Snapshots

From New York:

On the second full day of the trip, Tuesday, I stop in a branch of my bank (on 5th Ave.) to see if I can get a temporary book of checks to use, since I'd brought bills to pay but no checks with which to pay them. While I wait my turn in line to talk to a teller (who eventually tells me they could not give me any checks), an interesting thing happens. The man who had been two places ahead of me in line is leaving, having finished his transaction, when the lady one place ahead of me says, "Hey, excuse me mister, but you've got something on your shirt." The man pauses, and looks down at his crisp white collared shirt. "On the back," she specifies. "You've got something on the back of your shirt. I think it's a cucaracha." As he walks past from me, turning like a dog after its tail to see if what she is saying is true, I catch sight of a good sized cockroach hanging out square in the middle of the back of his shirt. Another person in the line behind me flicks it off for him as he walked by, and out the door he goes, no doubt on his way to a high-paying executive-type job. Only in New York? I don't know, but it sets the tone for me, happening as it does my first morning in the Big Apple. (My research suggests it was a male Oriental Cockroach, but that probably doesn't matter to most of my reading audience, and in fact, I may have just lost some of you as an audience entirely by writing this.)

Day Three: I'm in the elevator of the Hilton, where we stayed, and I'm riding to the 17th floor with four construction workers, and I hear one say to the other, "Remember that rat that Johnnie saw, the big one that chased him?" A couple of the guys remember, and for the benefit of the other guy, the first speaker says, "Yeah, you know, that fricken' thing was THIS big," he gestures like a fisherman, and I assume he's including the rat's tail in the length, but even so, he's describing something akin to a ROUS from Princess Bride. The other guys laugh, and one says, "That's the one that went after him, right? Fricken' charged after him out of the room and up the stairs. I never seen him run so fast. That thing was huge." They all laugh. I imagine what kind of beast it would have to be to make one of these dirty, tattooed, muscled tough-guys run for his life. Another man adds, "Yeah, that was down in SOHO, wasn't it?" They all nod, laughing some more. Apparently it was. Within an hour, I'm in SOHO. I never see the rat that chased Johnnie, but I also avoid going into the type of apartment where such a rodent might be King.

In SOHO, my favorite part of New York, there are cafes and art galleries, bargain boutiques, cigar shops, Laundromats. It's a little like Berkeley East, but at the same time unlike anything I've seen. I liked New York very much, and I really liked SOHO (maybe especially because I never saw a rat the size of New Hampshire there). Now whether SOHO liked me is another matter. The high/low point was probably when I walked into the Franklin Bowles Gallery on West Broadway, wearing old tennis shoes and the same clothes I'd worn the day before, having walked in the sweltering heat for miles with sweat trickling down my back. To her credit, the woman managing the gallery at the time let me view the Matisse line drawings and even let me take a business card (which she delivered using the tip of her fingers and a very long extended arm). I didn't feel like I could even afford to ask how much the pieces went for, but I was pleased to have encountered them. It was like that in a couple other SOHO galleries, too. Like being an orphan at Christmas, or a gardener coming across an unexpected iris bloom out of season.