Where's Scorsese When You Need Him

[Steven Hunley]

Where's Scorsese When You Need Him?

Well, these bits of city I see gliding by don’t look anything like I imagined, and I imagined a lot.

I don’t see King Kong, and I don’t see any East River, the one Goodfellas throw the bodies into. And don’t tell me not to end a sentence with a preposition. I will if I wanna’, on accounta’ I’m an English teacher who breaks the rules whenever I wanna’. Gangster-Goodfella English teacher, that’s me, the one who scoffs at rules. You’re just some Mook who's reading the story. I’m the one’s who’s telling it. No offense, Mookie and Mooker. I’m only trying to get the reader’s attention.

That's me again, Mister Up Close Personal and in your Face. It’s only when it’s personal that you get offended. So I’m trying to offend you, trying to get under your skin. Getting under your skin is the hook. So much for true confessions, now back to the story.

So I ask the taxi driver, and no, it’s not Travis Bickle.

“Where we at?”

Oh sh*t, ended another one with a prep. Better get used to it, and while you’re at it, mistakes in spelling, grammar, and composition. I’m an equal opportunity rule breaker. The cabbie is wearing a blue turban and sporting a steel bangle on his wrist. I betcha he’s from the Punjab.

“This is Queens,” he announces.

“Are you a Sikh?”

“Yes!” His eyes flash like a Kirpan in the rear-view mirror.

“From the Punjab?”

“From Amritsar.”

He seems surprised I identified him so quickly. Even Barb looks at me in amazement. I’m starting to have a good time here. I get to show I know something about something in a completely strange east-coast environment. This makes me feel secure, and even more than that, now that we’re off the plane, Barb is holding my hand, relaxing me like a coconut shell worth of Kava. I got the info about India from my daughter Michelle when she worked for Subway Sandwiches. She'll probably deny the story.

Her boss was a Sikh, and when the California State Health Inspector was supposed to come by unannounced, to inspect the temperatures of the refrigerators, or expiration labels on prepared foods, she’d get a call on the phone.

“Tell your boss the inspector is on his way,” a voice would whisper, “He just stopped by my place.”

Elle would have to rush around and change all the labels on the prepared foods and bring them up to date. The call was from another Sikh, his partner. Sikhs are real entrepreneurs; they know how to slide around regulations. After all, they were run by the British for nearly a hundred years.

So the city here looks like some sort of city, and I can believe it’s Queens because many of the houses are brick and look like the opening sequence to King of Queens, the TV show. I just don’t see any UPS delivery trucks parked outside. Huge square brick buildings dot both sides of the freeway, like the projects back in LA. For some reasons there are a lot of Gentleman’s clubs. So close to the freeway isn’t always the best part of town. But there is no Rhapsody in Blue here. I needed taller buildings to rhapsodize over, something more substantial and romantic. I need the flow of Old Man River, or in this case the Hudson.

Gentlemen’s Clubs and bricks weren’t going to do it. But as it turned out, a symphony of a city was just minutes ahead. He wasn't driving like a maniac, and I complimented him on it.

"I leave that to the cab drivers in Mexico City" he said. "My wife said if I drive like an idiot, she'll give me my marching orders. Unfortunately, I'm in love with the woman and do what she suggests. She graduated magna cum laude!"

His teeth sparkled a smile in the rear-view mirror.

"I have a smart woman too, I knew it from the moment we met. Now get us to Metropolis, and let Romance take care of the rest.”

To be continued….

I hope all these true-life adventures of mine are always “to be continued", at least, until I drop dead.

©Steven Hunley 2016

https://youtu.be/EUrUfJW1JGk New York New York- Frank Sinatra

[AuntShecky]

good to see you posting material again. I admire the attitude expressed in the ultimate sentence.

[MANICHAEAN]

And good to see you treading the boards again Aunty.

[Steven Hunley]

I suspect that at any moment we’ll be shooting over a bridge that’s over a river. Manhattan is an island. I don’t know the name of the bridge or if it’s the East River or the West River or what. Are they both the Hudson? I’m from SoCal. We don’t know much about rivers. Maybe it’s the one the traditional OG Mafioso dumped the bodies into. Holy Cow, another prep ending. For an English teacher this is getting to be a bad habit.

I should have watched more travelogues on New York instead of so many noir films. Humphrey Bogart in Dead End, James Cagney in the Roaring Twenties, and Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, were my first cinematic impressions of the Big Apple before they called it The Big Apple. Then there was 42nd St. I make a note to find out where 42st is. I wonder if you can see it from the Waldorf and if my dancing feet will get me there. Yes folks, I said the Waldorf. Later, Goodfellas and Taxi Driver put color into the mean streets. And streets remind me of alleys, and that reminds me of Tin Pan Alley.

For some reasons tin pans remind me of ashtrays and ashtrays remind me of Winston Churchill. Now my imagination goes wild and makes a crazy mental note to examine every ashtray in every remote corner of what used to me the world’s largest hotel and find one of Churchill’s cigar butts, you know, preserved in the sand like a mummy. I know that Winnie and his cigars butts have been long gone these many years, but that’s how my mind works.

My head must be out of order.

Now that we’ve examined my out of order stream of consciousness, look up ahead! There’s a huge structure of iron and steel supported by enormous piles of grey stones. It’s the Queensborough Bridge, and when you get far enough along to see where it’s going, the view makes you gasp. It’s that twenty-four dollars’ worth of unmistakable island. It might as well be Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island; it’s so filled with legends.

Barb makes like she’s looking out my window but really she’s looking at me and can tell I’m getting nervous. It’s like she’s taking my temperature from a distance, gleaning I’m a little wound up. She’s seen all of this scenery before and even so, refuses to cop a ho-hum attitude and remain enthusiastic.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be getting there soon,” she tells me, in her finest therapeutic manner.

Barb is always telling me comforting things. You gotta love the woman. See? I just used gotta and you didn’t even flinch. You’re getting used to it! Nobody writes like me, you gotta admit. The writing is good, it’s bad, sometimes it’s ugly, but when it comes down to it, you know you’re reading the best. I take my lessons in Narcissism from Trump.

I salute your taste in authors. Now let’s jump off this Ego Train and back to the not-so-short story.

to be continued...

https://youtu.be/30yU6CtlWV8 New York State of Mind--Billy Joel


©Steven Hunley 2016

[Steven Hunley]

Once we’re on the other side of the bridge something weird happens. With each block closer to our destination, the glass and steel buildings get taller and taller. I’ve been looking out the cab windows, searching for a familiar icon, but the structures rising on either side are getting so tall it’s impossible to see the tops of any of them, much less a significant one in the distance. It’s a frustration I suffered years ago in Peru. After seven or eight switchbacks to get out of Cuzco valley, the steam locomotive ran parallel with the Urubamba, and with each mile closer to Machu Picchu, the mighty river, on its way to the even mightier Amazon, cut deeper and deeper into the gorge. After a while you couldn’t see the tops of the mountains in the distance. In order to see the tops of the mountains on either side, you had to put your head down to the floor to get the proper perspective out the window.

It made you feel disoriented. Standing on your head always makes me feel like a kid. Then out of nowhere, Barb spots what I’m looking for, but it’s only there for a second, because we’re stopped at a red light.

“Honey, look there, down at the end of the street.”

“Oh My God, that’s it alright!”

It’s stately and poking the sky with its spire. I recognized it from movies. King Kong scaled it just before he was shot down and ate the death-to-disobedient-monkeys pie. In Affair to Remember, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr were supposed to meet there but didn’t hook up. Lucy pretended she was a Martian on the top floor, let’s not forget that.

The light changed and it disappeared.

Somehow referencing movies is making me feel like a little boy again. I’m not as sophisticated as the people here on the streets of New York. It’s their home, not mine. I’m just a West-Coast California country rube. Even our hotel has a rep for sophistication. Not me. Makes me feel primitive, like Tarzan, in Tarzan’s New York Adventure. I wish the natives here were as primitive as me.

I’m going to think of it that way, like my new slice of life is a Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure. California Tarzan Meets a Tribe of East Coast Cavemen. Cavemen lived in caves because they were cool and comfortable, out of the sun, and even way back then, people loved a view. These concrete caves house businesses and restaurants and shops on the ground floor, and far above the trees, the New York Neanderthals hang out. I believe I know what’s going on here. I’m having a rare look into my own cranium. The underlying story is West-Coast Tarzan meets a Tribe of New York Neanderthals in order to steal their sophistication, in hopes it will rub off on him.

And right when I arrive at this thought, we pull up in front of what used to be the world’s largest hotel, so steeped in sophistication it should have been the queen’s tea, and the only hotel I can think of that has a salad named after it.

I already have a history with this hotel. I even wrote about it once, in a short story called Maui. Here’s what I said:

“Two hours later, we’re about to live it up Maui-style at the Fairmont. The villa is happening big time and I’m reading that the Fairmont is somehow related to the Waldorf Astoria. I should say Waldorf Historia on accounta plenty people in history stayed there. Wiki says Cole Porter hung out there and they named a suite after him. Others were The Royal Suite, named after the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the MacArthur Suite after our own American Caesar, and the Churchill Suite. The Presidential Suite was the home of Herbert Hoover, and Frank Sinatra hung there too.

OMG OMG I’m sooo impressed.

But even so, this movie-star-ex-presidential-ex-king-ex-military leader-ex-crooner-hotel was nowhere near Hawaii. I’m not going to sniff any of their bones like Keith Richards, so what it has to do with me, the quintessential laid-back California dude, is questionable. Because it’s so upper-crust, I feel even more out of place, the black bird baked in the pie.”

Well, it’s two years later and I’m finally face to face with the original hotel. This movie-star-presidential-military-leader-royalty-statesman-on accounta-Churchill-hotel, is right here in front of me. It’s sporting a doorman in a spiffy uniform standing at attention, and a sh*t-load of cache. Since I wrote that old piece, Barbara has helped me to fashion myself differently. I’m not the complete-out-of-place blackbird I used to be… but I’m still nervous.

Anxiety has been my middle name my entire adult life. If I didn’t have Barb to calm my *ss down I’d be lost. She pads my jagged edges with her kindness. I have confidence in the woman. Even after she stole my heart, she made me feel secure.

Barb smiles calmly, straightens her Jimmy Choos, squeezes my hand, and boldly says, “Let’s go.”

to be continued...


©Steven Hunley 2016


https://youtu.be/NtAsQNDCiaA Tarzan's New York Adventure

[Off]

He should be honored if he were to read this.

[Steven Hunley]

He knows his films and he makes good films, especially about his neighborhood. Love ya, Marty. Wish I knew him good enough to call him Marty.

Immediately I adopt a sophisticated air. Taking the lead, I swing my hand behind me and grab hers. She feels I’m going all Thespian on her. I don’t need acting lessons. I can look as sophizto as she can, or any New Yorker for that matter, except Sinatra. I’m sure of it. But I’m always sure of sketchy things. It worries me. It probably worries her too.

“He’s going all cosmopolitan on me, I can feel it. You can take the farmer out of the boy, but you can’t….and he’ll want to know every little thing about the hotel. To find out, he’ll strike up a conversation with anyone, anyone, from Conrad Hilton, to the chamber maid who comes in to make up the bed. He’s an equal opportunity interrogator. My brain is shuddering in anticipation.”

We skate one time around the revolving glass door. A skinny French-fry dark-haired Asian woman in a severe business suit and tie, wearing sensible high-heels, welcomes us to the hotel.

“And William will show you to your room.”

William is the Filipino guy with the purple suit and gold pins and he’s grey at the temples and wearing a smile that won’t wash off. The elevator door reliefs are decorated in art deco style, depicting female figures representing music and prosperity. You had to run your fingers over the folds of their robes just to get the feel of them. Once in the elevator, we need to use our room key card to allow the elevator to let us off on our floor. William shows us how to swipe it and push the buttons.

“People staying at the hotel proper can’t get off on your floor, and they can’t get off in the U.S. Ambassador’s floor either.”

‘Barbara and Steven and the US Ambassador must be important people.’ I figure. ‘At the Waldorf they make you feel special. Being an only child, I already thought I was special, but maybe it was just the Narcisus in me. Maybe I was just different. If different is special, maybe everybody is special.’

The history-book halls, lined on either side with enormous black and white photos of famous people, remind you where you are. You’re in a landmark hotel, a meeting place, a watering hole, a cultural center, a multi-generational extravaganza that has to be experienced to be understood. I never imagined a building could work black magic, but in its own way, the Waldorf seduced me. And William wasn’t through yet. He had another trick up his purple sleeve.

“You can have breakfast on the 27th floor. They serve snacks all day until four. And to get there, you have to swipe the card like this.”

William smiles and swipes the elevator gizmo with an executive’s flourish.

“Do they have yogurt and bagel?” I inquire.

“Naturally.”

The Deco doors open and we roll out into the hallway and turn left. The hall is lined with large black and white photos of well-known guests. Our hall had a photo of Princess Grace and Prince Rainer of Where-ever-it-was. He takes out a packet and hands us two cards when we get to the door. They’re charcoal grey with a W and an A in white formal lettering and they’re superimposed making a sort of a monogram. Makes you want to keep one as a souvenir of a special occasion. Holding our magic cards makes us feel special again. Damn, these fancy big-city innkeepers are good at the hospitality game. He lets me do the honors and swipe it to open the door.

We walk through an entrance with a mini-fridge on one side, and I imagine it’s full of expensive drinks of all sorts. The living area has a couch on the left and a TV on the right on top of a piece of furniture that must have belonged to Marie Antoinette because it’s big and it’s fancy and stylish with scenes inlayed with exotic woods and hand painted ceramic drawer pulls. Look closer and you see pastoral vistas dotted with rose bushes frequented by milk maids, fair ladies, and their hesitant lovers etched in gold. Maupassant’s pale artistic fingers could have tugged at these knobs, I just knew it.

Barb was already through the doorway and plopping down on the bed.

“This,” she said, “is like heaven.”

I gave the mattress an affectionate press.

It had been a red-eye flight with forgettable food and cramped as a mouse trap. It was not quite dawn and foggy below, and even then, the view was spectacular. That’s what I learned about New York. If you were up high enough, the view was always spectacular. Everywhere you looked it was me, me, me, you know, us, us us, us humans. The altitude and all this ‘usnuss’ made you giddy. Good thing it was just a man-made illusion, otherwise it could get to you.

While Barb’s feet were having an orgasm for her being off them, I was scouting the living room and found a bottle of Champagne and two square white plates on the desk. It was two sets of Gigantic Strawberries dipped in chocolate. Did Montezuma have strawberries? If he did, he would have made this himself. Praise Montezuma and his chocolate. Then curse him for giving it to Cortez. Cortez didn’t deserve a taste of heaven. Cortez was a grub.

Looking out the window has me giddy, and I still can’t see the streets, it’s so foggy.

I decide the pop the champagne.

The strawberries sing happy birthday with delicate chocolate swirls signed Allison and Seth. Her daughter and son in law have sent a suite-warming gift all the way across the continental United States so we’d feel close to them and not so out of place. That’s love.

POP! There it goes. We down the sparkly-party brew, and stuff the chocolate strawberries too. Do you ever… you know… when the food is looking this good, and somebody really took their time preparing it and making the presentation special, as much as you want it, you hesitate messing it up?

Like when Barb or any other beautiful woman has her hair just right and her makeup nasty good? When a man understands all the skill and girl-hours it requires to achieve such a magic effect, and realizes it was just for him? You feel divided. You have two minds about it. You don’t want to mess it up… but you must.

Like Buddhist sand mandalas, a woman’s face is temporary art and changes with her whims and seasons, suggesting the transitory nature of material life. She must be experienced in the here and now to be enjoyed, not studied with a scholar’s dispassionate hands-off approach. The Waldorf knew we couldn’t resist their decadent chocolate strawberries. They provided white linen napkins, the rascals.

©Steven Hunley 2016

[Steven Hunley]

After that we crash, after all, it was the red-eye. But the next morning finds us waking up and hungry again.

From the lounge in the snack room, I call it the snack room; you have even more of a view. The room is so special it takes your magic card to get in. Time for me to make a keen observation. Time for Barb to look up from her bagel anyway.

“Seems like there are more skyscrapers here in one square block, than in all of San Diego. They’re crowded together like pencils at attention.”

She nods and says nothing, there’s too much seedy bagel and cream cheese in her mouth. She may be displaying her good manners in New York, but she picked them up in Ironwood Michigan. You take quality raw materials from the Midwest, refine them in California, and come up with one sophisticated lady.

What a view. There’s so much steel and glass and brick you lose count after just a few seconds.

About two blocks or so away I can see something towering up that’s different. It’s several spires but they’re not as tall as the rest, and they’re blossomed at the top like celery. It’s like Antonio Gaudi visited Manhattan or something. No, it’s not celery tops, it’s crosses. And they aren’t steel and they aren’t brick and they aren’t glass. They’re stone.

“What’s that?” I inquire of my woman.

“It’s probably St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”

“Oh, we should really see that,” I reply, and my brain is already processing like a Hollywood thought factory. Seems to me I remember seeing Edward G. Robinson die on its steps when he was Little Caesar. You know, Rico. I may be wrong; it may have been James Cagney in The Roaring Twenties. You know, when “he used to be a big shot”.

Either way, I want to see it.

A few hours later we’re out on the street and going to a place so nearby we don’t have to take a taxi. Just down a block or so we pass the residence of the ambassador to Ecuador. The ambassador hung a flag outside on whatever street it was so everyone would know. At least I think it’s the Ecuadorian flag, maybe it’s Brazil. It’s a little folded up on the pole. I love traveling; you never know what’s up. They say the test of a relationship is when you can travel with somebody and get along. Barb and I get along like Gangbusters.

And there’s the cathedral coming up.

"Wow, look at that!"


“It’s beautiful!”

We were around the side facing some steps, when an enormous Gothic door beckoned us to come in. Right here I have a confession to make. When I was much younger I missed going into Notre Dame because I feared if I did, the priests or somebody were going to spring out of some hidden corner and convert me to Catholicism. I may have got this impression by watching the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I missed seeing a true Gothic Cathedral with world-class stained windows. Since then I’ve fallen in love with faith and photography. There was no way in Heaven or Hell I was going to miss out on back-lit Saints and Biblical Illustrations. So neither one of us was Catholic. Instead, we were one of the faiths that came before Catholicism and one that came after it. What does it matter what order religions come in anyway? We are all true believers. The rest of the religions are true believers too, even the dead ones.


Inside the door lay another world and another time. Stone worked into heavenly ceilings and walls. Trails of incense rose up in spirals and wandered towards the stained glass saints. Light and dark and vistas unknown, and all of it beautifully rendered in stone. Fluted columns turned into leaves spreading across the vaulted ceiling. Frankincense and Myrrh perfumed the languorous air. It was 13th Century architecture but the people examining its bones were 21st Century sleuths, restless and looking for something. A good selfie, a connection to faith, something to write about in Architectural Digest? Even what we were looking for was undecided at the time. Sometimes your soul is searching and you don’t even know it.

“Let’s sit down,” Barb whispered.

We sat in a worn wooden pew, and near the floor in front of us was one of those padded things you could put your knees down on if you decided to pray. Off to one side was a tiered stand with small candles flickering in amber glasses. People would come up and light a candle and say a prayer. Noise from the tourists outside the front door was muffled by the endless rows of wooden pews so here near the alter it was quiet. You couldn’t hear the people praying, but you could see when their breath touched the glimmering candle flames and made them flicker in response.

Barb reached over and squeezed my hand.

“Let’s light one and say a prayer for Deb,” she said.

“That’s right. She was a Catholic. She’d like that.”

We got up, held hands, and walked up the isle to the stand lit with candles. I figured if we were in church and it was really like being in a server that God listened to, a main-line to Heaven, and then it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. He usually doesn’t answer anyway, but if he hears you it’s alright with me. Just knowing he’s listening is enough.

“The kids miss you, and I miss you. We’re alright and are getting along. You’d be proud to know all they’ve accomplished and how much they’ve grown. I was torn up for a while, but now I’ve found someone who’s made me happy, really happy. It was her idea to light this candle for you. Now you know why I’m finally happy. She knows what’s good for me.”

After a few silent minutes we left and went out the same side door avoiding the crowds outside the main entrance. Neither one of us said anything for a minute or so. There was some construction work going on and a jackhammer going off and a barrier to get behind with a tarp overhead to keep dust from settling on our shoulders. Even the sidewalk was torn up beneath our feet so we held hands to keep our balance.The gravel fill was uneven and inconsistent. The noise, the dust, the imbalance, our senses, were being assaulted from every quarter. Suddenly the jackhammer stopped and the street went quiet. It was three o’clock and the bells of St. Patrick’s started to echo down the street like a grand canyon lined with bricks and glass and steel.

We couldn’t just hear the bells of Saint Patrick's, we could feel each note press against our chests until it touched our hearts and drowned out everything else.

I stopped under the tarp and went down on one knee on the gravel, put my hands together with her hand caught between and looked up into her smiling eyes.

“Barbara, will you marry me?”

“Yes, I’ll marry you.”

The bells of Saint Patrick’s rang twice more and stopped.

The men working with jackhammers resumed their pounding symphony and traffic sounded again when dump trucks hissed and buses squeaked as business on the street returned to the everyday scrape and hustle. Truck drivers honked at limos.Commuters waved down taxis.
Manhattan was again Manhattan.

The only thing that really changed was us.

©Steven Hunley 2016

https://youtu.be/X4oKwhhcQyw The Roaring Twenties

[Steven Hunley]

Ellis Island was tomorrow, and as Scarlet O’Hara once said,

“Tomorrow is another day.”

Mid-morning, into a cab we pile. “We’re going to Ellis Island so I guess we’re going to The Battery.”

I say this like I know what I’m talking about. Like I’m Field Marshal Rommel or something. I don’t. For me, a battery is some kind of collection of guns, like big guns, like Napoleonic Wars to WW2 collection of very large guns. Like a Battery of Big Berthas. I read that when Napoleon was just regular soldier he commanded a battery of canons.

Either that or a battery is some kind of electricity storage device. There are wet cells and dry cells and all kinds of batteries big and small. We all know that. We charge the suckers up every day. We trip over our battery charging wires every night. What I can’t figure out is how or why a place is called a battery. They call this place we’re going “The Battery”.

The driver is a girl, a young girl, but I can’t give more details because she’s wearing a dashiki. The pattern is typically Somali. In San Diego we have whole neighborhoods of Somalis radiating off University Avenue. I catch some of their kids in English classes. Some of them have sects that are the oldest Christians of all. I have no idea why. Sir Richard Francis Burton would know, but he’s too hard to get ahold of, since he’s been dead these many years. But you know Sir Richard; he’d appreciate having an attractive female guide. Miss Somali, her eyebrows scootched together, looks down her delicate nose, working out the directions on her I-phone with her fingertips. She smiles to herself, you can see it in her mouth, it’s that smile of understanding we all make, and off we go.

These streets look like New York streets to me but really they’re more Manhattan streets than New York streets. I wonder if there’s such a thing as New York at all. Maybe it’s as varied as its collections of boroughs and has as many faces as the moon. But right when I’ve imagined I’ve figured everything out about the streets of Manhattan, I spy something straight out of Taxi Driver, the opening credits where the taxi goes through a cloud of steam rising up out of the street. OMG OMG this reality is taking on aspects of cinema!

And to make it even better, for reality is always stranger than cinema for, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy". But as we travel through this cloud of steam a figure appears and it’s a red-headed man with a long red beard and even though it’s not raining he’s carrying an open umbrella with stuff glued on top of it. When I take a picture, he spies me as we wiz past and gives me a dirty look, like he doesn’t want me to see him much less take his picture. Like he doesn’t want attention or something.

Hey, just look at this guy anyway. His long hair is fire-engine red and his equally fire-engine red beard is almost down to his belt. His fricken umbrella is red too, and festooned with I don’t know what and dangling with odd stuff too. Hey, take a long walk on a short pier, wild and crazy guy, get back into the steam cloud from where you cometh. You’re a walking advertisement for yourself. Good for you. Just don’t give people dirty looks for reading your sign. Go just the opposite for a change. Buy a set of camouflage fatigues at the Army Navy store. Get a camouflage tarp for the red umbrella too. Then just stop and stand still. You’ll disappear, and be the man with nothing to say.

In your case less might be more. Even silence can be a statement.

When I look back in the side-view mirror the mist man disappeared. My only proof now is the picture. I give my celestial companion a look.

Barb is smiling and almost off the charts with excitement. For me, it’s a continuation of the search for the real New York, but her interests are more a part of her fiber, her being, and a search for her roots. For her, this part is retracing the footsteps of her grandmother and grandfather. They came this way in 1906, fleeing the pogroms in Russia. Ellis Island was their port of entry, and not long ago. The trees that grew from these roots have only been here for five generations. I wondered what it took for these poor immigrants to abandon their homelands, cut their roots, sail an ocean away, to come here and eventually bare such precious fruit.

Turns out The Battery was a park near the harbor and we got on a ferry.

“Did you know, Pirate Girl, that before you came, San Diego had a ferry?”

“Why, Totsky, I didn’t know that.”

Barb was inscrutable, looking out the window at the Statue of Liberty gliding by. She was wearing her Jimmy Choos. If you’re reading this, Jimmy, throw some cash my way please, I just plugged your product.

But I knew what was going on in her noggin.

“He’s blathering away like an idiot again. He’s informing me of something he does know, because it makes him feel secure when he’s surrounded by something he doesn’t know. Poor fellow. You gotta love the guy, he’s so needy.”

An island with an enormous brick building appears. We stumble over the gangplank, too busy looking at the gigantic building instead of our feet. Picture at the sign and up the stairs we go, and I have the same impression you get in Europe when you visit a castle or ruin. The stairs are smoother than you expected. Many feet have passed this way, trod wearily up these stairs, and two pairs of those feet were her grandmother's and grandfather’s.


I give Barb a look but she’s looking down and lost in thought. Her hair is partially hanging over her eyes. Even in partial profile the woman is poetry.


©Steven Hunley 2017


https://youtu.be/lO8ZVSRbVN8 Drive Scene

[Steven Hunley]

The Great Hall is enormous, three stories. Here stood the crowd. They were from all over.

“They’d process hundreds in a day,” said Barb, and tilted her head towards the ceiling as high as the stars.

“All those people speaking all of those languages,” I replied.

Dozens of discrete languages echoing against the walls, rising up, bouncing off the ceiling, then mixing, descending in one indecipherable deafening roar.

Upstairs we saw a movie in a small theater. Documentary about the island. Vintage black and white. When you saw what they went through, it made you tear up. Even the ones who weren’t your relatives became your relatives. You knew your own story was hidden between the folds of Lady Liberty’s gown somewhere, and as sketchy as is was, it touched you to your core. When the movie ended, we crowded together and went out the door.

Later, hand in hand, cruised through a room full of regional costumes.

“Look at how differently people dressed then,” said Barb."Underneath the outer decorations, we're all more alike than different."

“It makes me kind of sad. These clothes are from a different place and a different time. Look at us now, the wearers of urban fashion. These marvelous unique clothes show you that there’s going to come a day when everybody dresses the same. We’ll all be the same color of grey. Not black, not white, just grey.”

“Like the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit,” said Barb. “I wonder how they felt.”

“Apprehensive. Just imagine. You pack up all you have, so little it can be carried, things that are really important to you. You leave your house, your street, your town, your city, your mother country and mother tongue. You cross the Atlantic in a boat, bigger than any boat you’ve ever seen.”

We imagined we were immigrants shuffling down these hallways shoulder to shoulder and came to a room that showed where they slept when they were detained. Seems like the bunks were stacked high and some bunks were suspended by chains. So much metal gave you the impression of a lock-up. At the far end, you could see Manhattan out a small screened window, shrouded in fog. It was distant, indistinguishable, out of focus. Even so, how it must have lured them, after all those days at sea, crammed like sardines in steerage, not knowing what to expect.

The rich folks got off somewhere closer. The sick ones were sent to a hospital next door, if they weren’t sent back. It cost nothing to be sent back. Turns out the tickets were round trip fares. But no one wanted to be sent back. Sent back to war, sent back to poverty, to famine, to pogroms, was out of the question.

In the souvenir shop downstairs, I took a picture of stuffed dolls in regional costumes. Italian here, Romanian there, Frenchman next to that wearing a beret. They were propped up next to a window, looking out at the Statue of Liberty.

You know, when we walked into the main building on Ellis Island we were garrulous, expectant, ready to grab a gold ring on a free historic carousel ride. But when we left we were silent and thoughtful and walked out the same way you walk out of an empty church. When history enters your blood, it makes an indelible impression.

©Steven Hunley 2017

https://youtu.be/gAoArleLZEk America Simon and Garfunkel

[Steven Hunley]

When we got back from Ellis Island that afternoon we took the side Towers entrance as usual. Three bell boys were in a corner just as we walked in, huddled around a newspaper, talking in low voices. I didn’t think much about it at the time.

We took a nap, and woke up just before sunset. I suggested we check out the TV, to watch some local news.

I was sitting on the bed and Barb was where she usually was, in the bathroom. On flashed the boob tube.

“Look, Honey, it’s the local news, and they’re expecting an avocado shortage!”

Barb ran in and sat down.

“Why?”

“Because of all the fires at home.”

“Hey, what’s this?”


A lady shuffled some papers, then looked up towards the camera.

“The Waldorf Astoria and the Hotel Workers Union Reach $149 Million Deal for Severance Payouts

When a Chinese insurance firm bought the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for $1.95 billion this year, it said it planned to convert part of the aging building into high-end condominiums, while maintaining a smaller five-star hotel.

Standing in its way were the hotel’s 1,221 union workers, whose jobs were protected by the Waldorf Astoria’s contract with the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, a union that represents hotel workers.

Now, the owners of the Waldorf, New York’s largest union hotel employer, have reached a record deal with the union in which the hotel could pay almost $149 million in severance packages to its employees over the next two years.”

We were stunned. We couldn’t believe our ears.

“The Chinese own the hotel?

“They’re shutting it down?”

"They're turning in into condos?"

I decided we needed something to temper the news, something to make it digestible.

“Babygirl, look in your purse for those coupons they gave us when we checked in. They’re good for a couple of drinks in Peacock Alley. It’s right off the lobby.”

Down in the elevator we go, and into the magnificent Art Deco lobby. A huge silver statue/clock thingy is in the center and within steps of that, the bar.

I spy a piano and wonder if it could be Gershwin’s piano where he wrote Rhapsody in Blue. It must not be the famed instrument; there’s no sign. Right next to it we take a small table.

Out pops a waiter. He’s tall as a streetlight and has a white linen towel draped over his arm. His dark hair is slicked back as if it’s nineteen-thirty-something and he used a whole tube of Brylcreem.

I pull out the two coupons with an executive’s flourish. He’s not amused. He may be down in the dumps. Maybe he’s not having a good time. We’re the ones having a good time.

“What would the lady and gentleman prefer?”

“I’ll have a Hennessey, straight up, with a water chaser. She’ll have a glass of Riesling.”

Off he dashes. When he returns with the drinks I decide he’s the first one to grill.

“I saw on the news some kind of Chinese conglomerate is going to tear a lot of the place down and build condos? How do you feel about that?”

“These things happen. It doesn’t mean much to me.” He shrugged his shoulders and walks away, but then he walks back.

“Every president has stayed here, every one of them, including Obama. Did you know?”

“Yes, we read about that,” said Barb.

“William, our Bell Captain, has been here thirty years." I said. "How long have you been here?”

“Two years,” he replied, and looked at the barkeep, who motioned him to another table where a couple was just sitting down. The silver statue/timepiece gizmo in the center of the lobby went off, marking six o’clock, and sounded just a mini Big Ben.

And that brought me right back to the history of the place. Back flew Slick Waiter with ice water and venom.

“You know, Obama didn’t come back. He had a chance but he didn’t.”

He looked all four directions, the front desk, the bar, the Guerlain Spa, the entrance on Park Avenue, and leaned down closer, almost between us, and whispered while pouring the water, “That was right after the Chinese bought it.”

“Really?” said Barb. “It doesn’t seem fair. It’s a piece of American history.”

“It’s a historical monument, a [I]historical monument[I]!"

“They will have to. No matter how golden their golden-hand retirement seems now, they’ll all end up beggars in their old age. There’s no way around it.”

He wiped a wet spot that wasn’t really there with his towel. At last he sighed, and looked resigned to his fate.

“For me, things aren’t so bad. They could be worse. I’m reasonably new. Back in the kitchen we have a man who’s been here fifty years. Fifty years!”

“Whoa.” I wanted to reign in the conglomerate monster. Then I motioned to Barb to lean closer by crooking my finger. She drew so near I could smell her White Shoulders.

“****ing Chinese conglomerate ***holes,” I whispered.

And that was the end of our drinks. We proceeded down the hallway to the Bull and Bear for dinner.

Then we shot back upstairs to the security of the Towers to make sense of the tragedy.

***


©Steven Hunley 2017

[Steven Hunley]

Beautiful


Later that night we had dinner at the Bull and Bear. When we sat down, Barb asked the waiter,

“Can we be done with this and out of here in forty-five minutes? We have a show to catch.”

I could see gears turning between his ears, calculating all the variables.

“Yes, I believe we can.”

The filet mignon was tougher than I figured. But the scalloped potatoes that came in an oval dish were to die for. After we finished, we toasted with champagne, like we owned The Bull and Bear. Barb took up a knife, which I thought was odd, since there wasn’t any food left. She dug through her purse and came up with Chanel lip gloss number 110. Holding her butter knife sideways, she proceeded to touch up her lips. I just love it when she comes up with polished feminine moves like this. She caught me smiling.

“My mother used to do this,” she said, “when she went out to dinner.”

Out the swinging glass door to the Towers and into a black limousine. I grabbed a paper from my shirt pocket.

“124 West 43rd Street, please.”

Off we go and I’m all eyes out one window, while Barb is all eyes out the other. This is the first time we’ve been out at night, and it’s quite a display. What can you say about Manhattan? There are streets and buildings and people and more people and they’re all in a rush. Even at midnight somebody is out and about being busy.

And I don’t know much about Carole King besides the fact she made an album called Tapestry back in the day. It looked like a girly album to me at the time. I was into Led Zep, the Rolling Stones and the Doobie Brothers. See any girl’s names there? Barb would never watch a movie like Lawrence of Arabia simply because it hasn’t any women. And Barb is way into girly stuff, so I’m going to humor her. It may be good; after all, I did like a couple of her songs, like Natural Woman. At the time I heard it though, the title conjured up images of women I knew who didn’t use deodorant or shave their legs and ate male chauvinists pigs for dinner. I’m all for natural women, but Jeez. Thank God, Barb isn’t that natural. I was younger then, not so sure of my masculinity, so I touted only masculine groups, no girly stuff for me, kinda juvenile attitude. So Canaries were OK, but Canaries were a dime a dozen because women have pleasing voices anyway, so no girl song writers for me. That's me in my 20's, Idiot Boy at his best.

By the time the black limo reaches our destination, there is no doubt in our minds what “district” we’re in. The last few blocks are crawling with theaters. The street is lit with dazzling neon in every direction.

Outside the Stephen Sondheim Theatre I see an immense billboard for the show and capture the moment digitally. Barb’s in the picture too, to demonstrate scale and add panache. In we scoot. When we find our seats and sit down, Barb scans the audience while arranging her coat on the back of her seat. She twists my direction and draws closer, noting,

“They’re more dressed up than in California.”

“But we have one thing in common,” I whispered, taking a look over my shoulder, “salt and pepper hair.”

“Speak for yourself, Steven.”

That shuts me up. Most of the crowd is dressed up like anywhere else in the world but a few ancient grand dames are outrageously stylish. They brought their kiddies, and the kiddies were in their late 30’s. These fashionable women have no fear, and know the secret to beauty lies in attitude. One in her late 60’s has electric pink hair. Another sugar momma has a slick Italian dude wearing an Armani suit who’s a quarter her age, holding her Ermine coat like a lackey.

The rest of the people are like audiences anywhere, all eyes and ears. When the lights go down low, and the curtain finally goes up, they’re as ready as Sponge Bob for the show.

There she is, and look at her, only a high-school girl. And there she is writing and the next thing we know she has trouble selling her songs.

But look, what’s this? She’s given Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow to the Shirelles. Hey, I remember that song! She wrote the number one hit? OMG OMG I just didn’t know. Up On The Roof and On Broadway to The Drifters? Take Good Care Of My Baby to Bobby Vee? Pleasant Valley Sunday to the Monkeys? That’s one of my favorite songs, and it wasn’t by them it was written by her, the young woman song-writing genius.

Before our very eyes the string of her hits unwinds, one after another, for years.

As the times and places change, the stage crews and technicians move the pieces and places about like children draped in black silently assembling gigantic Leggos for our amusement. There’s a lot of illusion going on here.

During the intermission we stroll to the lobby for an extremely sophisticated plastic cup of Riesling and on the way back we spy a couple standing by the double doors. She’s wearing a diaphanous gown with a flower print, off one shoulder. He’s sporting a Harvard vest under a navy blue blazer, and a Sinatra autographed snap-brimmed hat. They’re so engaged you almost hate to break their mutual spell, but you know me, the guy with no boundaries. I don’t need a stinking passport to get into people’s heads. Barb schooled me to ask only bold decisive questions, you know, the deep stuff, the tough ones, like,

“How do you like it so far?

“We’re really enjoying this,” Snap-Brim Hat Guy answers, and beams at his woman. She can’t say anything, she’s sipping some wine, but she smiles. He squeezes her arm tenderly and she pulls the plastic cup away from her lips.

“I didn’t know she’d written that many songs,” Sheer Gown Lady says.

“Me too,” says Barb, and hands the visual mike to me with her eyes.

“Where are you guys from? We’re from California, and I’ve been on the lookout for what I call a New York accent, but you two don’t seem to have one. At least it’s not the one I heard on Seinfeld.”

They giggle conspiratorially.

“We’re from here. We live in Manhattan. You’ll probably hear more accents in the burrows.”

“Oh yes,” I say understandingly. As a child I learned to respond understandingly, even if I didn’t understand sh*t. It pleases people when you understand them, and I don’t like to displease people, especially when they’re making a genuine effort to communicate. And besides, straightening out the confusion in my mind takes more questions. This gives the illusion you’re really interested, and they adore this, when you’re just trying to straighten out your own confusion. We think life is crystal clear, but it’s just smoke and mirrors. You mirror people, and for whatever reason, they like what they see. There’s a significant difference between a trick and an illusion. A trick can only be a dirty trick. It’s second rate. An illusion is made of grander stuff. Illusions can be heavenly or straight from Hell, and the most Hellish ones are the one we make for ourselves. Tricks are straight from Outa Compton College. Illusions graduate from Vassar, Duke, or Cornell. They take more effort.

So I name the boroughs to show him I know what they are. A New York kindergartner knows them, and now I do too, and share the wealth of knowledge.

Snap Brim Hat Fella, and Shear Gown Lady give each other a look. It’s real subtle, but it’s one of those looks one half of a couple gives the other half, that gives them the OK to reveal a secret. It’s one of those, “Go ahead, Honey, tell ‘em” looks. He takes the invisible mike.

“You know,” he whispers, “when people here refer to the boroughs; they use their names, like Brooklyn, Queens, or Jersey. But when they come to Manhattan, they call it ‘The City’.”

My socks nearly fall off.

“Oh my God, California has that going on too. We call San Francisco The City, but nowhere else.”

The implications make all four of us smile. Culturally, geographically, and musically, we have identified ourselves, and are happy with what we’ve discovered. The tribes from both coasts meet… and party.

And true to its name, and true to the spirit of Carol, the show was Beautiful, and we drifted off in a New York state of mind.


©Steven Hunley 2017

[Danik 2016]

Nice story about discovering New York in the company of Barb. Reminds me a bit when I was there back in the 80s. I wanted to see one of the famous Broadway musicals but they were very expensive. I was in front of the "Cats" theater and was going away, when suddenly a nice guy extended a free card to me: "Do you want it ? I´m not going to need it". That was my gala night in New York.

[indiefilmshare]

Extremely impressed with your ability to reference the source material, create the visual, and still make it your own. I'm a huge fan of all of his films and finding all the references to them was fun. I live about an hour from NYC and do not go enough. This makes me want to take a trip up.

-Michael
https://www.IndieFilmShare.com
A Community of independent filmmakers to submit short films for peer feedback.

[Steven Hunley]

Late one morning we called the concierge and complained that the WIFI wasn’t performing its magic. A technician was on the way. When I opened the door I expected to see someone spiffy, clean-cut, and well-pressed. You know, like one of the NASA scientist-dudes down in Huston or Florida, or wherever it is, the ones who build rockets in those super-clean rooms where they wear pure white space-suits with white booties and look foolish but sterile, clean, and efficient.

“I’m the guy they sent down,” he says, so I give him the once-over. He’s wearing scuffed workman’s boots and Levis blue-jeans cuffed at the bottom. His shirt is light blue and his sleeves are rolled up revealing the hairiest arms I’ve ever seen, which is funny, because he’s balding at the same time. It’s a Waldorf shirt, it has to be, there’s the WA monogram on the front. All in all, his outer form is a combination of circus strong man and gentle gorilla.

“Joseph Sifakis,” he tells me, and flips open his wallet so I can see his ID.

“Come in Mr. Sifakis. My significant other, Barbara, will explain the problem with her I pad, and I can’t get the WIFI to work either.”

Barb gives Joe a pathetic puppy-dog stare from across the room while grasping her red I pad in front with both hands in an imploring manner, like she’s holding something fragile and sacred. So she gets to go first.

They begin talking and I tune them out. I already know the story about how her I pad goes out at times, and have it memorized by now so there’s no need to listen… but hark, what’s this my ears are picking up? It’s not what he’s saying but the way he’s saying it. It’s that New York accent I keep hearing in my head.

“So you’ve done this and this,” he marks off his fingers. “Maybe it’s your modem.”

He glides to the desk and grabs the modem and fiddles with it.

“Try it now.”

It works. I’m bursting with curiosity to ask him stuff, now that the emergency is over.

“You know, we’ve been here for four days now, and I’ve heard plenty of accents, but yours is the first one that sounds to me like a real New York accent, the one I’ve heard on Seinfeld.”

“Is that so?” he smiles.

“Yes. To me, yours is the real deal. Where are you from?”

George smiles again.

“Brooklyn.”

Now we all smile. Some understanding and common bits of humanity are cooking here and we savor the flavor. George is still messing with the modem.

“So, Mr. Sifakis, what’s the real difference between the boroughs?”

George put down the modem, then wiped it with a blue rag he stashed in his back pocket and stood up straight.

“Attitude,” Joe said, “Attitude.”

Suddenly George, like Pauly in Goodfellas, became a gangster-guy, a ‘Fixer’, and for all I knew, the Empire of Internet, and all its gizmos past and present, were his domain.

When he left that sunny afternoon and disappeared into the maze of historical hallways lined with photographs of important people, princes, movie stars, statesmen, politicians, the blue rag must have fell out of his pocket.

I found it later on the floor and kept it as a souvenir. Well, not like a cheap souvenir, more like a tribute. Not to the Waldorf Astoria, but to Joseph Sifakis, Godfather of Technology and Serious Smiles.



©Steven Hunley 2017


https://youtu.be/yztx8qfoNu0 Goodfellas Dinner in Prison Scene