Waiting. (The Grey Line Journals)

It's another steamer today. A not-unbearably-hot-but-the-humidity-makes-it-all-the-worse one. Here in TS, it helps the smell of streetmeats, cigarettes, car fumes, and the unimaginable amounts of trash that this one district produces cling to your uncreative, over-worn and generally unpleasant work clothes. (White Polo shirt and dark cargo shorts. I have about three sets.) And I was late for my tour.

So, instead of taking the extended Waldorf Downtown Tour, called so because the point of it is to pick up the early risers at the Waldorf Astoria before the full DT loop. It's late in the summer, they're looking for people to screw up to thin the ranks for the fall, and I can't afford to not get a full-time fall schedule. (Called a "bid") So, I'm out to the one block that we refer to as Times Square, at least when it comes to reporting to a bus. It's Broadway between 48th & 49th, in front of a Starbucks and a designer sunglasses and perfume store. They're all air conditioned.

But as you can imagine, with handfuls of Guides, Drivers, and Dispatchers all hanging around the same block, day in and out, the idea that we could just "wait inside till our bus comes" is utterly preposterous to the owners and operators of said shops. Well, we get away with Starbucks pretty often, but that's because we tend to patronize it with business much moreso than the other two. Blocking the door is also a big no-no, but on steamers like today, many try to gather close enough to soak in as much cool as we can when someone walks in or out.

There's an average of five of us here at a time, and I've been waiting an hour. See, those on a bid, (and there on time) get priority, and if they're lucky, get on their bus within 20 minutes of when they're supposed to. Extras and lates can stand there for over an hour. I'm talking with an old-timer, not to say that's he's particularly old, but he's been here a few years, so got seniority when it came to choosing bids. Youthful energy, very animated. Probably a great guide. (That's the most description I'll give here. I'd like to keep most of my characters anonimous) Like most smart Grey Line vets, he chose an Extra bid. As long as he shows up, he gets paid. Which means on busy days, he could do 3, 4, sometimes even a murderous 5 runs. Slow days, he could just sit in the back of the theater all day long.

"I gotta tell you, I love this job." He says, as we've both been waiting nearly an hour as Bid Guide after Bid Guide go on buses, filling up 3/4 full with late-summer tourists maybe one every fifteen minutes. "I sit around twelve hours and do one two hour service order, and by the end of the week, I'm collecting overtime. And oh my God, this two hour service order was a group of European and South American Au Pairs!" Here we go. Tour Guide Bragadoccio.

"I chat them up, and then this one girl from Brazil, but said it like: 'Brathil' as if what she was really saying was. 'I want to. . ." I'll leave the rest to imagination. Told me they were all staying at the 63rd st. Y. I glanced at my watch and wondered how much more time I would be standing or sitting around waiting to get on a bus.

The conversation shifted to Grey Line Gossip, and the latest outrage by the company. The big buzz recently was that a Guide had just been fired for moving a bus. A young guide, friend of mine actually, 25, Latin American, charming, smart. Well, if he was so smart, what the hell was he doing getting behind the wheel of a bus? The Guides' gut reaction to the news was outrage at the company. "Should've just suspended him!" or "It was only ten feet!" Mack stared at us, sweat beads accumulated on his large round forehead doing all he could to keep his lips tight.

Mack is the head dispatcher at TS. Hefty Guy, bald and black, with a goatee, glasses and a postive disposition. He's friendly and professional, even on steamers like today when he doesn't have the fortune to go back to the AC'd bullpen & theater. Even the top of the bus is better than here. The air is moving, you get some respits from Urbanity when passing by Grenwich Village or Central Park, not to mention a seat. Mack is standing on that curb every day, radio and clipboard, managing the chaos day in and out, hours at a time.

All the Guides eventually shut up and listened to what Mack had to say on the issue:

"If I was here when ----------- was driving that bus, I would have removed him myself and handed him to the cops! He did not have a CDL (commercial drivers license) he had tourists on the bus, and it doesn't matter if it was ten feet, or a joyride down to Florida, if he had hit someone? That'd be it. Done." The guides sat back, swallowing their brash opinions, not realizing that it had happened in TS, surrounded by tourists, dispatchers, guides, and quite possibly the company owners & managers who like to check up on us this time of year.

"Well, I think he was showing initiative. What if that bus needed to be moved?" the Bilingual Bragadoccio asked before Mack stared him down into the pavement.

"How long you been working Grey Line?" He asked

"Since. . . '98."

"And have you ever, in that entire time NEEDed to move a bus?" Point and match.

The Guides scattered a bit, adjusting their bags and glancing around the all-too-familiar scene, The garish neon to our Right, (facing the buses, of course,) the Crowne Plaza to our left, and across the street from the enormous brown hotel, the construction site for a rising set of steel and concrete floors and a billboard in front advertising "Luxury Condominiums, coming soon!"

And with nothing much to say, we fall back on one of the quite overused conversation starters of the area.

"Can you believe this thing? Who the hell would want to live right here?"

Brooktopia: A native reflects Pt. 2- Biking to Bay Ridge

"Yeah. This definetely qualifies as 'way-the-Christ-out-in-Bay-Ridge." My brother Matt says to me as we convene on 68th st. ad Fort Hamilton Pkwy, using his prefered replacement of explatives.

There was this event posted in Nonsense, which is the first and foremost of a collection of 'net athourities for underground and unconventional events in New York City, the kind that don't exactly fit into a Time Out NY category, nor would attract the TONY crowd. Things like subway parties, head-phone dance parties, pirate parades, condiment wars, and so forth. This one caught our eye: Futurist Vegan Dinner-Party. And it's way the Christ out in Bay Ridge.

How'd that happen? Nonsense is occassionally Manhattan, but mostly Williamsburg, sometimes Greenpoint, DUMBO, or LIC, (particularly in the Queens pioneering art-house The Flux Factory) but with the occassional mass bike ride to/from Coney Island, there's never anything down here, and especially ot out in The Belly.

It was o some obscurely named street which tend to pop up and unexpected intervals, breakig up the monotony of consistently numbered streets and avenues, and Matt knew it was around the 60's and late teens. Ovington's the name, and as we found out, it comes in two flavors: Ave and Court. It also disappears for a little while and then reappears after the Gowaus Canal. I know it sounds horrible, but we were able to gague the neighborhood borders through a little racial profiling.

Heading West from Flatbush it was easy: First came the Pakistanis along Coney Island Avenue, complete with kebab shops and Baliwood video stores. after Ditmas ave became 18th, I was booking through Borough Park. Suits and Hats, one and all. Swirls of Payes flowing from the front of all the mens and boys ears. They relief themselves from summer heat by shaving the tops of their heads instead. Almost as if preparing the young ones for male patter baldness sure to come later in life.

Out of Borough Park, into Sunset Park, Brooklyn's own personal Chinatown, except the elevation is lower and the real estate wider, like everything has been squished down and stretched out. buildings, of course, but it feels like streets as well. The sky's much wider here, and it doesn't feel like everyone and everything is reaching toward it. Lotsa double-parking and big fruit and vegitable stands. Oh, and Mexicans.

And soon, Bay Ridge came. Ah, the Italians. Muscle T's over Biceps so big that the arms dangled a good four inches removed from the torso at the elbow-line. Hair greased down and slicked with a fine-toothed comb. Hey, cliches are cliches for a reason. And that damn Ovington wouldn't sit still. It kept shifting with the grid plan that looked like a toothline maintained by a Civil War era orthodontist. I had to stop to ask for directions twice now, and by this point I found myself envisioning a big art-infused courtyard party with a wide table full of delicious animal-product free food, music, varied forms of lighting and various homages to the machine-sex-and-death obsessed Italian futurists. A striking blow to the North-Brooklyn centrists to prove that all the other 'hoods down here got something to prove to!

It was a stupid presumption. The party ended up being a dozen vegans sitting around an apartment with no furniture eating peanut butter-banana-raisin&nut concoctions before the main course of plain rice and vegitables. We discussed the futurists briefly between courses before my brother and I gave each other a nod that it was time to go. There was a long bike-ride home ahead of us.

No offense to all the vegans out there, but I've rarely been to a vegan-hosted party that wasn't mellow and dull.

Maybe it was because it was way the Christ out in Bay Ridge that did it.

The Worst Sound (by Mark Levy)

It was the worst sound I ever heard. Whatever the sound of a large muscular bicyclist who was really booking down the Manhattan slope of the Brooklyn Bridge slamming into a middle aged female tourist is, that was the sound. I warned em!! I told em loud and clear like I always do when I do my Brooklyn Bridge/South Street Stories tour.

‘ATTENTION!!. . . . . ATTENTION!! The Left Side is the Bike Lane!! The Right Side is the Pedestrian Side!!! Stay Out of the Bike Lane!! Stay out of the Bike Lane!! Of course, enraptured by the stunning views of the East River first south to Governor’s Island South Street Seaport and Brooklyn Heights, and then north to the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, they often wander into the Bike Lane.

I didn’t see it, I saw the cyclist and he was moving fast and it happened behind me as I heard him shout, and than that terrible sound and, when I turned, an even worst sight. The tourist lying on the concrete walkway and she was not moving at all.

The cyclist who had slammed into the tourist and vaulted 15 feet past her crumpled body got to her first; I was next and her stunned husband next. Two better citizen bicyclists also stopped at it seemed that all of us were calling 911 at once. Once female bicyclist, possibly a heath professional (heading to Beekman?) took charge as the tourist groggily tried to stand up. A cop on a motor scooter was on the scene next. She was convinced to remain prone and wait for EMS. About 10 minutes later they huffed up the walkway, checked her vital signs and trundled her away in their ambulance. I later found out that she was not seriously injured.

The Lesson? Each and every time you lead a tour on the Brooklyn Bridge, always, always say

‘ATTENTION!!. . . . . ATTENTION!! The Left Side is the Bike Lane!! The Right Side is the Pedestrian Side!!! Stay Out of the Bike Lane!! Stay out of the Bike Lane!!

In your case, as in this case, it may not work, but at least ya give ‘em a fighting chance, not to mention easing your mind if the word “liability” crops up.

Brooktopia: A native's reflections (Pt. 1)

It’s sometimes hard to believe that this place is Brooklyn. Either Brooklyn you look at, there’s the “old” Brooklyn, known for it’s tough-and-rumble Irish, Italian, and Puerto Rican hoods, it’s stretched out vowels and softened th’s like a guy woikin’ at de docks. The Brooklyn of stoops, the Brooklyn of fire escape summers.
Then there’s the new Brooklyn. Hair salons replacing the last of the red-stripe pole barbers, of Yoga studios with pastel-bright signs out front. The Brownstones of Park Slope and the Warehouse art studios of Greenpoint, evocative of a SoHo movement 30’s years before. The Brooklyn of performance art houses, referred to sometimes (with more tongue in cheek then the back room an Eight-grade graduation dance) as Off-off-off-Broadway.
“The kids these days, all the kids come to Brooklyn!” That’s what I tell my tourists while forcing myself through the same rehearsed jokes and stories leading the bland masses of the world around Manhattan on a double-decker bus. The bohemian movement, it just kept heading further East. Chased by rents rising against them like a tidal wave, washing them from Grenwhich Village through the East Village, to the Lower East Side, it eventually had to wash them right over the river, and the steel piers and wooden walkways of the Williamsburg Bridge were all to inviting.
I keep referring myself to the old Tom Wolfe quote: Oly the dead know Brooklyn. Cause it’d take a guy a lifetime just to get around the fuckin’ place. But then, I guess nobody told that to all the bicyclists with the heavy-duty hardware chains wrapped around waist, huffing away down Flatbush avenue, feeling like they were just dropped headfirst into a gladiatorial death race, or gunning across easily navigable streets of Fifth Avenue. See, this is the Brooklyn of newbies. transplants, pilgrims. It’s the second question. Hey, what’s your name? Mhmm. Where’re you from? And when I tell folks I was born and raised here, I have to whether the raised eyebrow, and reconfirmation: Really? You’re a native?
Of course, I don’t smack of Old Brooklyn. No blunt accent, no curt and direct blue-collar-charm often accompanied by a snug fit T-shirt and heavy handed gesturing. Even the Jewish stereotypes to go hand in hand with the heritage don’t fit to suit. Well, maybe a little. As these letters hit the screen, I’m sitting on a wide wooden porch with a collection of trees and shrubs around me, in the uncharted strip of wild-life that connects my front and backyard. I look around and see three-story homes of triangular roofing and driveway space to stretch. The families come in every shade and structure the planet Earth has to offer. It’s my own personal Brooktopia, a subway-access countryside, with bodega-access a block and a half in any direction. Whenever I take a look at the chubby, pear-shaped map and pinpoint my home of 23 years, I can’t help but feel that we’re the Solar Plexus of this Boro, just a stone’s through away from the Life-pumping Prospect Heart. So why do I so often feel like an outsider? Safely buffered on any direction from the Brooklyn that the Times, Time Out, The L Magazine and a hundred-thousand zines and free-press keep ranting and raving about?
I accuse Park geography. Draw a line West from Park Circle, and one NorthEast from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and you get the dividing line, even the subway system seems to discourage the networking of North and South Brooklyn, needing to bypass through THE ISLAND just to get from one to the other, unless you’re willing to dare the Prospect Park Shuttle-shuffle. And the G train was conspicuously excluded from the great Atlantic/Pacific subway gathering, though it’s station just a few blocks away. Robert Moses’ unearthing of neighborhoods, welcoming in noise and exhaust fumes galore didn’t help either. I keep wondering what would have become of this mighty land if the great tri-boro Authority had been a cycling enthusiast.

The Night Loop: Storytime (The Grey Line Journals)

I don’t really like doing Night Loops. Wait, no. I don’t really like the idea of doing Night Loops. The office is closed, so I can’t drop my Tourbox(*1) in my locker and change my clothes. I have to wait around forever to be called, and the only thing worse than Times Square in the day, is dealing with it at night, when I’d rather be at a complacent.org party, or a Lost City dance party in LIC(*2) . But the Night Tour itself is not itself unpleasant. One of the most important and unique aspects of the Night Tour, is that it’s not hop-on/hop-off. There are two pick up spots and TS(*3) and the Empire State. After that, they’re all mine, until one at Macy’s and then unload back at TS. It’s story-hour.
The nighttime offers two wonderful opportunities. First of all, are the city lights, A grand view of the Chrysler and of course the ESB shortly after. On top of that, the night tours, more often than not, have fewer or no youths to accommodate language and content for. Which means I don’t need to tip-toe around the somewhat phallic subtext of the race for the tallest building in New York. I give ‘em the familiar razzle-dazzel for Manhattan, and the comes the fun part: Over the Manhattan bridge. Hey, first time I gave a tour over the bridge, I was speechless.
Of course, there’s also the dual Borough effect to consider. By the time we’re over the bridge, the crowd has gotten to know me a little bit, and I can start sharing my pride and history in the borough of my birth, upbringing, and current residence. A little bit of early Dutch history kicks it off, the Fulton landing view of The Brooklyn Bridge is perfect for The Tale of Two Roeblings, and I give ‘em the tragic tale of the lost Dodgers, complete with a tear wiped away and a “burn in hell!” at the mention of the name Walter O’Maley.
Then it’s along Columbia avenue, beneath the BQE for a bland stretch of fifteen minutes or so. The whole point of this is for a glimpse of State of Liberty, which is difficult to see at best, and half the drivers won’t even pause for it, but boy, how those tourists scramble for thirty seconds for a picture. By the time we reach the next turn we’re at. Columbia & the very end of Atlantic ave. Warehouses & not much else. Well, there a’int a whole lot to point out until we reach Brooklyn Heights so from there on out, it’s Story Time. Sure, New York’s the city of 8 million stories, but Brooklyn is where I’m writing my own chapter.
Whether it’s the Hipster fests of Williamsburg, or the warehouse punk-haven of Fort Greene, what makes my night tour different then the “and on your left” monotony, because I share all of the exciting things there are to do in Brooklyn with those who (at least vicariously) want to feel like they’re taking part in a real New York City scene.
My last night tour was right after the Brooklyn Bike Bash, where hundreds of DIY bicyclists (DIY: Do it yourself.) who designed their own unique and wild-style bicycles including Tall-Bikes. A tall bike is actually 2-3 bike frames welded one atop the other, making the rider sit at nearly eight feet off the ground. And the most exciting event at the Brooklyn Bike Bash is of course: The Tall-Bike Joust! Tall bicyclists charge each other with PVC tubes with boxing gloves duct taped to the end.
I can’t tell you how many dropped jaws I got for that one.
There was also the Silent Night Disco which is a disco with a DJ digitally transmitting the music into headphones. A whole room full of people dancing to music that only they could hear. And they thought those things only happened in mini-disc commercials.
At first they give me a look that they don’t believe me, but they soon come to accept that these stories are a little bit too weird not to be true. And by the end of the trip, they know a little bit more about what life in Brooklyn is like for most of the young people who have taken the risk to move out to this magically transforming borough.
And then, when I clock out, around 9 or 10 pm, there’s a whole night ahead of me to collect a few more Brooklyn night-life stories to lock and load for my next Night Loop.

*1 Tourbox- Every Grey Line Guide needs one. The tourbox itself often doubles as the tip box. Mine is decorated with pictures of the city, one of CB's, one of the Statue, and one of myself, surrounded by sights of the city. Every guide's Tourbox should have: microphone, hole-puncher, pens, ID card and Tour Guide License.
*2- Long Island City
*3- Times Square

Bustop Yoga and Creole Pete (The Grey Line Journals)

The seats are perfect height.

I throw my leg up on the backrest for some outer hip extensions and hamstring stretches, with upper body twists and spine extensions for each of them. I'd complete the set with a downward dog and cobra pose, but I don't want my shirt, nor any other part of me other than the bottom of my shoes to ever touch the floor of the top level of a double-decker bus. Man, I feel good. It's even more fun when the bus is moving, it gives the balance element a whole new factor, and it tends to give the midtown hotties and cheerful Mexican construction workers a smile.

On nice days like today, you can even close your eyes and pretend you're drifting down a river standing poised and focussed on a gently gliding raft. The sun is rising over the east side, slowly creeping it's way over each story, topping the midtown climb before it peaks over the Empire State at just about 10:47 this time of year. It's late August, and the summer sweat-pit has been broken, the air is finally moving again and the garbage stench that had been clinging to the moisture and smog-soaked air seems to have finally moved down the coast to the Jersey Shore where it belongs (Sorry, J) and I can feel the crisp autumn freshness that'll be soon be rising up from the falling leaves of the Sycamore trees up and down Allen st. Sycamores.

It's almost enough to drown out the honking cabs and the infuriated swearing of Creole Pete.

See, the two drivers I get most often are Shorty Lou and Creole Pete. Shorty Lou is a nice guy, quiet, doesn't cause a big fuss when it comes to tips, and we have similar schedules. Creole Pete is a solid built guy from Haiti and speaks with a Creole accent. Every time he sees me, he grips me by the shoulder and says "Leevee! Lez go!" He knows I make good tips, and he's a quick driver, so I'm okay with his sometimes forceful approach to getting me on his bus. It also means less time standing around waiting for the dispatchers to get to me. He also yells at all the Euros in French when they don't tip.

The first half goes quickly, concluded with a big Australian pay-off. A whole pack of down-under senior citizens leave the bus with a quick "Thanks mate" and about a Washington apiece. We end up with $9 apiece, which a;int bad for a late-season half-tour. We're left with a pair of two-bit South Asians left up top.

"Fuck eet!" Put dem on de next bus!" Creole Pete declares. I make up some nonsense about the bus going out of service and toss 'em on the bus behind us. As we're pulling out around the Staten Island Ferry, we both have a good laugh at the dispatcher who authorized no such action. "You want to waste your voice on two people?" He asks me, knowing the answer already. And so, as Allen turns into 1st ave, I'm about halfway through my yoga routine when I pass by another bus with five people on the back and a tour guide rambling the exact same spiel he would give if the bus had fifty. And they all turn to observe the bus next to them without a single tourist up top, and a guide sitting serenely in lotus position.

I think it's going to be a good week.