Magic Jewball

I thought I’d choose today, when people tend to dwell on the negative, to send a love letter to the city that charms, delights, and embraces me, every single day. There is not one day that goes by that I don’t remember how lucky I am to live in this amazing place. So, here are my favorite songs about New York, chosen for how they represent the city, and not because I love them better musically. Although I do love them all.

(Photo is the approach shot in West Side Story)

West Side Story Cast – America
I like the island, Manhattan! This movie is so New York that when I think of it, the intro graphic of the city map always appears in my head before anything else. This particular song, which is sung on a rooftop, cleverly contrasts the positive and, er, not so positive experiences of the immigrant, all the while underlining the yearning to fit in and be successful.

(The whole scene is great but the song starts about 2:15)


Happyhead – Baby USA
Almost no one here has ever heard this song but it makes me laugh every time I hear the chorus: “Don’t shoot! I love you, Baby USA.” I always imagine the singer who has come over from England to see his love, getting greeted in stereotypical New York fashion. The song never mentions NYC, but it’s clear from the lyrics and sound effects that that’s where the lady lives. If I ever did send an actual mash note to this town, it would say: “Dear NY, Don’t shoot! I love you. xo, Becca”

No video for this, so here’s a stream. It’s the happiest song on this list, so you may want to play it twice.

Simon & Garfunkel – The Boxer
So many good S&G New York songs, but this one, again, tells the story of coming to the city with hope in one’s heart, only to struggle and fall. But as the post title says, still he remains.

I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling the emotions of this song every time I hear it, it’s that real.

Billy Joel – Miami 2017 (I’ve Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)
They blew the Bronx away! I really can’t tell you why I love this song. I think in talking about a supposed apocalyptic future for New York, it makes you appreciate what’s here now all the more. And never mind that other song; it’s become a cliche.

Rolling Stones – Miss You
The Stones aren’t from New York, but when I was young I thought they were. Forget the subject matter, the attitude of this song is pure NYC. It is elegant yet gritty, and full of swagger.

Lovin’ Spoonful – Summer in the City
Another great sound effects song. I can hear this song in the dead of winter and be brought to a 100 degree/90% humidity subway platform. But in a good way.

Interpol – NYC
More about this song tomorrow, strangely enough. But again, the theme of opportunity and difficulty intermingled are here. Plus, the subway really is a porno.

(The video to this will be in tomorrow’s post.)

U2 – New York
This is, 100%, my favorite song for representing New York. I think only people who have moved here, maybe, really get it right. It is loud. You are always surrounded by people. Those people are from a hundred different countries and ethnicities. As previously mentioned, it is hot as a hairdryer. There is always something to do. People are always wanting something from you. I used to cry when I heard this song; it came out right around 9/11 and it reminded me of all the things I loved and hoped would still exist. Irish, Italians, Jews and Hispanics…religious nuts, political fanatics… in the stew, living happily not like me and you.

During my orientation at Fancypants, they had teachers come to speak to us to give us advice about working there. Since many of the new people had just moved here, some of the advice was about living in New York. One teacher said something like, “people here aren’t rude, they are just… efficient. You will think they are rude but you just have to get used to the fact that they are in a rush and time is important to them. They don’t have the time to spend on you. It’s not personal.” I had never considered that before, and maybe it’s why most of the songs I picked are downers. It’s not personal, it can just be a grind to live here. But I love it beyond words, which is why I’ll never, ever let anyone make me afraid to live here.

I didn’t have the holiest of Rosh Hashanahs but I have spent some time in this week of repentance in contemplation of myself as a person and thinking about things I could improve. I’ve made a lot of changes in my lifetime, but somehow, I think, we all encounter the same issues whenever we think about changing ourselves. It’s the same each year: I won’t be so judgey! I won’t be so irritable! I’ll be nicer to people! And then, somehow, you’re just the same. I wondered what it does take to make change in one’s life and then, strangely, I was presented with a huge example.

Last week, when my team was here, folks sat in this one chair I have, and I meant to tell them the Story of the Chair, which I always do when someone sits in it. I think I do this, even though it happened over twenty years ago, because it still baffles and amazes me that it happened at all. At my college (the original one, not my grad school), you were kicked out of university housing after your freshman year and mostly left to your own devices to secure a place to live for the next three years. My friends and I arranged to rent a rowhouse near campus, but our lease didn’t start until late summer which left the matter of where to store some of our belongings until we moved in. One of the libraries, a grand old “reading room” was being redone and they sold all their furniture to students on the cheap. It was a fun sight watching the frat guys walk away with the long tables previously used for study – presumably to a new and different future. I bought one chair, a deep dark wood with black leather padding at the back and seat, to use as my future desk chair. But I couldn’t take it home to NY for the summer and my future roommates had things of this nature as well. Another friend, I’ll call him J., was moving into his new place immediately and offered to hold all our things until then.

I should talk a minute about my connection with J. here. We were extremely close. We came from the same county and had mutual friends from high school. We lived across the hall from each other and occasionally when my roommate had a gentleman caller and his roommate was with his significant other, I’d sleep over completely platonically. We even shared the same birthday, which we celebrated together. And he was a real confidant to me. So it was completely natural for him to make this nice offer and we stuck our library purchases and a few other things in J’s new basement.

Fast forward to the day I went to pick up my stuff and I went down with J. to the basement to get my chair and the other things. Except, J. insisted that the chair was his. At first I thought he was kidding. It’s hard to remember exactly, but I think there was another slightly different chair that he claimed was mine. “Mine has scratches on the back right leg,” I remember saying and sure enough, the one I claimed was mine did have that. But he insisted I was mistaken. There was a certain point in the argument where I think he knew he had made a mistake originally but did not want to admit it so just kept going. It was surreal. Why the hell would anyone lie about a $10 chair? Especially between two good friends? Finally, he grandly said that it was his but I could have it. I didn’t bother to fight this and just took it and left. But our friendship was really over. We barely spoke for a year and it was only probably the last year of school where we had friendly, superficial conversations.

As I’ve said, I still have that chair, even though it matches nothing in my home and is, of course, ancient. I keep it both to remind me of that library where I spent so much time and because I fought so hard for it – how could I let it go? But I think it’s that I also never understood what really happened or why. Last year, I friended him on Facebook. We had so many mutual friends and I had photos of my college years that I wanted to post which included him. We exchanged a couple of polite notes about our lives and then our Facebook relationship proceeded on like many: we never communicate but stay updated.

Last weekend, I was busy with my team but afterwards, when I checked Facebook, I saw that many people had written sympathetic things on his wall on 9/11 and that he had thanked them. It also linked to a page for a foundation. When I checked that out and Googled, I found that his brother had died in the Towers. I was stunned that in nine years I had never known that, but more than that was the fact that his entire family had transformed their lives to be dedicated to their son’s memory. That they had set up a foundation which I won’t identify here but that does amazing work. His parents who would probably be retired now, spend their lives in good deeds, done in their son’s name. Their message is simple: out of great evil can come great good. The message to me was, we are not who we were twenty years ago or even last year or last month. We constantly change and learn and grow. We always have the capability of making change in ourselves and in the world.

So as I go into Yom Kippur which begins tonight at sunset, I am inspired by my friend’s family. It is time to not just let change happen but to consciously take action and make positive change. May you have a meaningful Yom Kippur and a wonderful, happy, and healthy year.

On the heels of my recent car-free post, I’ve been reading lately about how the multi-story, suburban style parking structure at the East River Plaza in Harlem is shockingly empty. Now, the shock is on the part of the builder and owner of said parking lot, not of average New Yorkers, I’m sure. East River Plaza is a new-ish shopping center in East Harlem and I’ve been going to the Costco there for about a year, since I started needing large quantities of baking supplies. For a while, Costco was the only tenant but since this was designated as the landing spot of Manhattan’s first Target, I figured I’d be going there long into the future.

Well, to make a long story short, it’s a pain and a half to get there for those of us on the Upper West Side, because anything that involves a crosstown bus in Harlem will inevitably take years off your life. Years spent on that bus. Or waiting for that bus. Or waiting to get on that bus. But it is the only game in town as far as bulk groceries, so I do what I have to do. Today, I headed over there primarily to try the new Target but also picked up a few things at the Costco. In the future, when I need something from Target, I’ll be going back to the one in the Bronx which is a direct shot by subway. Target has a temporary shuttle (it goes till 8/22, a month after they opened) to hype the place but it only took me 1/3 of the way across 116th street, whereupon I waited 20 minutes for a bus, which is crazy in New York, sorry.

But while I was there, I checked out the parking lot which was indeed mostly empty while both Target and Costco were quite busy (there are other stores, Best Buy, Marshall’s, Petco…. I don’t know if they’re all open yet as they were on higher floors and I don’t care about any of them). If you’re wondering, Big Box Stores who insisted on the parking garage, how people are shopping, let me describe the following sights which I witnessed today to you:

• The family filling a little red wagon covered in a blanket.
• The lady walking down 117th Street with a ham under her arm.
• The shuttle, chock full of downtown types.
• The woman looking over the average supermarket size carts at Target in wonder, who said to me, “look how huge these are! They really want you to shop, don’t they?” (hint, if your customer is a person who has never seen a regular grocery cart before, she does not have a car.)
• The large family with each member carrying one bag.
• The innumerable little hand carts.

This all leads me to my letter:

Dear Target,

I have a great idea for all those empty parking spots in your big ugly structure! Why not fill them with shuttles which will ferry us sans-automobiles across 116th St. to all our respective subway lines? It can be every 15 or 20 minutes; I realize 116th is crowded as it is. Then, at night, they can have that whole parking garage to themselves.

You may also want to think about selling little red wagons.

xo
Becca

As for you, lady with ham, I’ll see you on the shuttle.

The set-up: while I was doing all that research on the two Talk Talk posts, I repeatedly came upon mentions of the No Doubt version of It’s My Life but I tried hard not to think about it or remember how it went because a. I dislike No Doubt b. I dislike remakes of songs that were already great and c. it was hard enough to erase it from my brain the first time around in 2003. So not only have I not heard it since then, I have been pretty good at forgetting it now.

Fast forward to tonight/this morning, when, as is my habit, I’m up during the wee hours and am hungry. So I started to make peanut-sesame noodles since I had all the ingredients… except I didn’t, which I discovered midway through and too far along to go back. So I ran out to the bodega on the corner in my skater shorts and Local H t-shirt, where, naturally, I was the only one there and thus had the full attention of the grocer. After about 30 seconds of scanning the racks, the song on the sound system ended, I heard a syncopated beat, and then – you know what comes next – Gwen Stefani started singing It’s My Life. I actually burst out laughing right in the middle of the store before remembering that the elderly Korean grocer was looking right at me. He was utterly expressionless and impassive. I guess this is far from the weirdest thing he sees at 3am.

In conclusion, I lead a dull life and you can’t escape No Doubt.

And no, there will not be a music link!

Today, for work (I know I don’t mention it a lot, but I have a part-time job!) I was sent on an errand to put up posters at other area Ed schools. My last stop was NYU, a school that it never occurred to me to attend, I think because I still associate it with people I knew who wanted to spend college hanging out. PS, I now wish I had spent college hanging out. I know this is a weird thing to say, but the last time I was at NYU or its environs had to be at least fifteen years ago. How strange is it to not have seen a major area of the city in which you live in a decade and a half? But I think I’ve been resisting going down there because, as you may have heard, the area has changed a bit since I used to get my hair cut and shop down there with the other 80′s Goths. But it’s sort of like that Thing in your fridge that you keep avoiding because it’s been in there too long, and the longer you wait, the moldier it gets. I knew the area was getting more and more mallified. I heard, naturally, about the K-Mart and the Starbucks.

~shiver~

I could get all grandma on you and tell you about all the cool clothing shops and record stores that looked like your basement, only with vibrant-colored-haired people blowing smoke in your face as you perused the…. records, but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. But that’s how it is to me eternally. So I knew it would be hard but I was unprepared for the lump in my throat and tears at the edges of my eyes as I passed the Chipotles and Au Bon Pains. It’s not that I didn’t expect it, I just liked that the last image of it that I had in my head was back when those stores in which I used to discover fun things with my friends dominated the landscape. So now that it’s over, I plan on deleting all those images from my brain’s computer. But I have two take aways from this day.

a. On the way home, I kept hearing this sung phrase in my head, “it’s a clear cut case.” Then I remembered a song that I hadn’t thought of in years and years. What odd piece of seeing the Village again shook this loose? Who knows! But it’s below, should you want to hear the song that got dislodged.

b. There are still great record stores in the Village and elsewhere. This Saturday is Record Store Day. Should you not be an observant Jew, please head over to your local record store and find some incredible releases special for this day. Or you could go anytime! To find your local participating record store, check out the Record Store Day Website. Odds are, these days, no one will blow smoke in your face.

c. I’m never going back there again. I know, that’s three, but I’ve begun deleting and can’t remember where I am.