Joe's Dairy, The Movie, Part 2

Vincent and Anthony Campanelli were extremely cordial throughout my initial encounter (see Part 1 here). I asked if I might be able to film the mozzarella-making process. They only requested that I return on a day less busy, so on Wednesday, February 1, at 11 AM, I came armed with cameras.

(read more...)

Joe's Dairy, The Movie, Part 1

On September 16, 2008, I wrote a story about Joe's Dairy, located at 156 Sullivan Street. In this Italian area of the South Village/SoHo, we have Pino's Prime Meats as well as St. Anthony's Church (see here and here), both on Sullivan Street facing Joe's Dairy. Just across Houston Street, there is Raffetto's, Delmonico's, and Tiro a Segno. Trattoria Spaghetto lies just a few short blocks away. These are the final vestiges of the Italian neighborhood - places such as Vesuvio and Zito's Bakery, neighborhood icons, are now closed.

However, the full experience of Joe's Dairy - meeting Vincent and Anthony Campanelli, grandpa staking out the front retail area, and the making of mozzarella cheese in that tiny backroom - is something which only video or film can capture.

(read more...)

At the Door

Being a butcher has little allure, and today, like most jobs that involve physical labor, there is no appeal for the young, restless, and upwardly mobile. At one time, butcher shops dotted the city, but now, a shop like Pino's Prime Meat is rare and noteworthy, the subject of articles that bemoan their loss and extol the pluses of getting one's meats from a skilled, multi-generational specialist, like Pino Cinquemani of Pino's Meat Market.

(read more...)

Foolish World of the Fiscally Frivolous

There is nothing more irritating for some men than the occasion when they feel the need to buy their girlfriends flowers. This obligatory event may be a minuscule effort yet looms larger than anything conceivable. And then there is the terror of Valentine's Day, where a last-minute purchase in New York City is tantamount to lunacy.

Adding insult to injury is the perception of wastefulness - buying something whimsically that is decorative and perishable is antithetical to the nature of the practical man. Flowers are a waning asset, so why invest?

(read more...)

A Sharp Focus

I once was expressing my interest in traveling to Singapore to a friend, born in Taiwan and knowledgable regarding Asia. It seemed to be a beautiful destination - both tropical and pristine. However, said friend said that she would never go to any country that did not have an art museum (there is at least one art museum now). This reminded me of conversations in my early days in New York City - an echo of the sentiment against the well-manicured lawn and gentrification.

(read more...)

For No Good Reason

Service in New York City retail is a VERY uneven experience. Many single-location privately owned operations which are legendary have an attitude regarding customer service bordering on the arrogant. I have seen salesman curse customers for no good reason. And yet I have seen the same salesman as sweet as sugar. The reason? It often depends on how you approach the sales staff - your attitude, knowledge, and other factors. Retail sales can admittedly be very trying, however, a customer should not have to walk on eggshells or ingratiate or prostrate himself to assure good service. It should not be that way, but welcome to New York.

(read more...)

Trimmings for Sale

I was appropriately reprimanded. Marty Silver asked why was I working with a supplier in Georgia when he was the largest tassel manufacturer in the world and was located within walking distance? I had no answer except that I had not done my homework properly. Schoen Trimming and Cord manufactures tassels and cords right in Manhattan at 151 West 25th Street.

(read more...)

Pretty Rad, Part 2

A Slice of Charles Knapp

In Part 1 of Fairway to Heaven, I found myself unexpectedly immersed in a food emporium, the likes of which I had never seen. I traveled there with a friend who you will meet in Part 3 of this adventure in Red Hook, Brooklyn. However, the plot thickened, or perhaps I should say curdled.

(read more...)

Pretty Rad, Part 1

Fairway to Heaven

Don't you love a bargain, a deal? A two for one sale? How about three for one? Please come with me on an adventure in three parts and see why New York City is everything you were told it would be, and more.

(read more...)

Off-White by Design

At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I must tell you that I really don't like being in my apartment much. I say ungrateful because although I have worked hard like many, I have also been lucky. And to live in an 1837 landmark townhouse on Washington Square is one of the rare privileges afforded very few in New York City.

(read more...)

Hey, Thanks Steve

Please Click and Play Audio Clip to Accompany Your Reading: 

Around 1980, a close friend suggested that I get a computer to run my business. He explained why I should get one with not just a floppy drive but also a big hard drive. It would take removable floppy discs. "What's a floppy disc?" I asked, and why were they floppy? A few years later, I bought my first PC - a DEC Rainbow running CP/M. Some time later, I got an IBM PC running MS-DOS.

(read more...)

Legacy

None of Us Go

You can read tomes about Italy, look at photos, see videos and films, and speak to native Italians, but you will never know Italy until you finally get on that plane for the first time and go there. When you arrive, you will have that Aha! experience that I am sure you have had in other ways before - so this is Italy.

Like an old friend not seen in decades, you will recognize many familiar things in his face, but the essence of the man himself is much more than a few big pieces. The image you have conjured prior to visiting Italy will be seriously devoid of the many, many things which will never be written of - the mundane, the inconsequential, the trivial, the ubiquitous, the details, the customary - yet these are the things which comprise the bulk of day-to-day existence.

(read more...)

Garish Glory

There's no reason to apologize if the offense is within the eye of the beholder.

There's just something about Spandex World that everyone in my office loves. It's a playground for the eye and hand. All that stretch. All that selection. For a riot of color, it's hard to beat an emporium of brightly covered fabrics like Spandex World.

(read more...)

Wonder Why

I grew up in a family with limited means. However, we triumphed through brute force and tenacity. My father, originally a woodcutter, once in Connecticut, worked a handful of blue collar jobs, often maintaining more than one job at a time. One of his brothers, in addition to his full-time job in construction, worked a second job - mowing grass on highways until 3 in the morning. Work defined a person's worth. Certainly this ethic has been a factor in my survival in New York City for the last 40 years.

(read more...)

Buy Magnesium

Once lit, magnesium produces light so bright that it will burn the retinas in your eyes. It burns so hot that if water is sprayed on it, rather than putting the fire out, the heat will break the water down and separate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which in turn feed the fire. This is the whitest light produced by burning a substance.

I think So Good Jewelry must be using magnesium to light their stores. They are BRIGHT.  When I say bright, I don't mean what you think may be bright. I mean magnesium so bright that it burns the retina and wakes the dead. For photographers, this place is a perfect tutorial for overexposure. Walking down 4th Street at night, I was astounded by the brightness. The place beamed me in.

(read more...)

Don't Bet Against Many Goods

In the 1980s, I was introduced to a man who had worked various outdoor markets and planned to open a large magic/costume store in a prime Greenwich Village location. I found it a ludicrous concept, really, for such a limited clientele for the products in a very high-rent district of Manhattan. I was also not very impressed with this man overall. He was really quite crass, unsophisticated, and very oriented to making a buck. A huckster.

(read more...)

Teleportation

In New York City, people are driven - it's the classic work hard, play hard. Regardless of how incongruous it may appear, with ease, ingenuity or great difficulty, you will find city residents participating in the most unlikely activities imaginable, using variants or adaptions as needed.

No mountains to climb? Then scale buildings instead (see Urban Night Climbers here). In New York you can find cross-country ski during blizzards, windsurfing, tennis, golf, farming, gardening, birding, fishing, biking, swimming, kayaking, canoeing, sledding, jet skiing, sailing, horseback riding, hiking, camping, wind sailing and the flying of radio controlled jets. Of course, whether the big leagues or amateur, the major sports are found here too - football, basketball, baseball, softball and soccer.

And surfing.

While in Quiksilver* on Broadway in SoHo with friends from out of town, displays of full size surfboards really surprised them, particularly when they learned that they were not just decorative but that those in racks were actually for sale. I further explained that these were not only sold for those who may travel outside New York to surfing destinations but if you wanted to go ocean surfing, the real thing was available within city limits at Rockaway Beach, Queens.

Rockaway Beach faces the Atlantic Ocean and is the largest urban beach in the United States. There is a surf community and surf shops. Perhaps the most remarkable, the stretch of beach is directly accessible by subway. In the 1970s, I had a short-lived romance with surfing, influenced by a love of the tropics, the California dream, the Beach Boys, and images of what appeared to be one a way to commune with nature and one of the most exhilirating activities.

I quickly learned that surfing required more skill than I had imagined and more effort than I was willing to expend. To make matters worse, because of storage limitations, I purchased a short board, which I subsequently learned was not the board of choice for beginners. I was told that a very long board, essentially a big boat, made learning much easier. I "surfed" a few of the beaches on Long Island as well as Rockaway Beach.

In Rockaway, the train is elevated. On return from one outing, I boarded the A train in beach attire and my board. At the start of my ride back, my appearance was not particularly startling, given the proximity to the beach. However, as I approached Manhattan, the closer I got, the more bizarre and inexplicable my appearance was - evidenced by the type and increasing number of stares. At the point I reached Wall Street in a train car during rush hour packed with businessmen in 3-piece suits, I am sure the sight of a surfer in flip-flops, shorts with a wet board dripping on the A train floor, looked like nothing short of a teleportation...

*Quiksilver is based in Huntington Beach, California and is one of the world's largest manufacturers of surfwear and other boardsport-related equipment. There is an extensive clothing line and a number of stores can be found in Manhattan.

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? :)

Irony Candy

For an insightful view into the soul of New York City, turn to its comics. If their material really resonates with you, then you're a New Yorker, if not by address, then in spirit. Some, like Woody Allen, are virtual spokespeople for all that is New York. Shows like Seinfeld capture the essence of city life, right down to the minutiae. One of my favorite New York City comics is Todd Barry. His has a brilliant, understated style, characterized with the necessary ingredients - smug indifference, cynicism, skepticism, sarcasm. Todd effectively illustrates the irony of the high priced accoutrement of defiance in a routine about Kmart coming to New York City:

Some New Yorkers were pissed off when Kmart came to town. They were outside the store protesting. They didn't even know what to say. They were like, 'Down with Kmart and their merchandise that people can afford. Down with Kmart and their 300 gallon drum of laundry detergent for 99 cents. Why don't you go take your good values to another town?' Let's turn that building into a vintage clothing store. The kind that sells used Kmart shirts for $700.

I had a similar insight in the early 1970s when I saw Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore East. They were singing one of their popular hits about revolution, Volunteers. Somehow it seemed hypocritical or perhaps to be a bit nicer about it, filled with apparent contradiction. This group had money - limos, mansions, etc. and their lifestyle did not seem to bespeak of those revolting against the world order and materialism. But when the spokesperson is generally perceived as cool, they can get away with a lot of contradiction. On April 8, 2008, I wrote a story called Unguent, about the effects of money: "Money is like an unguent and when applied liberally, it usually is absorbed readily with predictable effects. It doesn't appear that one has to rub the salve that hard or long to take off most edges."

We see that irony replayed here at Search and Destroy at 25 St. Marks Place, with underground, subculture and vintage punk clothing and goods being sold for a king's ransom. Whether a shopper sees irony or not with merchandise priced as luxury items and taglines like "chaotic and anarchy" or "dangerous clothing store", explains the wildly disparate ratings at a site like Yelp.com that go from 1 to 5 stars. Many bristle at what they consider outrageous pricing and others appreciate the merchandise, some apparently difficult to find.

I have zero knowledge regarding the products I saw there - it was primarily eye candy for me. Or perhaps we should say, Irony Candy :)