Salute.

[Photo Via: Eye Heart New York]

Could have used a jacket this morning. Well, that might be stretching it some but it was cool. Autumn is in the air.

So fresh, so fresh.

Happy Birthday to the Old Penn Station. 

This morning I saw a boy with blond hair sitting on his backpack. He was next to a covered garbage can on 7th avenue. Another bag rested next to the backpack. Kid must have been 10. His outfit was a jumble of day-glo colors. Above him was a weathered-looking man in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt. The guy could have been a fisherman. He leaned on the garbage can and smoked a cigarette.

I waited for the light to change and wondered what their story was. Then the man said, “There she is,” and dropped the cigarette to the ground even though it wasn’t half-way smoked. I looked back. A crowd of people exited the subway and were coming our way. A stumpy woman with peroxide blond hair and dark sunglasses emerged from the group. The boy ran to her and almost jumped into her arms. They embraced and then walked to the corner where the man handed her the boy’s bags. He then hugged the boy.

The man and the woman didn’t exchange a word. They did not look at each other. The boy left with his mother and the father disappeared into the crowd.

[Photo Via: iPhoneography NYC]

The A.V. Club’s 2001 interview with KRS-One. 

[Picture via Up North Trips]

This guy told me that he learned to dress from his father.

“My old man had hundreds of suits,” he said. “I’ve dressed well since I was a kid.”

“You must spend a fortune in dry cleaning,” I said.

“Man, you don’t know the half of it,” he said. “But that’s what you’ve got to do to look good so I’m not complaining.”

Lookit what our man Michae found–that there looks like the GWB.

Just rollin’ lookin’ for the one they call E-Z…

A friend saw this on an electrical box on 2nd Ave in midtown.

Well, you just can’t ignore a lady wearing red now can you? And with the matching phone and all.

Here’s a job that’s a big, fat “No, thank you” for me.

[Photo Via: Ffotofolio]

Fine Print NYC, a spot for browsing and happiness.

Nice little piece on Bobbito by David Gonzalez in the Times the other day:

His love of the game has taken him around the world. With Kevin Couliau, he made the documentary “Doin’ It in the Park,” which is a valentine not just to the game, but to the neighborhoods where it is played. He promoted it guerrilla style, through his Open Runs, which is like a pickup basketball flash mob gathered on several hours’ notice through an e-mail blast. This summer he organized in Riverside Park what he said was the first-ever full-court 21 tournament, the ultimate city game.

“You go to any park in New York, and the kids are playing 21,” he said. “Essentially, it’s a game where you have no teammates. You have multiple people guarding whoever has the ball. Every change of possession goes the opposite way. It’s a rough game. There’s no out of bounds and no shooting fouls.”

…“The beauty of outdoor pickup is there is no other environment where you are going to find such a diverse group of people participating in free recreation,” Bobbito said. “You don’t find that at a sports club or a university gym. Those require memberships. The park is free.”

[Photo Via: Life and Times]

A Then and Now photo gallery from Gothamist. 

David Bradford takes us all round the town.

Big Nick’s was a burger spot on Broadway between 76th and 77th streets. Been there forever. It closed recently and is apparently moving uptown. My stepmother used to live a block-and-a-half away and I’ve known about the place since the mid-’80s. It served overpriced but fabulously greasy burgers. The atmosphere was cramped and humid, like being jammed into a fogged-out fishbowl. Terrific New York characters worked the grill and waited tables. It was a neighborhood fixture, for sure.

I walked by a few days ago and was sorry to see it, like so many other joints, was no more.

I saw this kid on the subway this morning. Sitting next to his girl, plump and black with a gap between her two front teeth. She wore a black T-shirt and black shorts, white socks and flip flops.

I remarked on the kid’s tattoo and asked if I could take a picture. The train was moving so I didn’t get a good shot but he was happy to let me photograph him. Maybe it’s a generational thing–kids are used to putting themselves out into the world now.

They are from Tallahassee, Florida and have been in New York for a week.

I wonder what he’s done to make him ink “Forgive Me” on his neck.

Jimmy Picker’s 1983 Oscar-winning short.

Wonderful post about NYC record stores over at Flaming Pablum.

Vos macht a Yid?

I went to a small Farmer’s Market in Riverdale yesterday and there was a stand that caught my attention. Three young people from a Yiddish farm upstate New York. They didn’t have much to sell but they had a good story.

Here’s a look by Sam Frizell writing for Gothamist:

“It’s different to be Jewish in English than it is to be Jewish in Yiddish,” says Tsipore Angelson, 29, who grew up in a secular family and spent several years in China. Earlier this summer she learned Yiddish for a week on the farm and comes back to help out sometimes. She still speaks Yiddish at home with friends she made on the farm.

“The whole culture lies in the language,” she continues. “This is a vital culture that didn’t die. This is a language that young people want to be a part of.”

Clyde Haberman talks to the Film Forum’s directory of repertory, Bruce Goldstein:

“ ‘Million Dollar Movie’ was VHS before there was VHS,” Mr. Goldstein said.

That childhood experience led him, with Ms. Cooper, to create Film Forum Jr., an attempt to acquaint today’s children — generally, age 5 and up — with the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton and great musicals like “Singin’ in the Rain.” His own first movie, at 5, was “Pal Joey,” in 1957. “I didn’t know how sexy it was till years later,” he said.

“You can’t talk down to kids,” he said. “Kids have taste.” On Mother’s Day, he screened Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 version of “The Man Who Knew Too Much, which involves an assassination plot and a boy’s kidnapping.

“Someone said, ‘That’s not for kids, it’s too scary,’ ” Mr. Goldstein recalled. “I said: ‘Yeah, it’s scary. But it’s not as scary as ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ The Disney movies are really scary.” So he showed the Hitchcock film and “the kids loved it.”

For Mr. Goldstein, nothing compares to watching a movie with others around.

“You focus on the film,” he said. “You don’t focus at home or on your iPhone. Second, you get the benefit of the other audience members picking up on things you might not have noticed.” While it is not a phrase he likes, he added, there is such a thing as “communal experience.”

“Some films don’t work on video at all,” he said. “Silent comedy doesn’t work on video, as far as I’m concerned. You need an audience to laugh with you and to pick up on the gags you may not notice at home because you’re distracted in 20 different directions.”

[Photo Via: Gothamist]