Last to See the Future

The future is here at last. I hope. I was excited to see the demo bike station of the New York City Bikeshare program to be launched in the summer of 2012. I never thought I would see a bikeshare program in New York City. We hear of these things in places such as Portland, Oregon, considered to be a model city when it comes to progressive ideas and quality of life. Here in New York, these things are like faraway fantasies of tropical islands in the cold of winter. Never going to happen.

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Mine

One of my earliest childhood experiences wass flying simple balsa model airplanes with my friend Jaime. Portuguese in ancestry, Jaime's English as a very young child was virtually non-existent. I only remember him using one word in English, and that was when we flew our planes in our yards together. As we chased them to recover them at the end of their flights, Jaime would run for his saying, "Mine." What better word to learn for a boy playing with his toys?

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Boxing Al Fresco

Once upon a time, I became intrigued with biofeedback for stress management. My interest in biofeedback was something that dated back to my college years, when many were experimenting with a number of modalities of biofeedback and equipment. Many types of body control were documented. Later, some styles were adopted by the medical profession for a variety of conditions.

A well known psychiatrist located on the Upper East Side had provided a testimonial on a stress management book. I contacted his office. He was expensive, but this was to be a limited number of sessions, training under his guidance, in his office and with his equipment. I was told that insurance would cover the program (it did not).
The sessions became ones of psychotherapy - I never did get to train at all on his equipment. When I confronted him about this, he said that there was no value to biofeedback training if my behavior and mental processes were just to undo the relaxation I achieved. True, but was not what what I had…and I saw this would become a long extremely expensive process with no end in sight, so I quit after a short number of sessions.

However, I must admit that I have never met a person who could read me so quickly and thoroughly. I was like a pane of glass to him and he was in my head. He made a number of observations that I remember clearly to this day. I told him of my interest in cello and that I was taking classes with a woman who was an alumna of the Juilliard School. Proud that I had the privilege to study with someone like her, his response surprised me. Bad he said. "Why?" I said. "Because you turn everything into a job." He knew that learning to play cello was a serious commitment and would do little to bring me pleasure, only to add another burred to my life. He was right. I quit the cello after six months, telling my teacher that dragging my cello out at night to practice was feeling like a job. She heartily agreed that this was not good at all and she encouraged me to quit.

My doctor suggested instead that if I wanted to learn music as a hobby, that I try something much less demanding, like a recorder, where I would not be dragged into a hobby that was like study at a music conservatory. He also demanded that I take a Saturday and squander the entire day away, i.e. waste time frivolously. He knew my temperament all too well, that I always had a hidden agenda and only felt good if I could justify my activities as "productive."

Recently, in the early morning, while writing near an open window facing the park, I heard a very peculiar slapping type of sound. It was unique to me and I could not guess what was going on. Getting up and looking out through the foliage of spring, I saw a woman sparring with her trainer in the raking early morning light.

I could not help but reflect on how so many residents of New York City were overachievers with schedules packed with activities, whether cultural, interpersonal, hobbies, classes, training, meetings, business functions, gallery openings, theaters, clubs, bars, festivals, etc. To ask them to do something is like a request to be penciled into the appointment book of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

I fully realize that this woman may in fact be a well balanced person. Being physical is great for mental and physical health. She may not be overextended. Or perhaps she is a neurotic New Yorker, type A personality, choking with activities and entrenched with the busy busy ethic. Or, perhaps she is a young woman, freshly arrived straight from the corn fields of Kansas, just enjoying a little boxing al fresco.

Room and Board

When in high school in the late 1960s, I worked many part-time jobs, including McDonald's. The working environment was brutal by today's standards. At McDonalds, there was Zero tolerance for idleness - we had to remain moving at all times. If we had no customers, we were to clean and if there was nothing to clean, we were to clean again. And again. No exceptions.

The manager would stand, arms crossed, in the center of the dining area behind the customers. If there were any lines, the manager was extremely displeased. Regardless of customer volume, and whether it was humanly possible to serve quickly enough to eliminate lines was of no matter. We would hear the terrifying "I see lines, gentlemen."

In this work environment, it would be hard to imagine an event momentous enough to warrant the entire staff taking a break. The world's first manned moon landing on July 20, 1969 was just such an event. Someone had brought a small black and white television, placed it on the counter to see the moment Neil Armstrong take that first step onto the moon's surface. The entire staff and group of customers all watched in silence for what was one of mankind's greatest technological achievements, fulfilling President Kennedy's vision nearly a decade earlier. We heard Armstrong say "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." And then it was back to work - customers were waiting.

Although the deployment of technology was not perhaps as rapid and voluminous as what we have today, it was still an exciting time and the appetite for the newest and latest was as ravenous as it is now. With a smaller number of consumer product innovations, many new things were given attention, things which in today's environment would likely be overlooked. It seemed everything had to be improved, and in some space age manner, if at all possible.

One of these was 3D chess, where 3 or more chessboards are stacked above one another. A variant, Tri-D chess, was seen on the first series of Start Trek in the late '60s. It was during this time that someone introduced the game to our high school chess club, of which I was a member. Most of us, however, saw it as rather gimmicky, adding complexity to a game which already offered enormous challenge and which diluted the beauty and classicism of the 2D version of the game.

Chess is commonly seen played in the streets and parks of New York City, sometimes with makeshift setups. The resourcefulness of New Yorkers and their willingness to accommodate never ceases to amaze me. Here we have a world class city fully immersed in the technology of our time, yet should the conditions require it, there is a willingness to do whatever is necessary to achieve an end, regardless of how primitive the solution. At times, New Yorkers can be like spoiled children, but when duty calls, we can, like most people elsewhere, rise to the occasion.

In today's photo, we see a player in Union Square Park with a milk crate for seating and a table so bowed it clearly demonstrates that to play 3D chess in this city, if the money, means or technology is not available, a New Yorker only needs a little Room and Board :)

More Chess Stories: Good Fortune, Chess Monsters, Marshall Chess Club, Solid as a Rock, WFF 'N Proof, Xiangqi, Guns or Big Heads.

Really? Like What?

This place was a real eye-opener for me. I have been by this rather nondescript retail shop for over a decade with nary a thought. Two things drew me to investigate. One is that it is a retail game shop surviving in 2011. There have been others in the Village, but all are now long gone. Two, there always appeared to be a large gathering of customers socializing and/or playing. Peering inside, it appeared that this was some sort of fantasy game environment, ala Dungeons and Dragons. And it is.

One second in the Game Workshop and it is immediately clear you have entered a world with passionate participants. The cultish feeling was not new to me - in High School, I was a player of both chess, the strategic board games of Avalon Hill and Wffn Proof. The games attracted the nerd crowd, which according to my sister, I was clearly a member of. However, a close friend and fellow game player from those years recently pointed out to me that I had girlfriends (who were not nerds) - I am not sure if that disqualifies me from full membership in nerdom.

The camaraderie of Games Workshop had the feel of the chess world - indulgence, extreme focus and lively banter - the conversation here was dominated by analysis and commentary on military capabilities of other countries and what-ifs. I was very surprised to learn about the history of this company. Founded in 1975 in the UK, there are now over 380 stores in 19 countries worldwide with thousands more that sell their products. The British based corporation is traded on the London Stock Exchange. Yearly revenues are in excess of $200 million.

I found this statement from their website:

A hobby is something people make time for. It is not a pass-time and therefore not usually analogous to watching TV or playing computer games. In our case, as with most hobbies, it involves commitment, collection, craft or manual skills and imagination. Someone who is involved in the Games Workshop Hobby collects large numbers of miniatures, paints them, modifies them, builds terrain and war games with them in our imaginary universe. This involves huge amounts of time.

Games Workshop Hobbyists play war games with large numbers of metal or plastic miniatures they have carefully chosen and, usually, painstakingly painted, on a table top face to face with their friends. It is a social and convivial activity loved by Hobbyists the world over.

The game involves a lot of activity rather than passivity - making and decorating figures, creating playing space and learning the daunting amount of information and rules. Much like fantasy role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, the games become an alternate world.

I asked the sales staff if they minded I take photos. The response was essentially No Problema and I was already feeling this was another place with a policy of No Negativity. I stayed for some time watching the game playing and work, chatting with the sales staff to get some insight into this world. Game Workshop provides free space for customers to paint their figures and also play their signature proprietary games - Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000 and the newer Lord of the Rings. The wall space displays merchandise for sale - all the various figure model sets and also the voluminous manuals and magazines like their own, White Dwarf. I was told that the shop at 54 East 8th Street is the only store in the Northeast and is one of the largest revenue grossing operations in the United States.

There are worse ways to spend time than to be actively involved in a social activity and strategic game playing requiring a skill, memory and imagination. I think the entire experience drew out the nerd deep inside because my first reaction to this place was: These "boys" (and girls) are too old to be playing with toys. They have too much time on their hands. There are much better things to do with one's time. However, I found myself answering Really? Like What? :)

We've Got Skiing Too

Most New Yorkers have limited exposure to elements of the natural world. It is possible, particularly in Manhattan, to live and work and never see a tree or blade of grass. There are times, however, when Mother Nature shows her hand and makes her power and presence known, and no urban environment stands in her way in times of blizzards, rain, blistering heat, intolerable humidity, frigid cold, astronomical events, and dramatic lightning (see Back To Our Main Feature here).

There are many physical activities that depend on certain natural environments that make all but impossible to partake of in New York City. However, for the willing, extremes of winter weather occasionally provide a tiny window of opportunity to indulge in snow play. But only if one is willing to seize that opportunity immediately when available.

Today, there were ideal conditions for cross country skiing in Manhattan. Much snow related fun can be seen in the parks of this city - building snowmen, snowball fights, sledding - but I have witnessed some extraordinary activities in new fallen snow on the streets, immediately following a blizzard, before vehicles, plows or people have had any opportunity to disturb the white powder. The two most memorable are the making of snow angels in the middle of 7th Avenue South and a man in business attire skiing down lower Broadway to what I assumed was his office.

This morning, shortly after sunrise, while gazing out my window, I observed a man circumnavigating a large lawn in Washington Square Park on cross country skis. He had the entire area to himself and the snow was a pristine white, undisturbed except for his lone circular track.

The phrase moving meditation is an overused cliche, but at times it is valid. I found myself mesmerized while watching the skier make his rounds. The soothing quality of the white blanket of new fallen snow was enhanced by the circular repetitive movement of this lone skier at dawn. There are many great things about New York City and sometimes you may find, if you are poised, that we've got skiing too :)

Guns or Big Heads

Generally speaking, a man with a head this large playing chess would command quite a bit of attention. The big-headed character, a mascot for Emmy award winner Ted Greenberg's one-man show*, was available for any players while promotional free tickets for the show were being distributed. The chess playing mascot, however, got little attention for three reasons:

One, this is New York City, where anything goes and a lot is usually going. Two, this area of Washington Square Park, currently used for chess, is dominated by chess hustlers who are setup for business and playing for money. Three, the best candidates to find interest in chess are chess players. However, serious chess players (or hustlers) really could not care less about anything apart from a player's skill, and the mascot had mediocre playing ability. Perhaps a joke best illustrates this attitude, common to players and known to those very familiar with the game:

In a park, people come across a man playing chess against a dog. They are astonished and say: "What a clever dog!" But the man protests: "No, no, he isn't that clever. I'm leading by three games to one!"

This character trait of players is the theme in the short story The Chessplayers, about a trained chess playing rat, who, though remarkable on the face of it, leaves players in a club unimpressed because the rat's playing ability is not that good.

New York City is a mecca for chess, and anyone who lives here will see this illustrated in many ways. On August 6, 2009, I wrote a true story about a shooting I witnessed in Washington Square Park, where chess players only ducked and hid long enough for the bullets to stop flying before resume their games. See my story, Chess Monsters, here.

Only good playing will will impress good players. Gimmicks, novelties, Emmy Awards or non-human players will not. And neither will men with guns or big heads :)

*Ted Greenberg (sitting to the right of his mascot) is an award winning comedy writer who has written for the David Letterman show. Information about his one-man show, The Complete Performer, can be found here.

Other Postings on Chess in New York City: Good Fortune, Chess Monsters, Solid as a Rock, Marshall Chess Club.

Urban Night Climbers

For a full night climbing experience, click and play audio link to accompany your reading.

Many years ago, in a conversation with a customer, the subject somehow turned to my childhood love of tree climbing. My customer was VERY pleased to hear this and encouraged me to rekindle this interest, embrace some trees, or perhaps even join him and his friends in their nocturnal sojourns. He was a night climber. Of buildings.

New York City is a city that never sleeps. We are known for our night clubs, night life and night people - but night climbers of buildings? I was not aware that there was an underground fraternity of those who practice buildering, aka urban climbing, stegophily, or structuring.

The press has covered the various climbing spectaculars of the city - Philippe Petit's legendary walk between the world trade towers on August 7, 1974. George Willig, a mountain-climber from Queens, New York, United States, climbed the South Tower of the World Trade Center on May 26, 1977. Alain Robert is a French rock and urban climber who in 1994 scaled the Empire State Building and on June 5, 2008, climbed the New York Times Building (later that day, Renaldo Clarke also climbed the building). Dan Goodwin, using suction cups and a camming device, climbed the North Tower of the World Trade Center on May 30, 1983.

But recreational buildering goes back much further than might be expected, at least to Victorian times in England, where students had been climbing the architecture of Cambridge University. Geoffrey Winthrop Young was roof climbing there in the 1890s and published The Roof Climber's Guide to Trinity in 1900. In 1937, The Night Climbers of Cambridge was written (under the pseudonym Whipplesnaith) about the nocturnal climbing on the town buildings and colleges of Cambridge, England in the 1930s.

In the United States, two men, George Polley and Harry Gardiner, both nicknamed the Human Fly, pioneered buildering as early as 1905. In 1920, George Polley climbed 30 floors of the Woolworth building before being arrested. Not much, however, is written about current recreational nighttime buildering in New York City, for obvious reasons. In 2008, the New York Times published an article with a little on the activity.

Apart from legality or prudence, I do understand the lure of urban climbing. Much as the alpine areas of the world are magnets for rock climbers, the buildings and skyscrapers of New York City provide the same challenges and draw in masonry, steel and glass. Perhaps I may yet get to witness the activities of these urban night climbers...

Photo Note: I was recently privy to access to one of the very few rooftops in the Village affording a direct view of Washington Square Park. The building and friends kind enough to invite me to share the view, will, in the spirit of buildering, remain a secret :)

Solid as a Rock

I have written a number of times about the very rough side of New York City - you see this in living conditions, the street, businesses etc. In a city with such a wide range of resources and income with the people and businesses, you will see plenty of appropriation, improvisation and salvage. It often can be surprising or even shocking what can be seen in a place like New York City - see Very Practical and The Dark Ages.

Many New York City neighborhoods are in transition, often with a mix of of old and new. In time, gentrification usually rules the day and a transformation ensues. Occasionally, there are surviving holdouts due to special situations - long leases or building ownership. But even in the case of property ownership, the lure of big money by cashing in on the real estate becomes too great, and owners ultimately sell. A good example is Grand Machinery Exchange, the last of 40 dealers of machinery in the SoHo/Canal Street area. Sale of their buildings brought a small fortune.

In today's photo, the Chess Shop at 230 Thompson Street managed to scavenge discarded chess table tops in concrete with a steel banding from Washington Square Park, still under renovation in Phase 2. See the chess playing area here, prior to demolition. It is surprising how often one can see something quite edgy like this, often juxtaposed with the much more upscale.

Add piles of cinder blocks for bases, and you have some very durable chess tables for a long time to come. I asked the shopkeeper what they do with these after closing, but I had forgotten that there is no closing - the shop is open 24 hours, so there is no need to bring the tables in from the street.

Of course, a chess shop is not the type of business with the income to indulge in lavish furnishings, so this solution to their al fresco chess playing needs makes sense. No worry about damage, vandalism or theft. The tables may not be pretty, but like the Manhattan schist that this city is built on, they're solid as a rock :)

New York is Tennis Country

New Yorkers are accustomed to finding amenities in the most unusual places. Virtually every piece of real estate is utilized and maximized. In Little Stuff, I wrote of New York City's very broad range of products and services, including those things providing the everyday needs most visitors rarely notice and often ask about, like gas stations and supermarkets (see American Express here).

Many of the services and establishments catering to residents that do not need prime real estate locations are sometimes located off the beaten path and shoehorned into whatever space works. They become destinations and they can be found here and there, if not everywhere.

The most challenging services to provide are activities which require a lot of SPACE to be utilized by a few at one time. Like tennis.

There actually are 500 public tennis courts across the five boroughs run by the City of New York, and the costs are extremely nominal. However, demand is great and permits and scheduling are necessary. Using them requires patience, planning, and the ability to deal with limited times/availability and the occasional disappointment.

Money buys convenience, and for those with lots of money, there are a handful of private tennis clubs in Manhattan (rates can run $100 per hour.). One of the largest facilities in the city, shown in the photos, is the Sutton East Tennis Club at 488 East 60th Street. An inflated bubble encloses the club and is located under the 59th Street Bridge - see additional photo here. The courts are open year round, 7 days a week, from 6AM to 11PM.

Lest we forget, New York City is also home to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens, the world's largest public tennis facility and also the official venue of the U.S. Open. Everything considered, and in spite of the relative invisibility of all the tennis facilities the five boroughs has to offer, it would not be unfair to say that New York is Tennis Country :)

Note: Thanks to Sutton East Tennis Club for their graciousness in allowing these photos to be taken. For their website with information about the club, classes, rates, etc., see here.

Help From My Friends

Wouldn't you like a stadium or sports complex named after you or your company? Perhaps your immediate thoughts are, "At what cost?" In the case of Citi Field, the answer is $400 million dollars - $20 million dollars per year over 20 years. That's a lot of money, but nothing to worry about with a little help from your friends - the U.S. Taxpayers in the form of a $45 billion dollar bailout.
This is what prompted New York City Council members James S. Oddo and Vincent Ignizio to propose the new park be named Citi/Taxpayer Field. The cheeky remark was circulated and commented online.

The naming deal was made in 2006. However, by 2008, with the banking/economic crisis in full swing, Citigroup was in dire trouble as a result of heavy exposure to troubled debts in subprime mortgages. A government rescue ensued.

Citi Field in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park was completed in 2009, built as a replacement for neighboring Shea Stadium as a new home for the New York Mets. It was designed by Populous and featured elements of the legendary Ebbets Field (1913-1960), located in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and home to the Brooklyn Dodgers. You can see the design influence here in the photo of the exterior entrance to Ebbets Field. See Citi Field here, as viewed from the Roosevelt Bridge overlooking Willets Point.

Shea Stadium was built in 1964 (dismantled in 2008) and funded primarily by the 1964 World's Fair. It was used as a multi-purpose arena and had numerous rock groups and events. Pope John Paul II made an appearance there in October 1979. Perhaps its most legendary claim was the 1965 Beatles opening of their 1965 North American tour. Two years later, in 1967, the Beatles wrote With a Little Help from My Friends. Apparently someone from Citi was listening and later took their advice :)

Word Freaks

One of the defining characteristics of New York City is the passion, fervor, and obsession of many individuals in pursuit of activities, some of which might not seem worthy of an adult's time and effort.
Most people understand that chess is a serious game - various pieces each with its own special movement abilities and rules make it somewhat formidable to the newcomer. And a number of its champions are known to the public, most notably Bobby Fischer.

But Scrabble is a game that is seen by most as a past time, most often associated with their childhood. A game that can easily learned and enjoyed by all. To see it taken seriously by adults may come as a surprise. Except in New York City, where nearly everything is taken seriously by someone or some group and where board games are no exception - the perfect activities for a city limited in free space.

Stefan Fatsis, a former journalist for the Wall Street Journal, took time off from his job to investigate the world of top-level tournament Scrabble. He became obsessed with the game, and the book Word Freak emerged from his more than three years of nonstop Scrabbling. Published in 2001, the book became a New York Times bestseller.
Fatsis describes the exotic subculture of characters he met in the Manhattan Scrabble Club and in the northwest corner of Washington Square Park, such as:
G.I. Joel Sherman, a jobless, gastrointestinally challenged, fulltime Scrabble player,
Marlon Hill, an anagramming Malcolm X, 
Matt Graham, a pill-popping stand-up comic,
Joe Edley, a nonconfrontational human-potential devotee who nonetheless irritates fellow players in his dual role as champion player and National Scrabble Association executive,
Lester Schonbrun, an armchair Communist who began playing in the early 1960s,

The northwest corner of Washington Square Park, seen in the photo, has been the haunt of Scrabble players for years. In fact, this area's use for Scrabble play was taken into consideration in the recent redesign of the park. Here, on the new enlarged stone tables, you will find serious Scrabble players with time clocks, Scrabble dictionaries, and score sheets. World-class championship players can be found among them.
The Scrabble players in Washington Square Park were also featured in the 2004 documentary film Word Wars.

What type of people take an ordinary game to the level of obsession? Johns D. Williams, Jr. of the National Scrabble Association says: “Scratch the surface of any champion in any individual sport and you’re often going to find an obsessed misfit who’s deficient in many parts of his life.”
You have to give up something to be a world class word freak :)

Note: The Southwest corner of the park is the realm of chess. See Chess Monsters here.

Related Postings: Good Fortune, Marshall Chess Club

The Rockaways

Just a subway ride away on the A train, you will find not a bay, inlet, or river, but rather, the Atlantic Ocean. This is the Rockaways, a peninsula, most of which lies within the borough of Queens, New York.

The beach has an active surfing community - there are three surf shops in the area. The approach of hurricane Bill was seen by most as worrisome, but surfers heralded the storm as a joyful rare opportunity to surf the big waves. So, this seemed the perfect time to take a trip out to the Rockaways to catch some waves with a camera. Beaches were closed to bathers but open to surfers. See more photos here.

The 6.2 mile boardwalk is a huge feature of the area, extending from Beach 9th Street to Beach 126th Steet. The central area of Rockaway Beach is fronted with large, hulking public housing projects, many of which became riddled with crime. There are new apartment condominiums newly built and in the works. Strings of closed stores line 116th Street, the main shopping district.

Driving from one end of Rockaways to the other through the varied communities - Belle Harbor, Far Rockaway, Arverne, Neponsit, Rockaway Beach, Rockaway Park, Breezy Point, and Edgemere - is one of the most shockingly diverse demographic ranges of humankind I have seen, from lower to upper middle class. Driving amongst the virtual mansions in Belle Harbor, the ramshackle nature of central Rockaway seemed a flawed memory.

I missed many of the interesting areas, such as the historic bungalows off the boardwalk at Beach 108th St. that have become summer rentals and the scenic area at the end of the boardwalk from 121st to 126th Streets. I intend to return and explore more of the area on foot.

This is truly the land of the haves and have-nots, but the ocean and the boardwalk looms large and mitigates much of the area's depressed pockets. The ocean is a curative for the human soul, and I believe all feel fortunate to have such a fine strip of ocean, sand, and boardwalk...

NOTE: The Rockaways have a rich history: from 1902 to 1985, there was a large amusement park call Rockaways' Playland. See a photo history here.

Xiangqi

If you want a full cultural immersion experience, head to Columbus Park on a Sunday in Chinatown. This tiny park is Chinatown's playground, home to a wide gamut of traditional Chinese recreational activities. Here, you will find people doing Tai Chi or practicing martial arts in the pavilion, playing folk music, displaying caged birds, singing Peking Opera, women playing mahjong, and hundreds of men engaged in numerous games of Xiangqi (Chinese or elephant chess). You may find cobblers, watch repairers, and fortune tellers. There is also a children's playground and basketball courts. See more photos here.

Columbus Park is one of the city's first major urban parks (the park has alternatively been named Mulberry Bend Park, Five Points Park, and Paradise Park). The 3.23 acre park was planned in the 1880’s by Calvert Vaux, co-designer of Central Park, and opened in 1897. It was named Columbus Park in 1911. Read more about Columbus Park at the New York City Parks Department website here. From their website:

It is situated in the heart of one of the oldest residential areas in Manhattan. The southern end is adjacent to the infamous "Five Points." Until 1808, the site for the park was a swampy area near the Collect Pond (now Foley Square) and hosted a set of tanneries. In 1808 the pond was filled and became Pearl Street. When the filling began to sink, a foul odor emerged which depressed the living conditions of that neighborhood. As a consequence, the area became host to one of the world's most notorious tenements, known for its wretched living conditions and rampant crime, earning such names as "murderer's alley" and "den of thieves."

This notorious slum, Five Points, was dominated by rival gangs such as the Roach Guards, Dead Rabbits, and Bowery Boys, a central subject of the book The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury, published in 1928. This, in turn, inspired the 2002 Martin Scorsese film, Gangs of New York.

To survive in New York City, unless you have enormous wealth to buffer the harsh environment, you must learn to be resourceful. Ethnic immigrant groups find ways to import their cultures. Regardless of how inhospitable the city might be or incongruous the activity, New Yorkers improvise, adopt, and adapt. The Chinese have done that remarkably well...

Location: Columbus Park is located one block south of Canal Street and one block west of Mott Street in Chinatown. It is bounded by Baxter, Mulberry, Bayard, and Worth Streets.

Related Postings: No MSG, Tết, Big Buddha, Hallmarks and Earmarks, Durian, At Arm's Length, Year of the Rat, Pearl River Mart, Buried Treasure, Tea Time

Chess Monsters

The last great chess player I saw in Washington Square Park was Yaacov Norowitz; this was to be his story, as well as that of the other great players who have graced the southwest corner of the park. But I have not seen Yaacov playing in some time.

On and off, for a few decades, I have spent many a Sunday afternoon watching the games of many masters, international masters, grandmasters, and blitz players. I never got to see Hikaru Nakamura, reputed to be one of the undisputed monsters of blitz chess. I did often see Israel Zilber, a former Latvian chess champion who was homeless during most of the 1980s and was one of the best players in the park.

One of the wildest incidents I have witnessed in this area was a shooting. As all the players scurried for cover behind the low concrete wall which encircled the tables, one chess fan who had been watching the games actually made the rounds pausing everyone's clocks. Once the smoke had cleared and the police had reestablished law and order, the players jumped backed and resumed playing as if nothing had happened. We were told that that the incident was motivated by a previous drug deal gone awry. On this day, one party encountered the other, pulled out a gun in broad daylight, and fired.

One of the highlights for me was the regular appearance in the 1980s of Grandmaster Roman Dzindzichashvili, a two-time U.S. chess champion. He played blitz chess for money, as is common there. Blitz is speed chess, where each opponent is limited to 5 minutes total per game. Accumulated time for each player is tracked using a chess clock. A player whose time runs out loses (unless his opponent does not have enough material to win).

There is a spectrum of playing styles here. Much of street or park chess played for money involves hustling, which can take the form of anything from the classic hustle (i.e. disguising one's skill level) to outright cheating, which I have witnessed. Skills are honed specifically for speed chess, an aggressive style of playing and a mastery of all the tricks and traps of the game, along with distractions such as chess trash talk. Time odds are frequently offered to players of lesser strength. When played for money, games range from a few dollars and up - I have seen sessions played for as much as $100 per game. Side bets are also frequently made. Some regulars (such as Bobby Plummer, aka Sweet P) essentially set up office, staking out a good table early and barking the offer of a game to passersby. Some are able to eke out a subsistence living. This area is known worldwide to chess players, and many come here for a challenging encounter, prepared to lose some cash. Read article here.

This corner of the park was the setting for the 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer, a story based on the life of chess prodigy and Village resident Joshua Waitzkin. Bobby Fischer was a player here in the 1960s - unfortunately, this was before my time in New York City, and I never got a chance to see this legendary chess icon play.

The quality of player has gone down decidedly in the park, as has the physical environment in this area, which badly needs an update (scheduled as part of a future phase of the park renovation). I hope for a return of the chess monsters :)

Notable chess players who have played in Washington Square Park:
Joel Benjamin, Roman Dzindzichashvili, Kamran Shirazi, Joshua Waitzkin, Bruce Pandolfini, Vincent Livermore, Russian Paul, Hikaru Nakamura, Yaacov Norowitz, Luis Busquets, Bobby Fischer (early 1950s), Maurice Ashley, Asa Hoffman, and Israel Zilber. There are also regular games played in Union Square, Times Square, and Central Park.

Related Postings: Good Fortune, Marshall Chess Club

Under the Sun

When I saw the tip of a sail at a distance, darting to and fro, I was so excited. I knew what I was seeing: land sailing (aka land yachting or sand yachting). My first exposure to this activity was on television many years ago from the flats of Utah or Nevada. At the time I was fascinated - the whole thing looked so exhilarating and novel. However, I assumed I would never see this type of thing, lest I make a trip out west with a specific agenda to find a land sailing locale.

Land sailing in New York City? Floyd Bennett Field, with all of its unused runways, is a natural for this, but it still caught me by surprise to see an activity that requires such a large amount of unobstructed space. Years of living in New York City conditions you to negating an activity like this from contemplation.

It took some circumnavigating by car to find the runway being used. I was greeted cordially by the sole sailer at the time, Rick Honor, who had just done an interview for a piece on Floyd Bennett Field by the New York Times. Some would say it was another case of Morphic Resonance.
Rick was extremely generous, answering whatever questions I had about the activity and the equipment. He showed me his car, which was packed with a variety of air-powered vehicles, including equipment for kite boarding. He told me that on many weekends, there were land sailers who would be happy to teach me and let me sail one of their rigs. See my video of Rick land sailing here.

I was also surprised to learn that this activity was not born recently but had variations going back to China and Egypt. The modern precursor is credited to Flemish scientist Simon Levin in the 16th century - see painting here.
In its current incarnation, land sailing equipment is high-tech, with eight classes of vehicles including kite buggying. The standard construction today consists of a tricycle buggy with a main sail. Land yachting competitions take place worldwide. I was astounded to find a photo of a sail wagon on the streets of Brooklyn from the early 20th century, circa 1910-15. There is truly nothing new under the sun...

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