Category Archives: NYC

NYC, Tuneage

Unfortunate Juxtoposition Theatre Presents…

While stuck in traffic, “Accidents Will Happen” popped up on my iPod via shuffle. I’m sure I’ve heard this song several thousand times, but not in quite a while. By rule, I am never in a good mood in the morning, but this immediately brightened my commute.

I got that warm feeling you get when you listen to something again for the first time since forever, and you remember how great it is. I thought about how it is exactly the right length. How haunting the outro is. How fantastic the lyrics are; not as overtly clever as in some of Mr. Costello’s songs, but simple and subtle in the best possible way. Lines like It’s damage that we do and never know/It’s the words that we don’t say that scare me so.

And I thought about how there was a period when I listened to Armed Forces on a nigh-daily basis. When it was so much a part of my being that, like Jonathem Lethem once said about Talking Heads’ Fear of Music, “I might have wished to wear the album…in place of my head”. I thought about listening to the whole album start to finish, something I never do anymore with any album in this iPod age.

And as Elvis sang Accidents will happen…, an ambulance came screeching alongside my bus, sirens blaring, lights flashing. It hopped a curb in front of an auto parts store, then squeezed in between a phalanx of parked cars and a truck that completely ignored its pleas to get through.

Real accidents always overshadow metaphorical ones. I hit pause until the drama passed. But when I unpaused the song, it just didn’t feel the same. Sigh.

NYC

This Precinct Serves the Shame District

precinct.jpgNo one is happy at a police station. No one wants to be there, not even the cops. And all precinct headquarters (in NYC, anyway) were built at the height of the Stalinist Municipal Building movement, designed by the architecture firm of Doom & Hopelessness, making liberal use of cinder blocks, warped wood, and muffled screams.

To add to this aesthetic austerity, police stations make poor interior design decisions. Like painting dirty walls rather than cleaning them. Or leaving up a corkboard full of outdated, mimeographed notices. Or choosing cracked orange plastic chairs for the waiting area that must have been discarded from the saddest pizzeria ever.

My police station experiences have been maddening, but ultimately pain free. Then again, I’m a white male age 18 to 35, so police stations don’t evoke the fear in me that they do in some people. Yesterday, I went to the local precinct to pick up a stolen vehicle report I need for DMV/insurance purposes. I was reminded that it sucks getting your car stolen, then waiting an hour to pick up a report that takes five minutes to complete, but some things suck a lot more.

When I arrived, some kid was trying to clear up some hassle involving a vehicle-related summons/ticket. I couldn’t quite understand what was his deal was, but I got the impression that his dad was a cop–the other cops addressed him by his first name, and had no problem with him going behind The Big Desk to explain himself. I also got the impression that he was trying to take care of this matter ASAP and obviate a severe ass-whipping from said father.

After him, a young lady filed a complaint about some creep who’d been following her in his car. She knew the guy from the neighborhood, but didn’t really know him or talk to him ever. Didn’t sound like she’d been threatened per se, but she felt threatened and thought it could get worse from there.

This was about all I could hear (without trying) about this case, and pretty much all I wanted to hear.

I thought another man was next, a well-dressed Asian gentleman who looked to be in his 50s, but he said he was still waiting for his paperwork. So it was my turn. But when I entered the clerk area, he then came up to the little saloon door that separated it from the waiting room to inquire about his paperwork. There was a mirror directly across the room from him, and I could see his head barely stick over the top of the door, which made him look sad and ridiculous.

As soon as the clerk saw the man, she sighed. “I told you, I can’t take your report, you’re wasting your time!”

The man insisted, very calmly, “But the DA told me I had to come here…”

The clerk cut him off. “You can say that all night, but if you don’t got no paperwork from the DA, I can’t take your report.”

The man sat down, but returned five minutes later, looking like a scolded puppy in a gray suit. The clerk tried to deflect him again, and he was just as insistent in his stoic way.

I barely understood the gist of their back and forth. But apparently the man had been evicted, wrongly, in his opinion. So he needed some kind of report to take legal action, I think. But without some sort of paperwork from the DA who worked his case, he could not file that report. Or something. It was all very Kafka-esque and bureaucratic sounding.

The clerk had no intention of taking his report unless he returned with the proper paperwork. This hadn’t deterred the man for waiting for three hours (according to the clerk), until finally, during my visit to the clerk’s room, he was sufficiently convinced to go home and get the paperwork. Or come back the next day and try to wear down the clerk with zen fortitude.

So all things considered, I’m okay with waiting an hour for paperwork, then sitting through a clerk’s weird phone conversation with an unnamed relative. Anything to get out of there.

NYC

Things I Didn’t Know Until Last Night/This Morning

Did you know that if your car’s stolen, you have to call 911? My first impulse was to call the local precinct. As much as having your car stolen might be a lifestyle crisis and an emotional trauma, it doesn’t qualify as an emergency in my book. At least not on the level I associate with a 911 call. But the dispatcher told me to call 911, so I did as I was told.

Did you know that you can call up 911 and hear weird fax noises instead of a real person? I seriously doubt “911” is close to any kind of modem number, but that’s what I heard on my first try.

Did you know the 911 dispatcher will not ask you where your car was stolen from, but where you are? I guess that makes sense in a way, but I figured this piece of info was vital to the whole process.

Did you know that you could wait for 2+ hours for the police to arrive? After sitting by my front window for a small eternity, I actually called 911 again to check up on it (I called the local precinct first, but they didn’t pick up at all–a comforting thought). Even more amazing, when I called back, the dispatcher was apologetic. “I’m so sorry for any inconvenience”, she said, as if I’d been put on hold while trying to order a mattress.

Did you know that they’ll send two cops out in one large squad van? Seems like a waste of gas/space to me. You could’ve comfortably seated a softball team in this thing, but it was occupied by just two officers and their equipment bags.

Did you know that a nightstick sheathed in the straps of a NYPD duffel bag looks really frightening? Don’t ask me why.

Did you know that early-90s cars are in high demand at chop shops? Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine my 1990 Olds would be a target for theft. But the cops informed me that it “fits the profile” of cars swiped for parts these days. It makes sense, I suppose–a lot of those cars are still on the road, and in need of frequent repair. It was also in fairly good condition, both operation-wise and aesthetically–other than a mismatched replacement bumper, which, in my opinion, gave the car character. So in retrospect, even though I had no fear of my car ever being stolen,

Did you know that it’s a bad idea to park your car near a highway access road? Even one lined with houses? A thief can use said access road to get on the highway and be ten miles away before you blink. So even if it’s late on a Sunday night and you’re tired and there’s no other spaces near your house, don’t park there. This would’ve occurred to me–if it had also occurred to me that my car was enticing to thieves (see above).

Did you know the cops will drive you around to look for your car, assuming you just forgot where you parked it? Believe me, this was the first thought that crossed my mind. But I had very clear memories of parking the car where I did, because I seldom park that far from my house. I indulged the cops, because it couldn’t hurt to look around the neighborhood, but I had little hope of finding it. Based on my description, they pointed out every boat-sized car in a five-block radius, and I had to sadly inform them that none of these behemoths were my car.

Did you know there are Indian cops? I met one! I grew up in a Cop Town, and I see cops of every ethnic variety on the streets all the time, but this was the first cop of the Indian persuasion I’d met. Actually, I can’t definitively say he was Indian, but he did seem to hail from the Subcontinent. Then again, he could have also been from a Caribbean nation with a large Indian immigrant population (say, Trinidad). Then again, is any of this remarkable at all? What difference does it make where the man is from?

Did you know that I’m vaguely racist? At least I feel so after writing that last paragraph.

Did you know that staring at your vehicle/registration information on a laptop in a squad van feels upsetting and Big Brother-ish? I tried to look away as I waited for paperwork/procedure to be finished, but there was nothing else to look at, except for a space on the block where my car was supposed to be. I expected to see my name followed by the word DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD.

Did you know it costs an assload of money to ship a toddler’s car seat? Looks like I’ll be taking the bus back from Babys R Us some time this week. Sure looking forward to that.

Did you know that, the next morning on the bus, you’ll stare out the window constantly, as if you’re going to see your car sitting on the curb somewhere? And you’ll even take your keys with you so you can hop out and take it home where it belongs? Don’t bother, ’cause your car is down to the axles by now.

Did you know I got that car from my grandfather? And that I’d left a bunch of his stuff in there? A small rosary that hung from the gear shift. A pair of very large sunglasses. A small notepad where he wrote down the date and odometer reading every time he filled the gas tank. I didn’t want to disturb any of these items, because I always felt it wasn’t really my car; it was his and I was just borrowing it. If I had the slightest suspicion that it would be stolen someday, I definitely would have taken these things out.

Especially the notepad. It was such a classic Grampa thing. I can see him writing in it, on a million different trips we took, whether it was to Cooperstown or Niagara Falls or just into town to get pizza. He wouldn’t start the car again until he made his note.

Did you know that if his car was stolen, but I still had that notepad, I’d feel a lot better this morning?