Metropolitan Diary: Uptown, Downtown

DEAR DIARY:

Recently I was standing on the corner of Prince and Mercer Streets in SoHo, not far from where I work, enjoying the lunchtime ambience. A gentleman came up to me and asked me if we were in TriBeCa. “No, this is SoHo,” I responded. “TriBeCa is south and west of here,” pointing in that direction.

He thanked me and asked which way it would be to Greenwich Village. I pointed north and showed him where he could find the East and West Village neighborhoods. Lastly, he asked me which way he would have to go to find Chinatown. I pointed south and east of where we were standing. I was happy to be able to offer a little help to a visitor.

“I’m not from around here,” he explained. “I’m from the Upper East Side.”

-Steve Cytryn

Metropolitan Diary; Wow

Dear Diary:

I’m standing on the northeast corner of 57th Street and Avenue of the Americas, waiting for the uptown No. 7 bus, when an agitated woman in a brown coat rushes up the street beside me, holding a small black purse open in her hands and calling, “Laura! Laura! Laura!”

She accosts every woman. “Are you Laura?” she asks them, the desperation in her voice increasing as she progresses, luckless, up the avenue.

At the corner of 58th, out of earshot but still within sight, a tall young woman in a black coat does a 180 in obvious response to the 15th call of “Laura!” Her hands fly up to her face in excitement, and then reach out to take the proffered purse. There is some animated conversation between them, culminating with brown coat holding up her hands in refusal of something offered by black coat.

Brown coat then hurries back down the avenue, hesitating at our bus stop only long enough to say: “That was Laura. She’s getting married in an hour. She had thousands of dollars in there to pay the caterer.”

With that, brown coat rushes off, no doubt in search of other good deeds to do.

Thomas Mowrey

Metropolitan Diary; I Heart NY

Dear Diary:

My 4-year-old son, Micah, and I have the following morning routine:

We take the F train to Seventh Avenue. Micah gets his “morning paper” from the AM New York guy standing at the subway entrance and we walk to the bus stop. At the bus stop, Micah begs me to let him hold my MetroCard and I say no.

One day in January, I was tired, it was cold, we were late. I relented and gave Micah my MetroCard to hold. The bus came, and it was crowded. As we were getting on, I noticed Micah taking off his gloves, and no MetroCard. He had dropped it somewhere. We rode illicitly to school.

The next morning, same routine. We get up the stairs from the subway and Micah goes to get his morning paper. But this time, the AM New York guy stops him and says: “My man, I have been waiting for you all morning. I have something that you dropped yesterday,” and indeed pulls out of his wallet my MetroCard, which he found on the curb after the bus pulled away.

(Of course, then Micah asked to hold it again, because now Mommy has two.)

-Amy Sandgrund

Metropolitan Diary: A Shoe to the Face

Dear Diary

While walking past a shoe store on Madison Avenue on a cold December morning, I decided to buy a pair of Clarks desert boots. They have not changed from their original design that I, along with millions of other college students from the 1960s, wore as we marched in protest of the war that raged in Southeast Asia.

Upon arriving home I noticed one significant difference. Instead of noting that the boots are made in England, the inside tongue now clearly reads “Made in Vietnam.”

-Bob Fisher

Metropolitan Diary; I Am G-d, Your Blackberry

ON THE L.I.R.R.

Their fingers clack away on tiny keys,

fretting, as if counting rosaries,

heads bowed in homage to the deity

to whom all praise is due, the BlackBerry.

To iPods wired, into their brains infuse

music that eclipses any muse.

Time and space around them they invade

as phone talk scars my quiet, makes me trade

reading and thinking to hear of what they spent

or ate or who said what — my ears are bent!

No quiet stillness can they seem to hold;

to small machines their restless souls they’ve sold.

One might have the makings of a poet,

but plugged in thus, will probably never know it.

-Sheri Lindner

Metropolitan Diary; Lost by Translation

A few years ago my husband was waiting at the West Fourth Street station for a Queens-bound E train. The E and C trains both stop on the same track.

The C train pulled in and, at the last minute, a man ran up to my husband and asked if this was the E train. My husband quickly replied, “C.”

The man then said, “Gracias!” and ran onto the train. The doors closed and the train left the station.

-Dorothy M. Grusky

Metropolitan Diary; Disciplinary Gadgets

Dear Diary:

Observed and overheard on a Sunday afternoon in April:

A man pulled up in a car on Eighth Avenue in Midtown, and shouted to a woman sitting in the doorway of a fortune-telling parlor, “Will I get a ticket if I park here?”

She replied with a shrug, “I don’t know.”

-Jim Norman


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SEASONAL RITUAL

The sparrows spring into

action as Spring begins.

Each small coterie has

its favorite cafe, and they

wait patiently for signs

of metal chairs and tables

to spring up like silver

daffodils along the sides

of walls and windows.

Their ups and downs from

awning to pavement and back

catch the eyes of patrons

still not brave enough to venture

into the still-chilly air, who

sip their lattes behind

glass.

-Iris Lee


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Dear Diary:

It was the end of intermission at the Sunday matinee of “Gypsy,” and as I returned to my seat, I overheard a man arguing with the usher who was patrolling the area.

Although I didn’t catch the subject of the conversation, I heard her say to him politely, “Perhaps you should talk to the manager about it.”

As he stalked away, he muttered over his shoulder: “No thanks. I’d rather be angry.”

-Kathy Kleeman


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Dear Diary:

I was walking toward Home Depot on West 23rd Street in Manhattan when I encountered a very noisy kid sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. People were forced to walk around her, and they kept looking back to see how this situation was unfolding. The more her father pulled the kid’s hand to get her to move, the more this child screamed and resisted.

But instead of the old-fashioned threat, “I’m going to tell Mommy,” this father was a lot more tech-savvy.

Obviously frustrated, he took out his cellphone and aimed it at the little girl. Warning her, he said: “If you don’t get up in the next minute, I’m going to take your picture and e-mail it directly to Mommy at work!”

The child got up!

-Dennis Wunderlin

Metropolitan Diary; Sometimes I wonder

DEAR DIARY:

A parking space on my block! So rare an occurrence that I smile inside when drivers slow down and cast inquiring glances in my direction, hoping I’m leaving.


Exiting my car, I murmur thanks to the parking gods, when suddenly a familiar voice comes from somewhere amid the 30 or so black plastic garbage bags piled high on the sidewalk nearby.

Being a New Yorker, I walk briskly on, pretending not to hear; but being a New Yorker, I can’t help returning to the spot to have another listen. Wafting over the smelly pile, Brian Lehrer of WNYC is exit-polling the Tuesday primary. Inside one bag is a discarded radio.


-Patricia Lobosco


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HOME SWEET HOME


Sometimes I wonder

Why I reside in this artificial kingdom,

Betrothed to the dangle of a dollar

Stuck on the heel of my dirty shoe.

When the din of my own meandering mind

Is too loud to bear,

I’ll stumble to a mirror

And spy the city breathing in my ear.

If I were to fly away to a rolling land,

Where dogs aren’t carried in bags,

Where the earth is soft if I should fall,

I guess I would long to see pinstripes

And pizza dough whirling through the air.


-Sascha Radetsky


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Dear Diary:

I boarded the A train at Columbus Circle on a recent morning, groggy with sleep and trying to tune out the tinny cacophony of numerous “personal” music systems. On taking my seat I was greeted by a rather unusual announcement:

“This is the ‘A’ experience to Lefferts Boulevard. Stand clear of the closing doors and have an interesting morning.”

I’m not sure if the conductor had been listening to too much Jimi Hendrix the night before, or if this is just the latest in an evolutionary line of valedictions that started with “Have a nice day.”

-John Hull



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Dear Diary:

It took a split second. There I was standing over one of those intimidating subway grates, horrified that my beautiful watch had fallen off my wrist and — kerplunk! — was lying 20 feet below me among dirt and cigarette butts. I could see it, but how could I get it?

This happened last month on Broadway near 19th Street. The grate seemed to be cemented into the sidewalk, and the only way down there would be through the locked subway tracks. First I called 311 to file a report, then the M.T.A., and finally I called my parents.

Never fear, said Super Dad, and he ran off to corral a patrol car. The officers turned out to be everything good you’re taught as a kid to expect of the men in blue. As one officer kept his ear to the radio (“If we get a call, we’ve got to go”), the other fished and fished with a makeshift hook and a yellow police-line tape. What ingenuity! What patience! What chivalry! But no watch.

Dad ran off to a nearby sports store to buy a fishing rod. As he returned, the M.T.A. arrived. With a crowbar they could lift the grate, but they needed the right ladder. Whiz! Bam!

The ladder arrived, and before I knew it, the watch was back in my hands (and safely in my purse).

My father tried to reward the workers who saved the day, but they all refused with the same refrain: “We’re just doing our job.”

Jessica Sigelbaum

From this week's "Diary"

so the first one is a bit over the top, but it's kinda touching in a way, i think.

Dear Diary:

I was coming out of a “Can this marriage be saved?” weekend in early March, when I headed downtown to report for jury duty at Federal District Court. As I walked into a courtroom for my first voir dire with roughly 30 other prospective jurors, I noticed the judge’s name on the door: Leonard Sand.

I remembered him as a legendary guy my then boyfriend, now husband, had covered in his days as an Associated Press reporter, back when he and I drove each other wild in a very different way than we had over the weekend.

Judge Sand looks like a legend: the demeanor of Moses, with a Santa Claus beard cut like that of an Amish farmer.

Courteous and occasionally downright charming, he asked us for basic details, like our occupations and those of our spouses or significant others. One young man replied, happily, “I’m not married — but I will be in three months.”

Judge Sand stopped writing on his legal pad, looked up from beneath his white eyebrows, paused, and with exquisite delivery, said, in a voice resonant with meaning that carried throughout the courtroom:

“Good luck.”

The whole courtroom burst into laughter.

That night, I said to my husband, “Given our current state of marital bliss, you might enjoy this,” and told the story.

He eyed me suspiciously, but I could see cracks in his icy demeanor.

Later that evening, after story time and tucking kids into bed, I punched him lightly on the shoulder.

“Hey,” I said. “Good luck.”

The ice broke. Big time.

Thank you, Judge Sand.

And to that optimistic young man: Good luck.

-Kate Rice

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aight, if you're looking for the entry of the week, this is definitely it..

Dear Diary:

After having been in exile for a while, I relished being back in the city. I waited for that serendipitous moment that would prove to me I was back in New York, the place that jumps to a different drummer.

Now, the Roosevelt tram had passed directly over me, I had seen Trisha Brown dancing with robots, I had seen Kathleen Turner and Jon Stewart on the street (not together), but still...not quite there.

The moment came in my local Johnny Rockets diner. I was eating a late breakfast when Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” came through the jukebox. As one, the white-hatted waiters formed a line in the center aisle and danced to the song, to my delight.

I thought that was the moment. But it wasn’t. The real moment came when I looked around the room to share it with my fellow New Yorkers.

No one was paying the slightest attention.

-Paul Peacock

This Week's Metro Diary. Which's Your Fave?

Dear Diary:

Time: 10:30 p.m., weeknight.

Place: No. 1 uptown train, from Sheridan Square.

Date: Twenty years ago today (more or less).

A large group of people enter the No. 1, heading home from the theater. The subway car is packed as if it were a rush-hour morning. Moving along, then suddenly the train halts. The lights go out, pitch black. The engine stops. We all smell smoke.

The seconds tick on. Anxiety heightens. Although probably only a minute passes, of course it feels like 10. The smoke is smelling more intense. Everyone is close to panic.

My dear friend Steve (long since departed this world and never forgotten) leans over to me and, in his best stage whisper, declares, “We really should have had dessert!”

The car erupts in laughter. With that, the lights come on. The engine restarts, and on we go, as though it had all been a dream. Can one’s attitude change one’s reality?

-Linda Maryanov



Dear Diary:

Arriving at work in Midtown a few months ago just before 9 a.m., I glimpsed a man walking uptown on Fifth Avenue. He was neatly dressed in a business suit, walking briskly, carrying a large cup from Starbucks in his left hand. Nothing special about this.

But under his right arm? A huge live, clucking rooster. No one gave him a second look. Only in New York. (Perhaps that was the breakfast special of the day?)
-Beth G. Kneller



Dear Diary:

For those of us old enough to remember the opening scene from “A Thousand Clowns” with Jason Robards: Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in front of the library. Mr. Robards’s character tells his 12-year-old nephew that he is about to see a horrible, horrible thing: people going to work.

I grew up in New York and now live in California. Every time I come back to the city, I stay in a Midtown hotel and get up at 6:30 or 7 and go stand on the same corner. Almost 50 years later it is still the same: New Yorkers marching off to work by the thousands. We all have our private memories of New York and what it means to each of us. This scene is my New York.
-Charles Slesinger


Dear Diary:

I was in line waiting to buy a BART ticket (for our Bay Area subway system in California) when this lady started to push herself ahead of me. I promptly told her, “Don’t pull a New York on me.”

She replied that she was from New York.

I quickly replied that my wife is from New York also.

The lady says, “Tell her I said hi.”

New Yorkers, go figure.

-Charles H. Greene Jr.



Dear Diary:

Overheard outside a florist’s shop on Third Avenue near 71st Street in Manhattan:

Potential customer, older man: “Got any doyt?”

Clerk: “What’s doyt?”

P.C.: “Ya know ... ya dig it ... outa da oyt.”

-Conrad Eberstein

More Metro Diary (4)

Nothing really noteworthy this week, a nice picture though.


Dear Diary:

Following is an incident that happened a couple of months ago.

I was driving down the West Side Highway, and as usual, had on WQXR. They were playing a Brahms symphony. I was enjoying the trip and, as a former librarian for the Metropolitan Opera, the music as well.

The driver of the car in front of me kept waving his arm out the window. As I kept watching, I realized he was keeping beat with the Brahms symphony.

He was good. Pickups, cutoffs, silent moments all picked up by this “conductor.”

As he approached 79th Street he put on his directional signal to exit. I had to go on. As he left, I picked up the beat.

John Grande

More Metropolitan Diary (3)

DEAR DIARY

My wife and I often spend our vacations in New York City. We love the serendipitous mix of cultures, neighborhoods and people, but we have difficulty explaining to friends who’ve never been there what makes the city so fascinating.

On our last visit, we joined the runners in Central Park one clear, crisp morning for a jog around the reservoir. After completing one circuit of our route, I took a seat on a bench, while my wife continued for another lap.

As I watched the usual parade of joggers, cyclists, and pets on leashes, I spotted what struck me as a uniquely New York sight. Approaching me along the running path and headed in the general direction of Lincoln Center was a young woman pushing a harp on a small wheeled platform.

“Only in New York,” I tell my friends. They still don’t get it.

-Scott Hunsicker

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SPRING IN THE PARK

A lark entertains those who pass by the band shell

As young lovers populate the benches

Sharing their lunch with a squirrel

The elderly walk hand in hand

Soaking up the lengthening rays of the sun

Only a few in this tableau will notice

Some drops of ice

Giving them a sly wink

From the top of one

Extremely sleepy bud.

-Ellen Fuchs

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DEAR DIARY:

One sunny day last fall I was in the playground with my 3-year-old son. Ezra, as usual, was wearing his hot pink sandals. A boy, slightly older, came over with a curious look.

“Why is he wearing pink sandals?” the boy asked.

“Well,” I said, “pink is his favorite color.”

“But pink is for girls,” the boy replied.

“If he’s a boy and he likes pink, pink must be for boys and girls,” I said.

The boy hesitated and leaned in closer. Quietly, he said “Pink is my favorite color, too.” And off he went.

-Corinne Schiff

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DEAR DIARY:

My 11-year-old son, Simon, had agreed to call me during his school lunch and let me know if he was coming home by himself or with a friend.

Much to my surprise, he wrote me from his computer class at school while I was working at my desk computer.

It perfectly represents where we are in our relationship at his age, when “cool rules” and parents embarrass. Below is the actual exchange:

Simon: I am taking the bus.

Simon: dad?

Ahvi: ok

Simon: k

Simon: bye

Ahvi: bye

Simon: bye

Ahvi: love ya

Simon: DADDDDDDDD

-Ahvi Spindell

Metropolitan Diary (i.e. Why I Love NY) part 2

Dear Diary

My husband is a more aggressive driver than I, so I often cringe at the thought of traveling into the city with him from Connecticut. And this occasion was no exception.

We had just returned our daughter to her N.Y.U. dorm after a long holiday weekend. After saying our goodbyes, we hopped into the car and my husband quickly pulled out into traffic.

“Oh my,” I said to him, “I believe we just cut someone off!” Ignoring my back-seat-driver comment, my husband proceeded to the end of the block, where we stopped at a traffic light.

The man we had cut off was signaling to my husband to roll his window down. I pleaded with my husband to not create an altercation, as my anxiety level was rising.

The man rolled down his passenger-side window, and my husband rolled down his driver-side window.

“Dude, you’d get a lot more love if you would just put on your blinker,” he called out from inside his car.

My husband was speechless.

I smiled all the way home.

-Keli Solomon

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Dear Diary:

Fifty years ago, I was a buyer at Abraham & Straus (sadly, it closed years ago) in Brooklyn.

One day, I got on an elevator where a small boy, about 3 years old, and his mother were looking down at his new sneakers. The mother asked if he was happy.

The 3-year-old replied, “All my life I wanted a pair.”

-Miriam Landsman

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Dear Diary:

I was taking the No. 2 train uptown from 42nd Street on a recent afternoon, and a man in a wheelchair boarded with a guide dog. As the train started to move, the man stood up from the wheelchair, removed his coat, lay down on the subway car floor and began doing push-ups. On the other side of the car, a man announced that it was “gospel time” and started singing.

As the train pulled into 72nd Street, the gospel singer walked through the car asking for tips, and the man doing push-ups stood up and handed him a dollar. He then picked up his dog, put him in the wheelchair, lay back on the floor and proceeded with sit-ups until 96th Street.

-Rebecca Weinstock

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Dear Diary:

Scene: A jewelry store in Brooklyn with loud rap music blasting out of three speakers.

Dramatis personae: Teenage salesgirl and me, a senior citizen.

Me: “How much is this necklace?”

Salesgirl: “Thirty-five dollars.”

Me: “Do you really like that music?”

Salesgirl: “Yes.”

Me: “Could you make it a little lower?”

Salesgirl: “O.K. Thirty dollars.”

Me: “I’ll take it.”

-Jane Feder

notin' comes close to non-fiction. you just can't make this stuff up!

THIS WEEK'S METROPOLITAN DIARY SELECTIONS


As I was riding the Q recently to meet a friend, I idly pulled my ponytail out and ran my fingers through my hair.

A man behind me leaned around and said, “Your hair looks just fine. It looks good.”

I laughed and said, “Thank you; your hair looks good, too.”

We chatted a bit and he eventually asked me very politely, “Are you married?” I said no.

“How is that? A fine lady like you?”

“It just happens that way sometimes.”

“No man got lucky enough, huh?” I laughed again.

“So would I be able to get hold of you?” He had been polite, so I politely answered, “I’m not interested in being gotten hold of just now.”

“You’re not interested in a relationship at this point in your life?”

“Nope.”

He seemed to understand and turned back around.

After a minute he turned to me again: “Well, can I have a dollar?”
-Kim Hewitt

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This Daylight Saving

This hour gained, but empty, hushed

No one told the birds


-L. Fred Ayvazian