Thank you for love us

And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row - Bob Dylan, Desolation Row, 1965

Michelle, ma belle
Sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble
Très bien ensemble - Lennon-McCartney, Michelle, 1964

Michelle's sign, 93rd and 2nd Manhattan, 2015

Winter is so last session, the ads would have us believe. Sure. Tell that to the Marines is what we Manhattanites are thinking as we brave the cold, and venture onto the streets which are beginning to evoke rather horrific memories of New York City in the mid-nineties, when Mayor Giuliani was in town.

We have a different mayor now. His name is Bill de Blasio. He eats his pizza with a knife and fork, and he's always late. He was late for Catholic mass on Good Friday. He was late for the St Patrick's Day march in Queens. He is even late for his own breakfast.

Still, he has a following. Late people I expect. Many New Yorkers speak well of him. Especially Brooklyn people. For Bill is nothing if not Brooklyn.


NYC 2015 - So Soviet!

I was out to dinner the other evening, and was talking about de Blasio with a friend. We were sipping cocktails at a new restaurant, the Monte-Carlo (sic) on the Upper East Side.

I had just made a particularly acerbic observation about de Blasio, when the maître de came over. "His name is de Blasio with a zee," she corrected me.

I was tempted to snap back that there's no hyphen in Monte Carlo, but figured it wasn't worth it. And in any case, she was correct. It is pronounced à la Italian with a hard 's'. But I still call him "de Blasio" with a soft 's'.  De Blassio à la Australienne. It makes me feel good.

If I have to put up with Bill de Blasio, at least I can pronounce his name the wrong way.

 I don't think I'll be going back to the Monte-Carlo for a spell. I don't know what that restaurant is doing on the Upper East Side anyway. Like Mayor de Blasio, it's all so Brooklyn. You pay your check millennial style, with an iPad. And the fact that you are paying and the wait staff is waiting is neither here nor there. We are all people, after all.

There's a democratic proletarian vibe about the place despite it's fancy linen serviettes and Manhattan-chic décor.

We might all be equal, but I don't expect to have the waiting staff  listen in to guest's conversations  and to correct their pronunciation. Equality only goes so far!

Empty tables at the Monte-Carlo


Back to the Giuliani-period bleakness that is returning to this city. And Michelle. Michelle -  who is one of the of many whose quality of life has been especially affected -  by the Second Avenue Project in Manhattan.

Michelle used to run Eve's nail Salon on Second Avenue. A typical Manhattan nail salon - the staff were mostly Korean. Big black-and-white posters of American icons hung over mirrored walls. Marilyn, Sinatra, James Dean stared down on us, as we sat in big padded massage chairs having our pedicures. Taking calls on our cell-phones, or reading the  'People' magazines  provided by Michelle.

Eve's Nail Salon was a refuge, a comfort zone amid the mess that has become Second Avenue above 62nd Street for these last nine years or so. Second Avenue Upper East Side - now so much like a scene from of a post-apocalypse movie that you could think you were in Detoit. On the once thriving block between East  93rd and 92d Street, there's only one business left. And Eve's Nail Salon isn't it.

Sign on Manny's on Second - the last business standing

I found this out when I ventured over there last weekend , the first weekend since November when it wasn't snowing or freezing cold. All bordered-up. The building that had housed it "foreclosed".

I stared at the sad little notice that Michelle had put up inside the now brown-papered window giving her phone number and the address of her new place of work, signed with a melancholy, "Thank you for love us".


Dolce Nail Salon, Third Avenue, 2015

Touched, I went to Michelle's new salon on Third. Only a block away and a different world.

"Hello Michelle, it's Kate. I saw your sign!" She gave me a big smile and said she'd missed me. "Hi Kate, how are you?" "I am good Michelle, how are you?"

Knowing someone's name is Manhattan for friend.
 
On my way home I detoured along Second between 93rd and 94th. Homeless guys live there, between the chicken-wire fences and ugly plastic barriers that separate the empty shells of those buildings that remain and the scaffolds that are holding them up.

'Desolation Row' - 2nd near East  93rd, 2015

The homeless guys all have bits of them missing. A leg here, an arm there.

"Hello!" I greet them with a forced cheery smile. It is dark and damp. Old beer bottles and pizza crusts line what is left of  the sidewalk. "Hello," they answer. "How are you?  Have a good weekend, lady."

New Yorkers are so polite and friendly. Endearing.

Even ones who come from Brooklyn and pronounce de Blasio with a zee.

On People Who Walk Right Into You

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down

Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it '
Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo - Macarthur Park

Here I stand; I can do no other. - Martin Luther, 1521

"That breakup text can wait," captions the traffic-safety poster on the bus stop shelter. But there's no waiting for the plague of millennials on their cell phones who seem to be perpetually on the move on Manhattan's sidewalks.

I have a new tactic. I no longer dodge them; I no longer veer to the right to give way. Nor do I stick to my path, and hope they will look up in time not to bump into me.

There's a trick to it, you see. If you keep to your path, you will automatically move at that last nana second. It's human nature. So I just come to a complete halt. This way I can steady myself and won't be knocked over.

I just stand perfectly still. At first I tried this technique as an experiment - to see when the cell-phone person would realize someone was coming towards them.

Apparently there's an app you can get that advises you when there is an on-coming pedestrian. Of course there's no market for it, because the cell phone people want YOU to move out of the way. Otherwise they'd be looking up in the first place. My stand-still tactic works. Really well. It is now my modus operandi.

There are three responses. Most of the cell-phone texters look up at the last minute and THEY move, without a murmur. About twenty percent complain saying silly things like, "Why can't you move, there's plenty of room?" Such people only serve to make my decision more resolute.

About five percent keep walking. They don't realize that other people exist. And they certainly don't realize that they are about to come across a baby-boomer. My formative years were spent  in demonstrations. Walking down St Kilda Road in Melbourne with 10,000 like-minded people. Braving police people on horses. Stopping for no man. Or woman. A Manhattan millennial on a cell phone is nothing in comparison.

I like to think I am passively resisting. Gandhi-like I make my stand. I'm not going anywhere! " One two three four, we don't want..."  etc.

Mad Men Street Manhattan  © G Chen

Casualties are minor. But as in any war, even peaceful ones, there can be collateral damage. Like last week on Third when I spotted a millennial iPhone person bearing down on me. She was one of the worst kind. Not only was she texting, but she was wired for sound. Sightless and completely deaf - a Hellen Keller of the twenty first century. I braced myself. I stood my ground. She flew straight into me. Taken by surprise she threw her hands in the air. I watched astonished as her silver iPhone 6 flew heavenward. The sun glinted on it as it reached the zenith of its trajectory and hurtled to the ground.

We both stood. Staring at the shattered thing. A sad thing. Deprived of life. The gleam of its silver casing gone, a dead thing. 

I felt mean. She looked at me, waiting. Was I meant to say something? Like time during a car crash, the moment seemed to go on for an eternity. I stayed, expecting her to pick up her phone. I think her ear buds were still playing the last of her iPhone's songs. The final refrain as the umbilical detached and the dead phone lay on the ground.

I couldn't stand the silence, so broke it with, "Not a good idea," and hurried on.

Back in my apartment that evening, I poured a wine and turned on the TV to blot out the stresses of the day.

Watching the news. CNN with its garish almost psychedelic background sets that move disconcertingly as you try to focus on the anchor of the moment. What the hell was he saying? Some bakers in Arkansas protesting that they don't want to bake cakes for gay people?

Seriously?