SENDING PAPA HOME

Posted on October 25, 2014 by xaviertrevino

bambooBefore my father died in a nursing home five years ago he would tell me he’d been in Mexico the day before, or the week before, or sometime in the recent past, despite the fact he hadn’t been anywhere but the inside of the nursing home for seven years.
I always asked him how it was, and how my dead aunts were. I never contradicted him, after all, he had dementia and anything I said would not have mattered much.
He wanted to go back to Mexico to die, but the logistics of it at his age would have made it impossible.
He died on August 11th, 2009, one day after my friend Andy died. I left work and went to the funeral home that had been recommended by the nursing home to make arrangements.

The unopened package

The unopened package

I was pretty much alone, Danusia was in Poland and my brother lives in Florida and I hadn’t spoken to my sister in many years. My son Javier was spending the summer with me, so it was just the two of us.
I arranged a viewing at the funeral home for the next day, Javier and I said our goodbyes and I had my dad cremated.
His ashes arrived by first class mail a couple of weeks later, and he took up residence in a John Varvatos shoebox that I placed in our inert fireplace at the Broadway loft we lived in. He spent the next five years there.

inside
Danusia and I often discussed what to do with the ashes, and I had some vague Idea of taking them to Tampico, Mexico where he was born and tossing his ashes into his beloved Atlantic ocean. My dad loved the water, and swimming.
Tampico is a costal city and he’d grown up on the beach and in the water.
He wanted me to be the same way, but his way of teaching me to swim was to throw me in the deep end of a pool when I was 7. That didn’t work out too good, and to this day I hate the beach and I’m not a very good swimmer.
But I did think that he would have liked to be released into the ocean. When he was at the nursing home I tried to discuss his wishes for his passing, and all he would say was, “why should I care? I’ll be dead anyway. Do what you want.”
Danusia and I did go to Mexico in 2011, but we forgot my father. We were on a beach, too for that vacation.
I’d also thought about going to Florida and doing this with my brother, the both of us going to the Atlantic together to release the ashes into the ocean.

We had to move a couple of weeks ago, and I dutifully packed my dad’s ashes with everything else, but getting rid of stuff became a central theme of moving into a smaller place, and one of the things we could certainly let go of were dad’s ashes.
Danusia has a recurring cleaning job for a friend at his cottage in the Rockaways, and she was scheduled to go yesterday. I asked if I might tag along, and bring the ashes to put in the Atlantic out there, and a plan was born.
I found the box with the ashes, and finally opened the postal package. Inside there was a black plastic box with the crematorium’s name and address, along with the words: Cremated remains of Agustin Trevino Lucio. I’ll never know why he was Lucio and I’m not.
We made the long trek out to Beach 69th Street and spent a few hours cleaning the cottage. I cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom so we could get out of there faster, and when we were done we headed off to the beach and got there just at sunset. I was wondering how I was going to get the ashes in the water without getting wet, and we saw a rock jetty about a half-mile away. I remember a night when I was in high school when some classmates and me went out onto one of those in the middle of the night while drunk and tripping. It’s a miracle none of us drowned that night.
It may have even been the same jetty, I don’t remember exactly where my friend’s house was, except it was somewhere on the Rockaway peninsula.
Danusia and I reached the rocks and climbed out as far as we could and still be safe. We got as close to the crashing waves as we could.

The last of my dad.

The last of my dad.

I got the plastic box open and inside there was a plastic bag with the ashes. I took the bag out and for a crazy moment I remembered the scene in The Big Lebowski where they set out to do the same thing and the wind blows the ashes all over them.
I opened the plastic bag and held it out as close to the water as I dared and shook out the ashes. The bag was remarkably heavy for ashes; it was about four pounds. I managed to get most of the ashes in the water, but some blew onto a rock.
We sat and said our goodbyes, and I cried a little, it was my last physical connection to my father, and I was finally letting him go.
I sat and watched the waves, I knew one would come along and wash the rest of the ashes into the sea, but maybe it would happen soon.

jetty
The sky was beautiful, the setting sun and the clouds turned the world pink for a moment and then a big wave came and splashed the rock and us and dad was gone forever. We got up and made our way back to shore and the A train home beyond. It was an accomplishment.

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HELLFIRE ON 9th AVENUE

Posted on October 21, 2014 by xaviertrevino
View of Weehauken at night.

View of Weehauken at night.

Last Friday I went to an “open studio” event at a friend’s studio in Westbeth. I went with some old friends, and we met for dinner before hand at a burger joint on 9th Avenue called “Bill’s Drinks and Burgers. It was a loud, crowded little place on the corner of 9th and 13th streets.
After we ate we walked over to Washington Street and down to Westbeth, going up one elevator to the 6th floor and then across a long corridor to another elevator to get to Robert’s studio on the 8th floor. Complicated, ain’t it?
I met Robert and my friend Vicki who’d invited me to the dinner and open house when we were all students at the Cooper Union Saturday art program. Cooper Union invited talented High School students from all over the city to take classes at Cooper taught by actual Cooper Union students, who where adults to us then.
But this isn’t about that; this is about the meatpacking district.

The old Hellfire Club was here.

The old Hellfire Club was here.

As I made my way to 22 9th Avenue and Bill’s Burgers I passed by a place called HILO now, and I remember when it was called The Hellfire Club in the ‘80s. In the ‘80’s the Hellfire club was about the only nightspot there, if you want to call it a nightspot. It was more of an S&M bar where the owners (or someone hired by the owners) put on some pretty tame S&M shows, I remember one where a very pretty girl in a leather-strappy sort of thing was spread-eagled on a big black painted wooden X getting whipped by some beefy bearded guy in a leather hood.
It was a show, a performance, and I don’t think the guy was really hurting her.
I went only because a friend of mine insisted I go with him, he offered to pay my way in and buy drinks. I never said no to free drinks at the time, so I said OK.
It was entertaining, most of the patrons were in their best latex and leather and the girl’s outfits were pretty skimpy. Then my friend, whose name I won’t mention for obvious reasons, disappeared for a little while. I wondered where he went, he was gone a little too long for it to be a bathroom trip, so I went looking for him and discovered that there were private booths in the back of the club. I went back to our table and nursed my beer till he got back. I didn’t ask him what he’d done.
While he was gone a girl in a latex outfit came up to me with a big paddle in her hand.
“Would you like to go up and get paddled? Only $25.” People were going up on the little stage and getting paddled by these girls.
“I don’t think so. But if you like I’ll paddle you for free.” She declined my offer and moved on to the next patron.
Back then you only went to the meatpacking district at night if you were looking for a transvestite prostitute, or to go to the Hellfire, of course.
Friday night I encountered a whole different scene.

I can't even pronounce that.

I can’t even pronounce that.

Little West 12th Street was lined with stores filled with clothing I can never hope to afford, and ditto the restaurants. I was barely able to spring for the burger ($9.95 for just a burger, fires were $5.95 extra) with a side of water.
After I left Westbeth by myself, I walked back to the A train and passed all these stores anew, and took the accompanying pictures. By the way, the photo at the very top is a view of Weehauken from Robert’s window. Nice view, huh?

pastis
I passed by the now closed Pastis, and I did eat there once, but only because my friend Linda was waitressing there and insisted I drop by. I had coffee and some kind of pastry and didn’t have to tip her. I didn’t see anyone famous.
I did eat at a place on Hudson Street once and sat next to Steven Van Zant and his wife, who was also on The Sopranos.
But Friday there were no famous people, just rich kids in expensive clothing staggering around and looking fabulous. I wished a gang of transvestite prostitutes would come running down the street to run over these privileged self-indulgent brats. They’d never know what hit them.

makeup on 9th ave
Near 14th Street there was some huge makeup store open, I guess the fabulous need access to makeup on a 24-7 basis since it was past 9PM.
Some of the gleaming new buildings are very impressive; the neighborhood no longer has that smell of fresh-spilt blood and rotting meat premating it. There are no longer roving bands of kids looking to rip off the Transvestites or groups of gay men looking to break into parked trucks. All in all, it’s a pretty sterile scene today.
I think I liked it better back then, seemed a little more based on reality.

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WHERE HAVE ALL THE BEDBUGS GONE?

Posted on October 18, 2014 by xaviertrevino

bed

I thought I was done with our Brooklyn apartment, we moved out and I left it empty and “broom-swept clean” as they like to put in a standard lease. Then I got a hysterical phone call from my ex-landlord, he was getting “violations” because I’d left a king-sized mattress and two box springs in front of the building. I did not remind him that I’d mentioned that when I was vacating when he insisted I “get everything out and put it in front of the building.”
The mattress and attendant box springs were not wrapped in plastic, as the current NYC law requires. This law is a result of the bedbug hysteria of a couple of years ago. The poor sanitation workers refused to handle uncovered mattresses for fear of contracting bedbugs. If you are a sanitation worker and you are afraid of bedbugs, you are a pussy.

Pussies.

Pussies.

Of course the city saw it as a new source of revenue, something else to slap a fine on.
So when I spoke to the landlord, he asked what I was going to do about it.
“I can call someone to pick it up, pay whatever, $100 I guess, and eat it.” He said.
If I owned a building and was getting $100 a day violations, I would have called someone to haul it away right away, or get one of my employees, like the building “super” who cleaned the stairwell probably once a year in the 8 years we were there to wrap it up in plastic. This guy’s a millionaire and he’s bitching about $300 worth of tickets. I’ve had to eat around $5,000 so far in this sudden move and I’m not a millionaire. I know he’s one; if you own a few buildings in Brooklyn you’re a millionaire.
Rather than listen to anymore whining and to get my security deposit back, the next day I got up early, went to buy a couple of those “one size fits all” plastic mattress covers (another new industry) and got on the M train hopefully for the last time.
When I got to Broadway the mattress was still there, lying in the middle of the street. But there was only one box spring, and I don’t know if the garbage men took it, or some enterprising homeless person. My money’s on the homeless person.
I found out one size doesn’t fit all, and with the tape I bought along and a borrowed knife from S&Y organics (my friends from the store on the first floor) I was able to cut up the covers and cobble together the right sized pieces of plastic. I let the landlord know, but I had to pester him a bit before I got a response as to when I could pick up the check.
When I was working as a handyman on 86th street a few years ago we would have tenants periodically tell us they thought they had bedbugs. Out of the ten or so who suspected it, only one tenant actually had an infestation, and it came from her upstairs neighbor who hadn’t reported anything. When I went up there with the super to check I put on one of these white HAZMAT outfits with booties and gloves. Not really because I was afraid of the bedbugs, more of a goof, as this woman’s apartment was particularly filthy. I was more afraid of getting catshit on me.

white suit

The whole episode brought home the realization that we are a nation of pussies, afraid of our own shadows and things we have no control over or that don’t even remotely affect the average American.
Take the Ebola scare. I turn on the TV to listen to some hysterical announcer breathlessly talking about the latest confirmed Ebola case in the country, like tomorrow we’re all going to be infected. It reminded me of the hysteria in the ‘80s about AIDS, when cops started wearing rubber gloves to touch drug suspects and homosexuals. As far as I know, we didn’t all die from AIDS.
As of now, 4,550 deaths have been attributed to Ebola. In a world with a population of 7.126 BILLION people your chances of contracting Ebola while sitting in your comfortable living room chair are astronomical. But it doesn’t stop assholes with nothing better to do to hysterically demand “stopping the flights” (take that, Mr. Baynor) or treating people from West Africa as pariahs.
In the 1918-1919 world flu pandemic 25 million people died, and that was 3-6% of the world’s population at the time. The rest of the world went on and forgot about it.

We are a little like sheep waiting for the anthrax.

After the 9/11 attacks there was the anthrax scare. I was working as a doorman at the time, and part of my duties was to sort the mail and deliver it. There were a few residents who would not touch their mail because they feared being poisoned by anthrax. They should be so lucky to leave the world they are so afraid of.

We are all sheep.

We are all sheep.

Then there was SARS in 2007. That time it was Chinese people and chickens.
I’m so glad I don’t buy into any of this shit, and I’d like to personally go around to slap any of these fear-mongering jerks with their little signs in the face and say, “you should be so lucky.”
Life will go on, but let’s not forget Charles Darwin; the world has a way of regulating its population and there isn’t a hell of a lot we can do about it.
Now if we can only find a way of selectively giving Ebola to the rats and roaches in the city. But wait, rats and roaches are smarter than us, they know they will survive as a species and they don’t carry signs about the end of the world or make hysterical TV announcements. Maybe we should learn from them.

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I CAN SEE THE BRONX FROM HERE

Posted on October 14, 2014 by xaviertrevino

the bronx

We have achieved some semblance of normalcy in our new home, and we’ve walked around a bit, getting the feel of the place like wary cats in someone else’s territory.
We are a block from Broadway here, in Brooklyn we were right on Broadway. This Broadway has trees on it; the Brooklyn Broadway had a train on it. They are both busy avenues, but the pace on this Broadway seems a little less frenetic than our old Broadway, where everyone from the faux taxi drivers on Flushing Avenue to the Chinese massage women handing out fliers on the corner were desperate for business, or at least aggressive about promoting it.
I don’t know how many times the same guys with broken down dirty “taxis” shouted “taxi? Taxi?” in my face, regardless of the fact that they’d asked me a million times before and I never said yes. Whether they had high hopes or never remembered my face I don’t know, but it was annoying.
No one has asked me anything or tried to push anything into my hand here, or offered me a free cellphone or complimentary dental exam through a bullhorn. And yes, I could hear most of these characters from my window all day long, along with the sirens of ambulances headed for Woodhull Hospital around the corner, the J and M trains roaring or trundling by, and the delivery trucks constantly parked in front.

The first day here.

The first day here.

It is pretty darn quiet here. There is some yappy dog somewhere downstairs, it sounds like a Shih Tzu or something small and annoying like that. The other morning it barked for two solid hours after its owner left for work, I imagine. But it was a few floors below and the only reason I was aware of it was because the windows were open and there was no other noise at 6am.
There was a woman singing gospel in her bathroom across the courtyard the other day, but at least she sang in tune and only for a minute or two.

yankee stadium

We went to the Bronx last week, to the Bronx Terminal Market, which is 6 minutes away by car. I took the bus there by myself Sunday to go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and it took me only 10 minutes on the Bx 6. It took a lot longer to walk the half-mile there because I got off at the wrong bus stop, on the north side of Yankee Stadium. I’ll never do that again.
When you stand on the corner of 155th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue you can look down the hill and across the Macomb’s dam bridge at the Bronx, and if you look hard enough you can see Yankee Stadium across the Harlem River. I remember a few years ago riding in a car with friends and we were on the Harlem River drive headed to a funeral in New Jersey. There were two Yankee Stadiums (stadia?) at the time, the new one and the one that hadn’t been torn down yet side-by-side. I absentmindedly said, “will the real Yankee Stadium please stand up?” That got a laugh, so I couldn’t resist repeating it here.
Now there is only one, the new one, and a very nice park and little league field that was part of the deal for building the new stadium. It’s a very big park, and I found that out by having to walk the whole length of it to get to the Bronx Terminal Market.
In the ‘70s I new a guy, he was actually a hood who was the boyfriend of Liz Eden, a friend of mine from the bad old days, if you’ve never heard of Liz Eden you should look her up, she had a very interesting story.
This guy’s name was Tony, and he was a Bronx Italian. We were discussing business one day and I asked him to come to Brooklyn.
“Are you kidding me? I don’t go to Brooklyn. Brooklyn’s like the jungle.”
I wanted to say I felt the same way about the Bronx, which to me was a place of burnt out buildings and roving street gangs and Fort Apache. No thanks.
But now it’s where Home Depot and Target are, and Danusia loves Target. I’m a home Depot man myself. The Bed, Bath and Beyond there isn’t so impressive, smaller than the Sixth avenue store if you can believe that.
It’s a little confusing getting from place to place at the BTM, there are 6 levels and a north and south side divided by a huge parking lot in the middle. It took three minutes to cross the parking lot.

After five days of unpacking.

After five days of unpacking.

So, now I have a choice, I can shop in the Bronx or shop in Manhattan. I never shopped in Brooklyn, except to get the Güttig mineral water at the food Bazaar on Manhattan Avenue. They are the only ones who carry my favorite mineral water, so I’m going to miss that. Güttig comes in 2.5 liter bottles that weigh 5 pounds each.
There is coincidentally a Food Bazaar just across the river, near Yankee Stadium. But I’m not gonna carry 30 pounds worth of mineral water on the bus once a week, so I guess I’ll have to find some other mineral water to drink.
But the one thing I think I will do next summer is try and find my way into the stadium to watch a Yankee game. It’s been 50 years since I did that at the old stadium, so I guess it’s about time to get re-acquainted with the Bronx.
It is really beautiful up here, the cemetery is beautiful, the Hudson River is beautiful, and the Harlem River ain’t too bad either. And you can walk from one to the other in about 20 minutes. The old buildings on Edgecombe Avenue are beautiful too, and we are thinking of looking there for a real place to live, with more space than here. I like it here already.

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I GONNA MISS YOU

Posted on October 11, 2014 by xaviertrevino

fallout shelter

Yesterday I took my last look at the loft apartment Danusia and I lived in for almost 8 ½ years. Danusia was working so I got to do it by myself. I took one last look around at the empty apartment, said goodbye, and closed the door. I wondered if I was going to get emotional, and I did for a second, it was a beautiful space and we’d made it our own, but there was nothing we could do (short of becoming rich overnight) to stay there. I went downstairs and said goodbye to our friends at the S&Y Organics, Itzak and his cousin, who’s name I never quite got.
They are the sweetest guys in the world, two Syrian Jews that I was afraid for when they moved in, I thought Broadway would swallow them up whole. I’ll miss them.

b2

I’ll miss the train ride over the bridge, too. I saw some interesting things on that ride in the years at the loft, I think the best was one morning around 6am on my way to work I saw towering flames rising from a burning warehouse on the Greenpoint waterfront. When I came home that day the fire was still burning and you could see black smoke roiling the air above, that lasted a few days.
After hurricane Sandy the first trip across was bizarre, seeing lower Manhattan in the dark.
Sometimes I got lucky and caught a Montauk-bound floatplane clawing for altitude before it hit the bridge, no one else notices things like that.

The Berry Street loft is to the right of the building in the foreground.

The Berry Street loft is to the right of the building in the foreground.

And I always saw the loft building on Berry street where I lived briefly with my first wife before we were married.
The daily trips over the bridge reminded me that I live in a great and beautiful city, something you don’t get riding the C train underground. But I could always go back and visit, can’t I?
The move was stressful and exhausting. Danusia told me yesterday that the three most stressful things humans deal with are in order of importance,
1. The death of a loved one.
2. Divorce.
3. Moving.
And there we are! BTW, I’ve gone through all three in the past 14 years, and moved three times.
The 8 ½ years were a record for me, the longest I ever lived in one place before (outside of my parent’s home which doesn’t count as my responsibility) was the 7 years we lived on Guernsey Street in Greenpoint when my son was small. He and I were the last ones out, I don’t remember where my then wife was, but Javier stood in the doorway of the empty apartment and waved and said, “ Goodbye, Apartment!” So that’s what I said yesterday when I closed that door for the last time.
When we were packing I found a bag of coins in one of the closets, well, I always knew it was there but didn’t pay much attention to it, just occasionally dumped a full jar or ceramic bowl of change into it, and I weighed it. The bag weighed 38 plus pounds, and I didn’t want to carry it up five flights of stairs to our new apartment. We took it to TD bank where Danusia has an account, and it yielded almost $400. I think it took about 10 years to fill that bag.

The empty bag.

The empty bag.

My new neighborhood is a lot greener than Broadway, cleaner as well. But it is a little scary; this is after all, Harlem.
When I was young Harlem was not a place for anyone that was not black, or African-American, if you prefer. That has changed, and I shouldn’t feel afraid or uncomfortable, but I do. But I think I’ll get over it. There is a very beautiful cemetery a block away, and some nice tree lined streets if you stay off of Amsterdam Ave.

Ed Koch is somewhere in here.

Ed Koch is somewhere in here.

154th Street has some beautiful brownstones and townhouses, and maybe one day we’ll live in one of them. I’d like that.
This is a large building with 60 units, and very integrated, with older black folks that have been here forever and younger white kids just starting out life in the big city. I guess we are somewhere in between, Danusia and I.
Since I moved out of the projects where I grew up, and then the Pratt dorm, I haven’t lived with a lot of people. I always lived in small 6 unit max buildings, so I’m not used to encountering a lot of neighbors. Most of the ones I’ve encountered so far do the New York thing of ignoring you and avoiding eye contact.
I always say hello, and I’ll keep doing it. Maybe some will respond in kind one day.
This place is a lot smaller; we got rid of an incredible amount of junk and furniture, and are finding more things to get rid of. It’s like the old saying; you can’t stuff 10 pounds of shit into a 2-pound bag.
Right now there is hardly a place to step in here, but after we throw some more stuff away and unpack and sort, I think this will turn out to be a very cozy place indeed. After all, Danusia and me live here now.

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T-MINUS FOUR AND COUNTING…

Posted on October 4, 2014 by xaviertrevino

home

Four more days before we say goodbye to Williamsburg. This was the fourth place I lived at in Williamsburg, and the longest. Eight and a half years, according to Mark, our landlord.
The building in the picture above is our building, 724 Broadway. It is the tallest building on the block and was built in the 1860’s. It was used as light manufacturing and storage, a commercial space until Mark bought the building and converted it into residential lofts. Not a big loft, but a loft nevertheless.
When we first moved in, it had a big PEZ in 6-foot high white letters painted on the side you can see from the Flushing Ave. Station. I’m not a big fan of graffiti, most of it is too sloppy and haphazard to be attractive, but there was something about the neatness of the big block letters that appealed to me.
As you can see the less appealing SMEWS CASH and other assorted haphazard junk has covered up the PEZ. You can still see the top edge of PEZ that wasn’t quite covered.
The front door gets special attention from the graffiti fucks as well. The only interesting graffiti I ever saw on the door was this summer when someone was doing the Alien little green man thing all over the neighborhood. This was on the window of our front door one morning:

alien

They also managed to do it on the big plate glass window of the Tattoo parlor-slash-Chinese Bodywork parlor on the corner of Flushing and Broadway. I wondered how they got up there.

Incomprehensible ugly crap.

Incomprehensible ugly crap.

But mostly the door was covered in a jumble of incomprehensible junk, which the landlord and the Doe Foundation guys would periodically paint over. I liked the alien, but one day I came down and it was gone. It’s still on the window of the bodywork place.
I love this apartment, the space, the floors, the 8eight and a half-year-old appliances.
The new apartment is smaller; we’re losing 500 square feet of space, and are in the process of getting rid of the stuff that fits into 500 square feet of space. My friend Lisa bought the elliptical machine, I’m gonna miss that. Someone took the beautiful antique armoire and a couple of our friends have taken chairs, mirrors and other knick-knacks.
We’ve thrown away a ton of stuff, donated a bunch of stuff to Housing Works, and have more to go. It’s mind-boggling.
One time I moved, it seems I’m always moving; I hired a guy from the methadone program I was on at the time to move me, he and his friend Mikey that he’d been in Vietnam with. They rented a 16-foot truck and we moved from another loft in Williamsburg, (that was when I was with my first wife) and the guy, his name was Joe, marveled that I had everything packed in boxes and labeled.
“How would you do it?” I asked.
“I just put everything in plastic garbage bags,” he said. I’m glad I’m not on methadone anymore.
Joe stole my bike during the move, it was during a snowstorm in February in 2000, and he asked if he could borrow my bike in the middle of the move, he had to give money to his wife or something.
He came back two hours later without the bike; he said someone had stolen it when he went up to talk to the wife.
Me and my wife and the other guy, a guy named Mikey had done all the loading, and all Joe had to do was drive.
That move was to Spanish Harlem, East 121st street. Now we are going to the west side, on 152nd Street. Also from a Williamsburg loft.
We’ve hired some Russian movers this time. Danusia and I used Russian movers when we moved in together in 2006, and they were fast, so fast it took them only three and a half hours to move two separate apartments into one.
Then again, both of those apartments were tiny and we didn’t have a lot of stuff.

Kiwi says bye to her favorite perch.

Kiwi says bye to her favorite perch.

It’s the stuff that will get you every time. But I’m used to abandoning stuff, I don’t know how many things I’ve left at women’s homes after a breakup, or at a job after quitting or getting fired.
I’m more responsible now, that’s why I have a good credit rating and get steady work. Part of that responsibility is leaving this apartment as empty and as clean as possible.
When I worked in the building I got fired from a cleaned out a lot of apartments, and you get to know a little about people by how they leave an apartment. You see how clean or dirty they were, and how much they care about ‘stuff.” Some people even take the toilet paper and all the light bulbs. I know I’m not taking the bulbs, but the toilet paper, that’s another story.

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THE NEW ELOI

Posted on September 30, 2014 by xaviertrevino

banner

Sunday I went to my friend Laurie’s apartment to paint some walls for her, and she lives on the other side of Williamsburg, on Union Avenue. I took the L train there and when I exited the train the first thing I saw was the Kellogg’s Diner, a place I haven’t seen in many years.
When I was in my early 20’s I ate many a late dinner (or early breakfast) there after marathon poker games while I was at Pratt. We would go there usually after 4AM and the winner would treat. It’s always been a 24-hour place, and at 4AM in those days the place was filled with cops, prostitutes, and drug dealers, the denizens of the night. Oh, and us, the gamblers and club goers.
Of course if I went to a club the night before it was always in Manhattan, so Ratner’s was a better bet for breakfast; Kellogg’s was if you stayed home in Brooklyn and played poker. I can only imagine the new Brooklyn club kids saying, “let’s go to Kellogg’s” after a night of hard partying on Wyeth Avenue nowadays.

Dumont on Union Avenue

Dumont on Union Avenue

On my way to Laurie’s I passed the now defunct Dumont on Union Avenue. There were three Dumont’s; this one, the original on Broadway, and one sandwiched in between that I actually went to once. It was great, wonderful burgers and atmosphere in a loft building somewhere on Hope Street, I don’t remember exactly where.
The Dumont story is a sad one; the owner got into debt, then into money laundering, and committed suicide a couple of years ago.
Walking down Union Avenue I was amazed at all of the brand-new buildings, all glass and steel and concrete, a sharp contrast to the remaining wood frame aluminum-sided buildings that are the Williamsburg norm on Union Avenue.
I was not so surprised at the amount of impossibly beautiful young people strolling up and down the street in clothes that I couldn’t possibly ever afford.
They were mostly white kids, but there is a smattering of Black, Asian, and Latino kids that fit into the nouveau riche. They reminded me of the Eloi in the movie The Time Machine.
Besides being pretty, they also seemed blank, a real blank generation if you ask me. Their faces screamed studied insouciance, today belongs to me.

Eloi from the movie The Time Machine

Eloi from the movie The Time Machine

I saw that movie when I was 10 for the first time; and it starred Rod Taylor and Alan Young of Mr. Ed fame of all people.
If you are not familiar with the story it’s based on the H.G. Wells book about a man who builds a time machine and goes into the future. It was 1964 when I saw it on TV for the first time and I was in the grips of nuclear war fever.
There is a scene in the movie, and I remember the year it was supposed to happen because the machine had a panel that displayed the year it was stopping in and it said 1970. In 1970 in the movie George (the Rod Taylor character) witnesses a nuclear satellite explode over the city, I got the impression it was London because everyone had a British accent; and when I saw that I thought I had only six more years to live. That movie gave me nightmares.
George arrives in the year 802,701 and meets a race of impossibly beautiful people who exude insouciance (they are all white) called the Eloi.
He observes as one of them, a girl, falls into a rapidly moving stream and almost drowns, and none of the other Eloi do anything to help her.
Our hero jumps into the water and rescues the beautiful Yvette Mimieux.
The rest of the story is pretty standard Hollywood, the bad guys are the Morlocks, (not pretty) who breed and feed the Eloi so they can eat them later. A dystopian society if there ever was one.
George tries to warn them, educate them, but they have been so well bred for their passivity that it will take a lot of time and hard work to save them.
I don’t feel like I have to save these new kids from anything, they’ll either learn or end up the hard way like the owner of Dumont, who discovered there was a price to pay for his success.
At the same time I judged these kids I thought of myself 35 or so years ago, sitting in the Kellogg’s diner without a care in the world after a night of partying, maybe there was some old cop staring at me and thinking “he has no idea what he’s in for.”
But I think the difference was that we were not so blank, we tried to act nonchalant but inside we were full of anger, fear, and passion; and it showed in what we did artistically and destructively.

Still looks like it did in the '70s

Still looks like it did in the ’70s

So, in the end it’s all relative. I think a lot of older people are unhappy because they don’t want to get old, I know I don’t; but there is no stopping it, except when you die. I don’t want to do that, either, but it seems I won’t have a choice in the matter.
Part of it is jealousy, I wish at times I was still young, but when I think of some of the pain I endured then I don’t. But I wish I could at least look like I did then.
But I can’t so the best I can do is appreciate what I have, what I’ve done, and not worry too much about what I don’t have and what I haven’t done, and let these kids find out for themselves.
At least I know now there wasn’t a nuclear war in 1970, and I do still have some years to live.

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THE NEXT TOMATO YOU SEE

Posted on September 27, 2014 by xaviertrevino
At the Union Square Greenmarket

At the Union Square Greenmarket

All of my loyal readers know I have a sort of obsession with tomatoes and their quality, I think this is the third or fourth tomato post I’ve written, so if you are not concerned about the quality of your tomatoes, please ignore. Or read on and be entertained by my concern for a good tomato.
This was a great summer for tomatoes, the quality overall of tomatoes were good, and prices fell this summer. I saw heirlooms at the Union Square Greenmarket for $2.95 a pound, unheard of in the last seven years where at times the price soared to more than $5 a pound. Christ, the price for regular tomatoes at the Greenmarket has hovered at $4 a pound for a number of years now.
The first good “field tomatoes” I saw yesterday were $1.95 a pound. They looked pretty good, and I wanted to get some, but there was a large Russian woman who was picking up tomato after tomato and then just dropping them back onto the pile until she found satisfactory ones. I could tell the farmer guy wanted to stop her, but he just gave her the hard stare. She was too large to elbow aside, so I stood as close as possible to her and started reaching across her ample bosom when I could to grab a tomato before she picked it up and ruined it.
Not only was she dropping them, but also she was giving each one a good squeeze. I wanted to throttle her. I think the farmer guy did as well.
She finally settled on 4 or 5 tomatoes after touching at least half of the sixty or so tomatoes in the bin.
As she paid I was able to get the rest of mine. I selected four, after carefully holding each one in the palm of my hand and looking it over for bruising and the right color. Too pink and they are not ripe enough. I also check for breaks in the skin and black spots.
Some black spots are OK, you just have to make sure you eat the tomato in a day or so before the black spot develops into an open sore.

My first four

My first four

I watched the guy give the Russian woman the hard stare as she paid, but she was oblivious, the kind of self-centered person who does whatever they want and tough shit if you don’t like it, sort of like the Russian Prime Minister. Then he looked at me and gave the slightest little shake of the head. I smiled back in sympathy, giving him my best “Whatta you gonna do?” grin.
I paid for my four little treasures and walked on, looking for asparagus. I knew it would be tough to find, for some reason asparagus only comes out for a week or two in the middle of the summer and then it’s gone, but I did have hope.
Across from Barnes and Noble I saw more good tomatoes, redder than the ones I’d just bought. Damn, I thought, I should have waited. I always do that, jump at the first good thing I see and then lament that I should have waited. They were $2 a pound and I bought 2 of them. I can never have too many tomatoes, I told myself. Except if I don’t eat them right away I will have to throw them out. But I couldn’t resist their color.

No stem, just goodness

No stem, just goodness

You can buy really red tomatoes at places like Whole Foods and Fairway, especially the “vine-ripened stem tomatoes,” but I tell you they are shit. The worst tomatoes you can buy, no matter how pretty they look. Give me a dusty, splotchy weird shaped tomato anytime, thanks. I’ve learned my lesson buying engineered tomatoes at the big stores; they are hard and tasteless and they’re not kidding when they call them “stem” tomatoes as they have a hard white stem inside that is inedible, and it’s a good 20% of the tomato’s weight.

Not the thing to buy

Not the thing to buy

The little tomatoes they sell at the big stores are usually not too bad, but you have to eat them quick because they get watery in a hurry.
I posted in the beginning of the summer about my Amish friends at the Graham Avenue market around the corner from my home who had awesome tomatoes for the past few years, but sadly this year their tomatoes were not very good. They were hard and pink, and I wonder if they picked them too soon or froze them or what, but I stopped buying them.
There is another farmer at the Graham Avenue market, a surly Russian woman who with her two sons has had the best tomatoes this year. I felt a little like I was cheating on the Amish, who are anything but surly by buying her tomatoes instead, but taste and texture wins out over demeanor. The surly woman also has some pretty good kale and lettuce; for some reason the Amish haven’t had any lettuce this year.

Super-awesome Amish clover honey

Super-awesome Amish clover honey

They do, however have some really great honey. Danusia loves their honey, actually I do too, and I just don’t use it as much as Danusia does, but I bought a big jar of it for us this morning. I got some homemade pepper jack cheese as well, since I wasn’t buying any tomatoes today.
We still have kale from last week; you get a gigantic bunch for $2 that lasts forever. I’m glad kale is so hardy it keeps for a long time in the fridge.
Well, that’s it folks, my latest tomato story. If you haven’t read the others, it’s easy to go back on my site and find them, and then you can see the evolution of my thoughts on tomatoes and surly people.

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MOVIN’ ON UP

Posted on September 24, 2014 by xaviertrevino

HSBC-bank-logo-007

We signed a lease yesterday, and what a pain in the ass that was. Sign this, sign that, initial here, here, and here. 12 pages in all, for our new apartment in Hamilton Heights.
We then we handed over the checks, one for one month’s rent, one month’s deposit, and the realtor’s fee. The cute Lara was very happy on making her first commission.
“You’re not a virgin anymore,” Danusia exclaimed.

Not just any checks, mind you, but cashier’s checks that I went through a lot of trouble to get the day before.
I went to my bank, the HSBC branch on 14th Street and 6th Avenue. It was empty when I got there, and I asked to see a bank officer, as I wanted to merge one savings account with another, and I wanted to sign up for internet banking and get the cashier’s checks.
“Well, sir, you have to go to the window for the cashier’s checks, but I can help you with the rest.” I had a large amount of cash, $4,700 dollars for the three checks I needed to get. I went to the window, and there was only one teller there.
The single teller, a black woman in her 40’s was waiting on a young white woman. The customer was a very pretty woman not more than 30 in sneakers, yoga pants, and a Patagonia fleece running jacket.

A reasonable facsimile of the troublemaker

A reasonable facsimile of the troublemaker

“And I want it all in singles,” she said to the woman behind the window.
The Black woman frowned.
“Just joking, give me the biggest bills you have.”
The young woman was closing her account, I gathered from the overheard conversation, and she wanted all her money in cash. The woman behind the window looked at me and said:
“Sir, this is a big transaction, it will take some time.” She had a Caribbean accent, Jamaican or something like that. Not Haitian, I know that much.
“It’s OK, I’ll wait.”
She went back to her computer screen and began the transaction.
“What is your occupation, Miss?” She asked the jogging girl.
“Troublemaker.” She answered. Shades of Frances Farmer, I thought.
There was more frowning and typing on the keyboard. The woman behind the window was very unhappy.
More people started to pile up behind me. I stood at the window next to the one they were at and fingered my 47 $100 dollar bills.

hundreds
“Look, this gentleman has a lot of cash, maybe he can help you?” The jogging girl said to the unhappy Caribbean woman. The bank lady ignored her.
She locked her drawer and went outside to get one of the bank officers. One of the women sitting at a desk followed her back behind the bulletproof glass and they both stared at her computer screen together, as if that would make it work faster. She typed and clicked her mouse and shook her head.
The woman I’d spoken to first approached the growing line of people behind me and asked if she could help any of them use the ATM.
“Sorry, we only have one teller today and she is doing a long transaction.”
A couple of people left to walk to the other HSBC branch on 8th Avenue. I overheard the woman tell someone this branch was closing.
“That’s why this branch is closing, because it sucks!” Said a man as he turned to leave.
20 minutes passed, then 30, with a few more trips to another computer outside of the cage and more head shaking.
The teller took time out to take my money and put it into the counting machine. I made out a deposit slip and put the money into my account. I was asked to wait for her to finish with the “young lady” and then she would cut my checks.
Finally after a few more clicks of the mouse she magically opened her drawer and took out a huge pile of $100 bills, including the ones I had just given her. She put a pile at least six inches high in the counter and turned it on. I estimate it had to be at least 60 or 70 thousand dollars. I briefly thought of going after the young lady after she left and relieving her of the money. I could use 60 or 70 thousand dollars.

money counter
At one point she responded to a comment from one of the impatient people in line.
“Sorry. What can I say, I’m a billionaire!” Not quite, I thought.
She was finally led to a desk to count her money and I was called to the window. I waited another 20 minutes for the unhappy teller to unfreeze her computer screen so she could cut my checks. Some asshole in line behind me muttered; “What’s this guy doing, buying the bank?”
After listening to him say that to a few more people I said to him,
“Sir, I’ve been here for well over an hour. Surely you can wait another 5 minutes.” I wanted to punch him in the face.
The teller printed out my checks, and it was a long involved process of looking over each printout and signing it before she cut the checks.
After getting my checks I went back to the first woman, who helped me figure out my online banking.
“Thank you for your patience, sir, that was a very unusual situation we had today.”
“Sure, no problem, “ I said as I thanked her and walked out. I looked at my watch just to make sure that I wasn’t imagining being in the bank for almost 2 hours.
At least now we have a new apartment. I’m dreading the move, but I’ve done it dozens of times before, so I know it will be OK.
If you are thinking of opening a new bank account, don’t go to HSBC. There are fewer branches than ever, and what I witnessed Monday afternoon doesn’t bode well for the future of HSBC.
Money makes the world go around.

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ESCAPE FROM HIPDOM

Posted on September 20, 2014 by xaviertrevino

bye bye

Well that was quick, only a week ago I was writing about having to move and the stress and difficulty of finding a new place within our price range, and yesterday Danusia got the email that we’ve been approved to rent an apartment in a building in Hamilton Heights. Or is it Washington Heights? Harlem?

I know Danusia is already talking about buying a Harlem T-shirt, I do know that it is most definitely Manhattan. West 152nd Street, to be exact. You can see the Hudson River from the roof, if you lean your head out far enough.

Of course it’s one bedroom smaller, but it is still bigger than the combined 500 square feet we had when we started dating. My place was a little over 200 square feet and hers a little under 300. This new one bedroom is at least 600 square feet.

The bedroom itself is bigger than our present bedroom, that’s good. The living room is about the same size and so is the bathroom, and this bathroom has a window, and so does the kitchen.

The apartment is on the top floor, so we won’t hear anybody clomping around.
The only thing I didn’t like was the lack of outlets; the circuit box has only 4 breakers. The one here has 16. Of course here we also have a hot water heater and a burner for the baseboard radiators, and dedicated air conditioner lines, three of them.
I think we’ll be all right with a couple of surge protector strips.

Only $100 and it works great!

Only $100 and it works great!

We need to get rid of a lot of furniture; we have 7 or 8 chairs, an elliptical machine, and this giant closet thing:
But wait, there’s more!

The closet thing. Very roomy with a roll-out shelf.

The closet thing. Very roomy with a roll-out shelf.

The biggest headache when moving is getting rid of all the useless crap you’ve accumulated since the last time. Luckily I am home, so I can take care of a lot of this work.

If I have the space, I will fill it. When I was married to my first wife and started working at the building as a porter, part of my job was to collect the garbage from the landings. I ended up with 3 stereos, 4 sets of speakers, tons of clothing, books, magazines, tools, kitchen appliances, and lots of other stuff I didn’t need. But it was there, and most of it was useful and in good condition and I couldn’t bear to let it go to waste.

Chairs

Chairs

More chairs...

More chairs…

Except that’s what happened. You can’t play 3 stereos at once through 4 sets of speakers.
I’m a little better now at letting stuff go that I love (or at least think I love) so this shouldn’t be too stressful.

Danusia found the listing, and $1500 for a “large one bedroom,” and I said it was too good to be true. I looked at the pictures and said, “if that’s for real I’d take it in a heartbeat,” thinking that in no way were we going to find a decent sized apartment anywhere in Manhattan for under $2000 per month.

It turned out to be very true. Danusia is nothing if not persistent, and after some emails and phone calls we found ourselves in the offices of Bohemia realtors on Frederick Douglas Boulevard Thursday afternoon. We met Lara, a pretty, 40-ish woman with blond hair and a cute summer dress. She was from Ohio and had the accent and demeanor to prove it. After meeting Danusia she said: “oh, you’re so cute!” Only women would tell each other they’re cute, and I was immersed in cuteness for the next few hours.
Lara took us up to 152nd Street and up 5 flights of stairs to the large one bedroom. It actually was large, as I mentioned at the top. The building was clean, and quiet, I hope it’s quiet at night; but we’ll see.

The walls were concrete and plaster; it is after all a pre-war building with a nice façade. The floors were in good shape, and I was surprised by the size of the bathroom and impressed that it had a real porcelain pedestal sink.
The stove and fridge were old, dirty, and tiny. I can live with a 32 inch stove but we need a bigger fridge.
“If they give us new appliances we’ll take it,” I said.

Then came the hard part, or rather the tedious part. It was worse than when we tried to buy the house last year, with all the paperwork and fees. $100 each for credit and background check (non-refundable) $500 in “good faith” money to take the apartment off the market, 12% fee for the realtor. Lara lowered her fee from 15%, since if this went through we’d be her first clients.

Funny that when she said that I knew we’d probably get the place. I’m not much for serendipity, but Danusia has the power to create it, especially when coming in contact with a like-minded person like Lara.

The big sticking point was my employment, or rather lack of proof.
“I’m self employed,” was what I’d said. I tried to explain Task Rabbit to Lara but just settled on saying I make enough to pay the rent with free-lance work.
But Lara wasn’t the one we had to convince. Our present landlord, Mark wrote a very nice email in with he called us “exemplary tenants,” and said that in 25 years in the business we’d been his best tenants by far.

We had to submit tax returns and all kinds of other paperwork.
The whole process started at 1:30 when we walked into the agency, and didn’t walk out till after 5pm.

Yesterday morning we emailed all the stuff they wanted, and waited. Lara told Danusia that we’d have an answer by Monday, since it was Friday and probably nothing would get accomplished over the weekend.

Last night on my way over the bridge on the J train I got the text from Danusia:
“We got the apartment.”
Now on to a whole new type of stress, packing, sorting out loose ends with Mark, throwing stuff out, giving stuff away.

So, friends, we have stuff to sell and stuff to give away. If you need any chairs just let me know.
I won’t miss all the bearded boys and Williamsburg waifs, well maybe the waifs, but I sure will miss riding over the East River a couple of times a day. New York is a beautiful city seen from above.

View from the J train.

View from the J train.

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