My near-fantasy of having a blissful commute is shattered. My personal elevator (as I chosse to imagine it) is out of order and taped up with crime-scene looking adhesive strips. Maybe it will be fixed soon or maybe it will be permanent. I’ve seen it go both ways with MTA elevators. This will probably not wait because it is the only elevator on the platform, except that you can get another one that connects you to the E train, where I presume another elevator could get you to the street or Fulton Center.
I walked yesterday. It was epic. Almost 20,000 steps. To the Buccaneer Diner and back, with a perfectly palatable and expensive Jack Benny served at the counter. I’d always wanted to check the place out and I was finally galvanized into action after finding a years-ago article in The Guardian which mentioned that the Buccaneer DIner was a “payphone graveyard” or something similar. The story might have been from 10 years ago, making it almost impossible to expect that the place had let a battery of payphones molder away all that time. But even the remotest possibility was enough to get me to walk through the door, which is a minor phobia I have when entering a place I’ve never been inside of. I feel as if some force of rejection will paralyze me should I enter the place badly, or improperly. I imagine people talking one look at me and waving me away, telling me to leave.
Speaking of that, I stopped walking for a few minutes to play a video game. I was basking in the 75-degree October day when a shirtless man emerged from the house I was in front of and started calling out at me, or at least I think he was calling out for me, saying “Boss” and a few other words I don’t recall. I did not have glasses on but I recognize that New York City creature in any form. The city is filled with shirtless men sitting in their houses waiting for something to happen outside so they can engage in conversation or diatribe or give orders and make demands. The sidewalk is public space but howeowners are responsible for thier upkeep, and in this case it appeared the man thought me standing there was jeopardizing the good standing (so to speak) of the surface. He wanted to shoo me away, and I pretended to notice him but not to hear whatever he was saying. I put the glasses back and skedaddled, his voice fading as he continued barking out comments comprised of some indecipherable words.
A similar encounter occurred later, post-Buccaneer, on Astoria Boulevard. I noticed a shopt aht sold cheap shit, and stopped to consider entering but I could not find the door. In my brief search for the entry to this place of business I unwittingly looked in the direction of a disturbed individual sitting on a chair nearby, screaming angrified obscenities upon my arrival and blasting into high-volume invective overdrive when he suspected or surmised that I had cast my glance at him. He only just happened to be in my line of sight as I scoped out the invisible front door to the cheap shit shop. But that sparked his rage and as I walked off his voice seemed to grow louder, causing me to briefly fear he would follow me to my next destination, which was the piano graveyard at 73rd Street. He may have followed after me for a bit but after a block of walking his voice, which continued unabated in its foggy, groggy ranting, started to fade. I imagine he still sits or stands there today, outside the cheap shit shop, angry ad infinitum at the perception that I glanced his way and paid no respect.
But the walk was good. The pianos continue to molder away and get tossed around by unruly youths, or so I choose to imagine. I don’t condone or endorse the act but disposing of pianos this way makes sense for a restaurant or venue or whoever has been dumping pianos at this location for over 2 years. City sanitation will not pick them up and hiring junk removal is not cheap, probably at cost in excess of the value of the pianos. So City Sanitation officially does not pick up objects of this size but they end up doing it anyway.