Rhona in Kodachrome on Bleecker Street

After my friend, Rhona Saffer's memorial yesterday morning, walking to Bleecker Street something came to mind. As I've grown older, when I become friends with someone new I play a game with myself. I measure how much I wish I knew that person when I was 18. Then my imagination takes off, sometimes for a short flight but on a rare occasion the flight is explosive. Kodachrome scenes, powerful music and breathtaking motion, and my friend is there with me. Rhona Saffer is one of those friends. I met Rhona 12 years ago, but in my heart we met in kindergarten.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hSXKjHDKkY

Eight years ago, we're walking down Bleecker Street on the south side of the street between Broadway and Lafayette. At the same time, Rhona & I looked up, then started to say something to each other crossing over each other's sentence. She said you first, I started blabbing about the architect, Louis Sullivan, and she punched me in the arm. We both loved 65 Bleecker Street and couldn't wait to tell each other about it. This happened in any neighborhood, rich conversations about buildings and history, always leading to another topic. We never ended a meeting with a complete thought because there was always more to say to each other.

Rhona was thoughtful, funny, smart, warm, and charming. Her smile made my heart hurt and instantly cheered me up. Her deep love for her kids, Jonathan, Jordan and Gaby was awesome. I selfishly miss her.

Beck's Bolero

Middle of 1969, my freshman year of high school at LaSalle Academy on the Lower East Side, I heard Beck's Bolero for the first time and lost it, literally lost it. When this song came on a radio, I'd stop whatever I was doing and move to the speaker source like a wayward space craft being magnetically pulled into the mother ship.

This instrumental tune off Jeff Beck's album, Truth shook my core. It featured Beck, Jimmy Page, Nicky Hopkins, John Paul Jones, and Keith Moon on drums. Moon snuck into the recording studio to avoid pissing off Pete Townshend. This Lp album, including my favorite versions of Shape of Things and Morning Dew, triggered the most stringent money saving effort in my life. I needed to hear this music the way it needed to be heard. Loud and clear. Working 30 hour weeks after school and Saturdays for three months, I earned $350 delivering groceries at Daitch Shopwell, allowing me to buy a high end Lafayette stereo receiver and a pair of Criterion 100s, Lafayette's best speakers. I bought the gear at the Lafayette store on 87th Street & Lexington Avenue. I usually got thrown out of the store for not buying nothing, so it was odd to be there with lots of money, ready to spend, and the staff was ignoring my friend, Ekis and me. To attract attention we began to play Saluggi with a portable record player. This immediately brought the sales help we sought.

I timed my purchase to coincide with an evening I'd have our family apartment to myself until 11pm. I got in the house at 7pm. I wired the speakers to the receiver and the receiver to my low end Garrard turntable. I laid the speakers on the floor facing each other two feet apart, I lowered the needle onto Beck's Bolero, I turn the volume knob up three quarters, I laid on the floor with my head in between both speakers pointed towards my ears. When the song started I had two thoughts: this was bliss & a firm belief that my decision to keep the volume at 75 percent was a prudent choice preventing me from blowing the speakers out on their first use. The deep bass vibrations rattled the bedroom window panes like a train hurtling along an imaginary El outside.

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Beck's Bolero:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmO0OZC6Ifk

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