Not Enough To Count
I’m coming up on a year in Bay Ridge, which perhaps makes me a “regular.” It’s enough time, apparently, to make friends with the Chinese merchants on 4th Avenue, who seem to really want me to be Jewish. I suppose having Jews around is good business for dry cleaners and Chinese take-out.
I made it to Win Hing last night, just before closing time, to order some sesame chicken. The woman behind the counter, who always wears a pink Yankees cap and speaks very broken English, noted the lateness of my arrival and asked “Working late?” As the food was being prepared, and she started the closing-time clean-up ritual, she asked me for pointers on her English, which must indicate some form of familiarity.
“Is that how you say? ‘Can you sit there?'” “I would say,” I said to her, “‘Would you sit there?’ It would seem more polite. Besides, ‘can you sit?’ could mean, ‘Are you able to?'” She clarified, “Ah, like are you cripple?”
“Exactly.” Finally, she asked, simply, “Are you Jewish?” It’s probably the hat that I always wear, I guess to myself. “Ah, kinda.” “People always say this thing,” she said, “Kinda. What does this mean? Kinda.”
“Uh, it means, ‘not enough to count.'”
At the dry cleaners today, the female proprietor is surprised to see me midday. “Are you on vacation?,” she asks. Yeah, I took a day off to take care of my dry cleaning and other errands. Because I’m cool like that. This cleaner has a very computerized, talking cash register that greets customers with a bubbly “Welcome back!” It’s probably marketed to self-conscious immigrants. The woman behind the counter, however, notes my name on the computer-printed receipt. “Rich,” she says with a pause, “man. Are you…Jewish people?” “Uh,” I hesitate, “not enough to count.”
“I used to live on Kings Highway,” she explains. “All Jewish people there. Names all end with ‘man.’ Fried Man. Gold Man. I see Rich Man, so I ask.” I explain my heritage, for some reason, “Well, my father was Jewish. But he converted.” She smiles and nods at this answer. “Bye,” she says, as I walk out, “Have a nice day!” while the bubbly computer chirps, “Have a nice day!”
Alas Poor Busky. I Knew Him, Facebook.
It’s been previously noted the unnatural oddness that is leaving behind a virtual representation of oneself on the myface. As this shit gets more mainstream, the awkwardness gets more familiar and yet more surreal. In the Times, Adam Cohen writes of a friend’s Facebook profile becoming a sort of living shrine to a dead-too-soon friend. At least it served that function to those who friended him up while he was still alive, and until his surviving family chooses to pull the plug on the profile. But what of those who die unloved, unmourned, unfriended?
I recently threw in the towel and joined Facebook, the creepy, creepy improvement on Friendster and MySpace. Immediately, the computer intelligence starts recommending friends I should connect with. How does this bloody thing know the names of girls that I went on one or two dates with three or four years ago? And why does this blasted thing want me to be friends with Don Busky? Busky died late last year, and in life we were something closer to enemies than friends.
He was always an odd fellow, more noted for his reclusiveness than his actual politics or personality. As an ambitious young turk, I quickly butted heads with the guy in an attempt to recruit eager new recruits to charter a more active Philadelphia local of the Socialist Party and overthrow an innocent savant who was more interested in publishing silly little zines with a socialist bent. Shortly after I showed up for work in the party’s national office, as a teenage socialist in 1996, my buddy Clement Joseph started cracking jokes about the disembodied brain in a jar that was Donald F. Busky. My only interactions with the comrade were a fairly acrimonious e-mail exchange over his failure to properly represent the party (or, indeed, turn up to a single meeting) in the “Unity 2000” rally planning. His last message to me (and every party member for whom he could find an email address) was addressed, simply, “Cde. Richman owes some apologies.” I met him a few months later at a YPSL convention near Rittenhouse Square in 2001. We spoke not a word, but it was the first time I had been in his physical presence. The brain in a jar was a large man, shy and soft-spoken. He was a devoted Mac user, a labor buff and adjunct professor. We might have been friends if we hadn’t started as enemies. It was a sad loss, but C’est la vie. I soon left the party, and didn’t hear about Busky again until Gabe Ross passed on the unfortunate news about his death last December.
The next time I saw Cde. Busky’s name was on an open public records access request for the list of adjunct faculty at a community college down in southern New Jersey, where I’m helping the part-timers form a union. Prof. Donald F. Busky gets to be a voter in their union election, except that he couldn’t possibly vote “Union Yes” (as he surely would have) because he is No Longer Employed. Still, it was a kick in the guts to see his name on that OPRA list, just as it is a kick in the guts to see him recommended as a friend on Facebook whenever I log in, and to see his name and home address on a mailing label for a mailing we worked on last Friday for the union campaign.
I don’t think his elderly mother (if she’s still alive), or any other surviving relative knows enough to get Cde. Busky’s Facebook profile retired. Therefore, he will continue to haunt me. Perhaps I’ll learn to be a better comrade to those who have yet to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Questionable Civic Boosterism
In the wake of a fire that disabled the Throgs Neck Bridge, Long Island and state officials are contemplating construction of a new L.I. Sound crossing. This would be a 16-mile tunnel connecting Oyster Bay in Long Island to Rye, NY, the home of summer camps and amusement parks in Westchester County. The Cross-Sound tunnel would cost at least $25 billion, and would charge one-way tolls of $25. For those who would question the value of such a project, as well as its staggering costs and potential environmental impact, Oyster Bay (Long Island) Supervisor John Venditto justifies the proposal thusly: “I don’t think you can ever have too many ways to get off of Long Island.” To this, dear reader, your writer can add little of value.
Life in Brooklyn / I Like Birds
I’m slowly getting accustomed to life in South Brooklyn. Bay Ridge might wind up being the perfect neighborhood for me, in all of its remote and eccentric charm. It’s very quiet and beautiful down here, with the stately Verrazano bridge towering over everything. My own view of the bridge is minimal. You have to crane your neck out my bedroom window to see the very tippy-top of the eastern spire over an abandoned construction site.
The fog rolls off the harbor and blankets the neighborhood with a strangely comforting regularity. It can make driving over the Verrazano feel like walking through the London streets of a Jack the Ripper story. The foghorns of passing ships lull me to sleep, or gently awake me like the distant clickety-clack of the Long Island Rail Road in the house in which I grew up.
I can’t look at the rocket launch
The trophy wives of the astronauts
Bay Ridge is about as old timey as Brooklyn gets. The bridge connects two military bases. I’m not sure what’s still housed at Fort Hamilton except for a VA hospital, but the neighborhood is dotted with armed forces recruitment centers. The local barbershops offer free haircuts to servicemen, and front lawns still display their “Support the Troops” signs, faded and yellowed.
And I won’t listen to their words
’cause I like birds
I spend most of my time in New Jersey, or on the road, for work, so, so far, Bay Ridge is more of a bedroom community for me than much of a real home. I haven’t checked out nearly enough of the local restaurants and bars. I’m a little too reliant on take-out (particularly for a nabe lacking in any Mexican food).
I don’t care for walkin’ downtown
Crazy auto car gonna mow me down
The whole driving-between-Jersey-and-Brooklyn thing has made me even less keen on ever going in to Manhattan. My car’s been in the shop this week, so I’ve been having to take the N/R to Penn Station to take the Jersey Transit. It’s an inhuman squeeze.
Look at all the people like cows in a herd
Well, I like birds
Our Congressional district is lumped in with Staten Island, and, until last year, we were the only district in NYC to send a Republican to Congress. Early on, while at brunch at a local pub, I overheard a bunch of middle-aged bellyachers complaining about the upcoming MLK holiday and speculating that with our new (BLACK!!!) president it was the first of many such holidays. Next up, Huey P. Newton Day!
I can’t stand in line at the store
The mean little people are such a bore
duck took a while to get used to the new digs. While our we were in storage, waiting to close, we stayed in a studio apartment, which greatly comforted the clingy little beast. Now in a far more spacious two bedroom, she spent her first weeks getting lost in each new room and crying. Eventually, she rediscovered the joy of windows.
Although we are once again on the second floor, this time our windows face the quiet parking lot of a church, as opposed to a busy boulevard with buses driving noisily past. Up on the window sill, duck gets calmer and actually shuts up for a change. She seemed to take a particular interest in the birds.
But it’s all right if you act like a turd
’cause I like birds
I bought a bird feeder to encourage the wee winged ones to gather by our fire escape. The bird feed label promised to attract blue jays, cardinals and other “attractive outdoor pets” (as opposed to those dead common finches and pidgeons), and, boy, did it deliver.
If you’re small and on a search
I’ve got a feeder for you to perch on
I can’t yet name every variety of bird that’s stopped by my fire escape for a quick meal. I’m not quite at the point of buying a book to recognize them, although, it occurs to me that since grandma died it does fall to someone to be the family’s resident birdwatcher.
For now, I may content myself with hanging up a second feeder and filling it with a different kind of bird feed, just to see if I can increase the biodiversity of the fire escape. Maybe I’ll add a small plant, who knows?
I’ve got a feeder for you to perch on
Yeah, I’ve got a feeder for you to perch on
(Apologies to Mark Oliver Everett)