It’s good to be back “home” in our apartment in Brooklyn from our trip to Washington. Early this morning we walked down a couple blocks to 4th Avenue to watch the NYC marathon runners….after we watched the winners finish on TV…a heart breaker. Fourth avenue seems strange now…empty of runners…full of smashed green paper cups and cop cars.
We had been years since we saw Odetta so when Bob read that she would be performing in a Village club we jumped at the chance to get tickets. She walked in dressed in a dramatic multi-colored red and purple silk and velvet gown and head dress…walked in very slowly and with help. She is still her inimitable self…but her weight is down to almost nothing and her songs were confined to softly sung spirituals. She is in her late 70’s and we worried about her health. The middle to late-aged folk-singing crowd laughed though when she cautioned everyone that in this day and age we should all be careful to use condoms!
Looking for a restaurant one afternoon on the Lower East Side, we happened by a tiny bakery with huge savory knishes displayed in the window…potato, kasha, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, mixed vegetable, sweet potato, mushroom…and sweet ones too. The glass window was plastered with reviews (apparently this place is famous in New York,) and as I was in the shop making my choices with difficulty, Bob was outside reading one of the reviews which happened to be written in the 60’s!
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After getting through Phil & Adri’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal that arrive on our stoop every day it is difficult to find time for other reading.
However, Amy’s mom gave me a book I couldn’t refuse. It is a double memoir of the retired general counsel of the Safeway Corporation, Bernat Rosner, whom Debbie worked with before his retirement in 1993, and his friend, Frederic Tubach who is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of California, Berkeley. Bernat Rosner, an Hungarian Jew, and his German friend, discovered after 10 years of friendship that the former was an Auschwitz survivor and the other was the son of a Nazi German Army officer. The memoir is told in his friend’s voice at Mr Rosner’s request.
How to bridge the gulf and remove the power of the past to separate them becomes the focus of their friendship and together they begin the project of remembering. The stories begin with their similar village childhoods before the holocaust and their very different paths to America where they become men with the freedom to construct their own futures.
Poignant, honest, sincere…and proof of what good will can accomplish in the cause of reconciliation.
“An Uncommon Friendship”
Bernat Rosner & Frederic C. Tubach
with Sally Patterson Tubach
University of California Press
Around the corner from Josh’s apartment in an almost all-Polish neighborhood Bob and I found an authentic Polish restaurant. Blackboards behind the cashier list items in Polish and English. When our food was ready we carefully delivered it ourselves to our metal 50’s style table. We over-ordered (again) a variety of Polish dishes…pierogis, borsht, cabbage rolls, sausage, meat balls and gravy with mashed potatoes, sliced cucumbers in a vinegar dressing and shredded cabbage salads…all superb. Familiar delicious dishes my first-generation Polish mother often made as I was growing up. We’ll return.
Most everyone in New York is interested in looking stylish. The definition is different, however depending on the neighborhood you are in…whether on the affluent Upper West Side or on the Lower East Side. It also makes a difference what your ethnicity is. Young blacks and Hispanics are just as studied only in a different way. Generally, however, clothing ranges from dark to black.
You generally see denim and sneakers on the hip white thirty-somethings walking down 6th Street in Manhattan. The right accessories are de rigueur; it’s definitely a very studied look…it’s about the right jeans paired with the right sneakers and a white iPod in your pocket. For women, it’s levi jeans that can cost up to $500 (but heaven forbid not with a matching levi jacket) or long gathered skirts and an expensive handbag. And cell phones. “Blackberries are viewed as the professional choke-chains preferred by sadomasochistic bosses. And don’t expect to throw on high-waisted Levis and ratty high-tops and pass,” says Lonely Planet guidebook.
The cult of casual is subtle. “One of the draws of this city life is anonymity,” says Lonely Planet, “which is why New Yorkers prefer to mix their designer items back in with their regular clothes so that what they’re wearing doesn’t scream Prada or look like a glorified ad…” The American couple on our Big Onion Tour were wearing what they apparently thought was the New York Uniform…both were in black leather jackets and spendy slacks…both in expensive black leather walking shoes…and were immediately noticeable. They would have fit right in in Paris, however. I remember being remanded a few years ago in a restaurant in southern France while having a polite conversation with a lone woman at the next table who couldn’t figure out, she mused, why Americans wore those dirty sneakers on the streets in New York. You could be wearing a nice black pair of walking shoes she said, as I slowly tried to hide my all-terrain Adidas-covered feet under my table.
“What New Yorkers aren’t nonchalant about is their grooming,” LP goes on to say. “There is a slavish devotion to scubs, cuticles and perfectly coiffed just-rolled-out-of-bed hair. It takes hard work to make that impression of effortlessness.” Who this is referring to, of course, are hip young whites trying to look prosperous on waiter’s tips.
Maybe this is what we need to learn from the thirty-somethings that comprise the median age in New York…studied casualness… Us? Me? Bob?
I’ve never been in a city that has such diverse but tight little neighborhoods. The first question asked by anyone you meet, after what do you do, is where do you live. Soon you know the tenant up the stairs, the cashier on your corner deli and some of your neighbors at the yoga salon on your block..it’s like a little village…you belong…here.
One way to identify the subtleties of a neighborhood is to attend it’s summer street fair. The fair in our neighborhood, called Atlantic Antic, stretched all the way from the Brooklyn Art Museum to the East River…almost two miles. There were the usual food stalls (mostly Soul and Jamaican), beer stations and sidewalk clothing displays (many hand-made African motif). Every 20 feet or so a different music group blasted out African drumming, old-style singing like the Ink Spots of years ago-the vocalists sporting hot pink and lime green jackets, hip-hop, soul, jazz and rock.
There was table after table with information about the local arts activities, local pre-school and kindergarten opportunities, school events, parent organizations, nanny services, environmental concerns, local zoning issues, and all the rest of the latest local political advocacy efforts. Even the candidates for the upcoming New York City mayoral election dropped by. Children everywhere…on backs, on fronts, on shoulders, in strollers, those who could walk running amok. Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes A Village To Raise A Child” has taken on a whole new meaning for me!
Each neighborhood has it’s subtleties. Many of the stalls offered African clothing and jewelry that were hand-made by their sellers. I was trying on a pair of earrings and sharing a mirror with a middle-aged lady in one small stall and suddenly she turns and says to me…”this is so much fun! I just love this fair! Love it! We never have anything fun like this in our neighborhood.” “Where do you live?” I ask. “Queeeeeens,” she grumbled! We both laughed, although I didn’t quite know why I was laughing…I guess just because she was laughing. We haven’t spent much time in Queens yet.
Bob was finished with the fair, however, as soon as he was confronted head-on by a large group of police with a few others circling around behind him. Apparently we had been followed. Bob had been video taping the fair as he walked along…panning the people and stalls of goods along each side of the street. One of the young policemen approached Bob and asked what he was doing here. “What is the problem?” Bob asked, oblivious to any criminal activity. “Why are you taking pictures of this?” as he pointed toward the sidewalk and the buildings. Bob was becoming progressiely nonplussed. The cop said, “that building.” Bob said “what, where?”
We hadn’t even realized we were in front of the Post Office! Bob then explained that he was just panning and video taping the street fair. “You can’t take pictures of public buildings,” the cop said. “Oh, then we aren’t supposed to take pictures of the Empire State Building or Ellis Island or the white house,” Bob thought. Bob, by this time was wondering “why me?” and he was finished with the fair. The last similar confrontation for Bob was in Dar es Salaam Tanzania. But that time the phony cop was after Bob’s wallet. The offense was photographing public buildings (also a post office in Dar).
We are still asking ourselves what it is that is causing people to regard us with suspicion here. I certainly don’t think we fit the typical terrorist profile–but then we are not your typical “local” either. Or maybe there is just some reverse karma regarding postal institutions.
A call from Amy: Would you like to run into Manhattan with me to pick up Josh after work tonight? Of course, I said! Bob had already eaten stir-fry at home and preferred to watch the world series so I suggested to Amy that we go get something to eat…something light. “Public,” where Amy loves the sauteed fois gras, was closed so we drove over to the Blue Ribbon where kitchen workers (chefs) often gather late at night (or early in the morning) after work. The restaurant closes at 4am.
I absolutely love Blue Ribbon’s bone marrow sandwiches served with marmalade…three large bones with long spoons to scoop out the rich jellied marrow. We ordered a table full of small appetizers, or “apps” as Josh calls them including steak tartare, raw oysters, baked oysters, escargot and bread with a bottle of wine to go with it all. My son, daughter-in-law, good food, wine and me: Heaven!
There are 13,000 restaurants in New York City and urbanites, with cramped apartments and schedules, often eat out…whether take-out, order in, pizza slices or, on special occasions, in one of the more elite culinary establishments. Eating out at one of the four or five star restaurants in New York City is a serious situation, an evening in itself, a form of entertainment….and it is expensive.
I won’t even tell you what the bill was the night Josh, Amy, Bob and I went to a restaurant called “Bouley” in TriBeCa (which stands for TRIangle BELow CAnal St) an area of huge lofts, world-class restaurants, quaint cobblestone side streets and a strong art scene all with a neighborhood feel. Bordering the World Trade Center site, Tribeca was rocked by the terrorist attacks but has survived and reemerged.
David Bouley is one of the celebrity chefs in New York City and I was treating Josh who had been wanting to try out the Bouley cuisine. (This is what che do…spy on each other!) Just inside the front door the walls were imaginatively lined with rows of fresh fall apples with the accompanying aroma…immediately signalling the appetite. The dining area was well appointed but comfortable without crowding.
Each small serving, of which there were many (I lost count), perfectly married colors, textures, temperatures and flavors and each was paired with a complementing wine. It was insightfull to have Josh there to describe the artistry and nuance of each course.
The meal lasted several hours and the service was impeccable. The elegant head waiter was a very experienced Jamaican with a pleasingly subtle sense of humor. The servers were perfectly unobtrusive but attentive and there were at least two assigned to each table. When each course came, we were served by two servers-each bringing two plates so that we all got our meal at the same time. When I got up to visit the ladies room an attendent appeared out of nowhere to lead me to the proper door. Nowhere have I experienced the level of service we had here…and now I know how Queen Elizabeth must feel every day!
This, everyone, if they can, should do once in their lives with people they dearly love.
Big Onion Tours, the word “onion” being a play on the Big Apple, offers tours of neighborhoods of NYC. We chose the “immigrant tour” which shows how different ethnic groups variously settled and replaced other groups around the island over the years—a continuum to the present. For example, Chinatown has almost completely taken over Little Italy and Christian churches have now become Buddhist Temples. The Church of the Transfiguration on Mott St, originally an Episcopal church dating from 1801 was transformed into a Catholic church in 1827 to attend to the needs of local Irish. As they moved out Italian immigrants dominated the parish. These days Mass is still said but services are in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Big Onion tour leaders are generally university grad students working on New York historcal theses and their presentations offer detailed historical information spiced with antedotes and humor. Our tour began near City Hall and included early history of the lower island evolving to the corruption and shananigans of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall–much of which is not too different from the current modus operandi. At the time a nearby pond was a reservoir for unwanted blood-and-guts from area butchers. When its stench became overpowering its contents were removed by a canal, built for the purpose, and now known as Canal Street.
As the pond became filled the overlying area became the “Five Points” –the former Irish slum depicted in the Martin Scorsese film “Gangs Of New York” where five streets had converged–representing the five burroughs. Now two of the streets are obliterated by skyscrapers.
Nearby is the site of the African Burial Ground, a cemetery for the city’s early black residents most of whom were slaves. Black residents eventually moved further up the island to Harlem. Remains of over 400 bodies were found on a site that was slated for a government building in 1991. Following much protest, construction ceased and the ground was declared a National Historic Site. Most of the remaining nearby graves had already been covered over by skyscrapers years ago.
In the early 1900s millions of immigrants called the Lower East Side, Little Italy and Chinatown home and the area became “one of the world’s most densely populated neighborhoods,” said the tour guide. Bob and I looked at each other and we both said at the same time…”he’s never been to China!” However, the horrors of the tenements were real and are documented at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.
The Bowery is a long avenue that was named by the Dutch for their word for “farm” as it linked New Amsterdam to the farms in present-day East Village. Horse drawn cable cars moved people and produce. In the early 1900’s the Bowery was lined with rough bars and flophouses and was the de facto border between Jewish Lower East Side and Little Italy. Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky helped organize rival gangs on both sides. A young grad student at Columbia, recently, researching the Bowery, found that Jewish prostitutes would frequent the Italian side of the street and the Italian prostitutes would parade the Jewish side….for the purpose of not running into family or friends of their own communities!
Recent gentrification has inspired the makeover of many original tenements and these days, the Lower East Side (LES) has become the new hip area with bars, restaurants and condos opening regularly and is our son Josh’s favorite neighborhood to visit when he gets off work at the Tocqueville Restaurant.
In this neighborhood, we ate a meal of grilled fish, sweetbreads, creamy cheese and bread and a glass of wine at a restaurant called Prune, whose chef was featured as one of the few respected female chefs in New York today. However, we had been walking all afternoon in the wind and we entered the restaurant with bags full of knishes, creme cheese, dried fruit and wine and hair blown all over. The manager met us at the door and very cooly asked what we were doing there. I wanted to curtly say “this is a restaurant isn’t it?” but I didn’t. I just said that we would like to be seated. The NY attitude strikes again. However the meal was ordinary at best and horribly overpriced. (I hope they read this review!)
Laughingnomad 