Ode to Eisenberg’s

I’ve been eating at Eisenberg’s for so long that I can’t remember when I first started going. Sometime in the ‘90s...

Certainly I went for the egg creams but I also went for the 1930’s atmosphere -- it opened in 1929.

How would one describe the color of the walls -- was it milky beige? And the marble counter, where Maria ordered a liverwurst with onion, Jonathan had the Matzoh ball soup, B got the turkey club, and I always asked for a tuna fish on toasted rye and coffee. Eisenberg’s was such a part of our universe that we always ordered the same meals, year after year.

It was always there, on a rainy day, when you wanted to stop in and have your sandwich and coffee at the counter, always the counter, because where else would you watch the theatre of the cook team flipping burgers, scrambling eggs, or yelling for a “whiskey down” (rye toast)?

Eisenberg’s was located in a small pre-war office building across from the Flatiron. It was so old-school that for a long time you could grab your coffee and donut then head upstairs to get your replacement ribbon at Gramercy Typewriter Co. If ever I wanted to pretend I was a character in a Bogart film…

When writer and editor Susan Chumsky saw the For Lease sign plastered to the window of Eisenberg’s she Tweeted “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!”

My sentiments, exactly.

https://www.grubstreet.com/2021/03/eisenbergs-closes-nyc.html

Smiles at San Toy

If you have an appointment at Citibank you will be separated from your clerk by a plexiglass shield most likely procured from a corporate vendor. If you’re picking up your dry cleaning at San Toy you will hand over your ticket through a shower curtain most likely purchased at the local dollar store.

I have been sending my laundry to the lovely folks at San Toy since I moved to Brooklyn in 1988. And nothing has changed. “The place looks like it’s held together by matchsticks,” my friend, Steve, once commented. Indeed, it’s still about as low tech as you can get. There’s a rotary dial telephone on the wall and your ticket is old school -- colored paper with the name, address, telephone number, and ticket number on it. At my newer, computerized dry cleaner down the street, the ticket seems to be a formality; if you don’t have one, the nice lady behind the counter simply looks up your name. I shudder to think what would happen to my shirts if I had no ticket at San Toy.

That said, I was recently convinced I had dropped off some shirts for my dad and had misplaced the ticket. I wandered in, weeks later, and a nice young man, who is most likely the son of the owner, was more than happy to help me. “What day do you think you brought them in?” he asked, as he fetched a Composition notebook and started looking up my supposed shirts in the “system.” 

While we never found said shirts -- I think I imagined I had brought them in and lost the ticket -- I was so grateful for the time the young man took to help me. And always, at San Toy, there is a smile, whether it is just to greet you, or to help you in your crazy quest to find some shirts you never dropped off.

The calendar hanging off a shelf of “brown-paper packages tied up with string” says that San Toy has been serving Park Slope for 60 years.

Thank goodness they have. It is an absolute pleasure doing business with them.

At Martine’s

On a beautiful August afternoon in 2019, my friend, Kate, and I wandered into Martine’s Auction, also known as Martine’s Antiques, a sweet store on East 78th Street, that, I’m happy to report, has survived the pandemic. 

Filled with picture frames, lamps, and prints, Martine’s is the kind of shop that you stumble upon a Manhattan side street and can’t believe your good fortune. The city was once filled with stores such as this.

Having lost my favorite letter opener years ago -- I’m sure I’ll find it if I ever move my couch -- I discovered a beautiful one while poking around Martine’s, made of brass and Art Nouveau swirls. It wasn’t until I recently found the receipt that I discovered the swirl at the end is a dragon’s head. I never noticed.

For the clerk, who I had struck up a conversation with, had hand written the receipt. It has my name and address and a description of the item: “Letter Opener with Dragon Head.” She even wrote the license number for the store on the bottom. What began the conversation was how lovely her handwriting was -- something I always notice and cannot refrain from commenting on, having practiced for years at the Rudolf Steiner School.

The clerk said she had grown up in Eastern Europe -- hence the handwriting -- and we talked about our memories of writing practice in all sorts of old school notebooks when we were children.

When I think about small businesses in New York, or anywhere for that matter, the items for sale are only a part of the picture. The other -- and for me, perhaps, the more important -- is the human connection. The conversation. The shared experience. In this case, the handwritten bill of sale is certainly the antithesis of a computer-generated receipt that will get tossed in the recycling bin. This one, on the other hand, is a keeper.

Clearly, someone else has been thinking about these side street shops, as well. They’ve created a website devoted to them: https://sideways.nyc/category/sidewalks/

Small Business Sunday

I’ve been walking around the city a lot lately. Last Sunday was the first time I felt the city was back.

Compared to the chilling days of last winter, with its empty streets and playgrounds, last Sunday was positively bustling.

My afternoon started with a D ride to the Village, past the line outside Famous Joe’s Pizza on Carmine, and a stop to try on a Panama hat at Goorin Brothers on Bleecker. Yes, this is the way I get through February – shopping for summer hats in the dead of winter.

Next, I made my way past diners in plastic enclosures (remember the ‘70s Boy in the Plastic Bubble?) to the marvelously old-school Porto Rico Importing Co. (GR7-5421, it still says, on their coffee bags), where I purchased two pounds of coffee and a box of English Breakfast tea bags. My only regret is that I forgot to pick up a couple of Hopjes coffee candies as I walked out the door.

After, I continued across Bleecker to Broadway and Bloomingdale’s for a lipstick purchase and stop at the restroom (they only way these long walks around town are doable).

The highlight of the afternoon came when I met my husband and dear friend Jonathan in the basement of New Kam Man Grocery in Chinatown. Downstairs we browsed the aisles of lovely, patterned dishware and chose a charming tea pot with a massive rooster on it. Upstairs, we made our way by the Pocky shelf and the Wasabi peas. And my husband, who loves nothing more than a dried mushroom, purchased an enormous pillow-sized bag of them. After, we walked towards Hong Kong Supermarket, a massive – for Chinatown -- store on two floors on Hester Street. Oh, the offerings…who knew you could get the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese sauce in a jar – by Ragu! Or my favorite toffee, Almond Roca, which they were out of at Kam Man, on sale. But the best part? Hands down -- the music. The Mandarin version of “Oh! Susanna” nearly killed us.

Later, we made our way to Ferrara, in Little Italy, where we ordered coffee, tea, and pastries and stood outside on Grand Street, chatting and watching the world go by. Was it possible? Yes, there was an elderly woman sitting by her second-story open window across the street, watching the world, as well.

It could not have been a more delightful afternoon, made all the better by the fact that New Yorkers were participating in that life-affirming activity of being out and about.

Shopping Yesterday Part IV

“I don’t like Woolworth’s,” my father used to say. “It feels like a big barn…”

I loved Woolworth’s when I was growing up. The Yorkville store, on 86th and Third, was where a kid on an allowance could have a field day. Hair ribbon, pen and pencils, notebooks, Woolworth’s had it all. I would wander the aisles, in that way that kids do with nothing but time on their hands, and do the mental math. How much could I actually buy?

Around the corner was Lamston’s, another variety store in the Woolworth’s vein. When I visited my grandparents, on Long Island, the basics, such as Ked’s-style white sneakers, were purchased at W.T. Grant, in Glen Cove.

I was never able to find another Woolworth’s but Brooklyn’s Save-On-Fifth – discovered when I moved there in the late ‘80s – came close. And still does.

Five aisles cover the basics – health and beauty, sewing, stationery, housewares, and cleaning supplies. And their prices are great. I get very crabby about paying $4.00 for a package of cotton facial pads – Save On Fifth has them for $1.99. They have my favorite Mead Spell-Write steno notebooks, and, in a world where you can no longer find a spool of thread without going to the Garment District, there are basic notions in the health and beauty aisle. No, they don’t have any exotic colors, but that’s okay. That’s what the Garment District is there for.

Save-On-Fifth will surprise you, as well. On a recent trip I figured they would have chip bag clips, but I was disappointed when I couldn’t find them. I asked the gentleman at the counter and he escorted me to a wall of chip bag clips.

And the folks at Save-On-Fifth could not be friendlier. “Hello, my friend, nice to see you!” the manager always call out. Last November we had a very animated conversation about the upcoming election.

Friends even come from out of town and make Save on Fifth a destination when they’re back in the old neighborhood.

“We don’t have anything like this in L.A.,” my friend, Sasha, recently commented.

Shopping Yesterday Part III

The other day I was in my very old-school grocery story, Key Food, where I have been shopping since 1990.

Key Food will be gone at some point, making way for a spiffier, up-to-date model because the site has been sold to a developer. To say I will miss it does not begin to address my feelings on the issue.

Key Food was where my husband and I shopped when we were still unmarried and living in our first rental apartment together. Then we shopped there as a married couple and continued to do so when we became parents and bought our house around the corner.

It is the very old school-ness of Key Food that I have always loved. It has the feel of stores like Grand Union, Bohack’s and A&P that my family shopped in when I was little. Key Food also plays great music. But it was the community of the place that really struck me.

Case in point: “ ‘Shame on you,’ my mother used to say, ‘if you don’t prepare for a coming snow storm.’ What is wrong with these people?!” Delio, a former store manager, once recounted as he watched hoards of shoppers coming in to stock up before a storm.

Case in point, two: “What is wrong with you?” Bob, another former store manager, once chided me when I told him I hadn’t been in the store for days because I had a sick child at home. “Why didn’t you call me. I would deliver!”

This week, I was passing the shampoo shelf and was stopped in my tracks by a bright red bottle of Clairol Herbal Essence. I simply had to have it. I almost took the bottle off the shelf when I managed to gather myself. Why in God’s name did I need a bottle of Clairol Herbal Essence? Did I need my hair to smell like I was in middle school? 

Thankfully, I kept walking. Just at that point, though, I realized they were playing  Saturday In The Park by Chicago. So, there I was drawn back to the mid-‘70s because of a bottle of shampoo and a song, whose lyrics were about, among other things, the Fourth of July. You know, that very cheerful feeling of mid-summer, the antidote to an endless pandemic and dirty snow and garbage-covered streets of New York. 

At this point, I was standing on line when a man of a certain age wearing an MTA uniform walked by me, singing, rather loudly I might add, the lyrics to the aforementioned song. Now I know, perhaps, the first line but this individual knew every word of the intro, melody, chorus, and bridge. A mere weeks before Key Food was playing Lara’s theme, from Doctor Zhivago. Only they were airing the ultra-cheesy Ray Coniff Muzak version, not the fabulous Maurice Jarre one from the soundtrack. 

And, accompanying this, was one of the female managers, loudly singing “Somewhere my love…” as she moved around the front of the store.

Shopping Yesterday Part II

“And another thing…” Audrey Hepburn tells Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina, “never a briefcase in Paris and never an umbrella. It’s the law.”

I recently lost my favorite black, bamboo-handle umbrella, purchased several years ago on a rainy afternoon from the flagship Brooks Brothers store on Madison and 44th Street. And I no longer have the beautiful raincoat my mother, who had clearly not listened to Audrey Hepburn, bought me at Brooks Brothers for my first trip to Paris.

This seems fitting as the loss of the 44th Street store has become a reality. Somehow, I can’t seem to bring myself to walk over and see the demise. So many memories…

The following is a blog post I wrote in 2012:

Breakfast with Audrey

When my mother took me to Bloomingdale’s I wanted to move in. There is no logic to this. Except that the world inside, with its living– and bedrooms set up seemed perfect.

I never knew anyone else had this feeling. Then I read Capote:

“Just get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there.”

The thing is -- you want to go to Tiffany’s with Audrey Hepburn. After you’ve seen the film, you are sunk. There is no Holly without Audrey. The real Holly is far from perfect and Hepburn was so stunning on so many levels that, no matter how hard she tried, she could not prevent her inner goodness from seeping through.

Another store with a proud look was Brooks Brothers; my one-year career at prep school gave me an excuse to shop there for boy’s oxford-cloth shirts and tweed blazers. I was fascinated by the mostly-male sales help. What was their back story? I came up with an idea, The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt, that imagined a young man and his mother, a former model, coming to terms with their lives as they come and go from their apartment in Greenwich Village.

Letitia Baldridge once wrote an Op-Ed piece about shopping yesterday called I Shopped Them All: “It was such a safe, predictable world. It was also intensely personal — everything directed at you and no one else.”

Shopping Yesterday

Best & Co., Bloomingdales. Brooks Brothers, B. Altman. These are the stores of my childhood.

I once wrote a piece called Shopping Yesterday, which brought it all back – those Saturdays spent shopping with my mother, an all-day affair that was both tiring and exhilarating. The attention to the customer, the conversation, the wrapping up in tissue paper, or, even better, a box. Items weren’t rolled up and tossed in a plastic bag. Elegance ruled the day.

The following is a piece I wrote some time ago on the subject:

Another “normal” book I read for a girl that age (although this kind of normal meant it would be banned in certain communities after 1980) was Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. The collective adolescent angst of every girl I knew could be summed up in lines such as: “I wore my brown loafers without socks. My mother thought that was dumb.”

The scene when Margaret goes to buy her first bra is somehow etched in my memory because shopping then was so different. I once wrote an essay about all the small (and large) Manhattan shops my mother took me to. What stands out is Melnikoff’s, where I bought camp gear as a teenager around Margaret’s age. The wood was polished blond, the cases had sliding glass, and the lighting was fluorescent. Most importantly, the store was intimate, so you did not get overwhelmed. Down York Avenue was the “Bazooka store” where my friends and I stocked up on Mary Janes and Goldenburg’s Peanut Chews.

Shopping always meant lunch and when my mother took me to Bloomingdale’s we ate at Burger Heaven (which may have been the Beef Burger back then). A burger, Coke and fries. Shopping was an event, a day-long affair in stores that were gently lit and very quiet…

Because of Business Cards

The lovely Jon Vie Pastries, in Greenwich Village, had an exquisite business card. It proudly proclaimed that they were “bakers of distinction.”

A pen and ink drawing of the arch and fountain in Washington Square, it contained a birthday cake with candles. The smoke floated up into the sky, resembling clouds at the height of the fountain’s American flag.

When I was a child, Jon Vie was a Friday evening stop on the way to visit a friend of my parents, one Luis Mendietta, who lived on the corner of Waverly and West 10th. When I was old enough to wander the Village on my own, Jon Vie was always a stop for an éclair and a cup of coffee, while sitting at one of their spacious tables and watching the world on Sixth Avenue walk by.

Recently I came across Jon Vie’s business card while attempting to reconnect with my dusty Rolodex, and while doing so realized that the entries in this now archaic information-gathering system were a perfect snapshot of New York in the ‘90s. As I flipped through the various businesses, people and organizations, I realized that many of them are no longer with us.

There was Airline Stationers, on the corner of Madison and 40th where I used to drop in as a high school student doing research at Mid-Manhattan Library, scouring the aisles looking for the perfect notebook and pen.

Then there was the card for Dr. Morris Shorofsky, our general practitioner whose office was located on East 61st Street, between Third and Lex. My husband and I loved Dr. Shorofsky, who was sweet and funny and seemingly ageless.

“Dr. S,” my husband once asked him, “aren’t you ever going to retire?”

“You see that courtyard out there?” Dr. Shorofsky pointed at the window. “They’re going to bury me in it.”

Around the corner, on Lexington and 62nd, was the Classique Shoe Salon, where my mother bought her Italian-made fine leather shoes. I found their card, while perusing the collection, and remembered how I always knew I would be all grown-up when I had purchased a pair of spectator slingbacks from Classique.

Then there was Ricky Bunting, who was a Brand Ambassador for Brooks Brothers, at their iconic flagship store on Madison Avenue and 46th Street. I would have never thought about Ricky if I hadn’t come across his card, which reminded me of the conversation he and I had in Men’s Wear about the etiquette classes he was teaching with a colleague for seniors at NYU.

“Do you still use your Rolodex?” I recently asked my husband, whose business cards from various folks in the entertainment industry have been found lying on his desk for decades.

“No, I use Google,” he said, “and proceeded to explain his current method for electronic contact list keeping. I understand, for I certainly use a similar one to track my writing resources. There is something about the business card, though, a certain sense of personality, an artfulness, that is missing from the electronic contact. Perhaps I have held on to these business cards to keep them alive.

“Shops that reflect an individual's idiosyncratic tastes are slowly disappearing in the Village, a trend repeated elsewhere in Manhattan,” The New York Times said about small businesses like Jon Vie.

“Even the neighborhood's dogs know the shop, because Jon Vie saves broken cookies for them. One dog that ran away from its owner a year ago was soon found inside the shop, drooling over the cookie case.”

Sydney Kryska, the bakery’s manager “recalls a time when the machine that spits out numbers to keep the line of customers honest was in use every afternoon between 4 and 5. We had that many people buying cake on their way home," he said. "Now we don't use that machine except for Thanksgiving or other big holidays. People do not come in on their way home to pick up pastries or desserts. They're health-conscious.”

This may have been true but if there is one thing I have discovered about New York from a lifetime of observation, it is its sense of renewal. Yes, my Rolodex is a testament to loss, to a New York that is no longer there.

And yet, there is a beautiful new pastry shop around the corner from my house. In the middle of winter, in the midst of the economic devastation of a global pandemic, I watched a man paint the word Boulangerie on the sign above the window. It was artistic and wreaked of personality.

Just like my beautiful business card from Jon Vie Pastries, Bakers of Distinction.

Because of Compost

It’s Wednesday and I’m caught up on compost.

This is what it’s come down to – I feel an accomplishment in not having any compost in the sink. Really? This is something to be proud about? How did it come to this?

Yet another small practice that was taken away by the pandemic was the New York City composting program. What started as taking your compost to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday had turned into eventually having your own brown bin that you could deposit your compost in all week and have picked up on Fridays. 

When it ended I bought a compost bin for the back yard, which, because we cook with so many eggs, fruits, and vegetables, filled up pretty quickly. Then the winter came, and the opening froze shut. While walking the dog one day I discovered a compost bin outside the local community garden. Problem solved.

Since then, I’ve been bringing a small bag of compost daily. Except all my neighbors have been doing the same thing and when the bin fills up the folks at the garden take the bin in. Then I get frustrated because I have no place to put my compost. So now I’m storing it in the little bins the city provided for compost transport from kitchen to bin in the back yard until the bin comes out at the community garden once more.

How did it come to this? On some level, it’s a prime example of trying to hold onto some sense of control, as well as a positive program that the city had started, that is necessary for about a dozen reasons. I’ve even taught composting lessons and spent lots of time researching the process. 

Could I put my compost in the garbage like everyone else and be done with it? Absolutely. Will I continue to shlep my little bag of compost to President Street on a daily basis? Sure will. 

As long as that bin is out, I’m there.   

Because of Bread

Normally, on New Year’s, I would be writing about books.

There would be a new stack, attained under the Christmas tree, and there would be the stragglers from the previous year that didn’t get finished, or were put aside, for one reason or another (I must say, though, I’ve tried to end this habit, telling myself I owe it to the author to finish the book from beginning to end).

And while I did get reading done this year, and I did participate in a delightful book club, not a lot of progress was made on the stack. And that’s okay. If there is anything I have learned during the pandemic, it is that pre-pandemic perfectionism is not productive. So, I didn’t make it through the stack. Acknowledge, accept, and move on.

Baking was also something that seemed to happen earlier in the year, but got displaced by work, the fever-pitch election and all-encompassing volunteer work that went along with it. There’s that awful feeling you get when you’ve been away from something you enjoy – will you remember how to do it again? Can you find your beloved bread recipe? Do you even know where to look? 

Perhaps it was the lines forming at the grocery store on New Year’s Eve that forced me into action. I’m an 8 AM-grocery-store shopper; no one there, no lines. As I had already made that trip, I was not about to go back and battle anyone for a packet of yeast. Which, as it turn out, I had a jar of on the shelf.

Bread dough is pretty forgiving, and luckily I have made this Artisan Bread for several years now. I even used this recipe with young children when I was teaching pre-school. Although it gets pretty sticky – I managed to get the dough into the loaf pans when ready and, when done, the bread turned out quite well, considering I had not baked for so many months. It helped to watch Paul Hollywood make his ciabatta on The Great British Baking Show Master Class. His technique reminded me to go back and read the original recipe, which also made four loaves, not the two I had adapted for classroom work. It was great to breathe new life into something I had done over and over for a long time.

If there is anything I will do differently in 2021 it is make the time to bake regularly. It is what our mothers knew – you do something weekly for a whole host of reasons. Sunday, for example, is often sewing day. Baking is joyous and, in dark times, is such a simple way of doing something productive, occupying my mind, and sharing something sweet – in return for a smile -- with friends, family, and neighbors. It’s okay, though, that other activities got in the way of baking last fall.

After all -- acknowledge, accept, and move on.

Because of Cookies

This year I was sure I forgot.

I convinced myself I could not remember how to make cookies at Christmas.

2020 had been a swirl of sadness, illness and death and the constant onslaught of major and minor responsibilities had left me struggling with focus. Were cookies really a priority?

And yet, rituals were certainly a necessity. Nothing seemed more important than participating in activities that were traditional and that reminded me of what had come before. I decided to dive in and start the process, taking my Good Housekeeping: 125th Anniversary off the shelf and locating Classic Sugar Cookies on page 702. After all, I’d made them many times before; how could I go wrong?

Something about gathering all the ingredients and tools centered me and gave me momentary focus. There was a task to be done and instruction to be followed. Before I knew it, I had the requisite sugar cookie dough, seemingly perfect in consistency, ready to roll into disks and chill in the ‘fridge.

With cookies that need to be cut, I find that the biggest challenge is getting the temperature of the dough just right. Too cold and you cannot cut a cookie; too warm and you have goo. My husband stepped in, as he always does, and showed me a great way to decorate with sugar -- by leaving the cookie cutter surrounding the dough on the baking sheet so that the sugar does not end up all over. That helped a lot. Also, spending just a little more time and money by going to the housewares store and purchasing sparkling sugar, versus colored cane sugar from the grocery store, made a huge difference. Sparkling sugar looks better, glistens, and does not melt on the cookie when baked for too long.  

With my newly-restored confidence in cookie-making I decided to dive into the new-and-apparently0-improved Good Housekeeping: 1,200 Triple-Tested Recipes, which a friend had given me several years ago. Why not try something new this year? Instead of cutting gingerbread out, I decided to attempt Jumbo Ginger Snaps on page 606, something I had never baked before. 

Remember I mentioned focus? Well, clearly it was missing at some step of the process, as I ended up with what looked like brown wet paste. Roll dough into a ball? I could tell by simply looking that this dough would not roll. What went wrong? Clearly, there was not enough flour. When I thought back, I remembered dipping the measuring cup into the flour canister once, but not twice, therefore having placed only one cup of flour into a two-cup recipe. In the end, adding that extra cup did the trick and the dough rolled easily into balls that, when covered with cane sugar, created a mighty tasty ginger snap.

I’m so glad I didn’t cave into that sense of defeat this year. Baking has given me focus and a task that is pleasant. After all, most of the cookies get given away and who doesn’t like a batch of freshly baked cookies in a most wretched year? Ultimately, making cookies have, at least in the moment, settled my monkey mind.

Perhaps it is because of cookies that I have a few moments of calm.

A Little Less Scrooge-ish

Some years I’m a little Scrooge-ish about Christmas. Other years less so. This is one of those years.

Now that the election is over, I am in full-on holiday mode, more so, perhaps, than any year in memory. The sadness, wretchedness, and dread has been replaced by joy, lightness, and hope. 

It began with the purchase of the wreath and the branches for the table. Then the wooden nutcracker statues emerged. But it was the unwrapping of the Charlie Brown Christmas lights that confirmed the season had begun. They even turned into a mini-project, as some of the bulbs had burnt out.

As soon as I played the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas for the first time this year, I knew I was ready.

Let the season begin.

What I’m Reading

You’d think that after an election season like no other and my first stint at working the polls, I’d be a little tired of the presidency. But no. I needed more.

The Worst Job In the World is a wonderful look at the office of the U.S. presidency and what it has come to represent. Complex, thoughtful and meticulously researched by its author, 60 Minutes correspondent John Dickerson, I picked it up for research purposes and now it’s become the classic, I-can’t-put-it-down book by the fire. And this at the beginning of the holiday season.

Go figure.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/604093/the-hardest-job-in-the-world-by-john-dickerson/

#worstjobintheworld #johndickerson #bookblogs

A Perfect Storm

In “Take This Sabbath Day,” a season one episode of The West Wing, the priest is telling the president a story.

It is the parable of the man by the rising river. He has ignored the radio report, the helicopter and sailor, all sent to bring him to safety. “God will save me,” he tells them, ignoring their attempts to help. When he perishes and arrives at the gates of St. Peter, he demands an audience with God.

“Why did this happen?” he asks.

To which God responds “I sent you a radio report, a helicopter, and a sailor. What are you doing here?”

I sometimes wonder if the unseen forces of 2020 were sent to scream at us, “We’re sending you a global pandemic, an economic depression, and social injustice. Wake up!” Indeed, it is possible that this administration has even helped: “In this single way,” says Emily Bazelon, of The New York Times, “Trump has, paradoxically, served as an engine of democracy. His appetite for attention has forced more Americans to think about politics. He has made it top of mind.”

While I cannot quite summon up the intestinal fortitude to thank the president, I do think that the parable of 2020 – the perfect storm – is one that I have learned multiple lessons from.

Perhaps the most important? Stay engaged.

All the Possibilities

What is it about Grand Central?

For the second time in a week I found myself crossing its marble floors in search of my favorite watch repair shop. Friday I was unsuccessful. I should have checked their hours. Monday I had better luck. I dropped off my Hamilton and searched for a coffee.

Friday. It seems months ago, when I continually consulted the Associated Press website — they’ve called every election accurately since 1848 — and tried to focus on anything other than the count. I hoped. I prayed. I tried to be patient. And in the end, in the frenzied, immediate-gratification world we live in, the gratitude I felt for the U.S. Postal Service, which, according to The New York Times, delivered approximately 60,000,000 mail-in ballots, and the “masked Americans counting the vote [who] just kept counting…” was not to be described. All I can say is that when I heard shouts and sounds of banging pots on Saturday morning I called out to my husband.

“What’s happened?” I yelled. “Something is happening...”

Checking his phone, he said the words I never thought I would finally hear.

“Biden won Pennsylvania.”

I just looked at him in disbelief. Then I walked over to my dining room table, collapsed into a chair, put down my head, and wept. Uncontrollably.

The rest of Saturday is a blur of joy, one I can safely say I have never experienced in my 55 years in New York City. Concerts come close. But this was about much more than sharing music together. This was about saving our democracy. And I must say, in recent weeks I saw many of the faithful I knew losing their faith. Which left me relying on myself. That’s bad news. I come from a long line of cynics who are much happier complaining about the emptiness of the glass than in figuring out how to fill it. It took all the faith I could muster to get up every day and believe that hope for our beleaguered nation would be back.

And then came Joe, “...relentlessly optimistic, even cheerful” during his acceptance speech, said The New York Times. “ ‘We can do it,’ ” he said. “ ‘I know we can.’ ” And America did. “We saved the republic!” proclaimed Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

And here it is, Monday. It seems fitting to celebrate my city and my country, the one that gave my family a home in the years after World Wars I and II in Grand Central, with a warm pretzel and a hot coffee. I’ve even found a sliver of sunlight against a boarded up ticket window which, for a few minutes, serves as a bar. And then I think of Cary Grant, who bought his ticket to Chicago at just this window in North By Northwest.

As I look up at the glorious aquamarine ceiling I think about how Grand Central is about possibilities. It is the knowledge that I could buy a coffee, a watch, or a bouquet of roses. Or I could purchase a ticket and cross the county or even – like Cary’s character, who ends up at Mount Rushmore -- the country.

It seems that today, the Monday after the Saturday that gave us back hope, I need to stand here and have a small moment of celebration. I had the capital B Big celebration on Saturday, when I stood on my stoop and threw my arms up in the air. “WE DID THIS!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, as car horns beeped, cow bells rang, and cheers filled the air. What I thought would be an hour or so of jubilation turned into what Gayle King referred to as “America’s block party,” a day-long event that for us included drums and dancing in Grand Army Plaza.

“It’s like V-E Day,” my husband yelled.

And it didn’t end that night when I tried to lay my tired head down in bed. My stoop-loving neighbors had gone through the champagne and marijuana and now were awaiting a pizza delivery.

As I finish my coffee and contemplate the majesty surrounding me I wonder what it is about Grand Central. In the end it’s all about the possibilities.

Democracy at Work

What was I waiting for?

It was 1 AM and I was wide awake. After months of nervous anticipation, Election Day had finally arrived, and I should have been asleep. I had four more hours before I needed to arrive and I just lay there, staring at my ceiling, thinking about everything that could go wrong. We could have four more years of this madness, partisan violence could break out, or, God help us all, I might be expected to troubleshoot the scanner.

The Board of Elections training I attended was thorough, so thorough that they taught you everything you might need to know to be a poll worker. The problem is that you don’t need to know everything in one session, and I, having never been a poll worker, would most likely never be assigned to work the scanner. But they don’t tell you that.  

Luckily, when I arrived at my Brooklyn polling location, to an empty room, with a small army of dedicated young women who are the face of the new poll worker generation, we all just went to work, setting up the privacy booths and putting up signs. I ended up being a line manager with a dear friend who I just happened to run into. An added bonus I could not possibly have predicted.

By 6:00 AM, when the polls opened, there was a small line on Baltic Street, but the reality is that that’s as far as it ever got. Throughout the day there was a steady stream of voters but there was never a line, and never a crowd. That was reserved for the days of early voting when I, like my fellow Brooklynites, stood for three hours at the Barclays Center. It was okay, though; there was a marching band and small dancing children and once we got into the lobby, voting took about 15 minutes.

What there was on both occasions: civility, respect, and kindness. Poll workers on Election Day held doors, directed voters to elevators, and ultimately made sure the process was as seamless as possible. My various jobs while on line included scooter baby-sitter, dog walker and granny-cart watcher, as well as puppy carrier. Needless to say, this was my favorite one. 

As the day slowly proceeded, volunteers from various non-profits delivered yummy food, including chicken, rice and beans, and pizza. Who knew I wouldn’t need the PB&Js I packed with my thermos of coffee? My fellow poll workers and I had lots of animated conversations about everything from jobs to civic engagement. Most of all, we watched the dedication of voters come, one after another, simply doing their job as citizens.

Problems? The only one I saw was some I Voted stickers at the end of the day that ended up stuck to the school lobby floor. Ah, that’s the tool I should have brought. Where was my handy-dandy paint scraper when I needed it? But by the time I went downstairs and returned to the lobby to figure out how I could remove them, they were magically gone, rapidly removed by a hard-working custodian who was probably eager to get home (and who had probably seen his share of I Voted stickers stuck to the floor from elections past).

The last hour, with very little activity, was tough. Still, I patiently waited for 9 PM, when we started the strike – to use an entertainment-industry term -- of the operation. By 10 PM I was walking home, exhausted but exhilarated.

What was I waiting for?

To get involved. I should have done this decades ago.

Oh, and one added bonus: at 8 PM, when I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I ducked out for a minute to get a coffee at the corner bodega. 

The woman shook her head when I took out my dollar.

“Why?” I asked.

 “Because you’re working,” she responded.

Becoming a Voter

Why do I vote? 

The answer is I really don’t know.

From the standpoint of analysis, I have been voting for so long – every presidential and primary election since I turned 18 – (okay, I may have missed one primary) that I can’t remember why I started in the first place.

My family was not particularly civically engaged when I was growing up. We only went to church occasionally, my parents didn’t join community groups, and they did not get involved in local politics. Except for one thing. They voted. It was a hard-won right of immigrants who had left the oppressive regimes of Eastern Europe and wanted to support their new country. My father voted in every presidential and primary election. My mother did, as well, although she may have missed a few primaries. I don’t ever remember being taken to a polling place with my parents – this would never have occurred to them – but once I turned 18, I couldn’t wait to vote. 

My first presidential was the Reagan-Mondale election of 1984; I remember being amazed by the fact that a woman – Geraldine Ferraro -- was running as Vice President – but my energy was tempered by the fact that I couldn’t vote in Westchester County, where I went to school, because my college address was not considered permanent. Hopping on a bus and train to go home and vote was no big deal, unlike it was for Laura Ruch, from Atlanta, who in this Presidential election never received her Ohio absentee ballet. She is going to, according to The New York Times, “…board a plane against her better judgement and fly home to vote in person amid a pandemic.” During the Clinton campaign, I was given an invitation to attend the Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden. What an experience that was.

When my children were little, my husband and I took them to every primary and presidential election, although I don’t remember them getting I’m a Future Voter stickers – “I definitely didn’t get one of those,” my child just commented. “I would have remembered that! I do remember you or Dad letting me turn the levers.” Then they got engaged: When they turned nine they had a Kids for Kerry fundraiser birthday party in Prospect Park. 

So, one way to look at it: voting is just what we did. We didn’t question it. “…if you learn about voting when you’re young you can be a good voter by the time you actually get there,” says Hannah McCarthy, of the Civics 101 podcast. “You could say voting is habit forming” Peter Levine, a professor at Tufts University Tisch College of Civic Engagement, says “…the pattern in America is that people gradually become voters each decade until people get into their 80s. They vote at a higher rate and it seems that people overcome the barriers; they learn how to do it, they tune into some issues and get an idea who they’re going to vote for, and once they do that they’re much more likely to vote again.”

About a year ago I had coffee with a friend, and I told him I was the most politically unengaged person I knew.

“Really?” he asked. “Why do you say that?”

The answer I gave has less to do with being uninvolved than it does with simply being horrified by the events of the past four years. One thing I do know. I am no longer that person. I’ve never been as engaged in an election as I have in this one. The phone calls, the postcards, and being a poll worker this Tuesday. Perhaps I’ve “become” that voter Peter Levine is talking about.

If not now, after all, then when?

Stories from the Street: Early Voting Opens in New York City

Saturday. 7:30. Foggy.

Wandering over to Barclays to see if there’s a line. I am so excited about the first day of early voting in Brooklyn and this site opens at ten.

I drop my Postcards to Voters in the mailbox and proceed to Flatbush Avenue. There isn’t going to be anyone on line, right? I could be the first one.

Nope. As I approach the corner of Fifth, I see a small line across the street -- about a dozen people -- that has already formed.

My neighbor and her elderly mother are there. So is a young woman by the entrance. 

“What time did you get here?” I ask. 

“6:30,” she says. 

“But they’re supposed to open at ten,” I say. 

“Well, someone came out and said they might open earlier,” she responds.

An older man walks up with a Board of Elections manual and says he has to work. How can he get in? “Are these all workers?” he asks, pointing to the line. 

“No, these are voters,” I say. 

“Go up to the door and knock,” someone tells him.

“Is this where early voting is?” a woman asks. “I live in the neighborhood, but I don’t know if this is my early voting site.” A discussion ensues. 

“I had a long wait for the 2018 midterms,” a young woman named Umi says. “And everyone was a bit grumpy. There was a general feeling that this process was an unwelcome chore.”

It shouldn’t be this way. If there is anything voting in this of all elections has illustrated, it is the fact that information is not streamlined, and confusion is rampant. To say nothing about lines. Other countries -- Canada and Ireland being prime examples — make voting easy and don’t force citizens to have to figure it out together. "I've waited longer for a bus than I have ever waited to vote," a Canadian man posted on social media. 

And why does every American state vote differently, with some – Utah and Colorado come to mind – serving as models of electoral efficiency – and others struggling to make voting safe, accessible and efficient.

The challenges of voting, the mechanics of voting -- these are all issues that are yet again coming out in this election, issues that are being worked on by tireless lawyers, volunteers, and voting-rights advocates nationwide. “…voter suppression,” says Umi, “both at the legislative and practical level, [is] at a generational high. It’s use it or lose it time. I don’t think it hyperbolic or irrational to say that it is pivotal to the fabric of American democracy, as we have come to know it, that citizens inform themselves and take advantage of this particular right while we still have it.”

New Yorkers, as well as voters all over the U.S. are willing to stand in long lines, some taking up to 11 hours, to make their voice heard. A record 57,415,468 votes, according to the United States Elections Project, have already been cast, and predictions are that this may be the highest voter turnout seen since the presidential election of 1908, according to Newsweek magazine. While the spirit of in-person voting is wonderful – I’ve always loved the communal aspect myself -- there should be no lines. I saw plenty of elderly and disabled voters who should not have to wait outside for hours. And the weather was not bad today, although it was cool and chilly. If it was raining, or snowing, it would not be okay to make people stand on the street in the midst of a global pandemic. This is no way to thank Americans for coming out and doing their civic duty.

An alternative to in-person voting is the mail-in ballot. But with the recent politization of the United States Postal Service and the debacle of incorrect ballots mailed in New York City, it’s going to take a lot of work for voters to trust this process again. Luckily, those carrying a mail-in ballot can simply walk in to their early voting site and drop it in a box without waiting in line. 

Finally, polling places and secure drop-off boxes should be available everywhere and should be easily accessible by the poor, elderly and disabled. 

These are just some of the ideas that can make the American voting process easy and equitable.

I missed my chance to be the first person in line but it’s okay. “Today the mood was very different,” said Umi, who waited over three hours to cast her vote. “Despite the hours of waiting, people were generally good-natured and excited to participate.” Indeed, folks had coffee and bagels and lawn chairs. Lots of animated conversations were taking place. “This is the first election I’ve voted in!” a man proudly told a reporter. And a marching band even showed up.

“…now as much as ever,” Umi said, “it is up to the dissenters to make themselves known, lest this new status quo cement itself into an immovable block of unchecked power that will crush the will of the most vulnerable of America’s people.”

Grey and Chilly

The sight was so comforting – a man in rainboots on the subway platform.

It was a Friday morning and it was grey. Rain and a chill were in the air. Without any ceremony New York had ushered in that time of year when we start to move back indoors.

It is a melancholic time – the saying of goodbyes to the summer sun and the breezes at the beach. The streets are strewn with yellow leaves.

I walked through Grand Central and noticed how little was going on. Financier, with its divine pastries, was shuttered. The main lobby was empty. Normally, on a weekday morning, crowds would crisscross each other, trying to get to a ticket booth or train. I could have roller-skated across the floor and had it all to myself. 

I looked up and Cipriani’s – where I recently had drinks with friends – was gone, to be replaced by a white, steel scaffold. But when I looked up again the ceiling was glorious. The beautiful blue-green was bright, and the stars shined. It was dull when I was a little girl and I took my first train trip upstate. Then there was a massive Kodak photograph on the east balcony. Now there’s the Apple store. When I walked around the corner I found my Zaro’s (family bakery, established 1927). The aroma was heavenly, and I happily purchased a bag of croissants for tomorrow’s breakfast.

On Park Avenue, it was dark. The rain continued coming down. It was fine, though. This is New York. Grey, and chilly. The season has arrived. The season of indoors. Of sweaters and cups of tea. Of books and quiet music. The subway, filled with people once more. In rainboots.

On a chilly, grey day in October.