The Forlorn Elephant of Broadway

My tragic looking new friend standing watch outside of a shabby little midtown shop.

There is a small diagonal stretch of Broadway in Manhattan between Koreatown and the Flatiron which is home to a street bazaar of peculiar wholesale establishments. Most contain bins full of unnecessary plastic knick-knacks that can only be purchased in minimum quantities of one hundred. The adjacent Fifth and Sixth Avenues are a tourist wonderland full of souvenir shops, hot dog stands and a legion of salesmen offering  "lowest price" guarantees to get to the top of the Empire State Building. This little stretch of road, however; is strictly for folks in the business of doing business.

Sometimes unsuspecting tourists will wander in to one of these shops and bring a single item to the salesperson only to be directed to read the "Wholesale Only" signs hanging rather unnoticeably in yellowed plastic coverings above the door. Some will try to plead their cases to uninterested store clerks for several minutes before giving up and continuing on their way without their coveted treasures. This anomalous zone feels like a relic of dead epoch that will surely be discovered by savvy real estate developers before the decade is over. Until then, the streets are still buzzing with merchants chattering away in a melange of Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, North-African French and a peppering of languages my dull American ears are not yet tuned to pick out.

Recently I've been enjoying the summer weather and taking long walks during my lunch breaks. This helps restore remnants of sanity that my day job holds captive during business hours. I usually buy something along the way, and eat on a bench in Madison Square Park under the shade of stately old trees that have seen many generations of the midtown workforce before me enjoy a moment of daily respite, just as I do now. I like to sit and enjoy an over-priced sandwich while watching the traffic dance around the delicate intersection below the Flatiron, and enjoy being un-tethered from my desk for a few short minutes.

By the time I've finished, and I'm compelled to return, I say hello to Seward's statue perched above the flower beds, and pay my respects to General Worth resting beneath his forgotten obelisk before continuing back up Broadway. Each time I navigate my way through the narrow traffic crossings and construction zones that define this part of town, I try to keep my eye out for details that stand out among the swirling crowds going about their weekday business.

Recently I came across a rather worn out looking figure of a baby elephant made of papier-mâché chained outside of a chintzy looking shop that sells plastic costume jewelry. The poor little character looks as if he's seen a heavy share of life's injustices. He once had a dark vinyl skin which has peeled away around his face and trunk, revealing untreated wounds. Innumerable seasons of hot and cold have made their mark in the materials exposed. One of his font legs was broken and crudely taped back together causing him to lean unevenly on the gum-speckled pavement. Children with ice cream stained fingers assault him with regularity. Tourists use his back as a resting spot for their bags as they rummage to recover misplaced guidebooks and cigarettes. Mostly, he is overlooked.

In my sentimental mind, this little elephant represents so many of the pieces of old New York that have been cast aside and allowed to crumble, even though I know that I am probably over-reaching a bit. I don't know the real history of this object or how it came to be placed outside of a shop in this odd section of the city. I don't know how it received its many scars, but I do know that it has become an enchanting detail that I look forward to seeing. There is something behind the layers of decay that conveys a simple and sweet sentiment given freely to anyone who stops long enough to notice. Part of me wants to rescue the little elephant and take him home to be repaired, but there is something more genuine and powerful about his presence on the street. Who knew that bits of paper and glue molded into an animal would provoke such a reaction in me. Perhaps he has that effect on others as well. I hope so.

Womanizers on a train...

Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn: a really great way to make Southerners become awkward and defensive...

After the Civil War, I believe a council of boastful Yankees must have been formed solely for the purpose of erecting grandiose monuments in New York City intended to make all Southerners angry. There are 39 such monuments maintained by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation alone, and scads of others littering public spaces in every corner of town. Now that most of the world has moved on, the responsibility of dwelling in the past over the "War of Northern Aggression" rests heavily on the shoulders of red faced tourists and/or involuntary transplants from below the Mason-Dixon line.

One night this week, I found myself in Brooklyn at Grand Army Plaza, which features an abundance of fierce looking bronze figures perched upon a fantastic triumphal arch and verses etched into the stone immortalizing Northern victory. As I am not Southern, and I am a sucker for gaudy remembrances of historical events, I enjoy going there. For Yankees, I believe these places provided a sense of camaraderie at one point, making everyone feel like they were a member of a winning team. Being a winner is only shiny and new for so long, but as the convictions of our drawling neighbors from the lower latitudes seem to suggest, being a loser is difficult baggage to be rid of. If ever I am feeling like I'm fighting a losing battle, I can find one of these numerous Civil War shrines dotting the landscape of the city and remember that no matter how bad things may seem, at least I don't live in the South.

After the novelty of borrowing the essence of proud Northern victory became more than I could handle, I decided to get on the number 2 train and take the long ride from central Brooklyn back to Uptown Manhattan. It was night time, which meant the trains were running very infrequently and making every local stop, so I found a seat on a bench and began to pull out a book when a pair of rather peculiar men appeared on the platform, making me forget all about my anthology of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The pair was comprised of two very charismatic, although scrappy, Latin men who appeared to have been pulled directly from a New Yorker Magazine cartoon sketch. The younger of the men was tall and lean with very sharp features, deep set eyes and a neatly kept pony tail. The other man was at least a generation older and seemed to be a walking public service warning for what happens to a person after too much sex, drugs and rock & roll during a prolonged bohemian adolescence. His glazed eyes, framed by abundantly overgrown brows, seemed to have almost an innate mechanical ability to detect, with laser precision, any woman within a mile radius. After taking inventory of the platform, the old hippie in his orange caftan approached me on my bench.

"Do you speak Spanish?" a mumbly surly voice asked me. "Oh, not very well," I responded, sensing his disappointment. He then beckoned his younger friend over, who obviously hadn't found any women attractive enough to devote any attention to, and the three of us began a very cordial little dialogue, in English (much to everyone's dismay). I found out the the older man was called Alfredo, and he was from Ecuador, but born in Argentina (for some reason he seemed very proud of this and repeated it several times). He was a photographer (of female nudes, no doubt), and had lived all over the world. He reminded me of an artistic, darker-featured version of Ozzie Osbourne with his slurred speech and rapidly decaying mind. He seemed completely full of shit, but he was friendly and I had nothing better to do than indulge him. The younger man was called Erwin and was from Mexico City. Apparently he was a sculptor of endangered animals, and also a photographer. He lived somewhere on 23rd Street in Chelsea, and thought it was peculiar that being an artist myself, I'd live all the way up on 123rd Street (I'm still not quite sure why).  Every time a woman would walk on to the train platform, they would both stop in mid-sentence to make an assessment, and then come back to the conversation.

By the time the train came into the station, we had become casual buddies and all decided to sit together in the same car, talking more about art and Alfredo's many travels. The conversation circulated to the subject of living in New York, and both Alfredo and Erwin told me about how much they enjoyed the many different types of women in the city. "White ladies, Latin ladies, Black ladies, Asian ladies, and not bad ones, really..." Apparently, the variety of women is much broader in New York than most other large cities in the world, according to these two men, who had obviously been around. When they began to ask me my thoughts on the topic, I quickly changed the subject...

Everything went well for two or three stops, and then finally a small group of attractive young girls, no more than 20 years old, entered the car next to us. I could see the two begin to salivate with a more than healthy appetite over the "cuisine" just one car over. Alfredo's speech became choppy and short, gazing longingly at the bottled blonde hair and cheap perfume that could be detected through the glass. It was clear that our lively conversation that was engaging enough just minutes before had lost all of its luster. As the train lurched to a stop in the next station, without skipping a beat, in mid-sentence both of the men bolted out of our car and entered the next. For the next 6 or 7 stops, I watched the unsuccessful attempts of Alfredo flirting with girls old enough to be his children, while his suave and younger side-kick obviously triumphed. Although I could not hear the high frequency giggles from these hollow headed girls, their stupidity was as buoyant as a beach ball on the Hudson and permeated through the cars. Eventually the girls reached their stop, and I saw the two men move on to fresh prey.

For the next 20 minutes, I sat digesting the experience while the train slowly made its way to my destination. I laughed a bit, glad to have met these rather comical men, but I also envied their ability to easily talk to strangers and have no shame in flirting, even against the odds. Being neither old, nor a product of one too many bad acid trips, nor a Southerner in a land of Yankees made the dreaded walk up my 5 flights of stairs to my apartment all come into perspective...