for this offer.  It was their favorable review of New Yorkers that made it possible.  The cost of the seals?  $25.00, plus shipping $9.95 (those seals must weigh a lot), for a total of $34.95.  

So why have I shelled out this sum for a bunch of seals?  Because exhibiting at book fairs taught me that any little gimmick like this makes a book more attractive to attendees.  They may never have heard of BlueInk Review,  but that little gold seal is impressive.  Of course, with the pandemic eliminating book fairs for the moment, those seals will only adorn the books (currently 12) in my apartment.  But someday, hopefully, those books will appear at a book release party or a fair, or be displayed in my living room, if I have guests.  Someday...  But oh, how those little gold seals catch the eye!  

One final thought:  Where on the cover will I put the seal?  It won't be easy finding a spot that won't interfere with my name, the title, or the illustration.  I hadn't thought about this until now.  Hmm...

               Wall Street Is Not Main Street

"Wall Street is not Main Street."  So spoke Mr. Thomas DiNapoli in a recent radio interview.  And who is Mr. DiNapoli, that I should quote him here?  He is the New York State Comptroller, an elected office he has held since 2007.  I met him briefly once at the greenmarket, and delighted him by saying that, in the opinion of at least one voter -- me --  his elected office, upstaged by the governor and lieutenant governor in elections, is highly significant.  He is the state's chief fiscal officer, responsible for seeing that the state and local governments use taxpayers' money --  our "donations" -- effectively.  A watchdog, necessary because who really trusts the government -- especially our dear state government up in the cesspool that is Albany -- to do things right?  (If I deplore Congress as a swamp, I have always described our state government in Albany as a cesspool, and am still of this opinion.) So what prompted Mr. DiNapoli's comment on Wall Street?

The stock market hit a new all-time high in February and then, as COVID-19 assailed the economy, it plummeted to a low in March, and since then has recovered and is now again hitting all-time highs.  Certainly this was a bust followed by a boom, and it all happened in record time; instead of taking months or even years, the plunge and recovery were scrunched up into one single month.  Unprecedented.  

So if the market is sky high, isn't that good?  For investors, yes.  For stockholders of Apple (the stock I love to love), Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and a few other tech biggies, the leaders in this rally, things are peachy keen.  But meanwhile vast numbers of people are out of work and desperate financially, small businesses are failing, and the general economy is devastated.  So as Mr. DiNapoli observed, Wall Street is not Main Street -- far from it.

Long ago in a pre-pandemic age I published post #410, "High Buildings, High Markets, High Debt.  How Soon the Bust?"  The date was May 26, 2019.  I commented on the megatowers surging skyward all over the city, and wondered if and when those skinny colossi -- or at least the ruthless optimism that inspired them -- might collapse, taking the stock market with it.  My premise: anything that goes up up up has to come down down down, the big question being when? And one might add, why and how?  And today the big question is: Has it happened already?  The answer: it would seem so, yes.

Even before the pandemic struck, developers in Long Island City and Greenpoint, two of the busiest real estate markets outside of Manhattan, were troubled by a softening market.  As of early July of this year, nearly 60 percent of the condos completed in Long Island City remained unsold.  

As for Manhattan, the pandemic brought a sharp drop in sales as well.  In June of this year a full-floor condominium on the 88th floor of One57, a 90-story tower at 157 West 57th Street on what has come to be called "billionaires' row," was sold to a Chinese conglomerate for $28 million, a 41 percent discount from the original purchase price.  Which is nice for Chinese conglomerates and foreign billionaires desiring a little pied-à-terre in Manhattan, but not too relevant for most of us.

More to the point: people are fleeing Manhattan, leaving a lot of apartments unoccupied, bringing rents down 10 or 12 percent, maybe more.  For renters, this is good news, if they want Manhattan.  But lots of New York fugitives are now paying extraordinary sums for houses in the suburbs, sometimes even buying them unseen.  So for now New York, one of the priciest real estate markets in the country, is beginning to look like a bargain -- a pricey bargain, but a bargain nonetheless; all is relative.  Whether this will continue is anyone's guess.  Ask the virus.

So the bust did indeed come, but in a way no one predicted.  Who could have anticipated a pandemic? And even if the stock market is surging to new all-time highs, Main Street -- meaning most people -- is suffering.  And that suffering may last a long, long time.

On this cheery note, I'll conclude.  What goes up up up does indeed come down down down, but in record time it can go back up up up again.  There's something about this that doesn't feel quite right, but that's how it is for now.  Tomorrow, who knows?  Meanwhile, just talking about it makes my head a bit dizzy.

Coming soon:  American humor.  Let's have a laugh.

©  2020  Clifford Browder

476. City in Lockdown: Who's Down and Who's Up

BROWDERBOOKS
Nothing new to report.  Thanks to changes in my computer, I can't preview posts, have no idea what a new published post will look like.  Another reason to hate computers.


                         CITY  IN  LOCKDOWN:
                 WHO'S  DOWN  AND  WHO'S  UP

In New York City today, a city gripped by the pandemic, who is afflicted and who is flourishing?  For every great crisis tears somebody down and lets somebody else rise up.

Afflicted are the gay bars, since high rents and no income are putting them at risk.  Gay people need public spaces like bars to congregate in, say the bar owners, since they don't have the family network that straight people have.  But to reopen now, with the pandemic still widespread, would be a disaster.  Even the legendary Stonewall Inn, the site of the 1969 riots that gave birth to the Gay Pride movement, is in danger of never reopening, and gay bar owners in the other boroughs are likewise worried.

Other bars, too.  The famous White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas indulged in the final binge that killed him, reopened outside and was overwhelmed by the flood of patrons who flocked there, many of them without masks and not observing social distancing.  The owner deplored this, but insisted that he could not physically intervene.  Result: the bar has been shut down by the New York State Liquor Authority for multiple violations, including the lack of social distancing.  It's not easy being a small business owner during the pandemic.

So who in the city is flourishing?  Home cooks who, confined to home by the virus, have more time to cook, and offer their wares to their neighbors.  Many were astonished at the response, and are cooking more and earning a steady flow of profits on the side.   What are they cooking?  Pizzas, flan (for Mexican neighbors), Hungarian goulash, cinnamon rolls, carrot cake, empanadas -- you name it.  New Yorkers have always been a creative bunch, and never more than now.

Also, a 33-year-old designer who markets art-inspired backpacks and other streetwear, an observant Jew who is up at dawn, prays three times a day, and does volunteer work delivering food and apparel to New Yorkers in need.  So what has he just added to his line of goods?  Masks.  Stylish, of course, and very cool.
Also, bicycle shops.  New Yorkers who have to commute are leery of the enclosed spaces of buses and subway cars, especially when some fellow commuters don't wear masks.  So they are flocking to bike shops, where they line up outside, are admitted one or two at a time, and buy one of the shop's dwindling supply of new bikes.  But if they want their bike repaired, it may take weeks, given the amount of business the shops now have.  

Also, a young woman who recently graduated from Columbia University's School of Public Health and now works from her home in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, as a contact tracing supervisor.  She leads a team of information gatherers who are out in the city getting info, so that case investigators can reach out to contacts of COVID-19 patients.  She and her team are constantly exchanging e-mails, working hard to identify vulnerable people and limit the spread of the virus.  Intense work that requires very up-to-date info as the situation is constantly changing.  Tact and compassion are also needed, when it is necessary to notify someone that they are COVID-19 positive.   But she loves her work; it's vital.

Musicians are also thriving, though not financially.  In Flatbush, Brooklyn, a saxophonist, deprived of gigs by the lockdown, serenades his neighbors from a second-floor balcony, greeting the evening with the strains of "Amazing Grace."  As word gets out, more and more people gather to hear him play jazz, and he is joined on the balcony by his trumpet-playing son, and by musicians on the street below, all masked and observing the proper distance.  A Barcelona-born jazz musician plays a melodica as his young children dance.  A Haitian guitarist comes all the way from from Canarsie, and a Pakistani shows up to play drums.  Occupying nearby driveways and lawns is a growing crowd of jazz fans: African Americans and whites, Pakistanis and Mexicans, joined at times by neighbors on porches and stoops clapping their hands to the music.  Hearing the music, a Mr. Softee truck driver stops his truck and listens, tapping his hands.  Once again, New Yorkers are adapting to unforeseen circumstances with imagination and creativity.  Not even a pandemic can stop them.

Source note:  These stories were inspired by items in the Metropolitan Section of the New York Times of Sunday, June 28, and Sunday, July 5, 2020.  This weekly section keeps me informed about what my fellow New Yorkers are up to.
Coming soon:  Maybe something, maybe nothing.

©  2020   Clifford Browder

475. Spas: Where Killers Make Nice, Cops Wink, Waters Burn, and Roses Turn to Stone

 BROWDERBOOKS

The front cover of my forthcoming historical novel, Forbidden Brownstones:

And now, an incident from last Thursday.  The phone rings and I answer, expecting a scam.  

A woman's voice: "May I speak with Mr. Robert Lagerstrom?"

Me: "He died two years ago,"

Her: "Oh my God.  Are you Mrs. Lagerstrom?"

Me: "No, I'm the cleaning lady."

Her:  (Resignedly.)  "All right."  (Hangs up.)

     SPAS: WHERE KILLERS MAKE NICE,

     COPS WINK, WATERS BURN,

     AND ROSES TURN TO STONE

That there was something suspect about our American spas hit me when, researching the legendary Waldorf Astoria Hotel for my nonfiction title New Yorkers, I learned that notorious mobsters like Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano lived there under false names, rubbing shins with more respectable residents like ex-President Herbert Hoover and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.  And when, in 1936, the feds came for Luciano, the desk clerk warned the mobster, who instantly took off for -- of all places -- Hot Springs, Arkansas.  Long noted for its thermal springs, Hot Springs in those days was also a favorite mob hangout, and Luciano felt comfortable in going there.  But another fed agent nabbed him there, and he ended up in prison for running a massive prostitution ring in NewYork.

      My knowledge of spas was, and is, limited.  I knew that President Roosevelt died at Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1945.  I first set foot in a spa in the summer of 1952, when I visited my young French friend Claude at Vichy, where, like many of his compatriots, he went annually to partake of its healing waters, but I myself did not taste thereof or bathe therein.  Years later, visiting my friend Bill in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he taught the rigors of modern philosophy to the charming demoiselles of Skidmore College, we visited the spa there off season.  It was completely deserted, but one site bore a chalked inscription: "good for poopie."  Though it figured prominently as a summer resort in the history of New York City, I have never visited Saratoga Springs in season.

      What drew my attention to American spas recently, and specifically to Hot Springs, Arkansas, was a review by Jonathan Miles in the New York Times Book Review section of Sunday, August 9, 2020.  Entitled "Sleaze City," Miles's article reviewed David Hill's book The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice.  This long title promises, and the book evidently delivers, an eye-opening account of a little town in the Bible Belt that became -- for a while -- a glittering center of vice, corruption, and fun.  And oh yes, there were thermal springs that reputedly enhanced your physical health and well-being, if you drank their waters, bathed in them, or inhaled them in a steam room.

                            A bathhouse in Hot Springs today.

                                             daveynin

                        

      The Vapors was a "hot" night club that out-glittered and out-flashed anything that Vegas could offer.  Liberace played in a front room, while oil tycoons gambled fantastic sums in the officially illegal back-room casino.  Much in Hot Springs in those days was "officially illegal," but everyone -- the mayor, the cops, maybe even the preachers -- winked.  It was a fun place, drawing five million visitors a year.  

      "The only rule in Hot Springs," Virginia Clinton Kelley once wrote, "was to enjoy yourself."  And she added, "Hot Springs let me be me with a vengeance,"  And who was Virginia Clinton Kelley (full name: Virginian Dell Blythe Clinton Dwire Kelley)?  A local resident and trained nurse who raised two boys there, one of whom grew up to be the forty-second president of the United States.  Yes, Bill Clinton grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where his mother's favorite hangout was the Vapors.  And she died there in 1993, a year after her older son became president.

      The Vapors opened in 1960, but Hot Springs was "hot" and wide open long before that, as in the 1930s, when Lucky Luciano was arrested  there.  A prominent visitor back then was Owney Madden, who ran the famous Cotton Club in New York.  Not for nothing was he known as "The Killer," but in Hot Springs this graduate of Sing-Sing married the postmaster's daughter, organized illegal gambling, took up golf, was generous to civic causes, and behaved himself to the extent of not killing anyone.  A photo of him in an outsized cap shows a leering young man you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley, or even on a well-lit street.  Said Mae West of him, "Sweet, but oh, so vicious." And where did he die in 1965?  In Hot Springs, of course.

Owney Madden, a 1931 mug shot.

      In its heyday Hot Springs played host to gamblers, bookmakers, con artists, prostitutes, politicians on the take, and legendary mobsters like Al Capone, who also refrained from killing anyone there.  To which I'll add one more name: Clifford H. Browder, Sr., my father.

      A corporation lawyer who worked for the International Harvester Company in Chicago with a specialized knowledge of railroad law, he was also a great outdoorsman, a hunter and fisherman and, alas, a heavy smoker who knew that smoking was undermining his health.  As he got older and his health deteriorated, he went once a year to Hot Springs to experience the famous thermal springs.  The fact that he, a rigorously honest citizen, went there purely for the springs, says a lot.  Corruption and vice can flourish, unnoticed by honest, hard-working citizens who want only to go about their daily lives.  My father wasn't there for gambling and vice, may not even have been aware of them.  I can imagine him sitting quietly at his hotel in the evening, reading Field and Stream magazine, or chatting with fellow sportsmen likewise there for the springs, while gamblers gambled, prostitutes solicited, and Al Capone cavorted.

A 1902 postcard with a view of a fountain at Karlsbad, Austria (now in the Czech Republic).  Written in the margin in English: "It is weird and wonderful to watch this continually spouting medicine.  A flower placed in this water becomes stone in 8 days.  Water is so hot it burns one's tongue."

      Europe has had spas from time immemorial, though to my knowledge they were never the playpen of mobsters.  They were, certainly, more than healing centers.  Their organizers knew to make them cultural centers and amusement parks, with concerts and theaters as well as the inevitable and quite legal gambling casinos.  There was something relaxed about them, with the usual social barriers less rigorous, more porous.  In Henry James's charming story "The Siege of London," an American woman of doubtful reputation is out to marry a very respectable young English baronet.  And where did they meet?  At a spa.  And in Thackeray's Vanity Fair the "fallen" woman Becky Sharp haunts the spas of Europe, no doubt on the lookout for just such a lucky involvement.  European spas were respectable, yet dubious characters could hope to interact there with their betters, who might become their friends, their spouses, or their victims.

      There are those who assert that the thermal waters of the spas are no more healthful than ordinary water, when heated.  But the spas are not about to disappear.  They are part of the European way of life, and have too much tradition, hope, and money invested in them to yield to pettifogging critics who may, or may not, mount valid criticisms.

Source Note:  Much in this post comes from Jonathan Miles's article "Sleaze City," in the Book Review section of the New York Times of Sunday, August 9, 2020.  Supplementing it are various online articles on Owney Madden, Hot Springs, European spas, etc.

Coming soon:  City in Lockdown: Who's Down and Who's Up

©   2020  Clifford Browder

474. New Yorkers and the Virus: An Outdoor Baby Grand, a Naked Jesus, Free Haircuts, Mopeds, Bikes

BROWDERBOOKS

Attention all LGBTQ readers: The e-book of my historical novel The Pleasuring of Men is now available from Amazon's Kindle for $4.99, marked down from $9.99.  But this bargain will soon end.  If you want the e-book, get it now.




I have two BookBub ads going.  But first, what is BookBub?  It is a free book-discovery service that helps readers find new books and authors.  Readers tell BookBub what kind of books they're interested it, and BookBub sends them e-mails with recommendations, and notices of discounts and new releases.  And in those e-mails are ads promoting new books -- ads created by authors eager to find new readers; in other words, authors like me.
BookBub ads are tiny little squibs of things that appear at the bottom of BookBub e-mails. They consist of three items: the book's cover image, a few words of description (10 to 60 characters), and a call-to-action (CTA) so you can buy the e-book immediately.  (BookBub only does e-books; no paperbacks.).  So the ad for Pleasuring of Men has that sexy cover of a young guy, then the text: "TOM'S SERVICES COST A LOT, BUT HE KNOWS HE'S WORTH IT," and then the CTA: "READ NOW."  This ad is appearing in Amazon in the US, the UK, and Canada. 
My other ad is for my new nonfiction title, New Yorkers: A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You.  The ad includes the cover (so small the subtitle is illegible); the text "SURPRISNG FACTS ABOUT NEW YORK YOU WON'T FORGET"; and the inevitable "READ NOW."  It appears in Amazon and Barnes & Noble USA, and in Kobo and Google Play as well in Canada, the UK, India, and Australia.


So what do I expect?  Hopefully, more e-book sales.  But honestly, how would I, as a BookBub member, react to these two ads?  Would I  buy?  The first one, for New Yorkers, maybe not.  The subtitle, which I count on to hook readers, is readable in the cover illustration here, but not in the BookBub ad.  And the other ad, showing the sexy young guy?  You bet!  That photo does it all.  But will it work on others?  Will others buy?  Time will tell.
There's a learning process involved in BookBub.  You have to analyze your CTR and hoped-for ROI and other statistics to find out what kind of ad works best for you, and that can be a challenge.  But even before that, you have to learn the meaning and significance of CTR, ROI, CPC, CPM, and God knows what else.  So wish me well and don't expect glorious tidings, for I'll be groping through a labyrinth of stats that I barely understand.  Maybe, instead of BookBub ads, one should take up knitting.  And undermine one's masculine image (if a male)?  Well, John L. Sullivan, heavyweight boxing champion from 1882 to 1892, used to knit, so that should settle that.  Sullivan, who sported a magnificent handlebar mustache, was a hero of my childhood, along with Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and sexy Batman.  Even so, I doubt if I'll try it. (A sudden inspiration: why not a post on heroes?  My own, and everyone's.  Could be interesting and might say a lot.  I'll ponder.)

 NEW YORKERS COPE:AN OUTDOOR BABY GRAND, A NAKED JESUS, FREE HAIRCUTS,MOPEDS, BIKES
New Yorkers are famous for adapting: to hurricanes, blackouts, 9/11 -- you name it.  So of course we're adapting to the pandemic, of which our city is the epicenter.  But with few visitors and lots of muggy summer heat, it isn't easy.  So what are we doing?

For fifteen years Colin Huggins, 42, has been giving free outdoor piano concerts in Washington Square Park.  He plays a 900-pound Baby Steinway that he lugs on a dolly to and from the park.  He lets people lie under his piano, so they can be cocooned in sound as he plays.  In good times he played to crowds of tourists entranced by the sound and sight of classical piano music in a park.   Donations from these concerts were enough to let him live modestly in the city.  Never has he thought of moving indoors; he is at heart, and totally, a street performer and wants contact with his audience.  But now, in the absence of tourists, he plays to small crowds who are masked, hesitant, and socially distant; they part with a dollar or two -- not enough for him to pay his rent.  And the Steinway has to be lodged somewhere, always in some improvised arrangement that never lasts: a small rented space thatbecame infested with drug dealers; a shuttered restaurant that finally reopened; and now, providentially, space in the Judson Memorial Church, just across the street from the park.  But getting a 900-pound Steinway into the church's small elevator isn't easy.  

Strapped for cash, Mr. Huggins may have to give up the concerts and leave the city.  When he announced this in Instagram in June, donations poured in, giving him a little more time in the city.  He is determined to keep on playing, but there are limits, physical as well as financial, to what he can do.  The sight of him pushing his draped monster of a piano on a dolly along the sidewalk is one of those where-but-in-New-York experiences that make this city unique.  Let's hope he finds a way to stick around.

Recently, when he arrived in the park with his piano, he saw some police officers and paramedics gathered around the park's fountain, which had been occupied by a young man, stark naked, who went by the name of Jesus.  Jesus had moved into the fountain with a couch and a sun umbrella.  His behavior there caused disruptions in the park, he got into a fight with another local, and now he refused to leave.  Finally the paramedics got hold of him and took him off in an ambulance.  A naked young Jesus living in a park fountain: another where-but-in-New-York experience.

Another New Yorker who is adapting is Herman James, 32, an African-American barber whose Upper West Side barbershop was closed last March, when the city closed all nonessential businesses.  Eager to keep busy and to help his fellow New Yorkers, in May he began giving free haircuts in Central Park.  The first day he just put his chair and tools out there, and waited.  Within ten minutes someone jumped in the chair, and he's been in business ever since, clipping masked customers, many of them with three months' growth of hair.  He commutes by subway from Brownsville, Brooklyn, where he lives alone, carrying his tools in a suitcase with a chair attached.  He can be found on the west side of the park just north of Strawberry Fields.  His barbershop reopened in June, but he plans to continue his one-man outdoor operation through September, after which he will switch to house visits.  Outdoor clippings and house visits are less risky than an indoor setting, he reasons, and people love getting snipped outdoors in the lovely setting of the park.

Mr. James prefers appointments, but walk-ups are welcome, and donations are as well.  His preferred customers are people strapped by the pandemic: all ages, both sexes; they pay what they can.  Is what he's doing against park regulations?  There are no rules against it, but there are no permits for it, so it's in a gray area.  So far, the police have been supportive.  Several officers even took his card, wouldn't mind getting a haircut themselves when off duty.  He's gone the whole day, takes a 4 p.m. break to get lunch at a cocktail and wine bar where he's a regular, then back to work.  After work he revisits the bar, takes the Long Island Railroad back, gets home around 9 or 10 p.m.  And in his spare time --  as if there were any -- he's writing a self-improvement book.  A real New Yorker; a doer, tireless, energetic, innovative.

So what are other New Yorkers up to?  Even though the subway cars and buses have never been cleaner, many commuters avoid their enclosed spaces.  A young woman who wanted to get from her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to attend a small garden party in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, got creative.  She went there by stages:

a rented electric moped to Alphabet City, the most downtown spot available, where she parked it;by foot one mile to the South Street Seaport;a NYC Ferry to North Williamsburg;sipping a to-go margarita en route, by foot for 20 minutes to the event.It took two hours, but she didn't mind.  Going home, she took a car-share service with her roommate.
Others also avoid the subway:a woman who runs a media company skateboards when on errands in the East Village;a young dentist commutes from his home in Hell's Kitchen to his practice in Chinatown by Citi Bike or moped;another woman rides Citi Bikes, but changes bikes just short of 30 minutes, when an extra fee is charged.  She meets friends only in places that can be reached by bike or on foot.Yet those who ride the buses and subways insist that, thanks to nightly deep cleaning, they have never been cleaner.  Personally, I've avoided the subway, as much because of its horrendous jolts as its enclosed spaces.  I've ridden a bus just once, masked, got on in front when I should have got on farther back, and will ride one again, if necessary.  (The front is now reserved for persons needing help, as for example anyone in a wheelchair.)
Source note:  The information in this post was taken from the Metropolitan Section of the New York Times of Sunday, July 19, 2020.  As always, this section keeps me updated on what my fellow New Yorkers are doing.
Coming soon:  ???
©   2020   Clifford Browder