…sipping ghetto coffee. Just had a slimy burger at a Brazilian place. Freakin’ nasty.
Yesterday I toured the Links again. They are exactly on my way to and from the 181. I discovered that some people camp out at these things, listening to music and surfing the web for hours. One guy outside the post office at 54th Street made something of a nuisance of himself, blasting loud music and dancing to the beat of the tunes coming from the Link. Another guy wore headphones but appeared to be listening to music, too, for at least 40 minutes. Just standing there on a public street. When these things start showing up in residential neighborhoods their use as a boombox will be quite the nuisance.
Watching these guys intently focused on whatever they were doing with these devices reminded me of the first year or so I lived in NYC, and I had no piano. Lack of a piano sounds like a bad arrangement for someone who moved here to become, among other things, a professional pianist. But it was fine. I had the Yamaha Showroom on 57th Street, next to Carnegie Hall. Yamaha was always at the head of the pack when it came to manufacturing digital pianos, even as early as the 1990s. They had all kinds of acoustic and digital pianos set up for anyone to come in and play for as long as they wanted. Complete with headphones, so I wouldn’t bother anybody with my “damn bangin'”, as my dad used to describe my piano playing.
I don’t know how many hours I spent at that showroom but they were many. It is, now that I remember it again, just about the happiest memory of my early NYC experience.
The showroom closed long ago. I think it was briefly replaced with a smaller boutique Yamaha piano shop. I can’t place in my frame of reference what is there now.
These folks glued to the Links seem to inhabit the space on Thiurd Avenue in a similar spirit. Maybe they are Luddites with no home Internet access. Maybe the guy blasting the music so loudly was actually the performer in those recordings, or the composer, and he is simply sharing his music, or looking for reactions from passers-by. There was something fundamentally touching about seeing them there, but it could get ugly when people start complaining about loiterers, and when the unsavory elements that stereotypically used to gather around payphones move to these devices, which offer considerably more distraction than a mere telephone.
I saw a 1941 movie last week. I wasn’t really paying attention but I noticed a payphone scene. It was “Flying ild” with the East Side Kids. One of them needs to make a phone call, and everybody gathers around the payphone and listens to his side of the conversation. Somehow, with Links, it feels like we’ve regressed to that sort of scenario.
