A Real Hat
After a morning that saw me put a bid in on a spacious two bedroom apartment with a formal dining room in Bay Ridge – $10,000 down with 75% financing and a very adult activity, if ever I engaged in one – I decided to go shopping for a new hat. I’ve been wearing hats for a little over a year now: a straw hat followed by a light felt black fedora. Fashionable as it might otherwise be, a black hat clashes with the navy blazer I’ve taken to wearing lately. This is another dubious sign of maturity. As the Clash song goes, “You grow up and you calm down / You start wearing blue and brown.” A grey hat seemed in order, so I made my way to Bencraft Hatters.
Bencraft has two locations in Brooklyn. The original is located in Williamsburg, not far from where my paternal grandfather lived when he married my grandmother. It’s probably where he purchased (or, more likely, rented) the top hat he wore on their wedding day. The other, which I frequent, is in Borough Park. Inside of Bencraft, you will find the kind of intense debates, measurements and arguments over hats that made most American men heave a sigh of relief when J.F.K. attended his inauguration bare-headed. Being a Sunday, I found a dozen Jewish men (customers and salesmen) engaging in heated debates over coloring, brim size and the ever-ephemeral quality of “quality.”
A family – two older brothers and their father – fretted over the difference of a quarter of an inch of brim for the youngest of their clan. A 10-year-old girl rejected her father’s new hat as “not as good” as his last one, and chastised him for losing his yarmulke inside of a display hat and thus exposing his chrome dome to Yahweh. At the sales counter, an agitated little man complained of a barely detectable “bump” in the crown of his new hat. “I wouldn’t complain, except that this is the fourth hat I purchased from you this week,” he explained. The salesman countered, “In every hat in this store, could I find an imperfection? These are handmade hats, they will never be 100%” Finally, though, the salesman agreed to steam the hat in an attempt to work out the bump, although, he complained, Sunday was a bad day for it. He gestured to the long line of Hassidic men waiting to have their hats steamed and cleaned.
As for me, I meekly requested a grey hat in the same cheapo style as the “lite felt” fedora I was already wearing. None in my size, the salesman apologized. He did find a slightly-more-expensive Stefano. “It’s a real hat,” he explained, “as we say in the business.” Almost thirty, a real home and a real hat. How could I refuse?
Goodbye, Queens. Hello, Brooklyn
I’m not a well-traveled person. I secured a reputation of sorts in grad school, on the first day of Elaine Bernard’s global labor movements class. As we went around the room for introductions, and everyone explained who they were and where they came from (yes, yes, they were the union, the mighty, might union) and discussed their various international contacts and trips abroad, I introduced myself with a flip “Shaun Richman, AFT, Queens, NY. Frankly, I’m uncomfortable leaving Queens.” I’ve spent my entire life – nearly 30 years of it – in this fine borough, but all things have an end. I finally received an acceptable offer on my apartment. I signed the contract of sale on Friday and will be gone by November.
I’m looking to move to Brooklyn, someplace close to the Belt Parkway and the Verrazano Bridge, and within an hour of midtown by subway. Someplace quiet, pretty, affordable and in close proximity to fun. I’m not sure such a neighborhood exists. It’s the “affordable” part that’s difficult. I managed, in the end, to sell my apartment for nearly twice what I paid for it five years ago. Unfortunately, everything else went up in cost at least as much. Obvious choices like Park Slope and Fort Greene are prohibitively expensive.
I had high hopes for Sunset Park, with its ubiquitous park and skyline views. It is affordable – barely – but sleepy and undeveloped. Bay Ridge, slightly to the south, had much more appealing shopping and dining, but it’s so far from everything, I’m afraid no one would ever visit me and the neighborhood would serve as little more than a bedroom community for my Jersey commute.
Yesterday I got my hopes up about the unfortunately-named Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, but I dashed them today by visiting there. Even the nabe’s enthusiastic booster blog has trouble highlighting more than nice architecture and convenient geography:
“PLG is among the last of the neighborhoods that border Prospect Park where average working people can still (almost) afford to live… That lower price tag, however, comes with concessions – there are none of the higher-end boutiques, bars and restaurants that populate Park Slope, Prospect Heights and Brooklyn Heights.”
It was lovely, but I had a hard time locating a supermarket, a fruit stand or even a decent slice of pizza. You could call places like Prospect-Lefferts Gardens and Sunset Park “up and coming” neighborhoods, but only a fool counts on a neighborhood turnaround in troubled economic times like these. Perhaps I’m asking for too much. Perhaps simply being able to afford a roof over one’s head is the best one can hope for these days in New York. I’ve got three months until I’m out on my ass. Expectations decline on a daily basis.
Christ May Be King, But At Least He Spares Us Monarchistic Thinking
Teachers at ten New York City schools went on strike Friday over the high cost of health care, but their union was not sued, their president not imprisoned and their members not fined two days of pay for every day out on the picket line. What gives?
The teachers in question work at Catholic schools in the archdiocese of New York so their union is not subject to the same draconian law that would apply to the city’s public school teachers. Is their strike not a “disruption” in the lives of the parents who enroll their children there? Do Catholic school-kids not rely on the structure and safety of the classroom as much as public school kids? Of course not. The simple truth is that while Catholic school teachers might arguably have to answer to a higher law, only public school teachers have to report to a Boss that makes the law and has the power of the state to enforce it. Hell hath no fury like Mayor Bloomberg and the Taylor law. It’s one more strike against monarchistic thinking.
Take a Break, Client 9
Born under a lame duck, for most of my living memory we’ve had only two governors in New York. Twelve years of Democrat Mario Cuomo and twelve years of Republican George Pataki. Now, in the blink of an eye, we just burned through another one. I’m not shedding any tears for Client 9, but I am somewhat dumbfounded that he was felled so quickly by something so…trivial.
At Monday’s Labor Research Association awards dinner, NYS Labor Commissioner Patricia Smith stood in for the governor-in-hiding and delivered a pretty convincing defense of his administration’s record. Hundreds of times more wage and hours claims against deadbeat employers than the previous administration. Hundreds of times more health and safety cases investigated than the previous administration. And, yes, he gave over 50,000 early childhood educators the right to organize into unions. Excepting that last one, what is really exceptional about that record? Have politics degenerated in such a way that we consider merely enforcing the law to be noteworthy and commendable?
To my mind, Elliot Spitzer was never a reliable friend of labor and David Paterson will be a welcome replacement (at last, a governor who needs us!). As good as Elliot “Ness” Spitzer’s record was as Attorney-General, after three terms of Republican misrule, voters would have voted in droves for a department store mannequin. Spitzer, like Illinois’ Rod Blagojevich and Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick, translated his lucky landslide as some kind of mandate and declared war on everyone, including his own party and unions like NYSUT when it suited his purpose. Is it any wonder that his opponents in Albany pounced on him the first time he showed an exploitable weakness?
And, boy, is this a story that can be exploited! Already, the two days it took Spitzer to decide to resign gave us time to ponder lots of questions. Questions like, what’s worse: to be Client 8 or Client 10? Why did he choose to book a hotel room under a campaign donor’s name? Because George Fox sounded cool? Well, that’s the last time that guy makes a donation to your campaign fund, Nine. Note to Elliot: next time you’re looking for an alias, do what the rest of us do – read a Dashiell Hammett story and pick the coolest name (“Yes, I’d like to reserve a room. Name: Harry Brazil”). And, finally, what kind of things does Spitzer ask a girl to do that she “might not think were safe?” I’m imagining a well-lubed baseball bat up the backside.
The simplest lesson that any of us can draw from this is that it is high time that we legalize prostitution. The illegality of sex work is the thin veneer of credibility that let the Republicans threaten impeachment and push Spitzer out the door. Applying health code standards and regulation to sex work would doubtlessly improve public health, and, hell, at a thousand dollars an hour, taxing that shit would help keep the Social Security fund solvent for generations to come (or should that be “generations to cum?”). Play safe, comrades. You’re benched, client #9. Batter up, governor #5.