8.13.2007
New York City
Aug 7, 2007
To Mr. R. Gibson Harp,
If it weren’t for the heat, the swelter of hopping the C 36 blocks from the Hell’s Kitchen apartment, after two avenues of walking and five flights of stairs, I’d start every day with a few hours at Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee in West Village. Little, and intended that way, Jack’s sells as good a cup of coffee as I’ve ever bought. I sit in the front window on bench seats that cats should curl up on. The four wooden tables, each with two chairs, are no larger than a milk crate, and they seem to be cut from the deck of an old man’s sailing ship, stained and re-stained and buckling under time. The baristas, who'd shudder at that corporate plastic marker, aren’t so friendly, but the coffee is fine, as in the old sense of the word.
I order a large cup. The girl, in a black-and-white tight-fitting shirt and holey jeans, goes ahead and makes it with milk and sugar. As it brews, Jack's trademark works, a rigged machine to stir the grinds in process. They attest the invention accounts for the smooth taste. The behind-the-counter milk and sugar saves them and I from the hassle of a station, where people clutter and drip cream and reach over one another for the right sweetener and pine-scrap stirrers. It all seems a waste once you get away from the option.
I’d spend, like I said, any morning at Jack’s had the Village been my summer home instead of Hell’s Kitchen. And had heat not fallen like fog.
It’s the warmest week thus far in New York. The sky, the last two days, has been grey and swallowing. It’s foreboding. Motionless. No matter, I’ve been out today, Tuesday, spending the afternoon hours in the midtown library, the one with the grand, concrete lions. In the upper room, halved into vast rows of brightly varnished reading tables, adorned with classic green glass lamps, I put in at the information desk for three books: a history of Grenada put out just four years ago; the 1968 nonfiction biography of a bullfighter, El Cordobes, with the most wonderful title, Or I’ll Dress You in Mourning; and, a book about street busking called Passing the Hat by Patricia Campbell. Each came up in about fifteen minutes – my number was 168 for the Grenada and bullfighter books, 029 for PTH. I knew this by a square screen discreetly inlaid into the wood-walled divider, its matrix of dotted points-of-light simple like a older basketball scoreboard. The screen sticks out seamlessly in a room that makes me think of a Carnegie brother hiring a fresco painter for the Cumberland Island place or some hotel lobby. These ceilings are like Michelangelo’s, only empty of Beings, just heavy white clouds and the bluest sky that make me think of the farm.
I browse through the street busking book, which read a bit dated, but did its job, telling me about Will the Juggler and the guitar player at Trolley’s turn, describing a mime’s bit about an apple and a arrow gone astray, all acted out on the Met’s steps. It reminded me of Key West years ago, sailing in and out, stopping for two evenings. The best of the best streetmen winter there, spending the hour before and the hour after sunset on Mallory Square. I see swords in the air and a magician on a sturdy blue fruit box and the tumblers and tappers all along the seaside pier. It’s a magic thing to witness. How I bet my Vermont friend that those traveling showmen must pull in two hundred dollars a night.
I read up then set off to find a Barnes and Noble, where I looked over three food magazines - Gourmet, Bon Appetit, and Food&Wine - trying to find a spot for a essay about Oil Down, Grenada’s national dish. (I spent a week there in June. And haven’t stopped thinking about the kindly cops in the rain ever since.) Afterwards I walked up from 44th and Fifth to 51st, and along that stretch, I found myself among the fancy clothiers I’ve always heard of. Saks, Cole Haan, Kenneth Cole, Banana Republic, Sephora, Gucci and Cartier. Most are housed in buildings with ornate golden facades of angels wound in ivy and birds’ nests and such. It’s quite Roman. Even the grates over the trees shine like polished bronze. They may be bronze. St. Patrick’s Cathedral sits among all this glamour and wideness, a thoroughfare girls with money dream about, and the spired place pokes at my conscience, like the men with the cardboard signs, the one who’d written 100 words about his plight near the duck pond last afternoon, the one I’d hurried by, so I turned after the store with ITALIA carved into the stone and headed west straight towards Radio City.
Some British rock group Deep Purple plays the Hall that night. Odd-looking groupies wait by the side door.
Such are the walk-around thoughts in New York in the summertime.
Tell Ruth to count me in for Labor Day. And that I suspect Arthur has an answer to my question.
So far is good,
TB
New York City
Aug 7, 2007
To Mr. R. Gibson Harp,
If it weren’t for the heat, the swelter of hopping the C 36 blocks from the Hell’s Kitchen apartment, after two avenues of walking and five flights of stairs, I’d start every day with a few hours at Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee in West Village. Little, and intended that way, Jack’s sells as good a cup of coffee as I’ve ever bought. I sit in the front window on bench seats that cats should curl up on. The four wooden tables, each with two chairs, are no larger than a milk crate, and they seem to be cut from the deck of an old man’s sailing ship, stained and re-stained and buckling under time. The baristas, who'd shudder at that corporate plastic marker, aren’t so friendly, but the coffee is fine, as in the old sense of the word.
I order a large cup. The girl, in a black-and-white tight-fitting shirt and holey jeans, goes ahead and makes it with milk and sugar. As it brews, Jack's trademark works, a rigged machine to stir the grinds in process. They attest the invention accounts for the smooth taste. The behind-the-counter milk and sugar saves them and I from the hassle of a station, where people clutter and drip cream and reach over one another for the right sweetener and pine-scrap stirrers. It all seems a waste once you get away from the option.
I’d spend, like I said, any morning at Jack’s had the Village been my summer home instead of Hell’s Kitchen. And had heat not fallen like fog.
It’s the warmest week thus far in New York. The sky, the last two days, has been grey and swallowing. It’s foreboding. Motionless. No matter, I’ve been out today, Tuesday, spending the afternoon hours in the midtown library, the one with the grand, concrete lions. In the upper room, halved into vast rows of brightly varnished reading tables, adorned with classic green glass lamps, I put in at the information desk for three books: a history of Grenada put out just four years ago; the 1968 nonfiction biography of a bullfighter, El Cordobes, with the most wonderful title, Or I’ll Dress You in Mourning; and, a book about street busking called Passing the Hat by Patricia Campbell. Each came up in about fifteen minutes – my number was 168 for the Grenada and bullfighter books, 029 for PTH. I knew this by a square screen discreetly inlaid into the wood-walled divider, its matrix of dotted points-of-light simple like a older basketball scoreboard. The screen sticks out seamlessly in a room that makes me think of a Carnegie brother hiring a fresco painter for the Cumberland Island place or some hotel lobby. These ceilings are like Michelangelo’s, only empty of Beings, just heavy white clouds and the bluest sky that make me think of the farm.
I browse through the street busking book, which read a bit dated, but did its job, telling me about Will the Juggler and the guitar player at Trolley’s turn, describing a mime’s bit about an apple and a arrow gone astray, all acted out on the Met’s steps. It reminded me of Key West years ago, sailing in and out, stopping for two evenings. The best of the best streetmen winter there, spending the hour before and the hour after sunset on Mallory Square. I see swords in the air and a magician on a sturdy blue fruit box and the tumblers and tappers all along the seaside pier. It’s a magic thing to witness. How I bet my Vermont friend that those traveling showmen must pull in two hundred dollars a night.
I read up then set off to find a Barnes and Noble, where I looked over three food magazines - Gourmet, Bon Appetit, and Food&Wine - trying to find a spot for a essay about Oil Down, Grenada’s national dish. (I spent a week there in June. And haven’t stopped thinking about the kindly cops in the rain ever since.) Afterwards I walked up from 44th and Fifth to 51st, and along that stretch, I found myself among the fancy clothiers I’ve always heard of. Saks, Cole Haan, Kenneth Cole, Banana Republic, Sephora, Gucci and Cartier. Most are housed in buildings with ornate golden facades of angels wound in ivy and birds’ nests and such. It’s quite Roman. Even the grates over the trees shine like polished bronze. They may be bronze. St. Patrick’s Cathedral sits among all this glamour and wideness, a thoroughfare girls with money dream about, and the spired place pokes at my conscience, like the men with the cardboard signs, the one who’d written 100 words about his plight near the duck pond last afternoon, the one I’d hurried by, so I turned after the store with ITALIA carved into the stone and headed west straight towards Radio City.
Some British rock group Deep Purple plays the Hall that night. Odd-looking groupies wait by the side door.
Such are the walk-around thoughts in New York in the summertime.
Tell Ruth to count me in for Labor Day. And that I suspect Arthur has an answer to my question.
So far is good,
TB
posted by TB at 11:29
