Category: Lopsided Observations

Not all observations are worth noting.

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The Power Of You

Time Warner service window in East Rochester, New York
Time Warner service window in East Rochester, New York

We recently upped our Time Warner exposure by signing a contract for cable tv in addition to our internet access and digital phone. So this has been a new experience for us watching Breaking Bad in real time. But on Sunday night we sat down for episode three in the final season and we could not get our box to work. I tried unplugging it to reboot it and but it wouldn’t budge from the “b109” error message. I called TW and the message said the wait time was approximately forty-five minutes. I hung in there. The operator was not able to reboot through the cable either so she offered to set up a service call on Wednesday afternoon, three days away.

I had a sneaking suspicion that our cat had melted the circuitry. She is fifteen and looks for the warmest spot in the house to roost. So I took the box out to East Rochester and got in line with all the other hopelessly addicted users. The line grew out the door, literally, and just as it did one of the two clerks slid this big blue sign over her window and announced that she was gong to lunch. It was very theatrical.

I hung in there and when I got to the front of the line I found the clerk to be quite friendly and helpful, not at all what I expected. I came home, rebooted, watched a few rather unseemly messages, and then sat there with the sound off watching Manchester United play Chelsea to a 0-0 tie in their English Premier League game.

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The Lonely Goalkeeper

Adrianna Franch takes goal kick for Western New York Flash
Adrianna Franch takes goal kick for Western New York Flash

We got there about an hour before last night’s game, in time to stand behind the goal on the blacktop and watch the WNY Flash warm up. The person who was working the hardest by far was the goalie, Adrianna Franch. The goalkeepers’ coach, Scott Vallow (former Rhinos goalkeeper), took shots at Adrianna for twenty minutes and then the team took turns shooting at her. We watched Abby boot three shots over the goal and the fence. Carli Lloyd scored twice in a thrilling game, the last one coming in stoppage time well after the 90 minute mark. The Flash play Portland in the league finals next Saturday at 8pm.

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Ka Pow

Mural near El Camino in Rochester, New York
Mural near El Camino in Rochester, New York

We helped my dad clean out his gutters, patch a few holes in his roof and bring down a broken limb in a maple tree out in front of their house. I climbed a ladder with a running chain saw in order to accomplish that last one, something I would rather not do again. We finished around dinner time and my father suggested a few places we could go to eat. We chose Nick’s Sea Breeze Inn. It is one of our favorite places mostly because Nick is such a great host. He always greets my dad with a long Leeeeeeeooooooo.

Nick’s location is stellar, the end of a dead end road, in the summer that is when the bay bridge is closed, just down the road from the oldest miniature golf course in the county and right across the street from a hundred year old amusement park, the parking lot has a sensational view of the Lake Ontario. Inside Nick has decked the place out with a lifetime’s worth of memorabilia from the days when he managed a nightclub on the heavyweight circuit, Armstrong, Ellington and the great Scott LaFarro who was in Nick’s high school class.

Tonight the four of us went for the buffet dinner and we each filled our plates two times. The pea soup was thick, the salads and antipasto were delicious and the Eggplant Parmigiana was fantastic but this one mystery dish knocked us out. It was sweet and sour with celery and walnuts. Nick told us it was a Sicilian dish called “Caponata,” mainly eggplant with onion, celery, plum tomatoes, vinegar and sugar, pine nuts or walnuts, capers and olives with fresh parsley. He said it is often sold more finely chopped in small jars as a spread for toast or bread. I plan to do my own batch when our eggplant matures.

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A Perfect Loop

View of Kodak Hawk Eye and Driving Park Bridge from Genesee River bike path in Rochester, New York
View of Kodak Hawk Eye and Driving Park Bridge from Genesee River bike path in Rochester, New York

Pretty soon you will be able to follow the river on bike from its source in the hills of Pennsylvania northward to Lake Ontario. And when you reach Rochester you will be able to take your choice as to which side of the river you would like to travel on. The city keeps expanding its bike paths and we arranged a weekend tour for a most spectacular ride.

We started by putting our bikes in the car and driving to the zoo in Frederick Law Olmsted’s Seneca Park. We parked and rode out of the zoo entrance and across Saint Paul Boulevard to Collingwood where we found the newest section of the city’s ever expanding bike paths, “El Camino,” on a repurposed old rail bed. We rode north past the former Ridge Lumber (Home of Lanky Planky) and across 104 on a foot bridge with a graffiti carpet past the open air drug markets of Avenue D, C, B and A, stopping frequently to marvel at the new murals painted by the Wall Therapy Project on the backs of abandoned industrial buildings.

We lost the path north of Clifford Avenue and wound up on the Bausch Street Bridge where we crossed the river looking for the west side path to take us back to Seneca Park. Traveling north on Lake Avenue to Driving Park we spotted the illusive trail. Determined to find out where we went wrong we took the path back south down along the river where I took this shot. The big art Deco building is Kodak’s Hawk Eye plant where they made bomb sites for the military. My father worked here and was sworn to secrecy. I love the name of the bridge, “Driving Park!”

If we had gotten off El Camino when we got to Clifford we could have crossed Saint Paul and gotten on the northbound trail that crosses the river on an old RG&E power plant and then travels along the west side of the river gorge into Maplewood Park where you have the option to continue north to the lake or cross back over the river on a foot bridge that leads into Seneca Park and the zoo where our car was parked.

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It Doesn’t Matter

Cross as seen through construction peep hole in Chelsea, New York
Cross as seen through construction peep hole in Chelsea, New York

It never fails to happen. We’ll dart in and out of galleries in Chelsea just as most folks do, carrying on conversations while taking the art in, and the lines between the art, the people and the gallery setting all get blurred. Maybe it’s just the act of discerning the good from the bad that alters your perception skills but I always come back home with some pretty cool photos that I shot between galleries.

Back at Duane‘s in Brooklyn I insisted on listening to the entire “On The Beach.” Phrases connected to insidious melodies were lodged in my head and I thought I might be able to shake them by feeding my fix. The title song is killer but “Ambulance Blues” had its hooks in me big time. At first it was “Walk On” and then “Motion Pictures.” Back home it’s been the line, “It doesn’t matter,” from “For The Turnstiles” so I decided to fight fire with fire and buy a remastered digital copy from iTunes. I’ll report back.

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Green Berg

Green plants in neighbor's pond
Green plants in neighbor’s pond

We were meeting in the Refrigerator’s attic studio near East High to start work on a new print edition when Chuck Cuminale brought up a stack of Duplex Planet magazines, a model of sub culture fanzines if ever there was one. That was our introduction to David Greenberger’s world but our paths were destined to cross.

When Pete LaBonne sent us a copy of the compilation cd, “Meditation Garden“, that Sonic Trout released of his music we spotted David Greenberger’s name attached to the art credits. The font Margaret Explosion chose for our cd “Live Dive” came from the Buffalo type foundry, P 22, and turned out to be a font based on the handwriting of Ed Rogers, a self taught artist Greenberger discovered in the Duplex Nursing home. David was on a return trip from one of his projects in Wisconsin when his car broke down on the NYS Thruway and was towed to the repair shop next door to the Little Theater Cafe on a Wednesday night where Margaret Explosion were playing. He and his wife saw both sets and when David returned to pick up the car he stayed at our house. Plans were hatched to collaborate somehow.

Our friend’s and neighbor’s, Rick and Monica, hosted Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric at a house concert and then attended a house concert at Eric and Amy’s where they met David. Monica facilitated the collaboration by suggesting the combo to her employers at the MAG. A photo of David standing in our kitchen came up on our screensavor slideshow this weekend and a moment later David Greenberger called to hatch plans for a Fall performance.

“I feel strangely on.” That would be my favorite line from Noah Baumbach’s brilliant “Greenberg.” The guy lew it with Frances Ha but this one is right on in my little book. Ben Stiller, a New Yorker fresh from a stint in a mental institution, housesits at his brother’s place in Los Angeles, the perfect setting for this darkly funny love story. Here’s Roger Ebert’s take.

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D.P.W.

Conga players at the Rochester Public Market
Conga players at the Rochester Public Market

Couldn’t decide which picture from the Public Market to put up here – the live chickens or the conga players. We missed the Smokin’ Dopes somehow. I would have bought some of their cajun smoked salmon.

We were on pothole duty this morning. Most of the people on the street met at the corner at ten AM and we swept out 53 potholes that one of our neighbors (let’s call him the foreman) had identified. Then we dumped twelve bags of asphalt in the holes, tamped it down and sprinkled some stone grit on the spots so it wouldn’t stick to the bottom of car tires. We were done by eleven and it actually kind of fun. Nobody told us that we owned the road when we bought this place. It was only after we were moved in that someone someone told us it was a private road. Sounds kinda swanky but I have tar on my arms.

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Unquote

LPW Summer Jam on the street at Jazz Fest in Rochester, New York
LPW Summer Jam on the street at Jazz Fest in Rochester, New York

I’ve been reading “Picasso and Truth – From Cubism to Guernica” but mostly looking at the pictures. Author, T. J. Clark focuses on the art and stays away from the personality and that is as it should be but I get awfully bogged down in the artspeak.

I came awake thinking about a memorable quote that was actually never said by anyone. I must have dreamed it but I believed it as I regained my footing. I’ll put it in quotes but that doesn’t make it so. Picasso said, “If I could have painted one of my late (1970s) paintings when I first started out I would have stopped right there.”

It must have been the Breaking Bad episode we watched before turning in.

Jazz Fest Notes – Day 2

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Xerography

Midtown Tower from Xerox Headquarters in Rochester, New York
Midtown Tower from Xerox Headquarters in Rochester, New York

After twelve years it finally happened. Not one of the big-ticket, Eastman Theater acts booked at the Rochester International Jazz Fest has anything to do with jazz, unless you count David Sanborn. I am certainly no purist but I drift toward the off beat while the festival goes mainstream and there wasn’t much to choose from last night.

We started with the French trio, Thiefs, at the Xerox Auditorium. While waiting in line I took this photo of the about to be renovated Midtown Tower and I was thinking about the early eighties Personal Effects gigs in the ballroom that juts out of the fourteenth floor. A security guard interrupted my drift with a stern warning, “This is private property and no photography is allowed.”

The Theifs were pretty cool but not quite ready for prime time. The drummer and lead singer was shy of all things. The trio of sax, bass and drums all had effects pedals. The tenor player had more effects boxes than Bob Martin and sampled a few loops to add to the rhythm guitar sounds the drummer was getting from the box on his floor tom.

We ran into our jazz buddy, Hal, on the street. He had already walked out of Kat Edmundson (“the girl with the squeaky voice”) at the Little, the replacement act at Christ Church and Patricia Barber when the fire alarm went off at Max’s. We were sort of at a loss as of what to do. The yee haw Hackensaw Boys, Quincy Jones Presents: Nikki Yanofsky, the comedy Trondheim Jazz Orchestra? We opted for Dr. John in the street. I felt sorry for him banging out his gris gris stuff at another festival.

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Passion

I’ve been uploading photos for the last week and I could spend the rest of my life organizing them but I was anxious to check out this external embed flash code so I put my first “set” together and embedded it above. (Note: Flickr embed no longer works)These are all stills I took from the Passion of Saint Joan movie. I can’t remember if I stopped the dvd and shot them or did screen captures from YouTube. The movie is public domain and about a million times better than “Frances Ha” which we saw at the Little on a $5 Monday night. Our neighbor’s brother and wife contributed music and had a small part but what happened to that director? We really liked “The Squid & The Whale,” sort of liked “Margot at the Wedding” and hated this one.

And while I’m complaining, the new season of Breaking Bad, that is the newly released dvd season, Part One of the fifth and final season in the series, better turn around because the first six episodes are going downhill on the brilliant meter. I just know they’re setting me up though so I’m hanging in there.

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How To Hoe

Red Wing Blackbird on dead tree near the marsh
Red Wing Blackbird on dead tree near the marsh

When our former neighbor, Leo, reached his nineties he really started spacing out. He lost track of everything and was always ringing our bell to ask if we knew where his tools were. In his heyday he could fix anything and made a point to help someone everyday. Near the end he had a pile of uncompleted projects and he was buying tools that he already had because he couldn’t remember where he put the the ones he had. There was a note from him stuck to the window near our door one morning that read, “I need some common sense.”

We used to plant vegetables in his garden and it was a joy to garden with him. He taught us how to hoe. I never really understood that simple tool but in his hands it was an ingenious instrument for weeding. No bending over to pull tiny weeds or ones that had grown bigger than our new plants in a few days times. The how is angled just right so it cuts the weeds or at least uproots them while dragging a small amount of earth over the blade and leaving it essentially right where it was. I always pictured a hoe as simply a tool to pull earth along so you could plant seeds in a trough or something but Leo used to sharpen his hoe so it cut like a knife.

He had a few hoes, one was a favorite and it was small. He looked everywhere for that hoe and was so desperate to find it that he good naturedly accused us of taking it. “Are you sure you don’t have my small hoe?” I took him in to our garage to look around and I spent a few hours looking for that thing in his yard. I can’t be sure but I think it was right in his garage. When I showed it to him he said, That’s not the one.”

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Post No Bills

Post No Bills wall in Manhattan
Post No Bills wall in Manhattan

At dinner last night our nephew, Alex, made a joke about suicide and he motioned with his fingers across his wrist. Peggi and I pointed out that the proper direction is parallel with his wrist and later that night he reached into his sink and cut his wrist rather deeply on a broken wine glass. He spent the night in emergency. Meanwhile I reached into my bag at Duane’s and cut my thumb on a razor blade I had brought to shave with.

Duane suggested the Brian Eno installation on 32nd Street as our first stop of the day. We could have really settled in here on the cushy overstuffed sofas but it was just a little early to chill out. The show consisted of his ambient music, of course, and a symmetrical cluster of twelve monitors, three sets of four, each set a different size and each set showing the same slowly dissolving and appearing abstract imagery, hence “77 Million Paintings” title. We didn’t stay for them all, we had to meet Peggi’s sister in Chelsea.

The art galleries in Chelsea close for Memorial Day weekend and they will close again in August for summer vacation but some of the smaller galleries there were open for business. We found some interesting stuff and had a good time but dinner that night at NoMad was magic.

We swore we would never let that crazy, tension filled, last minute, dash for a train happen again but we pulled off a stunning repeat performance, running to the Fort Hamilton F stop in Brooklyn only to find people flooding out of the subway so we stood there for what seemed like forever. We got off at 34th Street and crammed on to a broken up escalator We were behind an Indian family with two small children who had to coaxed to move forward at every step. Up on the street we ran through the crowds in front of Macy’s and then down the steps in front of Madison Square Garden. I was thinking about the time Dave Mahoney and I hitchhiked down here to see Blind Faith at the old Madison Square Garden. We were the last ones on the train and they slammed the doors shut behind our lucky asses.

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What Time Is It?

Frederick Douglas Resource Center in Rochester, New York
Frederick Douglas Resource Center in Rochester, New York

We stopped in the Frederick Douglas Resource Center on King Street on Rochester’s west side for a Black Power art exhibit on Saturday night but it turns out it was more than an art opening. The admission was fifteen bucks and we only had about fifteen minutes so we said we’d stop back. I love the building and all that they have done to one of Rochester’s oldest neighborhoods. Madison Park is looking good with the statue of Susan B. and Frederick as a center piece. Our friend, Shirley Zimmer, lived on King Street many years and the neighborhood looks a lot better than it did when used to visit her. I hope it is not just an illusion. I think this is the same street dj, Roger McCall was killed on when someone held him up.

Speaking of hold ups. My nephew was walking only a few blocks from his home in Brighton on Rochester’s east side when some guys pulled up next to him and his friend and asked if they knew aha time it was. Our nephew’s friend reached into his pocket to pull out his iPhone and the guys in the car pulled out a gun. They rode off with the phone.

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Ready, Aim, Fire

Target on tree in Durand Eastman Park
Target on tree in Durand Eastman Park

We generally stay in the woods when we walk. There’s less chance of running into an off lease dog than there is in the park and it feels safer. Our neighbor stays on the streets even in the park but then she walks alone. She told us she often has Nick Cave on her iPod and that might get a little spooky in the woods.

We cut through the park the other day and came across this target nailed to a tree. It’s an official 25 foot Rapid Fire Pistol Target and it was peppered with small holes. I found a handful of silver BBs at the base of the tree. And here we were just stopping by to check on the progress of the Magnolias.

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MAG100

Georgia O'Keefe "Over Blue" pastel on paper 1918 Memorial Art Gallery
Georgia O’Keefe “Over Blue” pastel on paper 1918 Memorial Art Gallery

There is no better time to visit Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery than right now. They are celebrating their centennial and have brought out over two hundred works from storage, many works on paper that are too fragile to stay out in the open. My favorites were a woodcut and beautiful lithograph entitled “Mothers” from Kathe Kollwitz. a cool Roy Lichtenstein offset print, an Ed Ruscha drawing named after his girlfriend “Ultra” Violet, two really nice Motherwalls and a fantastic little caricature by Tiepolo. And there is is this showstopper, an almost one hudred year old pastel from Georgia O’Keefe.

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Beautiful Decay

Old Buffalo railroad stop
Old Buffalo railroad stop

Buffalo, like Detroit, knows how to decay. There are so many beautiful old buildings in downtown Buffalo it is sort of unfair to single out this image but there is no denying the city has seen better days. The restored buildings, like the beautiful art deco Hotel Lafayette, defiantly offer hope that the city may someday return to its glory days.

We were reminded that the restaurant we ate at on Chippewa was only blocks form the Continental, a club we played monthly gig at in the early eighties. Back then hookers walked the street and the club got so down the owner, Bud, had some German Shepards living in the building. One of the last times we played there he had someone shovel the shit off the stage with a snow shovel before we setup our equipment.

I’d like to link to the Bootlickers’ “Bus To Buffalo” but I couldn’t find it online.

Here’s Hi-Techs – Screamin’ You Head.
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Dialog With Nature

Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House in Buffalo, New York
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House in Buffalo, New York

Peggi has been quietly building DonHershey.com, a website devoted to the famed Rochester architect. Hershey was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright and they both had a profound reverence for nature. Hershey, we’re told would pull up to an empty lot, survey the lie of the land and start sketching the footprint of the house, determining which way to orient the rooms, the windows, the entrance in order to have the house be in close harmony with the land.

The Frank Lloyd Wright house in Rochester is occasionally open to the public but Buffalo’s Martin House is always ready for non-for-profit business so we booked an 11 AM tour on Saturday. In some cities your commute could be an hour, in Rochester you can be in another city in an hour. This place is much more than a house, it is an entire complex. There is a pavilion on site with a mini museum inside, and there is a beautiful gardener’s house on the property. Wright designed and built a stable and garage, a conservatory with an underground and above ground passageway to it. And there is an additional house on the property for the in-laws. It is undergoing renovation but all work is being done to spec and that’s what makes this tour so interesting. You really get a sense of the effort involved in creating this treasure.

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Those Were The Days

Marsh in March, Rochester, New York
Marsh in March, Rochester, New York

I set aside Georgia Durante‘s “The Company She Keeps” a few months back because her autobiography had left Rochester and settled in LA but as she found you can’t shake your ties to this town. Durante is a strong woman with an epic story. She ran with the top echelon of Rochester’s Cosa Nostra, well dressed thugs, while modeling for Fortune 500 companies. I can’t understand why Hollywood hasn’t run with her story.

She was born the same year as I was so when she names streets and restaurants and clubs her story is especially vivid. Wouldn’t you love to go back and stop in Skinny’s all night diner or the Living Room on Norton, The Blue Gardenia (now the Bingo joint on Empire Boulevard), The Fountain Blue, the 414 Club with the best bands in the city or the Overlook in Webster? On the night he died Sammy G barhopped from the Club Car to Club 747, the Encore Club and then Ben’s Cafe Society where he was blown up. I could’t remember where Ceasers II was so I emailed Georgia. She responded “Lyell and Dewey in a basement. Those were the days, weren’t they? :-)”

Nicholson Baker was still living in Rochester when he placed a few ads for his “U & I” book on the back page of the Refrigerator. His new book, “The Way The World Works,” is an exquisite collection of short pieces from the last fifteen years, a lot of them are set in Rochester. We went to the same Doctor’s office on Goodman Street. These vignettes are like getting high without the drugs. Here’s one.

“One summer I worked as a waiter in a fancy restaurant that had been owned by a reputed mobster. The mobster sold the restaurant to the head chef for a lot of money. But many of the people who’d gone to the restaurant had been friends and associates of the reputed mobster – when he stopped going, they stopped going. So business dropped, and I stood wearing a ruffle-fronted shirt with a black bow tie, looking out at empty tables. Once a waitress told the chef that a patron wanted a simple chicken sandwich. The chef whose specialty was veal dishes, was affronted. “Chicky salad?” he said. Tell him to bring his dick in here. I’ll make him some nice chicky salad.”

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