Mott St. in the 80s was no joke New York. I’m happy my then-girlfriend Joan invited me to live with her and another room-mate or two, or three, in a real railroad tenement right across from St Patrick’s Basilica. It had an interior window between the kitchen and “living room,” à la Scorsese’s Raging Bull. There were roaches, mice, an air shaft and a fire escape, the way any legit NY apartment should be. Yes, of course, there was a wooden overhead box-tank pull-chain WC and a clawfoot bathtub in the kitchen. The building still retained gaslight plumbing, but the fixtures were gone.

There was no door buzzer. Visitors yelled up from the street, then we threw down keys in a sock. Richard Butler from the Psychedelic Furs lived in our building. The concept of “keeping it real” didn’t exist then. I suppose he was living downtown because that’s what artists could afford. Or maybe because cool necessarily comes with patina. The entire neighborhood was in original condition. Lots of crust and calcification. On the people, too. Those were exciting days when I loved NY most, especially downtown.

We were lucky because the apartment was made from two adjacent railroad units combined at their living rooms. One tub was removed. One day while taking a bath, no shower there, the ceiling fell on top of naked-me. Now, that’s a surprise, if you like surprises. I sat in a slurry of plaster, asbestos, tin and moldy wood splinters. I do believe my puffy hair, white from powdery, talc-like ancient carcinogenic building materials, reduced my concussion’s severity. Probably. The violent drunk upstairs passed out while over-filling his own tub one too many times. Sloshed.

During more relaxing soaks, our room-mate, really a sweet guy and one of the Aztec Two Steps, had the habit of walking up to me while I was bathing for lengthy chats. No curtain, I’m in a kitchen. IIRC that’s when I got into bubble bath.

On Mott or Mulberry, further down from where we lived, I saw a guy run out of a building, a beat-cop pursued on foot, who drew his six shooter revolver and fired. Just like that. Nobody really cared. We didn’t eat meat in those days. Getting to Vegetarian’s Paradise on Bowery below Canal for our mock meat wheat gluten delights could be perilous. But totally a welcomed break from our archetypal tenement kitchen. Cash only.

Joan and I will have to turn this next part into a comedy film script some day, here’s the economy version:

A friend of Joan’s from Chicago showed up, so we threw down the keys. Let’s call him Roger. Roger had a badly blackened eye behind pretty cool aviator sunglasses. When he walked into our place he pulled off the shades dramatically. Slow and smooth. Cleanly, no snags. He rotated his head, tilting obliquely, mindful of the lighting, as if to enhance his shadows and saturate the purple shiner with all our naked hanging bulb’s deep orange glow could deliver. I’ve never seen a better Hollywood hair light. That’s when I knew we could be pals. Apparently his transvestite girlfriend back in Chi-town beat him down so bad he had to flee. I think he had only the Schott MC jacket on his back. He might have carried a bag. Let’s call it a Navy duffel bag. The mid 80s were a long time ago.

It turned out he was a drummer, too, and we both loved the Ramones. By an act of God, Roger was close with one of Johnny Ramone’s Chicago girlfriends. I use the term “girlfriend” loosely in this case because I don’t recall the nature of that relationship. Apparently, telephone calls were placed, and words were communicated in old 80s style – one at a time over a line for a dime. What happens? Just like that, Johnny’s gonna swing by to drop off something for Roger to carry back to Chicago, when the heat’s off, and deliver it to this girlfriend.

On the Day of Johnny, Roger and I were insane. We may have swept-up the place. The windows were wide open so we could hear calls from down on the sidewalk. Screw the cold weather. We were sweating, banging drumsticks on steaming radiators and folded up futons, rolling-out to the Ramones.

We heard him yell!

A third floor walkup means what, four, six flights? How many steps? Anticipation. What to say? How to greet? We didn’t even consider refreshments. We were flat broke.

And there he was, carrying a case. Roger took it. We chatted in the kitchen. His muddy sneakers left prints all around. You might not think Little Italy has mud, or did in those days, but somehow it’s true. He asked us if we like to hang out anywhere in particular. We couldn’t think of anyplace cool enough to mention. Embarrassing. I’m pretty sure we were way too worked-up to think straight, with all the drumming on furniture, such as it was, anticipation and now the real deal, an icon of New York muddying up our NY tenement kitchen.

I can’t recall how long we chatted. But it was amazing. After he left, Roger and I danced around like drumstick wielding turkeys. Real downtown NYC bliss. We could croak now, happily.

Johnny told us the case held a manual typewriter, a gift to his Chicago gal, who was interested in writing. We ran masking tape on the floor, attempting to preserve the royal mudprints, a forthright cordon. Several years later I’d meet Johnny again and that’s a different story. He was a cool guy.

©2020 peipei.vin

They had me almost thirty years. I worked in higher education as a tenured professor. Three...decades.... How was life in the ivory tower? Don't ask unless you really want to know how the academic sausage is extruded.

Workplace enemies, lurking -- some obvious threats, others hid behind a camouflage of professorial congeniality. You’d easily spot the latter, though. They’re the first to say: “We’re in it for ‘the kids’ and who cares about promotion or that higher pay step.” Better watch your back.

None were from New York. To be fair I was teaching in New Jersey, but also to be fair the faculty and administrators were wannabe New Yorkers. They had wet dreams about fantasy graduate programs wherein profs would teach upper division courses exclusively and let low pay, non-union adjunct instructors do the grunt work. God forbid they had to teach intro courses -- such a chore! The money-shot in every wet dream they had was attracting and enrolling students from New York, then touting them as pilgrims seeking "JerZeducation: An education disbursed within the great state of New Jersey."

My real NY accent and outlook seemed all wrong to my colleagues who dreamed of licking those tasty NY students up and down and ferrying them across the Hudson -- students like NYU gets, mostly Asian, or ironically from outside New York and wealthy. Their impression of New York is "whatever NYU is," and as many now recognize, too late, that is precisely the problem with the New New York. It has no New Yorkers in it. A fashionable lamentation moaned by every transplant sitting in Starbucks, New York, New York, isn't it?

Honestly, much of the faculty in my department never met anyone like me. Their fantasy didn't jive with my reality. I was real. The kind of New York they wanted so dearly to bring into and validate their tiny little hayseed program was fantasy. They were misinformed about New York. For example, let me set a scene: I'm sitting in a NYC diner with my chairperson -- a rare treat for her. She orders food by addressing the waitress in an excruciatingly hammed-up Jersey version of New York "diner lingo." Maybe she heard the patois in a movie. How clueless can you be? The waitress, salt of the earth, felt mocked, was justifiably insulted and taken aback -- and I sincerely hope put "something" in my chair's food. I was embarrassed. You know, most of my former colleagues couldn't recognize authenticity if they tripped over it. Well, they most likely didn't care to. They disdained and disrespected my New York, and me.

Going back maybe twenty years ... my academic department was called into a meeting with the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs to discuss budgetary issues. I fought continuously for more funding to get decent facilities for my students, not the fantasy NYU ones, but real students in my actual classrooms, and this meeting's agenda would largely comprise those items. We arrived prior to the Vice Chancellor, a flamboyant man who, like Liberace, made spectacular entrances, or so he thought they were -- perhaps staged more like the regional musical productions I imagine he was transfixed by back in Anywhere, USA, where he grew up and learned to project beyond the footlights. Nothing wrong with that, but his stagecraft was lacking. He confused delay with showmanship. So we waited. I used the time to look over the meeting’s agenda items and review my material.

Curiously, his anticipated spectacular arrival for this day's meeting would instead be characterized by unexpected avant-garde entertainment value. The doors to the Vice Chancellor's private conference room swung open and in walked a breathless supplicant, a male assistant, hands palms-up and gingerly holding before him, as if transporting the Queen's most precious jewel encrusted crown, a doughnut pillow, which was hurriedly, precisely, delicately aligned onto the vacant chair at the head of the table. He scurried back to the door taking the Vice Chancellor's arm, half stepping, assuring sure footedness, lovingly stabilizing, softly, very softly, both appearing as though plying a course barefoot over rotted eggshells, some with septic yolks intact. Gas faces. They moved in unison, and apart from the expressions of agony, with weird detachment that comes from routine -- as if they were alone. We didn't seem to register as present. No one spoke.

The Vice Chancellor was then silently rotated by his assistant in tiny sixteenth-step increments through an arc to face the assembled faculty, but really the purpose of the precision azimuth alignment was to orient his ass for a perfect soft landing onto Tranquility Base, the doughnut hole. His final descent was accompanied by the sound of a legato hiss, air escaping the cushion in a controlled manner, very even and very lengthy, hissssssssssss, like a snare drum buzz-roll fanfare concluding with the rimshot punctuation of a loud office chair creak. Both men grimaced exactly at that moment. Creak! Then the Vice Chancellor finally spoke: "A little surgery."

Now that's academia!
©2017 peipei.vin

Speaking of entrances, Bill Murray did Liberace better than Liberace:

It's a rainy, late winter evening in New York. A nor'easter blows. When a wet walk astride the greasy streets of Manhattan doesn't sound appealing, be a homeboy -- or girl -- a homebody. Use your handy housewife helper. It's time for some comfort carbs.

You know, there's nothing quite like the aroma of freshly baked bread to mask the stench of dog-hair damp NYC, plus the residual garlic patina from last Thursday night's marinara. And to that end...

Below, our first, and probably last, VLOG... Oh Lucy!!! I mean, Peipei!

©, ℗ 2018 peipei.vin

Did Hawaii's Democratic Governor David Ige instigate a state sponsored public relations stunt at the expense of President Trump? An as yet un-named State employee inexplicably presses the wrong button -- and, BOOM! Fallout traverses the Pacific ocean, wafting all the way to Washington and into the Oval Office, as if the fearsome false alarm was Trump's doing -- not a sequestered patsy's fault, nor of any conspirator laying on the beach in true-blue-state paradise.

Who knows?

Remember when New Jersey's recently departed Chief exacted revenge against his political enemy, the Mayor of Fort Lee, in the Bridgegate Scandal? How could George Washington Bridge traffic get backed up bad enough to shut down an entire municipality precisely on cue? A random perfect storm of vehicular incidents? Odds are that...sometimes...conspiracy theories lead to the truth.   

No matter what you think, you got to admit, nukes are a ballistic political football aimed squarely at petrified new Democratic voters. Scare them -- that's the tactic. Make them "vote-scared." The plan to vaporize Republicans in the mid terms and ultimately, blast-out Trump in the next general election is well under way. Locally, New York City Mayor De Blasio effectively parlayed "New" New Yorker's fears of nuclear fallout shelter signs into magical tritium dust, misdirecting attention away from his corrupt, failing administration. More recently, New York's Governor Cuomo, presiding over one of the most corrupt states in the Union, said, "Washington hit a button and launched an economic missile and it says 'New York' on it, and it's headed our way..." He's just getting started with the verbiage. He's running for President.

Sure, there were false alarms of nuclear attack in the past. I like to think that veterans of the Cold War, in our considered, existential youth, had better systems in place for warning and retaliation, and took the likelihood of that brief, bright flash with a stiff upper lip. We didn't have social media, cell phones, text alerts and Twitter. We merely had nightmares and radio.

Imagine it's 1974. You're listening to the radio or watching TV. Suddenly, the programming and station you were tuned to is cut-off, out of your control, by this audio message from the outer limits: "Good evening. This is WGU-20, a Defense Civil-Preparedness Agency station, serving the east central states with emergency information." What you would hear next is a sobering alert warning that doomsday is upon the land, a nuclear attack has been launched, followed by information specific to your region detailing evacuation routes and shelter locations. Once reception of that signal is triggered, your TV won't be returning to Kojak, already in progress, anymore.

The "DIDS," Decision Information Distribution System, was a planned network of ten longwave radio stations covering the continental US, (sorry, Hawaii,) activated on warning of a nuclear attack providing evacuation information and population control. The public normally cannot listen to the longwave radio band without specialized receivers, it's well below the AM broadcast band, that is, lower in frequency, but consumer radios and TV sets could be manufactured to have a built-in longwave receiver pre-tuned to WGU-20 (179kHz, AM) automatically activated by a control signal. In fact, some radios were built this way. As far as I know, none were ever triggered.

Why longwave? Transmissions made on these frequencies travel along the Earth for great distances. The signals provide blanket coverage. They do not tend to rise up and bounce off the ionosphere, leaving a "skip zone" of no-coverage below like short waves do. More importantly, the United States Defense Preparedness Agency, later becoming FEMA, chose longwave radio frequencies over others because they determined that in a nuclear war, those signals can still get through. All communications and broadcasts on other frequencies would likely be blanked-out by the thermonuclear blasts.

I'm pictured sitting at my Ham (Amateur Radio) station circa early seventies. The big grey steel box on the right is my receiver, a Hammarlund Super Pro (SP200LX) dating from several years prior to WWII. (I still have it -- built in NYC on West 33rd Street, one block from my longtime apartment.) I used that for short wave Morse code communications, but it also had longwave receiving capability. As soon as WGU-20 came on the air during that period, I heard it. Many Hams did. Radio-geek speculation about the purpose of the station ran rampant. I surmised it was a semi military emergency warning beacon which also gave weather reports. I used to blast it in the morning before school, waiting for some kind of emergency to occur. You can hear what it sounded like in the youtube clip linked below. Unfortunately, the video's sound is poor. WGU-20's transmitter was a technological breakthrough, the first all solid state 50 thousand watt design. It had a robust broadcast quality sound and my Super Pro receiver's powerful hi fidelity vacuum tube output lent authority to what amounted to a radio clock, ticking over, anticipating the final transmission ever.

WGU-20 went silent in the late seventies. Other stations in the DIDS network were never built. Ostensibly a budgetary consideration as the US already had EBS, now called the Emergency Alert System, piggybacking on existing broadcast radio and TV stations. In an actual nuclear attack the Emergency Alert System will fail once detonations begin because broadcast radio and TV signals are not operating on blast-immune longwave frequencies like WGU-20 was. Social media, cell phones, text alerts and Twitter will also fail. Then we will finally be rid of assholes checking their phones blocking access at the top of subway stairs.

Once it became known what the purpose of WGU-20 was, and therefore why it was situated at 179kHz in the longwave band, Hams thereafter referred to it as "The Last Radio Station." Its historic antenna and transmitter building were razed in 2011.

©2018

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio seeks to capitalize on rekindled fears of nuclear annihilation sweeping across Manhattan and wealthy enclaves throughout the boroughs. The spat between Great Leader Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump has unsettled an emerging power elite in NYC -- recently arrived, left of center, young, urban Democrats -- Millennials employed in the tech industry who rather despise the President but hold no grudge against the Little Fatty, so long as his missile fly-overs are limited to Japan and deplorable American Red States. De Blasio, always on the hunt for fodder to detract from Trump and the Republicans, misdirects attention from his poor performance in office like a political magician. The too tall political prestidigitator removes nagging issues from his governance before your eyes, then, POOF! Behold vacant storefronts, expansive homelessness and crumbling infrastructure, still there, only receding from his agenda, replaced by a mandate from the trembling new constituency in the city.

What really disturbs comfortable existence in bubble New York? Looking up from their apps the new-tech-toughs in Fone-City don't notice deeply troubling fails of society, economy and government. They fixate on historic fallout shelter signs posted during the Cold War, 1961. I'd bet 311 is inundated by calls from geeks complaining their nearby fallout shelter isn't stocked-up with fresh crackers, water and plastic pails for taking a dump. A spike in therapy and Xanax prescriptions ensue. Big pharma and big data really ARE in bed together! Viral reports say the signs will be removed. Hallelujah!

All the far flung press on the subject seems to have been written by the same Buzzfeed college intern, characterizing New York City's fallout shelter signs as "misleading." To whom? Seventeen year olds from out of town attending NYU? Millennials working at Google? Did they expect to take an Uber or Lyft to that pre-war brick building on the corner for solace and refuge?

What's a public servant with the stature of Bill De Blasio to do? Retro-chic anxiety demands attention-getting action. Good for PR! Get a Millennial to write it. Remove the "misleading" signs and let the endorphins flow!

As I write, the wife of Mayor De Blasio's personal advisor and public relations "guru," Jonathan Rosen -- the guy behind the curtain and I surmise responsible for hatching the "misleading" fallout shelter sign removal policy and all the "misleading" press about it -- has been promoted to Chief of Staff to the First Deputy Mayor. Debbie Rosen gets a big raise along with the new title. Congratulations. De Blasio dismissed conflict of interest concerns.

©2018

No police seen anywhere. Times Square, New Years Eve. Revelers hurl champagne and wine bottles as high into the air as they could swing them, unconcerned for the heads they will land on. A bottle crashes nearby, then a bloody scalp, frozen blood plus alcohol for antiseptic. You better squint into the Klieg lit glare above for early warning of incoming. No steel pens caging-in the horde. We bristle and squawk and pee. 

Sure, it was dangerous. Some poor souls left cars parked inside the party zone and soon enough their big Detroit iron got stomped flat. Coil-spring trampolines. Journalist Robert Lipsyte said, "Times Square is an oasis of celebration and a sewer of crime."

The ball drop was a relief. We survived another year in New York City.

I was in Times Square proper for just two New Years Eve celebrations, the one related above in the early 1980s, another toward the end of that decade. It was a period where NYC's murder rate was more than six times that of today; to say nothing of more commonplace crimes. Everybody got mugged. Rents were low. New York was interesting. 

The focal point of all the mayhem, that "ball" sliding down a flagpole, wasn't always the gaudy, high tech bling-bob it is today. I prefer the diminutive 80s aluminum version with a stem, the "little apple," stippled by hardware-store halogen floodlights and lowered by rope. Below it, the same structure supporting all of the high tech signage seen today, as well as the ball, is actually a building. 1475 Broadway, or One Times Square, stands, a triangle skyscraper -- once the second tallest building in New York -- cloaked by ads, one window wide at its apex pointing north into the heart of Times Square. As I write this it is completely vacant save for a Walgreens at the first floor.

I spent my other Times Square New Years Eve on the inside of that very building, near the top, overlooking the Great White Way, just below the little aluminum apple ball. Nirvana Club One was an Indian Restaurant, bar, disco and venue available for special events; a regular spot for Saturday Night Live after parties. You could still see out the windows at that time. During the Eve's celebration, I walked into the very narrow apex of the Times triangle, vodka martini in hand, and looked down at the congregation: Mayhem, debauchery, crime, consolation and hope. Quite a view.

©2017

Frosty the Snowman, was a jolly happy soul,
With a corn cob pipe and a button nose, and a tablet....

For this reason, when I go to a wine bar with colleagues, I usually order something I can pronounce, such as… merlot. However, I always want to try something new. One day at Shutters with Vin, I took the opportunity to order something with a long name, something I couldn't pronounce, because I knew Vin would help me. I showed Vin what I wanted from the wine menu. Vin taught me the pronunciation and encouraged me to order by myself. The bar-tender came. "Mon..te..pool..chi..Ah..no", I said, with a broken Italian. I was preparing to repeat a few times followed by pointing to it on the menu - that's usually the case, but not on that day. "Good choice" he said. He didn't even need to pause and think when he heard my words!

Soon he came back with glasses and poured the wine in front of me. It was the best wine I ever had! Since then, Montepulciano became my favorite.   

Vin and I went to Montepulciano, the actual wine making region in Italy. A “must-go” destination. Besides the stunningly beautiful orographic features and landscaping of Tuscany...it has my favorite wine! Our time there wasn't all wine cellars, fresh food and endless tastings, however. What else happened? A story for another time. 

©2017

Thirty Fourth Street is the demarcation line between Manhattan's Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen neighborhoods. I lived on the south side of West 34th, officially Chelsea. On the other side, almost directly across the street from my old place -- a different neighborhood, mind you -- stands an apartment building where Dee Dee Ramone once resided.
 
433 West 34th also housed a street level restaurant-bar called “Shutters,” the infamous spot where in 1986 fashion model Marla Hanson was attacked; her face carved hideously by two razor wielding assailants. She survived but needed 150 stitches to keep skin on bone. Scumbag landlord (and horrifically, makeup artist) Steve Roth hired the attackers because Hansen spurned his sexual advances. He didn’t like that. Roth stood outside Shutters watching his henchmen pare the skin from her cheekbones, to his satisfaction.

Strange. The doctor who sewed her up would some years later install a titanium pin in my hand after I broke it on a douche-bag's face during a street fight. I figured the doc might be gay because of what he said to me before surgery: He held my hand for a time, looked over my digits silently, intently, lovingly – perhaps to ease my fear and anxiety -- then locking his eyes onto mine, finally said, “long....” Now that’s Modern Medicine!

Shutters' sad association to the Hansen case faded, and so had its intact original decor. The spot remained a time capsule until closing circa 2010. A film location scout's dream: It had a raised dining area fenced-in by wrought iron railings featuring scrolls and rosettes, à la 1970. Imagine a cocktail lounge set behind big plate glass revealing unobstructed views of 34th Street's sidewalk hustle. If you happened to be dining solo, gazing out the window provided entertainment aplenty. Opposite the windows on the back wall stood a piano and sometimes a jazz combo.

The owner was an old gentleman who lived across the street in my building. Occasionally, from his ground floor apartment all the way down in Chelsea, he'd recognize me sitting in his restaurant at a window table, in the company of an attractive Asian woman. He'd graciously trek across the border up to Hell's Kitchen favoring Peipei and I with a few songs on the baby grand.

©2017

Ads for magical appliances promising relief from domestic toil are as old as advertising itself. Futuristic Handy Housewife Helpers “as seen on TV" for only $3.98, plus shipping and handling -- oooh, careful, better watch that handling charge, there is no greater American swindle. Aside from unscrupulous sales techniques, didn’t life just get sweet and easy? Historically we can thank print, radio and TV advertising for bringing so many hilarious, off-brand and questionable products to the fore in our psyche. Somehow the ad-men caught our eye or ear, and kitchen-life back in the day got as good as thug-life is today. Thanks, traditional media.

In contemporary kitchens, the blogosphere offers even greater freedom from the drudgery of dinner preparation. Not exactly an ad. Not exactly journalism. Well then, what is it? What's the product? We're selling a lifestyle, the 'teens version of the 1950s. Desi and Lucy turned around. Yet somehow the female lead still gets the funny line..."chicken towel," indeed!

In the end all the social ramifications of media in society boil down to one question: What makes the meatballs? A product never seen before in advertising, but now brought to you through the miracle of hilarious, off-brand and questionable blogging, we present to you ... me.

©2017

Right about now it's time for a wonderfully uncomfortable and sweet rendition by Korean gayageum zither-star, Luna Lee. Fake news sites report that The Great Leader just a tad north gets his YouTube VPN-piped direct into his chamber where Luna's channel logs the most late night sessions. The Cold War and its promise of mutually assured destruction never featured such sweet teddy bear cuddly cuteness, plus the anticipation of a tickle from those zitherfingers. Oh, Great Little Fatty, dream on. You ain't getting none of this in your lifetime.

©2017

Couriers on bicycles, “messengers,” sometimes go places off-limits to mere workaday citizens in suits. They meet people, mundane and exceptional, famous and infamous, in brief exchanges of package for signature, pickups and deliveries. Everyone knows about the messenger’s adrenaline-infused city sprint and flash, skinny tire en pointe traffic ballet. But when not on the road, the courier must negotiate different hazards.   

Manhattan, circa 2004 --
I got the call for a special run. It was a "Double Rush," meaning theoretically what you are carrying on your back goes direct from pickup to drop-off, nothing in between. Any other jobs in your bag are supposed to be sidelined. So the client gets practically beam-it-over service. Bicycle messengers like Rushes and love Double Rushes because they make more money.

This particular run came with unusual instructions. I was told to go to a corner, something like Grand and Centre. At that point I was to call a number and speak with "Elvis." Now, I'm a longtime fan of The King since well before the 1968 Comeback Special; but on that day, well into my mid-late forties, a grown-man daredevil-bicyclist literally risking life and limb in pre bike lane NYC to rush, for example, stiletto heeled slippers to glowing, nipply, ecstasy enhanced supermodels -- it wasn't until that day I found out that Elvis is an asshole. And probably a douche bag.

My dispatcher tipped me off -- this was a celebrity run, and I gave not one damn. I was very focused on messengering, and being a messenger and doing that seriously, because I didn't want to get busted up or killed, and I wanted to make money. I saw five messengers get or just got killed on the road. It's sobering. The last one I saw was on Park Ave South around 30th street. The guy was folded inside the front right wheel well of a bus. He looked like he was sleeping. I quit a few months after that; the joy of a speedy slalom, skirting moving obstacles never goes away, but the bullshit guaranteed to come when dealing with jerks, Elvis being the least of them, and the danger, made me see the end. God bless the messengers out there for twenty plus years.

Then there's "The Rule™." Before I get back to the story, let me explain The Rule. I discovered it. I coined the term after a year or two in the messenger game. My Rule™ postulates that on any day of bicycle messengering, the courier will encounter no less than three incidents of a deadly, random event. By deadly, I mean you can be killed. By random I mean you have no control and there is no possibility of taking control of the event in an attempt to alter the outcome. As skilled, professional and careful as you are, gifted with a sense of radar curving around that box truck or bus, this will happen three times every day. Guaranteed. At some point I discovered this phenomenon and began counting. That's one. Two. There's three...another reason why I eventually retired from messengering.

Anyway, I arrived at Grand and Centre and called "Elvis." He was a hipster dick. Like the hipster of today, Elvis feigned anger, was clearly not from New York and to compensate, spoke fast and unintelligibly like he was running away from his true accent. His accent being that of a stuttery weasel. Why was Elvis annoyed? I wasn't sufficiently clairvoyant to sense the actual building address from his massive brainwave. Then I persuaded him to tell me.

The next set of instructions told me to proceed to the address and call again. Fast-forward four seconds. I call again. I assume he was looking out of a window or security camera to see if I was hot enough to be granted entry. I was. He instructed me to buzz a particular apartment number. I hung up, chained my bike and walked over to the buzzer, which was completely messed up -- not one legible digit or character on it. Even the spray painted graffiti tags were obliterated and extra-indecipherable. I called Elvis back. He was beyond annoyed, pissed, so I responded in-kind and mashed the hell out of every button on the goddamned panel and literally broke a few. The door buzzed open.

I saw an elevator in the vestibule, but no call button. It must have been 100% keyed, I can't remember, but I couldn't get the elevator. I waited thinking maybe he was sending it down. Nope. That would take practical intelligence. Dreaded it, but I had no other option but to call The King again. He screamed distorted commands into my ear, his loud, crackly weasel-tone attaining zero intelligibility. But then...the elevator lurches downward, I get in and I'm already jonzin' to get back on the road. Stillness is anathema to messengers.

The elevator door opened directly into a loft apartment. A few steps forward and I'm in someone's kitchen. Nice place. A woman steps over to me holding a package, no sign of Elvis. I said the usual "Hi, Elite Courier, picking up." She had a very warm smile, looked Italian, asked if I wanted a drink, I said no. I exchanged my canary copy (receipt) for the package and she gave me a long, direct look, half opened her mouth as if to say something, but in that space of time I was already back-stepped into the elevator ready to roll. It was a weird, brief encounter wherein you know the person sees something in yourself, which can be uncomfortable. At the time I thought she merely saw another Italian American. Or maybe I resemble John Turturro a bit. Perhaps I looked good -- compared to Angry-Elvis. Who knows?

Her name is Sofia Coppola. Angry-Elvis? Quentin Tarantino, who played an Elvis impersonator once on the “Golden Girls” TV show. Both successful movie directors. Their relationship lasted two years. Coppola sold the loft in 2012 for 2.75 million. A Chinatown bargain!

Later in the week I regretted not initiating a conversation with Coppola. Hey, everyone needs a break in life, friends in high places, a leg up. Entrée. I never had the ability to capitalize on the rapid-fire mobile roulette of chance encounters that is bicycle messengering. You meet all sorts and sometimes they are movie directors. I should have said outright: “My severely ethnic, authentic faccia brutta is quality character-actor material. Put me in a film. I’d play perfectly at the Copa smoking in a shiny suit; or as the messenger delivering your Double Rush on a hot, gritty, New York day, in black and white.”

©2007

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