Old New York, at work and the bar

This week I have been work­ing at the fam­ily business’s office in mid-town. Two years ago I worked in the Dumbo office for about 8 months. That con­vinced me to go back to school. The mid­town office is much more mel­low, with the char­ac­ters not so obnox­iously col­or­ful. The busi­ness man­ages waste paper and sev­eral rental prop­er­ties around town. The pre­vi­ous accoun­tant did a ter­ri­ble job. She was recently let off and the new accoun­tant is try­ing to sort out the mess. My sis­ter, who recently grad­u­ated Boston Col­lege, and I are her guinea pigs. I spend most of the day pound­ing old cal­cu­la­tors try­ing to find the prob­lem­atic item on accounts and records that don’t add up. When I am not doing that, I am pulling bills and other records from the mon­ster of a file sys­tem. The busi­ness has been in the fam­ily since my great great great some­one or other came over on the boat in the 1880’s, so this is old style. I find it amus­ing. For a few weeks, it’s a fine gig to fall back on. I’ll try and do a mini-photo essay on it next week. There’s a true crime book called Take­down about how the city, in coop­er­a­tion with my fam­ily mem­bers, had under­cov­ers in the busi­ness to bust a mafia garbage scheme in the early 1990’s. Work­ing in the office again has me inter­ested in read­ing it, and doing some other gen­eral research on the fam­ily his­tory. All day I am con­fronted with hitor­i­cal pho­tographs of the garbage trucks and fac­to­ries in the first half of the cen­tury. The images are going to hell in their ill fit­ted frames and no one knows where the neg­a­tives or glass plates are.

In the spirit of old time New York, I took Chris Nes­bit, a friend from the photo depart­ment at Par­sons, to McSorley’s Old Ale House on 7th st.

McSorley’s Ale House, taken by Berenice Abbott in 1937. From the bar’s site.

I had only been their once prior, but that was before read­ing Joseph Mitchell’s short story. Estab­lished in 1854, the Irish ale house has a lot of his­tory, which is drip­ping from the wall in framed pho­tographs and news­pa­per clip­pings. The look and feel has changed min­i­mal if we are to judge from pho­tographs. It’s a bit of a tourist’s attrac­tion nowa­days. By 5pm on Fri­day, it had filled up with stu­dents and young neigh­bor­hood locals. The huge wooden tables would force a cer­tain socia­bil­ity, but the bar ten­der insisted that Chris and I get up and take the smaller table in the win­dow. He thought we were on a date. The man was Irish, in his 60’s with sil­ver hair, wear­ing a blue smock that but­toned down the front. He con­grat­u­lated Chris on find­ing a red head. After a few beers, I dragged Chris around to my favorite for­mer haunts. He is work­ing on a pho­to­graph project of draw­ing the past build­ings onto cur­rent pho­tographs of the places. I showed him where the Church of All Nations used to be off Bow­ery and Hous­ton. Google Maps hasn’t updated yet to show the high end res­i­den­tial build­ing that now replaces it as well as the two build­ings that faced Bowery.

The arrow marks the inter­sec­tion of Hous­ton and Bowery.

I had a good time in the sum­mer of 2002 hang­ing out with friend that squat­ted the for­mer com­mu­nity cen­ter. The cos­tumes from the the­ater were still around so we played dress up and swung on the rope swings in the per­for­mance space. Across the street from where it used to be is now a Whole Pay­check, I mean Whole Foods. Gross.

We also went to Pun­jab at 114 E. 1st Street to get some good cheep Indian food and sit on a stoop to watch the sun­set over Hous­ton. The cab­bies go to Pun­jab because not only is it cheep, but there is plenty of park­ing on this last block of 1st street where it runs into Hous­ton. We got a bowl of rice with #1 and #3 and two chais for $5. I hadn’t been there since cold weather and was dis­traught to find that, sit­ting on the stoop a few doors down, the view was obstructed by not one but two screech­ing, scrap­ing new high end res­i­den­cies. One of them is right across the street. I feel like a cur­mud­geon, old beyond my time, talk­ing about how it used to be and how this change is just shame­ful. I do feel like the neigh­bor­hood is being lost to me though. So sad.

To con­tinue the theme of end­ing posts with birth­day wishes, John Tar­leton turned 40 over the week­end. He is the back­bone of the New York City Indy­media Cen­ter. I worked with Indy­media about a year and a half ago and saw John in action often. He does amaz­ing work. The team at Indy­media gave him a cook book, with an epi­thet sug­gest­ing that he would need it as his live branches beyond the IMC! We’re all look­ing out for you John.

John reads the intro to the cook book.

A cap­ti­vated, car­ing audience.