Category Archives: slice of NYC life

Seven Miles from home, New York City Style

We spent a lovely day yesterday visiting friends 41 miles (according to the trip odometer) north of here.  The ride back was quick and uneventful, until, 7 or 8 miles from home, the hungry cat waiting for his hours’ overdue dinner, the snappy 82 mile roundtrip turned into an exercise in something else.

Brake lights, as far as the eye could see, with the lights of the bridge tolls in sight. Construction on the bridge, why not do it at 10:00 on a Saturday night?   This is NY, the attitude is “fuck ’em,” and so they did.

We might have known about it in time to take another route (although a sign on the highway had warned us of construction and delays on the alternate Whitestone), but the device that runs the app that warns us of traffic nightmares was out of power, no car charger with us.  As we sat in the mass of idling cars the other navigational device kept cheerfully chirping out its instructions, in an Australian accent.  “Continue straight, to toll, then enter Throgs Neck Bridge,” he said again, as Sekhnet struggled to figure out how to mute him.  At 10:17, when we stopped, we were 0.4 miles from the toll.  The traffic report on the radio was spectacularly short on specifics as we sat among the gas breathing cars.

By 10:30 we’d inched about 0.1 a mile.  Announcing this annoyed Sekhnet, who said nothing at first, but snarled when I made the same announcement at 10:40– ten minutes, another 0.1 of a mile.  A quick calculation revealed that we were not actually stopped, but traveling at a peppy one mile an hour.  We’d be through the toll by 11:00 at that rate, I thought conservatively.  But the estimate turned out to have been optimistic, as the several right lanes unaccountably continued moving and merging in front of our stalled lane (the two right lanes on the bridge were closed, we were in the lane that was open– go figure).  We didn’t pass through the tolls until 11:30.  It took about ninety minutes, with five or six lanes merging to two, and then one, before we reached the point on the bridge where the lanes reopened and traffic spread out and resumed at 55 mph.  

Less than ten minutes later we were home, the cat eating with great gusto as each of us hurried off to a bathroom.

 

 

Animation by several creative adults

Animation created by several inventive women in four July 2014 sessions at the Creative Center, NYC.  Beautiful stuff.

with thanks to Django Reinhardt (1910-1953) (I’ll See You In My Dreams, Low Cotton– with Barney Bigard on clarinet) and Paul Greenstein (glistening glissentar on my track “Now Before I Go”)  Although this not for profit use is “fair use” I should get permissions from whoever currently owns the rights to Django’s genius…

On the Q46

Girl gets on the Q-46 bus
all teeth, yelling excitedly
into her pink cell phone
just loud jabbering to me
annoying shouted banalities
to the Spanish-speaking woman across the way
forced to take in every too loud word.

We’d exchanged annoyed looks
without moving our mouths
the girl is way in the back, mind you,
making a racket like a crazed bird or small primate

Finally the woman near me
calls back
“please lower your voice”
and the girl dials it from ten to eight.

Thankfully, she got off the bus
two stops later,
the bus moved quietly
toward the subway
as we unbent our brows.

At that point nobody was upset any more
that the air-conditioning wasn’t working
and the windows didn’t open.

rewrite one: Verizon

From a business point of view, Verizon’s policy of retaining customers by keeping them in the dark while not providing service makes good sense. The more judgmental might call their corporate policy of deliberate disinformation “fraud”. You be the judge.

Phone and internet service go out in early May. The technician who arrives on May 9 informs me that the problem is in a main cable, effecting many customers in the area. A May 10 robocall (text below) informs me that this could take two weeks to fix. What the pleasant recording didn’t say is that it could also take more than ten weeks, or six months.

Calls to Verizon are answered by a recording that informs you, in late May, in June, in July, that a service call for your number is scheduled for May 9 and that if you’d like to change it, press a number. When you eventually reach a human to inquire about when service is going to be restored, they tell you that they have to contact technical services and that technical services will call back the following day. Technical services never calls back. Nor do any of the supervisors who promise to find out why it’s been five, seven and nine weeks with no service.

The only communications from Verizon are the monthly bills, including late charges for nonpayment of no service. A supervisor tells me the bills must be paid and that Verizon will reimburse customers for the months of no service. She also admits that the time to lay new cables could be between three and six months.

I eventually call to cancel the service and have the account zeroed out. I get into a conversation with a sympathetic employee named Mrs. Moore, who expresses her concern as a Verizon consumer and tells me she’d like to get me an answer about when service will be restored. She asks me to hold while she contacts the technical department. I tell her it’s pointless, but I hold a moment and she returns, promises that a supervisor from the technical department will call the following day. She also tells me she’ll call back to verify that they called, and find out what they told me.

“Mrs. Moore, I’m sure you will understand my skepticism. I don’t expect a call from any supervisor. Verizon, by hiding information this way, even from its employees, is committing fraud to try to retain customers. Understandable behavior from a corporation, but despicable. I’ll give them and you 24 hours to tell me the true story, but I’m not expecting it. So cancel my account at the end of business tomorrow.” We’d discussed the usefulness in emergency of a copper wire phone line. The possibility that they were repairing these antiquated lines was the only reason not to close and then reopen an account, with associated fees and a new phone number.

She promises to do this, and assures me she’ll call me to follow up. Surprisingly, she actually does, leaving a voicemail the following day at 4, one a few days later, and then the following Saturday she invites me to call the 800 number if I want to close my account at Verizon.

Have a very nice day.

text of Verizon’s 5/10 robocall:

“… caused by a cable failure, and cable failures take time to repair…. hello, this is Verizon. We apologize for the disruption in your service and we are working diligently to restore it as soon as possible. Unfortunately, your service disruption was caused by a cable failure and cable failures take time to repair. As a result, we are targeting to restore your service in approximately two weeks. We would like to offer you a Verizon voice temporary solution device while we repair your service. The device utilizes wireless technology and is provided at no cost to you, so long as you return it to us after we restore your service If you are interested in our voice temporary solution device, please contact us at 855-287-8238 Thank you for your continued patience and for choosing Verizon, goodbye.”

This device is essentially a second cell phone and provides no internet service, it turns out.

Certain Things Actually Should Be Easy

(see note at the bottom)

“You write so easily,” she told me, “and this situation is so outrageous, and so right for an exposé on NY1, which is owned by Time Warner, Verizon’s competitor.  Write a paragraph and send it to them, would you?”

From a business point of view Verizon’s policy of retaining customers by keeping them in the dark while screwing them makes good sense.  Some might call their corporate policy of deliberate disinformation “fraud”, though that sounds so judgmental.  You be the judge.

Phone and internet service go out in early May. The technician who arrives on May 9 informs me that the problem is in a main cable, affecting many customers in the area. A May 10 robocall says “… caused by a cable failure, and cable failures take time to repair…. hello, this is Verizon. We apologize for the disruption in your service and we are working diligently to restore it as soon as possible. Unfortunately, your service disruption was caused by a cable failure and cable failures take time to repair. As a result, we are targeting to restore your service in approximately two weeks. We would like to offer you a Verizon voice temporary solution device while we repair your service. The device utilizes wireless technology and is provided at no cost to you, so long as you return it to us after we restore your service If you are interested in our voice temporary solution device, please contact us at 855-287-8238 Thank you for your continued patience and for choosing Verizon, goodbye.”

This device is essentially a second cell phone and provides no internet service, it turns out. Calls to Verizon are answered by a robot who informs you, in late May, in June, in July, that a service call for your number is scheduled for May 9 and that if you’d like to change it, press a number. When you eventually reach a human to inquire about when service is going to be restored, they tell you that they have to contact technical services and that technical services will call back the following day. Technical services never calls back. Nor do any of the supervisors who promise to find out why it’s been five, seven and nine weeks with no service.

The only communications from Verizon are the monthly bills, including late charges for nonpayment of no service. A supervisor tells me the bills must be paid and that Verizon will reimburse customers for the months of no service.  She also admits that the time to lay new cables could be between three and six more months.

I eventually call to cancel the service and have the account zeroed out. I get into a conversation with a sympathetic employee named Mrs. Moore, who expresses her concern as a Verizon consumer and tells me she’d like to get me an answer about when service will be restored.  She asks me to hold while she contacts the technical department.  I tell her it’s pointless, but I give her five minutes.  Two minutes later she apologizes for keeping me waiting and promises that a supervisor from the technical department will call the following day.  She also tells me she’ll call back to verify that they called, and find out what they told me.

“Mrs. Moore, I’m sure you will understand my skepticism.  I don’t expect a call from any supervisor.  Verizon, by hiding information this way, even from its employees, is committing fraud to try to retain customers. Understandable behavior from a corporation, but despicable.  I’ll give them and you 24 hours to tell me the true story, but I’m not expecting it.  So cancel my account at the end of business tomorrow.”  We’d discussed the usefulness in emergency of a copper wire phone line.  The possibility that they were repairing these antiquated lines was the only reason not to close and then reopen an account, with associated fees and a new phone number.

She promises to do this, and assures me she’ll call me to follow up. She actually does, leaving a voicemail the following day at 4:00, one a few days later, and then the following Saturday she invites me to call the 800 number if I want to close my account at Verizon.

Have a very nice day.

NOTE (many months later):  My bill eventually reached almost $300 for many months with no service at all from Verizon.  I eventually reached a woman there who got it.  My bill was eventually zeroed out and, in the end, I received a check for $14, a credit of some kind.  Sometimes the underdog gets thrown a bone, even in today’s corporatocracy, if the underdog is relentless and proactive enough.  So do not despair.

Gratefulness out of the blue

On the way downtown, to do the animation workshop with a small group of women fighting chronic diseases:

Bellowing, barking, enraged
man paces short track on empty
uptown A platform
screaming and kicking

on the way down
I had to squeeze past
an oblivious young couple
blocking the stairs
with ten feet clear on either side
“excuse me,” I mumbled
not pausing as I passed
“YOU SHOULD SAY ‘EXCUSE ME”!”
the bellicose voice shouted after me
“I did,” I said
a moment before arriving
on the platform to see my train’s
tail lights
disappear into the tunnel

sat and struck up a tune
on the ukulele
man next to me, as soon as I paused,
went into a lusty falsetto improvisation
in another key entirely,
if any.

Zipped the uke back into its bag,
watched the screaming man
across the tracks
bark and dance to the duet
he was performing
with the falsetto singer.

Mercifully,
this super cool train
arrived within a moment
and I am grateful
for that
impersonal mercy.

Then, downtown, moments after my volunteer assistant cancelled at the last possible minute, and it seemed there would be only four of us (two more of the original 8 showed up late), to my great surprise, the five women made like a bunch of kids, working together and coming up with some very cool animation.  You can see it here (you might need dropbox to see it.  I’ll post it elsewhere soon):

adults playing like kids

 

Enraged customer at the car wash

The weather service had been calling for severe thunderstorms the other day, but as the sky was clear when I set out, and my errand not long, I didn’t go back for rain gear, which in retrospect was a mistake.

The walk home from the store was about 3/4 of a mile and as I hit the bridge on Broadway I saw that I was walking into a dark vault.  The sky ahead was dark grey as far as I could see downtown. The entire sky, in every direction ahead of me, looked threatening as a tumor.  There were virtually no places to seek shelter between where I was and my apartment, about fifteen minutes away by foot.  When I got across the bridge, the first large drops fell.  Within a block it began coming down with intent to drench.  I made a dash and took refuge in the store attached to the car wash, the only place within several blocks to duck into. I found shelter a moment before the deluge began.

The rain came down like it was looking to flood the earth.   Within minutes there was a deep lake in the street in front of the car wash.   Cars passing through it sent plumes of water up over the sidewalk.   I moved further into the store eventually taking a stool in the back, and I watched the rain, figuring it probably couldn’t rain that hard for much longer.  It did, though.

Eventually another guy who’d taken refuge there took the stool next to mine.  A moment later we exchanged pleasantries about the weather.  He was a sympathetic looking man, slight and brown, looking something like Gandhi, but from the Dominican Republic, he said, his English almost completely unaccented.  I’d have guessed his background was Indian, actually.

I told him this kind of summer shower usually doesn’t last very long.  I recounted how I’d once been soaked in a very quick summer downpour in NYC making a sprint to beat the rain.  I’d been on a bike and when I reached 8th Avenue and 47th Street the skies opened up. Instead of finding cover, I rode like mad and arrived at 47th and 9th Avenue, one block away, drenched, socks and shoes and everything in my pockets soaked, dripping wet.  When I entered the place I was going, water running off me, people looked at me in disbelief.  I looked behind me to discover the sun was shining brightly, the street hardly even looked wet.  I’d learned from that summer shower to duck under something and wait out these flash rains.

But this one continued full-bore for over an hour, and my neighbor and I passed the time in a most pleasant and far-ranging chat while the thunder thundered and the buckets of dirty water fell.   At one point an irate customer barged into the store where we were sitting and began screaming at the girl behind the counter. “IT’S NOT FAIR!!!” he screamed several times, snarling and glaring angrily between screams.   He was at a loss to make the unfairness of it clear.  He turned to scream at one of the African car wash attendants “IT’S NOT FAIR!!!”.  As he stormed out to where he car was he shouted it to everyone a couple of times.   

Evidently some terribly aggravating thing was being done to him, it was unjust, they’d lied to him and then screwed him and it wasn’t fair.   That much seemed clear.   But the ferocity of his screaming really was kind of amazing.   It was also, I realized, the self-lacerating bellow of helplessness– they are screwing me and there’s nothing I can fucking DO ABOUT IT!

My neighbor and I paused, exchanged philosophical looks, and I said they’d probably promised to do something like change his oil, but had run out of oil filters, and they’d kept him waiting over an hour to give him the disappointing news.   He agreed it must have been something like that.   As the enraged man passed us on the way to his car, still screaming, I said quietly I hoped he wasn’t going to get a gun.   It was the kind of blind rage that, silly as the immediate cause for it might have seemed, if he’d been holding a gun he probably would have used it to try to discharge some rage.

My neighbor opened his eyes a little wider, and said he doubted the guy was going for a gun.  I agreed that he was probably right.   As it turns out, he was correct and nobody was hurt, except for the man who had been screaming.   We chatted for another twenty minutes or so, as the storm continued to rage all around, until one of the workers told us apologetically that it was time to go, they were closing the store.   We thanked them for their hospitality, shook hands, introduced ourselves by name for the first time, and headed off in opposite directions to get soaked.

It rained hard for my entire walk home.   Luckily I’d thought to take a plastic bag to wrap my electronics in, because I and my groceries got drenched.   My phone, wallet and iPod did not get wet.   It poured and thundered for a couple of hours, and it was a cold rain.   Actually felt a little good to be wet and shivering on a brutally humid day that had recently been about 85 degrees.   Once I showered and wrung out my clothes I felt refreshed.

I don’t think anything felt very good that day to the man who’d been treated so unfairly by those otherwise decent folks at the car wash.

Thoughts on the uptown A

Gratefulness –
most valuable
where it seems
least possible.
 
The simple math-
addition of all the 
justifcations needed
to explain an otherwise
inexplicable life,
a life as malaise,
misdirection,
drinking invisible Kool-Aid
feeling wise and profound
while others bucked
seeming desperate–
when the ledger is tallied
I would be a fool 
to regret
a single wrong turn
 
clutching to myself
unimpeachable good character
even if
at the moment
gratefulness is not something
I can wrap myself in.

A Deadpan Judge

I had a certain reputation, I suppose, that persists to this day, as a man with a conscience who would occasionally work for free.  This judge, who had seen me in action working in this capacity, had his friendly court attorney call and pitch me an easy pro bono case.  Would I mind if she sent me the file?  It would be a one appearance case, and the judge would consider it a great favor if I would consider it, and he would accommodate my schedule.   This judge was better than most.  We put the case on for a day when I was going to be in Brooklyn anyway and I appeared and met the tenant.

The tenant, who the law did not consider a tenant, was distraught, a man about my age, a combat veteran and a shell of the self he once imagined he might become.  He was about to be evicted from his home, the law on the case was open and shut.  It was not that he was behind in the rent, he’d been paying it all along, since he’d given up his apartment and moved in to take care of his aging mother almost two years earlier.  The judge’s hands were tied.   The story was rather simple and unfortunate for him, under the New York City Rent Stabilization Law.

If the tenant had been living with his mother for at least two years prior to her death, or probably also prior to a disability that necessitated admission to a nursing home, he would have had a clear legal right to succeed to the lease his mother had with the landlord, under the same terms.  This is called the Right of Succession.   He had given up his place and moved into his mother’s apartment to take care of her as her health deteriorated.  As her dementia increased he was forced to bathe her, feed her, carry her to and from the toilet, change her diapers and calm her when she got upset.  After about a year and a half he could no longer provide all the care she needed and had her admitted to the dementia ward in a public hospital not far from her apartment.  The poor person’s version of a nursing home.  

“I need you to visit the tenant, his mother, and come back and report to the Court if there is any chance of her moving back into the apartment to live with her son again,” I think is the mission I was given by the judge.  The judge was grasping at the last straw to keep this unemployed veteran from becoming homeless because he’d done the right thing for his mother, even if for a few months less than the law required him to do it in situ in the subject premises, her rent stabilized apartment.  

The hospital was a fifteen minute walk from the court house.  It was spring time, I remember pastel buds on the trees and a carpet of green buds on the shady Brooklyn sidewalks.  Birds and squirrels probably went about their business on this mild and sunny day, but I didn’t notice.  The man and I spoke as we walked the tree lined streets to the hospital.  The conversation was somber as I explained the legal situation and he told me more about his life and limited options.

We walked for what seemed like miles inside the hospital building.  The building was like something out of the Ottoman Empire, could have been hundreds of years old, with ringing corridors and a labyrinth-like structure inside.  We came at last to the ward where his mother was housed, a ward he visited every day.  The nurses greeted him by name, and he smiled back at them.  We entered a tidy room that smelled of urine and disinfectant.  He approached an old, smooth-faced woman in a wheelchair, pulled a chair next to her and leaned in to put his arm around her.  Her expression barely changed as he stroked her back and called her “mommy” and kissed her.  She seemed to like this, even as it was clear she had no idea who he was.  He began to cry quietly as he held her, tears running down his face.  There was no point asking her any questions, I’d arrived too late for that.  I probably spoke to the head nurse to confirm the medical situation that was plain enough for a child to see.   I said goodbye to the man, who remained with his mother, and walked back to the courthouse alone.

I got back to the court room shortly before the lunch break.  As I walked in the judge nodded, raised his eyebrows and motioned for me to come forward.  As I did I said “Judge, if I had a heart that could still be broken, it would be in fifty pieces right now.”  

He looked at me with sympathy and said “I have no doubt of that, counselor, but I also have no idea what you’re referring to.”  He had about fifty other cases before him that day and the details of the one I was there on were not something he could call to mind instantly.  I refreshed his recollection and he sighed.  We both knew I’d have to surrender the apartment now, and arrangements were made, either that day or on a day a week or two later, with the landlord, a very sympathetic man who owned a small building, and his attorney, who was also pleasant and respectful.  I don’t recall the details now, the son probably got a couple of weeks to move out.  It must have been on a subsequent court appearance, because I’m quite sure he thanked me and we shook hands.

The Customer is alw…, well, can sometimes be… uh, can I get back to you?

 

 

Image

 

“How can I help you?”

“Well, first, I’d like to access the remaining 5.5 ethics credits I bought from you two years ago,” I say.

“OK, so how many do you need for this cycle?” he asks, drawing his calculator close to figure his commission.

“Before we get to that, I’d like to access the 5.5 credits I already purchased from you.  It says in the email you sent me just now ‘Credits Never Expire!’ and I haven’t been allowed to access the remainder of the 12 ethics credits I bought from you.”

“Well, that actually means per two year cycle, but I can see how you could read it that way.”

“It’s not possible to read ‘Credits Never Expire!’  any other way, it’s kind of unambiguous,” I say to my Dedicated CLE Manager.

“Well, in the future it will be specified more clearly what is meant, they’re going to make that more clear…”

“‘Credits Never Expire!’ with an exclamation point and the word ‘never’ in bold, they’re going to explain what that actually means?” I clarify, bitchily, “if I log on and am informed that the remaining credits I purchased, the ones that never expire, are not available to me, you would have to call that false advertising, wouldn’t you?”

At this point he realizes he’s talking to some disgruntled smart ass lawyer who will insist on the supposed plain meaning of the advertising claim that appears, in this guy’s stilted reading, not to be true.  False advertising is such a harsh thing to accuse somebody of.   Untruthful, or inartfully drafted advertising is not lying, per se, or if it is, why is that my problem?  I don’t write the copy.  I only get paid when I sell these credits to these lawyers forced to take these courses every two years.  What’s he going to argue about next?  Riveting Course Content!? These wildly entertaining lectures on the mechanics of legal work are not riveting enough for him?  Give me a fucking break.

“Let me get back to you,” he says.  “Give me five minutes to get this straightened out.”  I know I should have better things to do, and many larger fish to fry at the moment, as another CLE speaker drones on in another window on this computer I’m pecking at, but I can’t help but notice that promise was made more than twenty-five minutes ago and the clock is creeping toward 5 pm on a Friday.  I wonder idly what it is that he is straightening out.

“So strict!” they are thinking, “you are so STRICT!!!  You really should get a life and be happier, it’s not possible to be healthy being so strict!”

I call back, am asked my name, when I give my name I’m told my Dedicated CLE Manager is assisting another customer and this friendly fellow walks me through the log-in and assures me that my 5.5 credits have been restored.  I can’t see them until I try to use them, he tells me, but my account at least is not showing up the way it did when last I checked.  Thanks all around and I get on to other things.  A moment later the phone rings.  My Dedicated CLE Manager, apparently having asked his colleague “did the asshole sound mad?”   He got the all clear, we had a pleasant 20 second chat, told each other to take care and on with the rest of today’s fun already in progress.

“So strict!” they are thinking, “you are so STRICT!!!  You really should get a life and be happier, it’s not possible to be healthy being so strict!”