i wandered part of the lower east side today, just wandering about on a beautiful day. starting at grand central/42nd street and landing at avenue A/st. mark’s place before heading back up via the m103 bus on 3rd Avenue.
walking up 1st Avenue in the 40s and 30s and 20s i couldn’t help feeling like i had never walked on this street before. and i was like, what the fuck, it’s 1st Avenue, not exactly a remote or random byway. but i don’t remember ever seeing Bellevue or the other hospitals along that street, hospitals i have heard of but fortunately never had reason to enter.
my father used to call the hospital the “shpital”, pronounced “shpeetul”. he also called ketchup “kellups”. i wonder if thosee were original unique words?
i knew a guy once (i sorta still know him) who said he was out drinking one night, swears he didn’t drink anything but beer, but for some reason he freaked out, passed out, and 4 hours later he woke up face down on the FDR, cars and trucks racing past, skillfully avoiding his seemingly dead body on the highway. the police picked him up and threw him into a paddy wagon, then took him to Bellevue, where he woke up the next day. he said that the cops told him the only reason they didn’t throw him away into jail was because he had a drivers license on him. without proper identification he’d have woken up in the Tombs.
that’s what i thought of while passing Bellevue today..
i also thought of a girl who wasted my time and energies like it was her mission, 13 or 14 years ago. a scientist girl moving from seattle to here for a job at one of the labs near 1st avenue and 20-something street. we were like the bestest most beastliest of friends on line but as she got closer to moving to NYC she started ignoring me, pretending she didn’t know me, and now she’s lived in New York for all these years and we’ve never met, and as of about 12 years ago i hope we never do.
…..
i decided to check out a speakeasy type of place called Please Don’t Tell. i heard it was a “phone booth bar” which one enters by stepping into a hot dog place, then stepping into a phone booth at the back of the hot dog place, picking up the phone, and thus being allowed entry into the bar. but i was there around 3pm, and the bar didn’t open until 6pm, and i hate hipster bullshit, and even if it was opened i didn’t want to enter a strange bar with a phat DSLR, so i just stood in front of the place for a few seconds, got irritated, and moved on.
…..
violins.