Klutz For Life ~ Next Cornelia Street Stoops to Nuts Show ~ March 13th @ 6pm

The National Black Theatre

Two weeks ago, I put up photographs of Harlem. What I left out was my outstanding klutz event in front of The National Black Theatre building.

That morning it was 17 degrees. I decided I needed exercise to offset the previous night’s party I had with a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise and half a loaf of bakery Rye. Feeling tubby and cold, I walked, ran, walked from 132^nd Street and Lenox Avenue to Yorkville. Taking 145 photos along the way. At the same time, I used my phone to stay in touch with an editor at the New York Times on final changes to a story. Frozen, anxious and distracted, I snapped away until I couldn’t feel my finger tips touching the camera’s buttons.   

Injured camera, bump top right

Near the corner of 125^th Street, I took a picture of The National Black Theatre. Done with that, I fiddled my gadgets towards my pockets and ran for the intersection to make the expiring green light.  My feet tangled, I tripped so fast the only thing I could do to prevent my head from hitting the pavement was to put my arm out and yank up my spine as I hit the ground.  While in the air, I lost the camera, it ended up in the second lane of Fifth Avenue; my glasses flew off my face and bounced into 125^th Street. On the ground, I felt embarrassed and sore. Two people helped me up. But the traffic light was in transition and I had to make a Sophie’s Choice. What item to retrieve first - my glasses or camera. I figured one of them was dead. 

Tom's glasses live another day.

I grabbed the camera first, then ran to get my glasses and nearly got hit by the cross-town bus pulling up to the red light. My specs were now under the bus. Their fate was in the hands of the guy holding the steering wheel. I waited out the light behind the bus. So I could hold up the car behind me if I got lucky. The bus pulled straight out, I picked up my eyeglasses and jumped back on the sidewalk. 

I began my assessment. Coat and dungarees were torn at elbow and knee. Remarkably, my glasses didn’t have a scratch.  The camera had a nasty bump on the top of its head but worked fine. My noggin was okay because I drew my body away from the ground when I went down.  Considering myself lucky, I headed south. Two days later, my neck, mid back and lower back went out. You’re supposed to fall loose; I fell stiff. That was six weeks ago. I’m still not back to my normal level of joint pain.

When I was a kid my family’s nickname for me was “The Klutz.”  I like contact & I’m clumsy, a terrible combo. Throughout my childhood, I was on a first name basis with the Lenox Hill emergency room doctors. When she was 5 years old, my daughter told her mother, “Someone should keep an eye on him,” after she heard me fall off a ladder three rooms away.

A woman asked me yesterday if I had one hour to live what would I do. I told her I’d play tackle football at the Asphalt Green on York Avenue and 90th Street. Then die happy. 

Asphalt Green Football Field 1974

Our next City Stories: Stoops to Nuts show is Tues, March 13th @ 6pm. It's a beaut.  Our artists are Claudia Chopek,Joe McGinty, John Newell, Rick Patrick, Thomas Pryor, Rivka Widerman & Ward White. Getting my Irish up, it's my birthday week, bring your best game. I'm giving away 10 drinks. Admission @ $7 includes one free cocktail.

Tonte getting her Irish up.

Dog on 125th Street stopping to look at me after I fell.

West Harlem Walkabout on A Frigid Friday ~ 1.20.12

Four weeks ago, I attended a funeral service at St. John's Pentecostal Church at 132nd St & Lenox Avenue. A brilliant cold  morning. After the viewing, I walked south on Lenox  to Marcus Garvey/Mount Morris Park. Went to the top to visit the old fire watch, a sister to the fire watch in Central  Park, "The Belvedere Castle." NYC's earliest fire alarm system, manned towers at distant intervals. The Castle was built on the same summit where a traditional fire tower stood until it was demolished in the late 1860s. Fire Towers became obsolete when the telegraph became the premier fire fighting communication tool.

Notice the heavy Dutch influence on West Harlem's architecture. Some of the stretches reminded me of Delft and Vermeer. 

Here is a link to a bunch of photos from my walk.

Left park and headed towards Lexington going south towards Yorkville. East Harlem pictures to follow in a few days.

If you love the city and wonder what you are missing and you are doing nothing about it.  Get in a car, ride a bike, use the subway, take a bus, or just put on your shoes and walk. Yes, the city is ever changing and old things go down overnight and new things pop up and change a neighborhood’s point of view. But if you get out there, and do it now, you’ll still see the template laid down a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, the bench markers are everywhere.

For example, in Central Park there are stakes driven into marble rock indicating street intersections that were planted by the 1811 City Street Grid surveyor, John Randel Jr. well before the area was chosen for New York City’s Great Park. 

Another John Randel Jr. article.

Go find one of these stakes and photograph it. That is my holy grail for the next month.