PLANE CRAZY

Posted on August 30, 2015 by xaviertrevino

2 hawks

I did a bunch of stuff in the past ten days, including getting a learner’s permit to learn to drive, (a skill I must refine) and filing papers to start my own small business, Fix-It-X. Next come the tax and insurance papers.
But the thing I did that excited me the most was watching three planes fly up the Hudson River.
I’ve been plane crazy since I was a kid, I have no idea when it started but I suspect it had a lot to do with war movies on TV.
When I started drawing I drew a lot of airplanes, some of them made up from things I saw on TV and imagined I saw in the sky. Whenever an aircraft flies overhead I automatically look up. I noticed most people don’t.
That means most people miss seeing a lot of interesting things in the sky that I’ve had the pleasure of seeing by simply looking up at just the right moment.
Just in the past few months I’ve seen a flight of three U.S. Army Blackhawks going up the Harlem river, two F-22 Raptors flying over Harlem, a Navy P-2 Neptune flying over the Hudson and just this past Thursday, I saw an F-22 Raptor, an F-16 Falcon, and a B-25 Mitchell W.W.II era bomber flying in formation up the Hudson.

3 planes small
The flight Thursday I found out about inadvertently, watching the morning news. Not that they actually announced it, it was only mentioned in one of those word crawls at the bottom of the screen that you have to be lucky enough to be paying attention to get.
It said: There will be a flyover of the Statue of Liberty by military aircraft at 10:30 AM today. I saw it at 9:15 AM while I was waiting for the laundry to dry at the Laundromat.
I looked up on line for any aircraft advisories and found one put out by the city saying that there would be four planes, the three mentioned above plus a P-51 Mustang W.W. II era fighter plane doing the display and then they were all to fly up the Hudson to Newburgh, NY for the Stewart airport airshow this weekend. This airshow was supposed to take place over Coney Island, but negotiations with the city broke down at some point and it was moved upstate. Nice going, Mayor DiBlasio.
I knew I had enough time to fold the laundry, find my camera and binoculars, and ride my bike over to the Hudson River some ten blocks away.
I arrived at the river’s edge a few minutes before 10:30, and figured I was going to have to wait anyway since the event was taking place ten or so miles downriver, but it was a beautiful day and I didn’t want to miss any of it. What if they started earlier for some reason? Also, those kinds of notifications are notoriously inaccurate. Believe me, I’ve waited for planes that had already flown by before.
So I sat on a rock by the water and waited, testing out both the camera and the binoculars. The binoculars had great range, the camera not so much. I wished I had the big camera and long lens I used a few years ago at the Blue Angels airshow over Jones beach. But one makes do with what they’ve got.

3 planes 3 – Version 2
At almost 11 I heard a plane coming from the north, and I turned to look. Like I said, I always look up at the sound of an aircraft engine. It was a shiny silver B-25 with red markings on its tail fins, headed down for its rendezvous with the others. I half expected to see the Mustang, but none appeared.
At 11:15 I caught sight of three dots in the sky as far downriver as I could see. I turned on the camera and put the binoculars to my eyes. I could make out three planes, two jets and the B-25. Where was the mustang?
I put down the binoculars and got the camera ready. Then I realized the planes were turning back, they weren’t coming up the river at all! Panic began to set in until I figured out that they were making the turn to circle the Statue. They did three circuits before they came up river around 11:30.
I watched as the dots got bigger and bigger and I was able to pick them up on the camera. It would have taken the jets just seconds to transit the river, but they had to stay in formation with the B-25, that was probably going less than 200 miles and hour. That’s probably close to stalling speed for the jets, which made a sub-sonic low rumble as they flew over instead of the ripping screech of super-sonic flight. It was a sight to behold and well worth the wait.

3 planes 2 – Version 2
I don’t think I can write about airplanes or air shows in particular without mentioning the two aircraft tragedies that happened this past week.
On Saturday, the 22nd a 1950’s era British fighter jet crashed onto a highway during an air show in Shoreham, England. The Hawker Hunter was doing a loop and for some reason wasn’t able to pull out of it in time and flew straight into the ground, killing as many as 20 people on the ground. The pilot miraculously survived, but just barely. He may still succumb to his injuries.
And just this Friday a high-performance Giles G-202 stunt plane augured in upstate after its tail came off during the practicing of a pinwheel maneuver. The pilot did not survive. Ironically, he was practicing for the self-same air show at the Stewart International airport that planes I saw over the Hudson Thursday are attending.
Accidents like this happen, though rarely. But I guess its part of the thrill, the draw. People go to air shows with the expectation of a spectacular crash always somewhere in their minds. Like the accidents that sometimes happen, it’s something that can’t be avoided.

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HAVE PUMP, WILL TRAVEL

Posted on August 25, 2015 by xaviertrevino

Pump

When we moved here to Harlem last year Danusia bought a bike right away. It was a used ten-speed, probably 40 or so years old that she bought from a bike shop on Amsterdam Avenue up a ways in Washington Heights. She suggested I get one too, but seeing as it was fall and winter was coming on, I said I’d wait till summer.
Her bike spent the winter chained up to a chain-link fence in our courtyard, and when Danusia finally decided to take it out in late spring, she discovered the front wheel was gone.
Meanwhile, I’d been doing work for my friends Elly and Eddie on the Upper East Side, and the work required me to go down to their basement a lot. In the basement were a bunch of abandoned bikes, so covered with dust and rust some looked like they hadn’t been touched in twenty years. There were two that were serviceable, a man’s ten-speed mountain bike, and a DAHON folding bike.
I asked Elly about the bikes and she suggested I put a sign up in the hallway to see if they actually still belonged to anyone or if someone would be willing to sell them. I was hoping they were abandoned, and I might just get a free bike. As a friend of mine once said, free is always better than cheap.
Within days I got an email from my friend Janet, who lives in the same building and was actually the one who hooked me up with Elly and Eddie.
The email said she knew who owned the DAHON, and she was sure the woman did not want to part with the bike. However, Janet had an extra bike someone had been ready to toss out, and if I wanted it, the bike was mine.
Back here in Harlem, Danusia had bought a new (used) wheel to replace the stolen one so she could ride her bike again. The first time she took it out she said the front brake was rubbing now. The she got a flat on the rear tire. I suggested she order new tires, as the ones on the bike were both pretty worn out and she was going to keep getting flats. I promised to change the tires (and inner tubes) and adjust the rubbing brake.
I went to pick up the bike Janet had for me, and it’s a nice bike, a woman’s bike. But who cares? A bike is a bike and that’s good enough for me.
“The gears don’t work,” Janet said as I examined the bike. It’s a Raleigh USA mountain bike with cantilever brakes and rapid-fire gearshifts. It has brand new tires on it and relatively little wear for a bike almost 15 years old. I know this because I looked up the model on the Internet and found out it has an aluminum frame, making it lighter than Danusia’s bike. I rode it to the subway and brought it home. I wasn’t riding it up hills stuck in a middle gear.

Rapid-fire gearshift.

Rapid-fire gearshift.

I looked up how to fix rapid-fire gears on YouTube and discovered the BikemanforU character among others. There’s also Ron Ritz, who’s been “doing this for forty years,” and Donald Lloyd, a funny Englishman on the Global Cycling Network.
I watched the Bikeman first, a big guy in his 50’s with a ponytail and whitewalls. His video showed me how to unfreeze and lubricate the gears, though he started out saying,
“You’re gonna have to cut the gear cable to do this. No if, ands, or buts about it!”
Au contraire, Mr. Bikeman! I was able to remove the cover without cutting the cable! It took me a couple of tries, but I finally got the gears working.

I was wondering how they got two 26-inch tires in the box!

I was wondering how they got two 26-inch tires in the box!

Danusia’s new tires and inner tubes arrived, and yesterday our living room became an impromptu bike shop. Not having a truing stand, I turned Danusia’s bike upside down on the seat and handlebars and went to work.

tires are on

I watched Ron Ritz’s video on how to change tires, even though I did it plenty of times as a kid.
When we ordered the tires I asked Danusia to order the tire changing levers, and it was a lot easier than using a screwdriver to pry the tires over the rims like I did as a kid. The Ron fellow joked how some woman used a butcher knife to do it and punctured the inner tube.
I left the YouTube channel on as I worked, and listened to a few other bike experts natter on about tips and such on changing tires. The best and funniest was the Englishman, Lloyd, who showed you how to cut your inner tube in half and tie off the ends.
“This will hold enough air to get you home,” he said.
“And if that won’t work, there’s always grass…” He demonstrated by stuffing wads of grass into his bike tire. I hope I never get that desperate.
After putting the tires on I debated taking the bike to a gas station or buying a pump. I settled on buying a pump, and took the bus to the Bronx for a visit to Target. I bought a foot pump and a helmet for myself. I came home to finish the job.
After filling the tires with air, I played around with the recalcitrant front brake on Danusia’s bike and got it to the point that it didn’t stick anymore. I oiled the chain and the axles, cleaned the bike as much as I could and repositioned the loose Kryptonite lock holder she’d installed herself. She’d installed it over the brake cable, that’s why it wasn’t tight.

The bike Janet gave me. Thanks, Janet!

The bike Janet gave me. Thanks, Janet!

I put my own lock holder on, after searching for a suitable place for it. I marveled at my re-conditioned 21-speed rapid-fire gears.

I’d already ridden the bike down to Fairway the other day, and after huffing and puffing up the steep hill from Riverside drive in mid-gear I’m happy I got them fixed. Danusia took her bike out last night and reported the brake wasn’t rubbing. We are ready for a big ride down Riverside Park this weekend.

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AIR CONDITIONING

Posted on August 22, 2015 by xaviertrevino

AC

A couple of weeks ago I did a job for a fairly famous young photographer who lives and works in a studio downtown. I knew he was a photographer and had heard he was well known, but to me he was just a guy who needed some work done.
There was a bunch of stuff, hanging new Levalor shades in his apartment, which is upstairs from the studio; fixing a ceiling fan, building drawers for a custom built captain’s bed. Whoever built the bed forgot to put drawers in it.
There were some minor things to do in the office/studio on the floor below, as well. The biggest thing to be done there was to re-install the 1400 BTU air conditioner in the large window of the office.
Again, whoever installed it did a half-assed job.
The air conditioner was tilted out and downward at a 30° angle, resting on a plastic milk carton on the wide ledge in front of the window. The plastic accordion assembly, the part that fills in whatever part of the window the air conditioner doesn’t had been bent outward to accommodate the angle (proper angle is 5-7°) and whatever space left over was covered by copious amounts of duct and masking tape. I would have been embarrassed to leave an A/C in a window like this.
You need a slight tilt to let the water that condenses on the grills drain out towards the street, not onto your sill. I’ve seen a lot of ruined windowsills because of an improper installation. But 30° is just past ridiculous.
I learned how to install A/Cs many years ago when I first started working at the building I worked in for 17 years. A tenant was trying to bypass the building Super and/or handyman who were asking $50 per unit to do a proper installation. I said I would do it for $30. This was 16 years ago, mind you.
I told the super and handyman, and to my surprise they said it was OK for me to do it.
“But you have to do it our way,” said Randy the handyman. Randy was a slight effeminate man with a neat little goatee and pencil mustache. He proceeded to show me how they wanted the installation done, using a steel “L” bar, Plexiglas, and silicone in lieu of the plastic accordions that come with most A/Cs.

This thing is like a sieve.

This thing is like a sieve.

You have to remove the metal catch bar on the top of the A/C and replace it with the L bar, which is cut to the exact width of the window frame. There are notches cut at either end of the bar so it will fit into the open window, the un-notched part of the bar will hold the unit against the frame. Properly done it is impossible to drop an A/C out of the window. After you attach the bar and seat it in the window properly, you measure the open spaces on either side of the unit and cut your Plexi to the proper size, then secure them onto the window frame and bar with silicone.

I scratched the Plexiglas with sandpaper to make it hard to see in.

I scratched the Plexiglas with sandpaper to make it hard to see in.

This makes it airtight and water tight, something an accordion cover is not. If you leave your A/C in the window year round with those things I guarantee you either freeze your ass off or have the things covered with towels and duct tape and such as the cold air just whistles right through all of the gaps.
I’ve seen some other things used as well, like pieces of cardboard, wood, and shoeboxes.
Here’s my across the alley neighbor’s Nike box covers. Tacky, tacky, tacky.

nike

This is my installation, and this is the way all of my installations are done, neatly.

AC

Over a month ago I did an A/C swap-out for one of my regular clients, The Center For Fiction. It was an over the window mount, and it was a big 30,000 BTU monster that had to weigh 100 pounds. I hired a guy from the task rabbit Facebook page to help me, I knew there was no way I was getting the old one down and sliding the new one in alone. The guy that showed up was thankfully 6-foot 3 and almost 300 pounds. He was very strong and we got it done without a lot of hassle. But I do most of the installations alone.
I’ve done dozens of A/C installations, and I’ve gotten good at it. When I worked at the building, at some point in the early 2000’s, a memo came down from somewhere up high: Rudin employees were forbidden to do any more A/C installations. This was because a building super had dropped one out of a window at one of our fancier buildings on Park Avenue. It turned out that it was the slight, effeminate Randy, who at 28 had become the youngest building super in Rudin history. He kept his job, and there were all sorts of rumors as to how he managed to do that, but he ruined a good source of easy cash for the rest of us.
Not that the memo really stopped anyone, supers and handymen still do it for tenants they knew and trusted.
Everyone else had to hire one of only three air conditioning outfits that had the proper 5 million dollar liability insurance. They all charged around $100 a unit if not more. And a lot of them did some pretty sloppy installations, some not even bothering to remove the bracket bar from the A/C, resulting in a less than 5° tilt, or no tilt at all, ruining more windowsills.
When I was still a doorman one of the tenants decided to put his own air conditioner in the window one hot night in August. He came home after midnight and opened his window and tried to seat his A/C. It fell out of the window, and he instinctively grabbed the power cord. This caused the errant A/C to swing through the window of the bedroom below, scaring the shit out of the couple in bed there and showering them with shards of glass. Luckily no one was hurt.
This apartment faced the courtyard, and the A/C would have just fallen onto concrete and not hurt anyone. It fell anyway after it broke the window.
So remember folks, if you don’t know what you are doing, or if you want a really tight, neat looking installation, call a pro like me to do it. It still gets hot in September.

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HUNTING THE FLEA

Posted on August 15, 2015 by xaviertrevino

cat glass

Only in New York can you go from hunting the whale to hunting the flea in a week.
Actually, the flea hunt started some time ago, if you read this blog you’ll know about it, if you don’t here’s a brief synopsis:
The last week of June into early July Danusia and I cat-sat for our friends Ezra and Jenny at their cottage out in Rockaway Beach while they vacationed in Spain. We brought along our cat, Kiwi in order to make things easier. Of course, Kiwi was totally traumatized, and didn’t get along with their three cats.
At the end of our 12-day stay, we returned to Harlem with Kiwi and all our stuff. Two days later Jenny texts me that they have fleas in Rockaway. We quickly discovered we have fleas in Harlem, too.
There followed a frenzy of cat combing, spraying, flea medicine application, washing, vacuuming, and hunting. The cat was totally traumatized (again!) by our obsessive combing and peering through a tiny magnifying glass at the area around her ears. I once saw a girl in a pet store declare a cat had fleas by looking around the cat’s ears, so I gave it a try.
Texts followed from Jenny that Ezra had found fleas crawling on his arms while driving his car, and on two of their cat’s faces. One day Ezra said:
“Is there any way we can pin this on Kiwi?”

These are the culprits, not Kiwi.

These are the culprits, not Kiwi.

Not a chance, buddy. They came from your cats, that you unwisely let roam outside. One ran up a tree, trees have squirrels, squirrels have fleas, fleas hang out in trees. Pure poetry, if you ask me.
We found fleas; mostly dead ones and one live one that jumped out of a bed sheet we’d taken over to the cottage when we stayed there. (Don’t ask.)
I had bites, lots of them. Every day I awoke with new bites. Danusia had none, and I totally resented that.
“How come they don’t bite you?” Same with mosquitos, they bite me, but not her.
Eventually the bites stopped and everybody calmed down. Then one day last week Danusia slapped at something on her thigh as we watched TV. She presented me with a tiny corpse, and I reached for the tiny magnifying glass, or as Danusia calls it, “enlarging glass.” Jenny got a kick out of that.

The big guy.

The big guy.

I looked, and yes, it was a tiny insect, flea sized, but with wings. She slapped at another.
“Are they fleas?” She asked.
“No. Fleas don’t have wings. They are gnats.” I said.
“What’s a gnat?”
“A small flying insect,” I explained. There were sighs of relief all around.
Last Monday I worked for my friends Elly and Eddie in their garden and I cleared out all of the dead leaves behind their bushes. I wore shorts and my legs made contact with a lot of uncomfortable foliage. My legs were on fire when I was done.
The next day my legs were covered with big red spots, insect bites for sure. I got out the hair dryer and did the heat treatment, which gave me some relief from the pain and itch, but not before enduring a lot of pain and itch for most of the day, the effect not fully taking hold till I left home for work. Could it be the fleas were back?

Magnifing me
After giving myself the heat treatment when I got home, I immediately grabbed the magnifying glass and accosted the cat. She squirmed out of my grasp and ran away.
I searched every inch of the bed for signs of fleas. We combed the cat and looked for flea shit. (The only way to really tell.) I longed for a bigger magnifying glass. I knew I had one somewhere; one I inherited from my dad after he passed away. I hadn’t seen it in sometime, and I harbored a secret suspicion that Danusia had gotten rid of in in one of her fits of “de-cluttering.”

So, there were no fleas, and i learned to never wear shorts while gardening again.
Yesterday I was looking for a battery for our electronic scale, which I wanted to use after watching on the Today show that people who weighed themselves every day were more successful at keeping off weight than those who did not. I bought the battery a month ago when I could see the scale display was fading. The scale hasn’t worked in a week, but I was too lazy to look for the battery. I put things away and then I can’t find them.
I found the large enlarging glass instead. Then I found the battery.
I ran for the cat to do an examination, and went over the bed again. No sign of fleas.
Then I put the battery in the scale and weighed myself. I kinda wish I hadn’t found that battery, but you can’t turn back time.

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HUNTING THE WHALE

Posted on August 9, 2015 by xaviertrevino

blue whaleI spent Monday and Tuesday nights on Nantucket last week. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if it hadn’t been for my lovely wife, Danusia. She’d been asked to perform one of her stories at a MOTH Main Stage event on Nantucket Tuesday night, and then she was to go to Martha’s Vineyard to do a repeat performance on Friday night. We were able to afford one plane ticket for me to see the Nantucket performance, and since I’ve already been on M.V. a few times (more on that later) I was happy with that.
I flew on a Jet Blue 100-seat jet and took the bus downtown after I landed. The bus was only $2, but when I got on the driver told me they don’t make change. I said I would go back to the terminal to get change for my $5 bill.
“You got four minutes,” he said. I ran into the terminal, franticly asking strangers for change of a five. The clock was ticking so I spotted a cop in a seriously peaked cop hat and asked him where the gift shop was.
“Ovah there,” he said in his thick Boston accent. I ran ovah there and there was no one at the desk. I thought quick and instead of having to hear “no change” I grabbed a 75¢ postcard off a rack. That immediately brought a middle- aged woman to the desk and I said,
“I’ll take a postcard.” I plopped my fiver down on the counter, and she handed me four singles and a quarter. I ran out onto the street to catch the bus. I made it with seconds to spare.

This is the setting of the fundraising breakfast.

This is the setting of the fundraising breakfast.

Danusia had told me the place we were staying at (The Brandt Point Inn) was on the street, but we were to sleep in the white house behind the grey one on the street. I walked through the parking lot to the white house and walked in, expecting to find the keys on the side table by the front door, as Danusia told me they would be. There was a big tan Labrador retriever in the enclosed porch that began to bark at my intrusion. He was behind glass, so I didn’t worry too much about him. I started yelling “hello! Hello!” The dog knew another way in and suddenly he was right in front of me barking and growling and bearing his teeth. I beat a hasty retreat to the parking lot, where I found one of the housekeepers, who called the manager, who showed me where the keys were, in the first grey house.
Of course, my lovely wife insisted she’d said not the white house, the grey house.
The manager said “well, I’m glad you don’t own the Brandt point Inn now,” after I told her of my mad dog encounter.
Danusia was rehearsing, that’s why she hadn’t been there to meet me. After the rehearsal I joined her and the rest of the Moth crew for dinner at a lobster place. I had a lobster; you have to have lobster if you are on Nantucket. It was yummy.
The next day we went to the beach by the harbor, we were on the leeward side of the island. I wanted to see the Atlantic side, but not having a car or bicycle that was out of the question. It was still beautiful.
That night was the performance at some Unitarian church downtown, and Danusia as always gave a socko performance, as did the others. There was a small party at a nearby bar afterwards. There were some great horderves and for desert the best apple cider doughnuts I ever had in my life. Dense and greasy, they were laid out in a drizzle of molasses.
I was to leave on Wednesday, but first we were invited to a big breakfast at a big Moth donor’s home. The name of the game was fundraising, and that’s what we were doing on Nantucket. It was a beautiful house with a private beach. Dan Kennedy, the Moth M.C. and host told a funny story about a 22- foot Python somewhere in South America to the 60 or so guests. We had coffee, muffins, and fresh fruit and Danusia and I took a walk on the private beach.
The one thing I wanted from my visit to Nantucket was a whale. The night before as we lay in bed I declared to Danusia:
“I want a whale.”
“You want a what?”
“A whale. Not a real one, maybe a wooden one. I saw one in a store downtown earlier. A whale is a proper souvenir of Nantucket.”
Ever since I read Moby Dick I’ve associated whales with Nantucket. My son was very into whales as a kid and I’ve always liked and admired whales. And the fact that a woman cellist playing “Farewell to Tarwathie” opened the Moth performance reinforced my whale fixation.
“I’m not leaving without a whale.” I already had a whale napkin from the lobster joint, but that wasn’t enough.
After the big fundraising breakfast a cab dropped us off downtown and I immediately went whale hunting. The best place to go was the Whaling Museum, of course. They had the perfect thing in these big carved whales:

White wahle
I wanted the white one, of course, but at $100 for the small one it was out of the question.
“Why don’t you take a picture and you can carve your own?” Danusia suggested. I took the picture and I might just do that someday. In the meantime I found a small white cast metal whale for $8, just the ticket. I bought that and a whale bookmark, in case I ever read Moby Dick again.

fish
So, now I’ve been to the three major islands off the coast of Long Island; Block Island, where I got a paper-maché fish, Nantucket, where I got my whale, and Martha’s Vineyard, where my first wife came from. I think I will carve that whale someday.

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ACROSS THE RIVER

Posted on August 2, 2015 by xaviertrevino

tower

Last week we went to a barbecue at the home of a couple we are friends with in Long Island City. The building they live in has a sort of rooftop patio on the 32nd floor. It’s actually not the rooftop, because there are more floors above, but it’s high enough.
Our friends, Olya and Nicolai are from Russia, and they met Danusia in her association with the Russian Arts Theater studio, or RATS as the director likes to call it. They are a very sweet couple and Nicolai made lamb skewers and beet salad and some other light fare and we took everything up to the roof to use one of the gas grills the building provides to the tenants.
There are two patios, a large one that boasts two grills; an AstroTurf lawn and two giant binoculars mounted on pedestals faces west, towards Manhattan.
The smaller patio faces Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island. There are two grills divided by a fence. The patios themselves are divided by an indoor lounge that contains a large screen TV, a small kitchen and a pool table.
We tried the big patio first, and there were already a half-dozen groups of tenants and their guests using one of the grills. The free grill was out of order. One of the guys using the grill suggested we go to the other side, and seeing the crowd I convinced Nicolai to give it a try. Most of the people on this side were young, late 20s early 30s, and loud.
We were by ourselves on the east side patio, and discovered the igniter did not work on the grill. With the help of some matches and trail and error, we got the grill lit and got to cooking.
I looked at the expanse of the city that stretched to the horizon, and I could see the Williamsburg clock building in the distance, and with a lot of work I spotted the housing projects I’d grown up in. Newton creek was less than a mile away, and we could see the cars crossing the Kosciusko Bridge into Brooklyn. The First Calvary Cemetery lies between LIC and the Bridge. I pointed it out to the others and asked, “Have you ever seen The Godfather?”
Of course, everyone had.
“Well, the scene where Don Corleone is laid to rest was shot in that cemetery. You can see the Kosciusko Bridge in the background in the shots.”
We ate and chatted, and being on the east side in the shade, started getting cold.
We decided to go on the other side to watch the sunset.
On the west side you can see most of Manhattan, but you can also see the Ravenswood Con Edison plant with its four stacks painted red and white. I worked there the summer I was 19. I got to go into the largest generator on the east coast, Big Allis. It was very hot inside, 140°.

Ravenswood
You can also see the back of the Silvercup bread sign. I think it’s a movie studio now. The Queens Citi Corp building was only blocks away, and I remembered when it had been built in the early ‘80s, the beginning of the LIC revival.
The summer I worked for Edison I would walk through LIC and the Ravenswood houses and there wasn’t a lot there. The Citi Corp building changed all of that.

LIC Citi Corp building

LIC Citi Corp building

Ironically, you can see the Citi Corp building on 53rd Street just across the river, with its distinctive angled roof. I got a picture of it through one of the binoculars.

Manhattan Citi Corp building.

Manhattan Citi Corp building.

The moon was almost full and beautiful, and I was able to aim the binoculars at it and see the craters. Everyone had a look and marveled at the image. But I couldn’t get a picture with my iPhone.
Later on, after it was dark, we all walked over to the new esplanade on the river to get a closer look at Manhattan. It was a nice cool night and there were hundreds of people on the pier. It got late and I suggested we go home, and there was a 7-train stop nearby.

from the river

I really didn’t want to take the 7, but it was either that or walk back the mile or so to the E train station at Court Square, where their home is. We said goodnight and descended the stairs to the 7 train. There was no train, or explanation. I felt bad for the token clerk who had to endure the ire of hundreds of stranded people.
On the sidewalk above people milled around trying to find the nearest subway stop, or fighting over the few cabs in the area.
Danusia and I had a brief disagreement on which direction the E train was, and I have to admit her way was right. We walked through the warehouses of the old LIC dotted here and there with restaurants of the new LIC.
For me it was like a walk through the past, having worked nearby or wandered around as a teen exploring the city. It was interesting to see how things had changed in the past 40 years.
But some things, like trains that don’t work, never change.

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TO FLEA OR NOT TO FLEA

Posted on July 30, 2015 by xaviertrevino

snailcat

That is the question.
We did some cat sitting in the Rockaways a few weeks ago, and we came back to Harlem with some little unwelcome guests in tow. Fleas.
I remember when we were there, at my friend’s cottage three blocks from the beach and four miles from Ft. Tilden, I kept waking up with what I thought were mosquito bites.
It didn’t help matters that on the second night there Danusia insisted on going to the beach at dusk to sit in the lifeguard’s chair the way my friends Ezra and Jenny had done. The things I remember the most about that were watching a guy with a metal detector methodically comb the beach and getting bit by mosquitos.
By the fourth day there I had so many bites that I looked up a good itch relief remedy online and discovered the heat treatment.
I’ve always been susceptible to insect bites, so I’m very familiar with all of the ointments, Cutter’s, Burt’s Bees, Hyland’s, etc. None of them work. Hyland’s came closest to some relief.
The website said to use a hair dryer to spot direct heat onto the affected area. Ezra has no hair so there was no hair dryer in the cottage. The first thing I thought of was to run it under hot water, and the water there was hot enough to scald, so I got it just hot enough and put my wrist and forearm bites under the faucet. It worked.
But what about my ankles and thighs?
My wife Danusia loves candles, and candles go everywhere we go. I figured hot wax ought to be hot enough to treat the bites without burning my skin. Don’t ask how I know that. I tipped the candleholder over and dropped hot wax onto the bites.
The only bad part about it was that now I had bits of wax stuck to the hairs on my legs and drops of wax on the floor I had to clean up. But the relief was worth it.
I have to mention that our cat Kiwi was brought along on this great cat sit/beach adventure. Even though Kiwi did not get along with the other three cats, (Koko, Betie, and Preti) they got close enough to do a little parasite sharing.

Kiwi and Beti

Kiwi and Beti

So, when we got home to Harlem two weeks ago and Ezra and Jenny returned to the cottage I got a text from Jenny: “There are fleas at the cottage!”
Well that was something I didn’t want to hear. I went online to find out how to tell if our cat had fleas, and sure enough, Kiwi had fleas.
There was a flurry of emails for the next few days, advice on bombing, treatments, Frontline, etc. One website said to put dishes of soapy water with a tea candle in the center out at night and it would attract the fleas and they would jump in and drown. I think we got two fleas like this.

No fleas today.

No fleas today.

Danusia got some PetArmor for Kiwi and we vacuumed and washed and mopped and sprayed. I still had bites, but surprisingly Danusia got none. We were changing sheets on the third day of the emergency, and Danusia took out some sheets we’d washed at the cottage (there is a washer/dryer there) and had dried alfresco on a wood fence outside the cottage. As she opened the sheet a flea jumped out. There were several dead ones as well. More washing and vacuuming. I sprayed the closet the sheets had been it. More dishes with soapy water and candles. I sprayed the cat’s scratchy post and the Ottoman she’s commandeered. It was supposed to be for my feet but I’m not going to compete with the cat hair. Danusia went around with a magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes hunting for fleas, dead or alive.

ottomancat tree
The websites all talked about the copious amounts of dead fleas we’d have to clean up, but I think we’ve only found five or six.
Jenny kept sending reports about finding fleas on the small cat’s faces, about fleas filling the soapy water dishes at Ezra’s business, about more bites and bite allergies. It made my stomach churn.

Magnifying glass
We’ve washed and vacuumed over and over again. The $40 can of flea spray is empty. The magnifying glass is kept at hand. The cat is inspected daily, and she’s not happy about it. We haven’t resorted to bombing yet; I hope it doesn’t come to that.
So this has been going on for the better part of the last two weeks. I had two bites yesterday, but it’s hard to know if they are from fleas or mosquitoes. Today so far I haven’t noticed any bites, but it’s early yet. Thank god for the hot wax treatment.

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WHERE’S THE W.C.?

Posted on July 25, 2015 by xaviertrevino

wc

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know I have BPH, or benign prostatic hyperplasia. That means that for me, the location of the exits in a theater is not as important as the location of the restrooms. In case of an evacuation emergency, I would have to hit the john first. Who knows how long I’ll be standing on the sidewalk?
I was in midtown the other day, I had to meet a friend for lunch in Columbus Circle but I also needed a new watchband. The watchband I wanted (a nice black silicone one) was available at a Fossil Store on 48th and Broadway, a short walk to Columbus Circle. I went there first.
As I walked through the throngs of tourists and Elmos and Cinderellas and the Naked Cowboy (holding some middle aged Midwestern woman aloft) I suddenly got the urge to pee. That’s nothing new; I usually get the urge about five minutes after I go. It just keeps getting more and more urgent as time drags on, until it becomes unbearable. Two plus hours is unbearable territory.

tourists
Like a good scout, I looked around for the possibility of a bathroom nearby. On 45th Street and Broadway, there is none.
Of course all the restaurants in the area have restrooms, they also have little signs that say: RESTROOMS ARE FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY! With an exclamation point, no less.
I looked at all of the tourists, the throngs of people that stare up at the giant electronic billboards and wait at the corner for the light to change, and wondered where they go, or what they thought about the fact that there are very few public restrooms in New York City.

men
That’s what I love about Europe, they know people need to go and have public restrooms everywhere. It’s an actual business and job for some people.
On my recent trip to Poland I had to go at a train station outside of Lødz and Danusia directed me to the “W.C.” W.C. means “water closet,” a polite and universal term in Europe. It’s called W.C. in every country in Europe.
“You have to pay. 2 zloty.” A zloty is about a quarter, and I’d gladly pay fifty cents for a clean bathroom any day of the week. In the U.K. the W.C.s were 50 pence, a little more but still manageable. And if you are really broke you can crawl in under the turnstile.
I walked into the room, and there was a little window with a big fat woman with bright red hair sitting on a stool behind it. I looked around for where to put my 2 zloty, and seeing none, I started to push open the door to the men’s. The woman yelled something at me in Polish.
I went to the window with the coins in my open palm. She said something I couldn’t understand in a stern tone of voice and pointed. Ah, that’s where the money goes, I thought as I spotted the proper receptacle, a little box by the door. Low tech indeed. I paid and entered the men’s room proper. A row of closed stall doors met my gaze. Closed all the way to the floor. No wayward U.S. congressmen to play footsie with here!
Years ago, on my trip to Germany courtesy of the U.S. Army we were let loose in Hannover, a large city in northern Germany. I went to the train station thinking I could score drugs there, and I just might have had I known how to speak German. But the best I could do was to take a pee in the large men’s room there. It reminded me of the restroom at Grand Central Station.
I took a place at a urinal, and I noticed the man next to me was a well-dressed older gentleman, with a suit, tie, and trilby hat. He smiled. I smiled back. He looked down, and I followed his gaze. He had a huge erection and was stroking himself. I broke his gaze and finished what I had to do and left as quickly as I could.
The bathroom in Washington Square Park can be like that, so I don’t go in. Hard to pee when you know there are five or six men standing behind you watching.
By now I know where to find restrooms in New York. All the big stores have them, Macy’s Bloomingdale’s, and whatever the store that took over Filene’s basement in Union Square is good. I was disappointed with Bloomingdale’s in Soho; one of their stalls had a leaky flushometer for months. It actually had a rag tied around it. Come on, Bloomingdale’s, you can afford to hire a plumber. I resisted an urge to bring a Channel Lock with me to tighten it up myself.

coulumbus circle bathroom
The best bathroom I use is the one on the second floor of the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. This is where I ended up at the other day, after I got my new silicone watchband from Fossil. It’s clean, it’s beautiful, and it’s relatively private and comfortable. I wish there were one like this on every other block in New York City.

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RESTRICTED AREA

Posted on July 19, 2015 by xaviertrevino

me on the beachWe spent the last week of June and the first 12 days of this month in Rockaway Park. Or the stop that says Playland, I don’t know why it’s called Playland since the only Playland I could find was a bar on Rockaway Freeway. Maybe there used to be a park there a long time ago.
We stayed in my friend Ezra’s cottage on Beach 98th street caring for his and Jenny’s three cats. We brought our cat Kiwi along for the ride.
Danusia was all excited about our stay, being a big beach lover. I’m not so fond of the beach, so my enthusiasm was more reserved. But it was nice to get out of the city for a bit.
It would have been nicer if I didn’t have to work for about half the time we were there, I rode the A train and shuttle a lot. I did get lucky one day and boarded a Rockaway Park bound train at Fulton Street and did not have to change for a shuttle at Broad Channel, an endeavor that can add up to 45 minutes to your ride depending on too many variables to get into here. On average I spent 3 hours a day on the trains. We did go to the beach a few times, we even walked down the block to the beach at the end of 98th Street at night to sit in the empty lifeguard’s chair. We stayed and watched kids making out on the sand and one guy with a metal detector looking for his fortune until I got bitten by one too many mosquitos.
Ezra arranged for the local Pedi-cab and bike guy to loan us two beach bikes, you know, those single speed trucks with balloon tires, and one day we set out for Ft. Tilden, just on the other side of Riis park. It’s only 4 miles from the cottage, but still a rough ride on one of those bikes. I’ve done more bike riding this summer than I’ve done in the past 10 years.
We got to Ft. Tilden after riding the length of Riis Park, and then rode through Ft. Tilden on a gravel track that took us past the abandoned gun casements built during WWII.

There used to be a 16-inch naval gun in there.

There used to be a 16-inch naval gun in there.

We came out on a beach hidden by sand dunes, there’s some kind of fisherman’s club there. We saw a Russian fellow catch a fish.

russian with fiah
I realized I’d been on that very beach before, back in the early 1980’s. I was dating a woman who owned a Toyota pickup truck and didn’t work and we would drive out there in the middle of the week and trudge through the sand dunes till we could see the water. We would have sex and then lunch in the sand dunes. She just wanted a tan; she wasn’t much for the water either; so the dunes sufficed.
We only tested the water that first day, Danusia and I. We hadn’t come prepared to swim.
We went back again later on in the week, and this time we went to the Ft. Tilden beach front, not as far as the Fishing Club. Aside from a woman who had a camera with a huge lens mounted on a tripod there was no one else there. That means no life guards either.
Danusia was a little timid about swimming, what with the lack of a lifeguard and talk of rip currents and sharks she stayed close to the shore. We went in neck deep and hopped in the waves. It was fun and I only got knocked down once by a particularly huge wave. By the time we left the beach there were about ten other people on the beach. The woman with the camera had gone.

beach waves
We went back again, this time on a Sunday, and I couldn’t believe how many people were there already. And they kept on coming.
This time there were Park Rangers on hand, to keep people off the protected area where the Piping Plovers are nesting. We got there in time to see there was one guy in the closed off area, he’d slipped through the fence which is festooned with “KEEP OUT” signs. A park ranger also saw him, and ran over to give him hell.
“Hey you! Get out there! As a matter of fact, get the hell off the beach. Leave now.” The guy sheepishly walked over to the ranger and apologized, all while the ranger guy harangued him.
“That’s a restricted area, don’t you see the signs?” I don’t know what else was said, I’d lost interest already, but I did notice the guy went back to his friends and did not leave the beach.

Empty building on the beach

Empty building on the beach

About half of the women on the beach were topless, I saw. So did the bearded Park Ranger in the Smokey the Bear hat that’d yelled at the intruder before. He paraded up and down the beach to make sure no one else wandered into Piping Plover territory, all the wile darting his eyes back and forth from one set of naked breasts to another.
It was a hot day, and we’d brought food and a water bottle that I had put in the freezer very early in the morning. We found a spot as far from the crowd as possible, but as the day wore on more and more young hipster kids showed up. They all seemed to know each other and were bent on partying. There was plenty of booze and grass.
This is nothing new on the Rockaway peninsula; when I was a their age I was one of the kids from the city who came out to Riis Park with my girlfriend and assorted cronies (and their girlfriends).
In the mid to late ‘70s Riis Park was known as a nude beach, or at least one part of it. I imagine the part furthest from the bathhouse buildings. We would all strip and sunbathe nude and swim nude, nobody ever said boo. So we were one up on these kids.
Sometime that day we spotted a pod of dolphins about 200 yards off shore. At first I thought it was a shark, but there were at least 4 sets of fins doing the characteristic formation swimming dolphins do, rhythmically breaking the surface every 20 feet or so. We watched them swim to the east, towards Riis Park. They came back west about 20 minutes later, and it was a real treat to see them.
Danusia had even pointed and said “Dolphins,” aloud to our neighbors, but they were all too busy drinking, smoking, and admiring themselves to pay any attention to her or the dolphins. I wonder how many things I missed out on when I was that age.

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JUICERS

Posted on July 14, 2015 by xaviertrevino

juice

We have a new addition to our family of glass-plastic-steel electric kitchen gadgets. The OMEGA:

omega

I think I bought a juice once, at Jamba juice years ago because a woman I was dating was having one and I wanted to, well, ingratiate myself. I thought I could learn something about healthy eating as well, but neither the juice nor the relationship worked out.
The taste of fresh squeezed kale, carrots, and celery and god knows what else doesn’t quite appeal to my palate.
I have a friend who once invited me (and a bunch of others) to her birthday at a popular restaurant on St. Marks Place, and when time came to order food she announced she was on a 7-day juice cleanse and took out a plastic water bottle filled with some bright green concoction that she sipped slowly as everyone else ordered burgers and whatnot. She graciously provided her own “raw” birthday cake for us to share (she didn’t have any of that either). That was an event to remember forever.
When I first started dating Danusia, she pulled out her old Breville juicer one morning and started feeding it copious amounts of carrots, kale, limes, (peeled, of course) and I can’t remember what else and poured the whole resulting juice into a tall 16-ounce glass. It was a very pretty bright green, almost neon in color. She took a sip and offered me some. I took the proffered glass and took the tiniest sip I could without being impolite. I restrained myself from grimacing, but I’m quite sure my brow furrowed and my eyes welled up.
“Well, what do you think?” She asked.
“Umm, yummy,” I said as I handed her back the glass.
“Have some more,” she said.
“No, no, dear, I know how much you love your juice, you go ahead and enjoy it. I’m fine. She burst out laughing at my reaction, and that was the last time she offered me juice.
Danusia will get on a juice kick, having a juice once and even twice a day for a few days, and then the juicer will remain in the cupboard for a while until the next juice frenzy. I won’t say what prompts these frenzies, but I will say it’s usually after the holidays.
Early on in our relationship, shortly after we moved in together at the Williamsburg loft Danusia spent some time on her computer researching “the best” juicer on the market. All the websites agreed that the top of the line Breville was best. At $300 plus apiece it should be the best. She ordered a new one. This was because her old Breville, not the most expensive one (they have three grades) wasn’t “juicing” as well as it did when new.
Now these things are big, and heavy for a kitchen appliance, ten pounds of motor and gears plus the big carafe, of course. Then there is the receptacle for catching the waste pulp, and the big cup for the juice. A countertop monster if there ever was one. Not to mention noisy.

breville
It sounds like a cheap vacuum cleaner ingesting a cat. I remember a few mornings where the morning news was drowned out by the shrieks of carrots and kale stalks being ripped to shreds by the tiny little teeth on the grinding basket. It’s a round basket with teeth like a cheese grater that spins with alarming speed. Imagine a deranged dentist going to work on your gums instead of your teeth with his high-speed drill.
One day Danusia came home with a bullet. A Magic Bullet, to be exact.
This is the Magic Bullet:

bullet

Not a juicer, more of a musher, the bullet makes creamy concoctions of frozen fruit and soy milk and whatever else you want to throw in there. I toyed with making my own peanut butter in it but balked at the cleaning job that would follow.
I have to admit I did try the fruit concoctions; they were a lot tastier than the juices. Of course probably not as healthy, but less calories than a pint of ice cream.
Using the Breville requires a lot of time and work, it has to be cleaned with a special brush, there’s a lot of pulp to be rid of, it’s big and heavy. Danusia’s search for a better way went on. Then she discovered the OMEGA.

scuzzscuzz2

OMEGA scuzz and pulp.

Unlike the Breville, the OMEGA works slowly, grinding down the veggies with a big hard plastic wheel that resembles a giant screw. It’s quiet, making a gentle whir as it destroys green stuffs. It’s also easier to clean and has a smaller profile than the monster Breville, which resides in a kitchen cupboard, having lost its place on top of the fridge. That space is dedicated to the new kid on the block, the OMEGA.

I like it better already. But I don’t think I’m going to drink the juice.

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