SOLSC March 7: Street Life

            New York is a pedestrian city — even when the wind is gusting to 25 mph. Just a little of what I saw today.

1. Three men walking  eight medium-small-size dogs of varying shades of white, black, and gray

2. A young man on a scooter with a dog on a leash

3. A young man walking two large brown dogs.

4. A woman walking a much smaller dog, who on seeing the big brown dogs barked fiercely

5. At least three people with walkers braving the wind; two were accompanied by a caregiver

6. A (presumably) very angry four-year-old girl with mother, child crying insistently. Possibly father was walking alongside with stroller. When they got to the top of the subway steps, mom and child went down together without even looking at the man, who folded up the stroller and followed them. (I wonder what that story was about.)

6. Fewer people than usual on the main drag of Broadway, though enough to cause me to keep my mask up.

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 7 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLTuesday: Reminiscence

            Yesterday I needed a book for my book group, and it was available at a bookstore on

Columbus Avenue. I had a podiatrist appointment about a mile away, so I decided to walk. After I got my book, I walked around the corner to 82nd Street, where Jack and I lived our first three years in New York. Our second apartment was at 134 West 82nd, a (very cheaply) renovated building—there were large gaps between the baseboards and the floor in places. We had mice. I got a cat from a “cat lady” (she had many in an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen), who turned out to be sick and we returned him. (Our cat-loving friends now would probably berate us for not taking him to the vet to cure him, but we were both working, and young, and careless.) An apartment in this building recently sold for three-quarters of a million dollars.

            The bookstore is in a building, the Endicott, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endicott_Hotelthat has now returned to its original status, then at the turn of the 20th century a luxury “hotel,” now a luxury co-op, but when we lived at 134, it was an SRO (single room occupancy), aka

welfare hotel. At night we sometimes heard screaming. The original Endicott had a glass-roofed Palm Court, and in that same space a series of restaurants in modern times; when we lived there, the space often held local CORE meetings. In photo to the right, the gray building in the background is now a police precinct, but when we lived there, it was a city-owned vacant lot; when it snowed, the city never cleared the sidewalk, and after several months of snow and melting snow, the pavement was broken in many places.

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.

SOL19: Celebrity Sightings

               A friend recently posted on FB that she had seen Claire Danes in front of a barbecue place in her neighborhood. We live in New York City so celebrity sightings are not unusual. 

               Many years ago, when our daughter was eight, she and her father were waiting for a bus after she’d been to the dentist. She, as usual, was engrossed in a book. He, as usual, was people watching, noting how different East Siders are from West Siders. He saw the actress Barbara Hershey walk by, and said to Christie, “There’s Barbara Hershey.” Christie looked up briefly from her book, said, “Okay,” and went back to her book. The jaded New York kid, we thought.

            Several years later, Christie was an adult, on a street in Brooklyn. Coming toward her was Ice-T with his entourage. She registered who it was, but (still) continued on as though he was just any other person on the street. She was not going to blow her cool and act like a groupie.

            Once I saw David Letterman on the subway. Once I saw Stacy Keach on the subway. Julianne Moore was around the corner from where I live talking to some film crew. Karen Young, one of the FBI agents on “The Sopranos,” had a son at the private school next door. We see them, note it, and move on.

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I’m participating in the 12th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

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