My son has a friend who collects Metrocards. He is four. He keeps them in plastic baseball card sheets. When he  handles a card, he imediately flips it over to check the design on the back. He can probably distinguish every Metrocard back from the last ten years. He gets disappointed when he comes across a “common” back, the same way we’d be deflated by finding Buddy Biancalana instead of Don Mattingly in a pack of 1986 Topps.

He dressed as a Metrocard for Halloween. When the soccer coach splits them up for a little scrimmage at the end of practice, he convinces his team to name themselves the Metrocards.

His collection brought back memories from my youth. With an older brother blazing the trail, we had a lot of collections. One of the earliest ones I can remember was a collection of patches. My mom would sew them on my plain hooded sweatshirt until there was no space left. And then we’d get a new sweatshirt.

I had baseball patches, Star Wars patches, museum patches (Air & Space and Natural History), NASA patches, superhero patches, really anything that a kid might like that was available in patch form. In the winter, I insisted wearing the sweatshirt over heavier jackets so the patches would always be prominent.

How about you guys, can you remember something from your youth, maybe something a little odd, that you loved with your whole heart?

[Photo via Benjamin Kabak and secondavesnuesagas.com]

How many people do we see each day walking through the streets of the city? Hundreds? Sometimes thousands? If you stop and look it is easy to imagine a story in behind everything you see.

[Photo Credit: Louis Faurer, Penn Station, 1948]

Another morning, another increasingly desperate search for the metrocard. I just can’t seem to get it under control.

I feel like a little kid who can’t think ahead so he keeps running into the same problems. An adult should have created a system to keep this from happening long ago, yet here I am looking for the damn card again.

Yesterday’s pants? Nope. Yesterday’s jacket? The spot beside the stove where we put things? Nope squared. The spot on the shelf, that graveyard of insufficient fares? I hope not, that would have been an insane place to leave it. But better check. Nope. Not next to the computer. Not next to the bed. Not on the vanity in the hall. Holy crap, am I infantile, senile or just the laziest dumbass on the block?

Here’s my problem. My wallet is magnetic, so keeping the metrocard in my wallet murders it. I learned that the hard way with a plump card, maybe forty bucks down the drain. So I keep my metrocard as far away from my wallet as possible. In the summer, that means my metrocard is in my pants pocket and my wallet is zipped up inside my bag. In the winter, there’s the additional option of coat pockets.

When I get home I cannot train myself to think about the card. Either it stays in my pocket, which would make for a relatively easy search, or I absentmindedly place it on the first open surface I encounter. The latter tendency spices up the mornings.

And everytime I say to myself, this is the last time I’m doing this.

[Photo via mynewyorkworld.com]

This will make your day. It sure made mine.

[Photo Credit: Susan NYC]

Check this out:

I saw a couple on the train this morning who were not shy about showing their affection. It was as if they were all alone, or perhaps they just get their kicks smooching in a crowd. Who knows?

It was warm on Saturday afternoon. Here’s the wife as the 1 train rolls into the station. Yup, she’s a good one.

The Iron Horse in the Bronx.

Sure, there can be problems on the train. If you live uptown, service can be sketchy on the weekends. But it’s incredible to me that the trains run as well as they do.

Before I walk into an elevator I look up at the mirror. Force of habit from when I was a kid. Maybe “Dressed to Kill” got into my head. More likely, it’s a reflex I developed growing up in New York during a time when you expected to get mugged at any moment. I know it might be extreme now, but the mirror is there for a reason. When the elevator doors open I brace myself and look up at the mirror. Just in case.

I’ve still got to see this show.

[Photo Credit: Frank W. Ockenfels 3/FX]

I saw a kid on the train today with a Daniel Boone hat. Go figure that. What’s old is new.

The platform at 238th street this morning was almost empty. So was the train. Not a bad feeling, especially knowing how mad Manhattan will be come tomorrow night.

Going to the movies in a snowstorm? Now, that’s a good idea. I saw “The Color of Money” during a blizzard. What movies have you seen in the theater when it was snowing outside?

[Photo Credit: Pete Turner via the incredible site, This Isn’t Happiness]

Do you want to know a secret?

Here’s a good one via Kottke. Picture by Geoff Manaugh.

“Hold on for a second, I’ll get you a tissue,” I said to my son after I heard him sniffling on the couch.

I scanned the desk and there were no tissues. I headed to the kitchen, snagged two from the box and turned back. He was still sitting on the couch, but he now wore a devilish grin.

“Did you eat that booger?” I asked.

“No.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Boogers are hard.”

“What are you saying?”

“I didn’t eat a booger.”

“What did you eat then?”

“Snot.”

The sun is bright today and we haven’t seen any snow yet in New York. With only a few days before Christmas I’m sure there are some who’d like to see that change.

In the meantime, check out another wonderful photo gallery from our pals at How to Be a Retronaut.

[Photo Credit: Alfred Stieglitz]

Picture this: I’m over-dressed in my goose-down winter coat this morning looking like the goddamn Stay-Puft marshmallow man. My backpack is loaded with gifts that I’m bringing to my family’s Chanukah party tonight. I’ve got two shopping bags, one with more presents, the other with the cabbage salad I prepared last night. By hand, dammit, I sliced four heads of cabbage–thin!–by hand.

“Why don’t you just use the machine?” said the wife.

“Tradition!” I say, referring as much to the masochism as the end result.

So I get on the subway with all my junk, neck still sore from leaning over the cutting board, and sit at the end of the car, next to the wall, so that I’ll only have a person to my right. In no time, the train is crowded. And then, at 181st street, the subway moment I dread–hot food.

Two people, two sausage, egg and cheese sandwiches. Nowhere for me to move. Trapped.

And they housed that shit by the time we got to 137th street. Believe it.

It’s hard to figure that it’s almost been five years since my Dad passed away. I got to thinking about him on the subway this morning when a man came on the train with a bible in his left hand and started talking about Jesus. The man through the packed car slowly and was ignored by the passengers. I smiled as I remembered something Dad once said to a subway preacher. Dad looked up from his book when the preacher got close, looked up at him and in a loud, clear voice said, “Sir, your arrogance is breathtaking.”

Ah, the old man was a good one.

The street photography of New York in the 1980s by Jamel Shabazz still sings.

Peace to How to Be a Retronaut (the gift that keeps giving).

Bruce’s Garden is a beautiful spot in my neighborhood. When my wife and I went looking for an apartment, the vibrant garden nestled onto the “pro” side of our decision-making process without us even realizing it.

On Wednesday night, Bruce’s Garden hosted our annual holiday tree-lighting ceremony. Hot chocolate, cake and carols, then a roaring countdown. Then more carols. Sometimes, there are even rosy cheeks and suggestions of snow, but not this year.

As we sipped our hot chocolate and waited for the countdown, I saw a police cruiser with lights flashing speed down the dead end of Park Terrace East toward Isham Park. The car did not come back out. Nobody else seemed to notice. There were five police officers in attendence for the festivities, but I didn’t see any of them leave the garden.

About a hundred yards away from where we stood, four thieves attacked a man walking through the park on his way to meet his family in the garden. He’s a big man and he fought back, but he couldn’t prevent the mugging. He was injured but he drove around the area with the police officers looking for the muggers. They didn’t find them.

I don’t want to speculate on the nature of the crime, the criminals, nor the victim other than to say that it was clearly brazen. The ceremony was well publicized. The police were prominent, the crowd vocal.

The things that keep us close to the city crash into the things that push us away. I can pretend that by choosing the right route home, or by carrying myself a certain way that I can avoid being jumped. That’s a fine delusion when I’m only thinking about me, but I’m not thinking about me anymore.

Someday, I’ll celebrate my last Christmas in New York City. Maybe it will be this one.

 [Photo Credit: Carla Zanoni Dn’Ainfo]