But what do I know? Stealthy NYC cops probably cruise around in this catching perps by the hundreds who have absolutely no idea of the identity of the occupants. I’m not quite so easily fooled.
The bumper sticker gives it away. It’s on every cop car in the city.
-H
I need a new chair. Hey, it’s NYC and there are lots of places to buy chairs! Right? Well, how come I’m having such a tough time? Ehhh, it doesn’t matter.
I decided to go down to ABC Furniture at Broadway and 19th Street to see if they had an acceptable chair. The store is huge (by Manhattan standards) at six floors and is about as eclectic as you could ever hope for. The store is so eclectic, it’s on two sides of the street! Rugs on the west side, everything else on the east. It has a wonderful selection and has the coolest floors around. Old stuff. Big herringbone in some areas, creaky old floorboards painted white in others. It isn’t your standard mall anchor store or your suburban furniture place. Honest to goodness, the place has character. It doesn’t, however, have a chair that I like.
Anyway, as I was leaving I started looking at their windows in the front and saw a Christmas window that beats everybody else’s. I haven’t been by very many so far this year, but they are always similar. This store has the one I truly love.
It’s as if they remember what Christmas is really all about.
But you have to remember, this is NYC. Other windows are more Buddhist and New Age than anything else and there’s an awful lot of Hindu stuff in the store. But they did have actual Christmas music playing (not “holiday music”, but Christmas music).
-H
I don’t know if this guy is a courier or not, but I like to think of him as such. Without a car in Manhattan, it can be tough to get packages around. Typically, you hail a cab and hope it can fit in; or wait to get one of the few minivan cabs. Or pay for separate delivery…at their time, not your’s.
But this guy has an alternative for a bulky package: skate with it. I can’t imagine it was very heavy nor breakable, but it was a cool sight to see. It’s a little hard to grasp from the picture, but the bag was huge and bulky. It didn’t phase the skater, though.
-H
I recently saw a notice that the Merchant’s House Museum was giving a special showing of the servants’ quarters. Well, that led me to try and figure out what the Merchant’s House Museum was and why would I care about the servants’ quarters.
It’s actually a house of a former NYC resident. Former, as in the early 1800s. It was originally built by Joseph Brewster and bought by Seabury Tredwell, a merchant who did import/export around the time of the Erie Canal. He did very well, and build this house to show how well he did. His family lived there until 1933 and was then given to the City.
As houses in America go, it’s not particularly large, but it is good sized for NYC.
It has at least four floors, with the top floor being the servants’ quarters.
When you go in, your receive (for your $8) a notebook with a self-guided tour. You first go to the basement and look at the living areas down there. There are some displays of how life was for the era. The kitchen is very interesting.
Just past the table you can see a white object.
Yeah, it’s the family bathtub. They’d bathe every week or so, whether they needed it or not I imagine.
Pardon the poor quality of the pictures. They don’t allow flash photography and the lighting is poor so my shutter stayed open forever.
The main floor had the living and dining rooms. It doesn’t appear to have original furnishings, but ones from the proper era.
Notice the coffin. Technically, it’s not the living room: it’s the parlor. Deaths were frequent in those days and homes were traditionally part of the funeral process.
The upstairs held the main bedrooms. I did like the built-ins.
But the area that really makes the place is the back courtyard. What I wouldn’t give…
And a wonderful view of the back of the house.
The servants’ quarters are currently used for storage, so there’s really nothing to see other than the space itself.
The house feature that’s interesting is that the money for building the place was spent in making it look good to impress the frequent visitors. Then, as now, the servants’ quarters weren’t places that the visitors would go so they were the worst looking and maintained. However, the front of the house was on full display, so the quarter’s external visage was equal with the rest of the house.
Overall, the museum isn’t a don’t-miss kind of display. But I enjoyed it and found it interesting and my $8 reasonably well-spent.
-H
After I watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, I walked back home.
On Fifth Avenue, just south of Rockefeller Center, I spotted something I’ve heard about from New York’s recent past: a three card Monte game.
If you aren’t aware of it, three-card monte involves you and the dealer…and the dealer’s friends who pose as other customers. In my case, they were all playing as if they didn’t know each other and the friends were making the absolute worst choices of the red card. What terrible luck! The players didn’t even notice that the red card had a big crease in it! Easy money? There was no way I could lose! Without me saying a word, the dealer looked at me and asked me if I knew which one was the red card. I pointed. I WON!
The dealer then tried to press a $100 bill on me…as the real winner of course. A woman with the original loser told me I “have to take the money.” I declined and walked off.
I don’t know how they were going to get it back (with the rest of my money) but perhaps I was going to be set up for pick-pocketing or maybe if I were to try to leave there would be some sort of loud objection or something; but I knew that there was no way they were going to let me off with any of their (or my) money in my possession.
I did get away. And I spotted another game a block further on.
I thought the cops had gotten rid of these crooks. Maybe it’s indicative of an economic downturn or maybe I’ve just been oblivious to other games (and, no, that ain’t the truth). But it does worry me.
-H
Famous Ankles 