That’s not really his name, but i had a surprising and interesting
conversation with Ben at the Costco today. I was buying a pack of steaks,
some printer paper, and a hard drive when I took a big Tower Records bag
out of my backpack. I have that old bag in my closet, among other bags,
not so much as a relic from my days of working at the record store but
just because it’s a handsome and sturdy bag. Costco does not provide bags
for your purchases, so when I go there I bring whatever size bag I think
will suit the purchase I intend to make. Today I brought the old Tower
Records bag, with the red plastic handles, that icon of commerce once
known on these streets as the “Manhattan Suitcase.” I remember thinking as
I brought it out today that this thing must be a collector’s item by now.
So as I was about to purchase the steaks, the printer paper, and the hard
drive, one of the Costco associates spotted my bag and said “Wow, I
haven’t seen one of those in … years.” He said that he used to work at
Tower, and i told him I did, too, in 1991. It turned out he worked there
at that same time, for about 6 or 7 years, in the LP section at the
Lincoln Center 66th Street location. I could not remember him no matter
how hard I tried, but that didn’t surprise me, since there were several
departments with which I never interacted, and the daytime staff versus
the night staff was different, and they rarely interacted.
It was pretty surprising, though, to suddenly find myself remembering all
those faces and names, shooting names at him and him remembering every
one, and then some. He seemed to know a lot about everyone there,
including J., the girl I dated for 6 or 8 months while working there. He
does not know what happened to her, either, and she is the one whose fate
would most interest me, just out of morbid curiosity. Then he told me that
the place got robbed by a couple of disgruntled ex-employees, and that one
of the girls nearly got killed in the melee. I had never heard about that.
I asked him if it was in the papers. He said no, but when i got home I
found a story about it in the Times from 1995. Ben said that that incident
was the last straw for him, and that he had to move on from that place.
I said that yeah, I reached a point where I had to move on, too. He moved
on to Costco, I moved on to corporate. As I walked home I remarked to
myself that needless to say, when I worked at Tower I wasn’t buying steaks
like these. Barharhar…
After a suitable amount of gossip and memories we parted ways, but not
before he said “The Manhattan Suitcase!” I said “I was just about to say
that. Your read my mind!” Much laughter. The Tower bag turned out to be
quite the conversation piece. I bet if I walked around town with it more
often all kinds of Tower alumni would rise from the crowds of peoples.
…..
There is a hard drive shortage in the world today. Costco is only selling
2 at a time to customers, on account of the flooding in Thailand. I bought
one today, and one last week, as preliminary planning for the next phase
of redundancy. i seem to have forgotten that the RAID includes an
automated backup regimen for external drives, meaning i plug in a USB
drive and a backup of selected things automatically commences, and when it
decommences i would take said drive to remote storage. hah, remote, as in
1 mile away. very remote. i just get nervous sometimes when i imagine
losing those months and months worth of scanning. in the past i would try
to do this by dragging and dropping a terrabyte or 2 of stuff from one
drive to another, but that technique is not very robust. the backup
protocols seem more stable. if only i could run a remote storage facility
wirelessly, and without electricity. hooyeah, i am a visionary.
…..