Last night I was on Broadway and 103rd street buying flowers for the wife before I got on the train. Who should come out of the bodega but an old friend. My cousin’s best friend for more than forty years (this is my cousin, the film editor, who was responsible for hooking me up with my first job in the movie business). The two of them told me about “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and took me to see “Valley Girl” when I was a kid, a big deal because it was a rated R movie; I covered my eyes every time there was a nude scene.

I remembered seeing that movie with them just a few days ago and now here was my cousin’s friend in front of me. I don’t remember the last time I’d seen her.

We caught up and made plans to get together. Then a woman I worked with in the movie business walked up to us.

My cousin’s friend said goodbye and now I was talking to another old friend. We’d worked together on “The Big Lebowski.” I was in the picture department and she was in the music department. We too caught up on old times–she still works in sound editing, is getting married next month–and when it came time to say goodbye I quoted her favorite line from “Lebowski,” a line we used to say to each other all the time during the post-production of that show.

I started down the subway steps and said, “Gave the Dude a beeper.”

And she said, “Gave the Dude a deeper.”

I was halfway down the steps when I heard a male voice, guy walking down the street, say, “Gave the Dude a beeper.”

How odd yet cool to have worked on a movie that became a cult hit. And how wonderful to have a New York Minute with old friends.

[Photo Credit: digger-cb]

Broadway and 116th street, Columbia University.

Family time on the 1 train.

Parking lot in Soho. Wait, what?

Honey, hang on a sec, I’ll be right there, I just need to take a picture.

It’s cold in New York today. I saw a dude on the train on my way to working this morning. He was not wearing a coat. I looked down.  Sandals with no socks. Really, man?

When I got to work and, I said good morning to Big Lou, one of the security guards in my building. I told him about the guy on the train.

Lou said, “Well, you never know, he could have a foot problem.”

“No, Lou, I think some people are just Herbs.”

“You never know, Al. Who are we to judge?”

I stopped and looked at Lou and told him that he was right. I thanked him for pointing out the facts. Won’t be the last time today that I need correcting.

Good to have people like Lou in your life.

Sitting on the train this morning at 125th street, the light pours in from the east. It’s always good to have someone blocking the sun.

One small move on their part and:

Blinded by the Light.

What’s a matter with you, boy?

Over at the New York Review of Books, here’s Bruce Davidson on taking pictures on the Iron Horse in the early ’80s:

In the spring of 1980, I began to photograph the New York subway system. Before beginning this project, I was devoting most of my time to commissioned assignments and to writing and producing a feature film based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel, Enemies, A Love Story. When the final option expired on the film, I felt the need to return to my still photography—to my roots.

I began to photograph the traffic islands that line Broadway. These oases of grass, trees, and earth surrounded by heavy city traffic have always interested me. I found myself photographing the lonely widows, vagrant winos, and solemn old men who line the benches on these concrete islands of Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

I traveled to other parts of the city, from Coney Island to the Bronx Zoo. I revisited the Lower East Side cafeteria where I’d photographed several years before. The cafeteria was a haven for the elderly Jewish people surviving the decaying nearby neighborhoods. I photographed the people I had known there, survivors from the war and the death camps who had clung together after the Holocaust to re-root themselves in this strange land. I walked along Essex Street to visit an old scribe who repaired faded Hebrew characters on sacred Torah scrolls. He and his wife, both survivors of Dachau, worked together in their small religious bookstore. Occasionally, he’d allow me to take a photograph as he bent over the parchment with his pen. When the flash went off, he would wave me away. I would return later with prints that he put into a drawer, carefully, without looking at them. Sometimes, returning from his shop during the evening rush hour, I would see the packed cars of the subway as cattle cars, filled with people, each face staring or withdrawn with the fear of its unknown destiny.

Dig the book, a cherce holiday gift.

Oh, hell, and while we’re at it:

Check out this gallery of New York City photographs by Stanley Kubrick.

From How to Be a Retronaut, where else?

A rainy day in New York always makes me wish I was at a movie theater. Or maybe a museum, or a cozy restaurant. Or hey, what about an indoor batting cage? Yeah, taking bp with my brother, Ben, Jon DeRosa pitching. Something like that, yeah. Unless, I was just chillin’ at home, laying on my ass reading a book or watching a movie on TV. Or in the kitchen, cooking. That’d work, too. I suppose there is lots to do on a dark, wet day in New York, isn’t there?

[Photo Credit: Tall Kev]

As a kid, the scariest neighborhood I could think of outside of Harlem was Alphabet City. It was a world away from the Upper West Side, which had its tough blocks and dangerous stretches. I heard about Alphabet City in frightening terms, as in “You don’t want to go down there.” Then, when I was thirteen, I remember this movie poster:

I never saw the movie and it would be years until I went downtown to that neighborhood. By the time I got there it was called the East Village.

[Photo Credit: Ribonyc]

I’ve never gone to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade but I have an uncle who used to go every year. It was one of those things that he couldn’t imagine not doing and didn’t understand why everyone didn’t feel the same way he did.

The floats are cool, though, aren’t they?

Lots of people getting out of town today. I’m glad that I’m not one of them. Hope that no matter where you are, you have a decent time of it tomorrow.

[Photo Credit: Thig Nat]

NYCmovie

Seen on Broadway last night.

[Photo Credit: NY Bits]

Meanwhile, uptown, the Dominican boys don’t mess around. Last weekend, there they were, still playing baseball.

The local was running behind schedule this morning so the conductor announced that after 72nd Street the 1 train was going express to Times Square, bypassing my stop in the process. I got off at 72nd and took one step to the side of the door onto the platform. My left foot was maybe six inches away from the ledge and I had to look away as the train pulled out of the station so I wouldn’t get dizzy. Then, as we waited for the next train to approach, I looked back at the faces huddled behind me and then shifted my weight on my back leg, away from the tracks. I was less than a foot away from disaster but not sensible enough to lose my spot.

[Photo Credit: Rob Brulinski]

As a kid I never understood this sign. Saw it all over the city but it made no sense. Why would anyone want to post dollar bills? And how do you post something anyway?

Seen on the street last week in the Bronx.

I have a friend who won’t buy books on the street because she doesn’t want lice in her library. She doesn’t mean this as a put down, her concern is authentic. I never thought of it that way though I’m picky about the condition of a book when I buy it on the street. Condition, my desire for the title, and the price. Last week I picked up a good paperback copy of E.L. Doctorow’s Book on Daniel. What’s the last book you got on the street?

Over at Codex 99, check out this cool post about subway tiles.

Check out this photo gallery of Penn Station over at Retronaut.

I found it difficult to look at these pictures without feeling torn up.