Our Town downtown
September 25, 2006
“Melissa,” the young woman sitting across the table does not want a cup of coffee. She worked an event last night and compensated for the energy she expended there before this early morning interview. If she had another, she says, she’d be bouncing off the walls.
This coffee shop is not that far from her old apartment on East 26th Street. Walking there would not be difficult, but it would still require some small amount of determination. To do it you’d have to be a certain kind of person – a person who chooses stairs over escalators, a person who wipes out the gunk from in between the shower tiles, someone who bothers to clean out the lint filter each time they use the dryer.
Melissa’s new place is her old-old place. During her Manhattan-living experiment, in which she sublet half of the 2-bedroom on 26th for the convenience of living in the city, she kept her lease in Hoboken and in turn, sublet it to someone else while she was on this side of the river. The lease on Melissa’s Hoboken apartment will not end for several months, and she was happy to return to it. Relieved is a better word to use here, because while moving back took away the easy access that the 26th Street apartment provided to her office and the other places her job took her, it also freed her from the Roommate From Hell (RFH). RFH is a sales analyst and the leaseholder. That lease is not scheduled to end until shortly after press time, which is why Melissa agreed to participate in this article on condition of anonymity. Translation: she wants her security deposit back, and in the event that RFH trashes the place before it’s time for her to move out – she’s heard of this happening when people leave their Jersey Shore summer shares and doesn’t put it past RFH – guess whose security deposit will be used to pay for the damages?
Jeni Larson had a roommate from hell when she lived on Christopher Street four years ago. Larson was working in fine arts publicity, and was a part-time student at Rutgers at the time. She currently lives in Puerto Vallarta. Her roommate seemed okay when Larson and her other roommate, a friend of Jeni’s, first interviewed her to sublet the third bedroom. They would soon learn that this unshaven female roommate was also bipolar. Before long she revealed herself to be racist and anti-Semitic, too, which fueled a lot of arguments and other hostile encounters inside the apartment. One of the odder things Larson mentions in an online interview, is that this roommate never stayed the night throughout the entire term of their lease. Each night she would take the train home and stay at her parents’ house. Larson and Sylvia (Larson’s mentally stable roommate) rode it out until the lease ended, and have since lost contact with the roommate they nicknamed “Ms. Lithium.”
Roommates in New York City are often brought together by nothing more intimate than a notice Scotch taped to a wall or a free classified posted on Craig’s List.
Michael Boujon, head of business development for EasyRoommate, a popular online service that allows customers to contact potential roommates from its database, says that there are three basic circumstances that result in New Yorkers’ random residential pairings: neither person can afford to live alone; they can afford to live alone, but are new to the city and want to make friends; or they cannot afford to pay the rent and they’re new to the city and want to make friends.
On EasyRoommate, users can narrow their search on the basis of criteria as general as age and as specific as sexual orientation and star sign.
As many Internet daters can attest, there’s a difference between a match of preferences listed on screen, and the elusive variables of the “chemistry” that is or isn’t there when two people, in this case, roommates, actually shack up together.
And Boujon says that once it’s official, there’s a pecking order within the apartment, that’s rooted in simple economics. “The guy who has the lease is the king all the time. But the guy who came in is gonna have a hard time to live under the pressure … When you don’t have the lease, you know, you just have to shut your mouth and pay the rent and everything …”
Boujon says that very often, when the lease holder or the subtenant who collects the checks and hands them to the lease holder, has an occupation that is generally unstable like acting or bartending, they will overcharge the other roommates and pocket the difference. To avoid this, he recommends getting a feel for the market by visiting lots of places and asking people who have lived in New York for a substantial amount of time what a fair price is for a given apartment.
When apartments have more than two people living in them, problems with things like cleanliness become more and more likely, which is why Boujon says roommates should make the rules explicitly clear early on.
A common recipe for disaster is when a one-bedroom is subdivided to accommodate a roommate, and either one starts hosting their significant other, Boujon says.
This summer, Melissa found herself dealing with a very similar set of circumstances.
Melissa, who has a list of former roommates dating back to her college days, runs credit checks and asks for job references when considering potential subtenants.
Any time she considers potential roommates, she gauges them from their first e-mail and telephone encounters with her.
In this case, RFH was actually an acquaintance of one of Melissa’s friends and before Melissa moved in, they went out for drinks, and they hung out a few times. She had no indication that living with RFH was going to be anything but harmonious. “She seemed really cool,” Melissa says.
In a discussion about their personalities, about a month after Melissa moved in, cleaning came up. “She said ‘I’m very, very clean.’ You know, ‘I love to clean.’ ‘I’m always cleaning.’” Melissa says this should have been her “first red flag.” As she would later learn RFH did clean. RFH cleaned her own room.
During the two months they were roommates, Melissa says, RFH routinely let dishes and garbage, bathroom and kitchen garbage, pile up despite the fact that there was a garbage chute on their floor. “It’s not like she had to take it all the way downstairs.”
Melissa acknowledges that leaving dishes in the sink is not equivalent to killing your roommate’s prized parakeet, but in her view, these tidiness problems went beyond common issues about the distribution of labor. One example is when she went on a business trip for the weekend. RFH cleaned her old food out of the refrigerator and transferred it to the kitchen garbage on a Thursday night. Melissa left her a note asking her to take it out of the apartment since it was perishable. “I went away on business Friday, came back on Sunday night and the garbage was still there, with all the old food … Who does that?”
One Friday, RFH informed her that a buyer was coming over the next morning, a buyer for the furniture. “She was leaving for vacation on Sunday, so I think she needed money,” Melissa says. For the next two months there was no furniture. “She could’ve sold it to me.”
And once, she caught RFH stealing her laundry detergent, emptying it from Melissa’s bottle into her own empty one, but she decided it wasn’t worth fighting over.
Overflowing trash in the kitchen and the bathroom, purged furniture and stolen laundry detergent, might spell roommate hell, but at least it doesn’t cost time and money.
If “common sense cleaning” issues were the tip of the tip of the iceberg, RFHB (the Roommate From Hell’s Boyfriend) was the base.
“The weekend she met him, he stayed over our apartment, which is, whatever. You know, it happens.” Melissa says she wasn’t introduced to the man who eventually became a de-facto third roommate, but first crossed paths with him on the way to the bathroom.
Melissa acknowledges that this was during the summer months, and that she expected air conditioning to bump up the electricity bill somewhat, but the boyfriend was showering, often when she herself had to get ready for work, and this used up more power. She held her tongue for awhile, but asked RFH if she could they could set up some house policy for overnight guests, because although the apartment wasn’t tiny, it wasn’t huge either. He added to the mess too.
RFH wouldn’t hear of it. “She flipped out. She’s like ‘I’m 24, I’m a grown woman. I can have people over whenever I want. I shouldn’t have to regulate who comes over when!’” Melissa says.
Melissa then explained to RFH that she wasn’t judging her lifestyle or trying to act like a parent. She just hoped to reach some kind of compromise between the, three, of them.
“And after that she shut down. That was it. After that, she became the biggest fucking bitch.”
He was there almost every night, Melissa says, and with his use of the electricity – RFH set up three fans and a dehumidifier for him in the bedroom, and often left the electricity on when she wasn’t home. The monthly bill jumped from what Melissa estimates was between 70 and 90 dollars, to 190.
She eventually told the landlord what was going on and got out of the apartment. She doesn’t know if RFH will remain once the lease ends, but if she does, Melissa says, “I almost feel bad, putting somebody else in that situation, but I had to get out.”
No stranger to living with strangers, myself, I had had my fill of roommates by the time I graduated from college in 2001. But after living in the suburbs with my dad and stepmother for a month, and then with my grandmother in Queens for six months, I was more than ready to hit the road in the spring. On an entry level salary, I knew that if I wanted to move out, especially if I wanted to move to Manhattan, I would have to find a roommate or two, maybe more. Undeterred by the experiences I had had at college as, I admit, an only child new to the world of communal living – undaunted by my father’s misgivings: there were loans to pay off, there was no cushion of savings to speak of, what if I lost my job? – I followed a hot lead: a friend going to school uptown saw a sign stuck on a Morningside Heights bus stop: 575 for a room on Amsterdam and 106th Street. A sublet. Not bad at all.
Fast forward to my fifth month in residence. There was the place itself. It had no common area besides the kitchen and the hallway, which was pretty wide, for an air duct. Then there were the jaunty bass lines that bounded, constantly, from the Mexican restaurant directly below us, the stench of the lobby, and the lock on the front door of the building, which was torn off.
At one point we lost electricity for two weeks. According to my roommate, this was because our absentee landlady had not paid the bill. I wasn’t sure if I believed him.
Then there was the roommate himself. He was 35. I was 23. He was a frustrated painter who waited tables. I was an introverted writer trying to pass as a publicist at a jazz club. My first clue that this wasn’t going to work was at a get-to-know-you dinner which I invited to him to. He explained why as a painter, he adhered to the teachings of the Classical Realism school. “Basically, all art made after the 19th Century is worthless. Like the human body, that’s God’s art. Anything abstract is a just … a perversion,” I remember him saying. On one occasion, he and a drunken pal nearly came to blows while I tried to sleep in the next room, next to the bathroom with its crumbling plaster. The next morning he told me that in the midst of the scuffle his friend had broken his laptop.
Out of desperation, I responded to another sign, this one on a telephone pole near Saint John the Divine. It sounded too good to be true – my own room with its own bathroom, complete with shower and bathtub, in an elevator, doorman building on Riverside Drive, all for 700 bucks a month. And it was all of those things. This was a six-room palace of an apartment, with a miniature chandelier in the vestibule (yes it had one of those), old world furniture and a living room big enough to have a small reception in. The only thing the sign didn’t specify was that I’d be sharing it with a sad gentleman in his 90s, who drank four martinis a night. He had a longtime female companion who was once a broadway producer. In her later years, she had bilked a number of South American immigrants of their life savings in a green card scam, and was being held in the Bedford Hills women’s prison for the next seven or so years. He was convinced she was innocent and was desperate for a good attorney to get her out. One day he had me take Polaroids of the furniture, so he could sell it for the cause.
Among my troubles with this roommate, although he may have owned the place for all I know, were hearing him scream her name drunkenly in the night, and his thinking we had a strong connection since we were both Russian Jews, never mind the fact that he witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution, and I was born to second-generation Americans in New York.
But my employer simplified these things for me by firing me shortly after I moved in. I was unemployed, despite the 800 dollar cell phone bill I racked up calling every potential employer in the yellow pages, so I packed it in and moved back home.
There is no shortage of bad roommate stories in New York City, but Kenn Rowell, lead singer of The Baghdaddios, a punk band, says the year he lived downtown with a coworker he only knew in passing was one of the best years of his life.
At the time, he was living in Nyack, and the rent was cheap enough that he didn’t need a roommate. But as a musician he felt disconnected, being almost 30 miles outside of the city, and he had been putting feelers out for awhile for places in Manhattan. The location complicated his love life too. He had to drive about an hour and a half every time he wanted to see his car-less girlfriend of three years in Connecticut, where she was attending school. She had always remarked that it would be easier if he lived in New York City. That way she could take the train down.
Finally, in January 2000, a two-bedroom sublet at Peter Cooper Village that his coworker, a temp named Kevin, had been inquiring about, came through – alas two weeks after Rowell and his girlfriend broke up.
Rowell, does not mention the details of the breakup, but it seems safe to say that if real estate can mend a broken heart the sweet deal he and Kevin, then a film student, were a party to for the next year, was a prime example. For $560 a month each, utilities included, they had their own bathrooms, and were living in a large apartment in a prime location.
Rowell describes himself as very extroverted and says that Kevin, who was often busy, working at his computer on various projects, tended to keep to himself, while Rowell had get-togethers in the apartment, was messier than Kevin and kept the late hours of an aspiring rocker.
So why did it work out so well? Rowell thinks it was because they both knew it was for the “short haul.” The owner sublet it to them with the understanding that he was coming back. Also, the apartment’s size gave them plenty of space for privacy. And not having to share a bathroom didn’t hurt either.
Rowell still has admiration for Kevin,− who he says volunteered at Ground Zero in the wake of the September 11th attacks, who allowed Rowell to store a large haul of blankets that he was holding for a homeless charity event in their living room, who supported his band and gave him dating advice.
Rowell is in his 30s and lives in Spanish Harlem with two roommates. He says he’d live in Brooklyn, but the public transportation to and from there is no good on the weekends, so he’s willing to live with roommates indefinitely if that’s what it’s going to take to stay in Manhattan. It won’t be too tough, he says, because he can pretty much “put up with anything.”
Jeni Larson misses New York, but says that she’ll be living alone if and when she returns from Puerto Vallarta where she is running her own PR firm.
As for myself, I’ll move out if I can find someone I already know and like to live with. Otherwise I’m with Jeni.
Melissa says she’s glad the Roommate From Hell is out of her life. “You know, it’s a crapshoot. Roommates are a crapshoot,” she says, although she’d be happy to continue living with the right kind of strangers.
-- Matt Elzweig
Monday, September 25, 2006
Monday, September 18, 2006
Movie Review: This Film Is Not Yet Rated
Our Town downtown
September 18, 2006
Directed by Kirby Dick
Eddie Schmidt, Producer
NR, US, 2006
98 minutes
IFC Center
It is a group whose decisions resonate across the country, which polices itself, and does not keep public records of its activities or its methods. It keeps the names of its members under wraps, and when those members, who are its full-time employees, are discharged, they are sworn to secrecy.
No, this is not some clandestine wing of the NSA, the CIA or the Freemasons. It’s not the Skull and Bones or some secret cabal within the Catholic Church either. It is the MPAA’s Rating Board, the group determines how widely movies should be made available to American audiences, especially to young American audiences.
The aptly named Kirby Dick, whose documentary, “Twist of Faith” (2004) was nominated for an Oscar, took it upon himself to penetrate the shadowy body that decides what’s too hot, too profane and too bloody for the big screen. Dick set out to find out how it really works, and whose interests it really serves.
To filmmakers, an NC-17 rating is the kiss of death. As directors whose films have received it explain in the documentary, TV stations won’t run ads for NC-17 films, major chains like Walmart and Blockbuster Video won’t carry them. And perhaps worst of all, is that major studios rarely release them, as Newsday recently reported. For all these reasons NC-17 recipients are a big part of “This Film.”
The natural starting point is the board members themselves, so Dick and company hire private investigators to find out their names, occupations and other personal details.
By the time the three-woman PI team completes its mission, independent filmmakers like Kevin Smith, Kimberly Peirce, Matt Stone, John Waters and others, former board members and industry experts are interviewed, the Rating Board is revealed to be a studio system organ that has no established standards and is rife with conflicts of interest.
A lot of the findings made once the Rating Board members are identified – namely that they handle sex, especially gay sex, a lot more severely than violence, that European raters take the opposite view, and that movie ratings processes around the world are much more transparent – are not exactly earth-shattering.
The climax, or the punch line, depending on your point of view, is when the PIs uncover the identities of the (italics)appeals(italics) board members. (This is another MPAA board. It hears the cases of filmmakers trying to get their films’ ratings downgraded.)
Jack Valenti figures prominently, but only in excerpts of interviews and speeches taped elsewhere. A breezy overview of censorship boards in America is interspersed with background on his nearly 4-decade long career as head of the MPAA and the founder of the ratings system. (He retired last year.) Valenti got his start as an aide in the Johnson Administration, and his insider knowledge of the federal government went hand in hand with the concerns of Hollywood producers. This proved to be a winning combination for the MPAA, which, it’s helpful to remember, is a colossal lobbying group for the movie industry.
Michael Tucker’s “Gunner Palace” (2004), a documentary about soldiers in the current Iraq War, originally received an NC-17 rating, but was downgraded to an R upon appeal. Tucker, who appears in “This Film,” suggests that during Valenti’s coming of age as a political operative, when the Vietnam War was raging, he took part in the censorship of war movies released at the time – and that this experience was a factor in the Rating Board’s reluctance to give realistic war films marketable ratings.
“This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” is a Chinese box of movie. It’s a movie about watching the watchers, but most of all, a movie about trust. The Ratings Board asks parents to trust them, to decide what their children should be able to watch. And the Ratings Board asks filmmakers to trust them to judge their movies fairly. In both cases, the stakes are high.
Another dimension is added to Dick’s investigation, when he submits the movie itself – “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” – for a ratings review. He documents this in the film’s final act.
“This Film…” is less of an ego trip than the usual Michael Moore gotcha fare, though it would have been nice had Dick refrained from using musical and graphic embellishments that give the interviews, and some of the scenes a kind of staged, sensational feel.
Still, isn’t it obvious? A trade organization that polices its own competition, and that acts as a public institution. A public institution whose inner workings are not made known to the public...
Like “An Inconvenient Truth,” “This Film” could propel a discussion that could have significant consequences if Dick and company market it the right way, and if it plays well with audiences.
-- Matt Elzweig
September 18, 2006
Directed by Kirby Dick
Eddie Schmidt, Producer
NR, US, 2006
98 minutes
IFC Center
It is a group whose decisions resonate across the country, which polices itself, and does not keep public records of its activities or its methods. It keeps the names of its members under wraps, and when those members, who are its full-time employees, are discharged, they are sworn to secrecy.
No, this is not some clandestine wing of the NSA, the CIA or the Freemasons. It’s not the Skull and Bones or some secret cabal within the Catholic Church either. It is the MPAA’s Rating Board, the group determines how widely movies should be made available to American audiences, especially to young American audiences.
The aptly named Kirby Dick, whose documentary, “Twist of Faith” (2004) was nominated for an Oscar, took it upon himself to penetrate the shadowy body that decides what’s too hot, too profane and too bloody for the big screen. Dick set out to find out how it really works, and whose interests it really serves.
To filmmakers, an NC-17 rating is the kiss of death. As directors whose films have received it explain in the documentary, TV stations won’t run ads for NC-17 films, major chains like Walmart and Blockbuster Video won’t carry them. And perhaps worst of all, is that major studios rarely release them, as Newsday recently reported. For all these reasons NC-17 recipients are a big part of “This Film.”
The natural starting point is the board members themselves, so Dick and company hire private investigators to find out their names, occupations and other personal details.
By the time the three-woman PI team completes its mission, independent filmmakers like Kevin Smith, Kimberly Peirce, Matt Stone, John Waters and others, former board members and industry experts are interviewed, the Rating Board is revealed to be a studio system organ that has no established standards and is rife with conflicts of interest.
A lot of the findings made once the Rating Board members are identified – namely that they handle sex, especially gay sex, a lot more severely than violence, that European raters take the opposite view, and that movie ratings processes around the world are much more transparent – are not exactly earth-shattering.
The climax, or the punch line, depending on your point of view, is when the PIs uncover the identities of the (italics)appeals(italics) board members. (This is another MPAA board. It hears the cases of filmmakers trying to get their films’ ratings downgraded.)
Jack Valenti figures prominently, but only in excerpts of interviews and speeches taped elsewhere. A breezy overview of censorship boards in America is interspersed with background on his nearly 4-decade long career as head of the MPAA and the founder of the ratings system. (He retired last year.) Valenti got his start as an aide in the Johnson Administration, and his insider knowledge of the federal government went hand in hand with the concerns of Hollywood producers. This proved to be a winning combination for the MPAA, which, it’s helpful to remember, is a colossal lobbying group for the movie industry.
Michael Tucker’s “Gunner Palace” (2004), a documentary about soldiers in the current Iraq War, originally received an NC-17 rating, but was downgraded to an R upon appeal. Tucker, who appears in “This Film,” suggests that during Valenti’s coming of age as a political operative, when the Vietnam War was raging, he took part in the censorship of war movies released at the time – and that this experience was a factor in the Rating Board’s reluctance to give realistic war films marketable ratings.
“This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” is a Chinese box of movie. It’s a movie about watching the watchers, but most of all, a movie about trust. The Ratings Board asks parents to trust them, to decide what their children should be able to watch. And the Ratings Board asks filmmakers to trust them to judge their movies fairly. In both cases, the stakes are high.
Another dimension is added to Dick’s investigation, when he submits the movie itself – “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” – for a ratings review. He documents this in the film’s final act.
“This Film…” is less of an ego trip than the usual Michael Moore gotcha fare, though it would have been nice had Dick refrained from using musical and graphic embellishments that give the interviews, and some of the scenes a kind of staged, sensational feel.
Still, isn’t it obvious? A trade organization that polices its own competition, and that acts as a public institution. A public institution whose inner workings are not made known to the public...
Like “An Inconvenient Truth,” “This Film” could propel a discussion that could have significant consequences if Dick and company market it the right way, and if it plays well with audiences.
-- Matt Elzweig
Q & A: Natalia Paruz, The "Saw Lady"
Our Town downtown
September 18, 2006
In the depths of the subway system, your ears may latch on to a ghostly tone. It’s similar to a human voice. It quivers, and seems to favor the upper registers. The “Saw Lady,” has played her unusual instrument on the big and small screens, on the radio and in concert halls around the world. Her favorite venues, however, are the Union and Times Square stations.
I’m guessing the saw wasn’t your first instrument. How did you end up playing it?
Well when I was little, you know, I … played … started with the recorder, you know, like a lot of kids do. And then my mother taught me to play the piano, and some guitar at school. But none, none of the instruments, traditional instruments really, caught me. And it was years later, after I had abandoned … the piano and all, that I saw a person playing the saw. That was in Austria. I was visiting there with my parents, and when I saw that … I said like ‘wow.’ You know a music sound is so unique, so different from any other sound, as well as the visual of playing an instrument, because you know how most instruments, well actually all instruments, maybe the bow moves, but the instrument itself does not move? This whole instrument is very visual. The entire instrument moves while you play it. So, I was drawn to that. And I just felt like ‘wow. I have to learn.’
Is your music improvised or written?
I don’t improvise. It’s all either original music that’s written by my husband. His name is Scott Munson … Or, it’s arrangements of existing music, such as classical music, you know Mozart, Bach, Schubert, or songs from musicals, songs from … film soundtracks, like arranged for saw.
Do you like playing in the subway system?
I love playing in the subway. I mean, I have played in all the major stages like Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall … and yet, I consider that my favorite (place to play) is the New York City subway … First of all, the acoustics, the acoustics here are so amazing … the way the subway is built in New York … here it’s as if I’m playing inside a huge cage, and the sounds, they really carry, in a fantastic wave. So I don’t need any amplification when I play here. And another reason I have to say, the people are so nice.
How many saw players are there in New York City?
You know, this Saturday, this coming Saturday, I’m holding the Fourth Annual Saw Players Gathering at my house. And every year there’s more and more saw players …
Do you teach?
This is one of my, you know, dreams for the future. Right now I’m too busy. But, you know, my dream is, okay when I retire, I would like to go open a school or like (saw) conservatory.
Was your saw fabricated or did you put together from scratch?
It is fabricated. The first saw I bought off of my then-landlady. Then I went to a hardware store and I bought a new saw because you know when the saw is rusted it takes away from the sound. And then throughout the years I have accumulated 17 different saws because I was experimenting with a different sound. Every saw has its own sound. It depends on the length of the blade, the thickness of the blade, the wideness of the blade … this is my favorite one … The longer the blade, the more notes it would have, so the more possibilities you have.
It looks like you filed the teeth down.
Yeah, you know that’s not because of the music. That’s because one day I was playing in Times Square and an undercover police lady gave me a ticket for $150, telling me that the teeth of the saw are a weapon … to play in a public place, I’ll have to get rid of the teeth.
It must have been quota day.
I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah … if anything, I would get hurt, but she said to me “you never know when a crazy person might come to you, snatch the saw away from you and start waving it around.” Well, between you and me, I’ve been playing the saw for more than a decade in the street, and nobody has ever tried to snatch the saw away from me, okay, so I don’t think this is likely to happen, but you know, you don’t argue with a policeman.
Are musicians who play traditional instruments ever condescending towards you?
You know you see all these musicians who turn up their noses at playing on the street, and yet they go on audition after audition after audition, and don’t get jobs. Whereas street performers, I haven’t been on an audition in like, at least ten years and I’m working all the time, because playing on the street is like a constant audition.
What’s the biggest tip anyone’s given you?
You know, among street performers, when somebody gives you, when one person, same person, gives you $100, we call this an Oscar, like ‘you got an Oscar Award.’ So you know, (this happened) a long, long, long time ago.
Did you ever find out who it was?
No.
-- Matt Elzweig
September 18, 2006
In the depths of the subway system, your ears may latch on to a ghostly tone. It’s similar to a human voice. It quivers, and seems to favor the upper registers. The “Saw Lady,” has played her unusual instrument on the big and small screens, on the radio and in concert halls around the world. Her favorite venues, however, are the Union and Times Square stations.
I’m guessing the saw wasn’t your first instrument. How did you end up playing it?
Well when I was little, you know, I … played … started with the recorder, you know, like a lot of kids do. And then my mother taught me to play the piano, and some guitar at school. But none, none of the instruments, traditional instruments really, caught me. And it was years later, after I had abandoned … the piano and all, that I saw a person playing the saw. That was in Austria. I was visiting there with my parents, and when I saw that … I said like ‘wow.’ You know a music sound is so unique, so different from any other sound, as well as the visual of playing an instrument, because you know how most instruments, well actually all instruments, maybe the bow moves, but the instrument itself does not move? This whole instrument is very visual. The entire instrument moves while you play it. So, I was drawn to that. And I just felt like ‘wow. I have to learn.’
Is your music improvised or written?
I don’t improvise. It’s all either original music that’s written by my husband. His name is Scott Munson … Or, it’s arrangements of existing music, such as classical music, you know Mozart, Bach, Schubert, or songs from musicals, songs from … film soundtracks, like arranged for saw.
Do you like playing in the subway system?
I love playing in the subway. I mean, I have played in all the major stages like Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall … and yet, I consider that my favorite (place to play) is the New York City subway … First of all, the acoustics, the acoustics here are so amazing … the way the subway is built in New York … here it’s as if I’m playing inside a huge cage, and the sounds, they really carry, in a fantastic wave. So I don’t need any amplification when I play here. And another reason I have to say, the people are so nice.
How many saw players are there in New York City?
You know, this Saturday, this coming Saturday, I’m holding the Fourth Annual Saw Players Gathering at my house. And every year there’s more and more saw players …
Do you teach?
This is one of my, you know, dreams for the future. Right now I’m too busy. But, you know, my dream is, okay when I retire, I would like to go open a school or like (saw) conservatory.
Was your saw fabricated or did you put together from scratch?
It is fabricated. The first saw I bought off of my then-landlady. Then I went to a hardware store and I bought a new saw because you know when the saw is rusted it takes away from the sound. And then throughout the years I have accumulated 17 different saws because I was experimenting with a different sound. Every saw has its own sound. It depends on the length of the blade, the thickness of the blade, the wideness of the blade … this is my favorite one … The longer the blade, the more notes it would have, so the more possibilities you have.
It looks like you filed the teeth down.
Yeah, you know that’s not because of the music. That’s because one day I was playing in Times Square and an undercover police lady gave me a ticket for $150, telling me that the teeth of the saw are a weapon … to play in a public place, I’ll have to get rid of the teeth.
It must have been quota day.
I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah … if anything, I would get hurt, but she said to me “you never know when a crazy person might come to you, snatch the saw away from you and start waving it around.” Well, between you and me, I’ve been playing the saw for more than a decade in the street, and nobody has ever tried to snatch the saw away from me, okay, so I don’t think this is likely to happen, but you know, you don’t argue with a policeman.
Are musicians who play traditional instruments ever condescending towards you?
You know you see all these musicians who turn up their noses at playing on the street, and yet they go on audition after audition after audition, and don’t get jobs. Whereas street performers, I haven’t been on an audition in like, at least ten years and I’m working all the time, because playing on the street is like a constant audition.
What’s the biggest tip anyone’s given you?
You know, among street performers, when somebody gives you, when one person, same person, gives you $100, we call this an Oscar, like ‘you got an Oscar Award.’ So you know, (this happened) a long, long, long time ago.
Did you ever find out who it was?
No.
-- Matt Elzweig
The Block: Front Street between Peck Slip and Beekman Streets
Our Town downtown
September 18, 2006
On the five-year anniversary of 9/11, a group of firefighters in their dress uniforms were gathered at Jeremy’s Ale House on Front with their families, at about lunchtime. From the street, you could see a small sign stuck on the center of an archway inside. “Jeremy’s Safe House 9/11/01,” it read.
The sky was almost as clear as it was five Septembers ago, but there was nothing false about this sense of security. Rather, it was a sense of calm. There was little to no traffic, and outside Barbarini Alimentari, across the street, a young man was eating a sandwich, with a bottle of sparkling water sitting on his sidewalk table. “How nice is this?” a silver-haired woman in flip flops said to her friend who was wearing taxicab yellow shoes and had a small dog in tow, as they entered the café.
And a short walk away, on the northwest corner of Peck Slip and Front, an alpha male sat in a beach chair, getting some sun, while hip hop bumped out the speakers of his truck, parked next to him.
It’s all, minus the hip hop, a respite from the open plaza that starts where Fulton meets Earl and there’s a Guess shop next to a Godiva shop, across from an Abercrombie and Fitch, which is on the same side as a display case that reads “The Seaport Experience.”
The Historic Front Street Project includes this tiny block between Beekman and Peck, and it’s slated for completion in March. Construction started in November 2003, when Yarrow LLC, the development firm managing the project, began renovating 11 buildings and building three others.
Numbers 214 and 217 on Front Street and 24 on Peck Slip are new buildings that were built on vacant lots, according to James Dorward, who is Yarrow LLC’s outgoing leasing agent for Historic Front Street.
All the other buildings were originally warehouses and were built in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
When it’s finished, the project, one of several downtown economic initiatives spearheaded by the Bloomberg Administration, will number 95 apartments and 13 retail units.
Buying Here
There is currently no residential real estate for sale on this section of Front, Dorward says, although there is a six-story townhouse for sale on the next block (Front between Peck Slip and Dover Street). The ground floor is commercial, but the all the other floors are residential. It is listed for $10,000,000.
Renting Here
There are currently just three units available for rent here, Dorward says. The one-bedroom in 220 Front has a bedroom-sized home office and rents for $5,440. In 217, there are two units, a two-bedroom, two-bath for $4,500, and a two-bedroom, two-bath, with a terrace, for $4,750. All units come with a washer and dryer, volcanic stone countertops, steel kitchen appliances and beach plank flooring.
What Happened Here
The South Street Seaport area inspired Herman Melville, who wrote about life here in his novels. The Front Street business district was the center of port activity during the 19th Century, and Ishmael appears on this block in “Moby Dick.” Passages from Melville’s classic 1851 novel are engraved into some of the buildings here.
Long before the fish market relocated to the Bronx, there was a gambling den called The Club, just around the corner, on the second floor of 40 Peck Slip. Loan sharks and numbers runners hung out there at a time when crime was a fact of life. .
Who Lived Here
Edith Wharton’s family owned 224 Front and rented it to a ship chandler.
Amenities
Food & Drink
Barbarini Alimentari; BIN No. 220; Buon Amici Restaurant; Carmine’s Italian Seafood Restaurant; Dodo; Harbour Café; Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee (under construction); Jeremy’s Ale House; Meade’s; Pasanella and Son vintners; Salud! Restaurant & Bar; The Paris
Accomodations
Best Western Seaport Inn Downtown
Real Estate
Yarrow LLC; Sciame Development, Inc.; JDF Realty, Inc. (commercial)
(Sources: Brown Harris Stevens online; Google Maps; Historic Front Street online; Lopate, Phillip. (italics)Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan(italics), First Anchor Books Edition. Anchor Books, 2005; LowerManhattan.info; White, Norval and Willensky. (italics)AIA Guide to New York City(italics), Fourth Edition. Three Rivers Press, New York, 2000; Powell’s online.)
-- Matt Elzweig
September 18, 2006
On the five-year anniversary of 9/11, a group of firefighters in their dress uniforms were gathered at Jeremy’s Ale House on Front with their families, at about lunchtime. From the street, you could see a small sign stuck on the center of an archway inside. “Jeremy’s Safe House 9/11/01,” it read.
The sky was almost as clear as it was five Septembers ago, but there was nothing false about this sense of security. Rather, it was a sense of calm. There was little to no traffic, and outside Barbarini Alimentari, across the street, a young man was eating a sandwich, with a bottle of sparkling water sitting on his sidewalk table. “How nice is this?” a silver-haired woman in flip flops said to her friend who was wearing taxicab yellow shoes and had a small dog in tow, as they entered the café.
And a short walk away, on the northwest corner of Peck Slip and Front, an alpha male sat in a beach chair, getting some sun, while hip hop bumped out the speakers of his truck, parked next to him.
It’s all, minus the hip hop, a respite from the open plaza that starts where Fulton meets Earl and there’s a Guess shop next to a Godiva shop, across from an Abercrombie and Fitch, which is on the same side as a display case that reads “The Seaport Experience.”
The Historic Front Street Project includes this tiny block between Beekman and Peck, and it’s slated for completion in March. Construction started in November 2003, when Yarrow LLC, the development firm managing the project, began renovating 11 buildings and building three others.
Numbers 214 and 217 on Front Street and 24 on Peck Slip are new buildings that were built on vacant lots, according to James Dorward, who is Yarrow LLC’s outgoing leasing agent for Historic Front Street.
All the other buildings were originally warehouses and were built in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
When it’s finished, the project, one of several downtown economic initiatives spearheaded by the Bloomberg Administration, will number 95 apartments and 13 retail units.
Buying Here
There is currently no residential real estate for sale on this section of Front, Dorward says, although there is a six-story townhouse for sale on the next block (Front between Peck Slip and Dover Street). The ground floor is commercial, but the all the other floors are residential. It is listed for $10,000,000.
Renting Here
There are currently just three units available for rent here, Dorward says. The one-bedroom in 220 Front has a bedroom-sized home office and rents for $5,440. In 217, there are two units, a two-bedroom, two-bath for $4,500, and a two-bedroom, two-bath, with a terrace, for $4,750. All units come with a washer and dryer, volcanic stone countertops, steel kitchen appliances and beach plank flooring.
What Happened Here
The South Street Seaport area inspired Herman Melville, who wrote about life here in his novels. The Front Street business district was the center of port activity during the 19th Century, and Ishmael appears on this block in “Moby Dick.” Passages from Melville’s classic 1851 novel are engraved into some of the buildings here.
Long before the fish market relocated to the Bronx, there was a gambling den called The Club, just around the corner, on the second floor of 40 Peck Slip. Loan sharks and numbers runners hung out there at a time when crime was a fact of life. .
Who Lived Here
Edith Wharton’s family owned 224 Front and rented it to a ship chandler.
Amenities
Food & Drink
Barbarini Alimentari; BIN No. 220; Buon Amici Restaurant; Carmine’s Italian Seafood Restaurant; Dodo; Harbour Café; Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee (under construction); Jeremy’s Ale House; Meade’s; Pasanella and Son vintners; Salud! Restaurant & Bar; The Paris
Accomodations
Best Western Seaport Inn Downtown
Real Estate
Yarrow LLC; Sciame Development, Inc.; JDF Realty, Inc. (commercial)
(Sources: Brown Harris Stevens online; Google Maps; Historic Front Street online; Lopate, Phillip. (italics)Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan(italics), First Anchor Books Edition. Anchor Books, 2005; LowerManhattan.info; White, Norval and Willensky. (italics)AIA Guide to New York City(italics), Fourth Edition. Three Rivers Press, New York, 2000; Powell’s online.)
-- Matt Elzweig
Monday, September 11, 2006
On The Cutting Room Floor: As a neighborhood changes, a barbershop stays (mostly) the same.
Our Town downtown
September 11, 2006
Buzzing and hammering are the dominant sounds on Broadway between Astor Place and 9th Street. On the West side of the street, several teams of workers are strung around a high rise on scaffolds at various points in the sky.
A man sits on the steps of Gap Women with a cell phone in one hand, papers and a pen in the other. He’s young, and wears a baseball cap, a red, patterned neck tie, and a dress shirt that’s tucked into dark chinos. A little later, he’s inside the store, on the Astor Place side, talking to a man in a dark suit. Renovations are underway. The 21-story Astor Place Tower – a luxury condo development that went up last year, and whose ground floor is a bank – is just down the street.
This neighborhood, the East Village, is a place where “the [Hell’s] Angels were” once “a dominant presence … (not always in a bad way)” Ron Roberg says, just before he has his hair cut at Astor Place Hairstylists. He began coming here over 30 years ago. He remembers when Dojo, the Japanese restaurant on St. Marks, was an ice cream parlor, with flavors like Panama Red and Acapulco Gold. The Angels could often be found hanging out at Central Park Mall, a barbershop, also on St. Marks, high on various substances.
Just looking at the tiny block that Astor Hairstylists has made its home since Enrico Vezza (Sr.) opened it in 1945, it’s obvious the East Village is in transition. Astor’s neighbors are now a Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks, a well-regarded liquor store, the Harvey Milk School, and the Cold Stone Creamery (which ate up Astor Hairstylists’ street level space last year, after the shop gave up its lease). The inside walls of the barbershop are covered with a hoard of photos of celebrities who’ve stopped by for haircuts over the years. The age of each picture is implied by the sharpness of its colors. Some of the subjects seem less affected by the ensuing years (Susan Sarandon) than others (Marky Mark, now Mark Wahlberg) do. There is one among them, though, that is as close to timeless as any. It’s a photo of the shop’s interior, with no celebrities to speak of that reads, simply “Astor Place 1945.” When you look at it, ignorant of its finer details, it is easy to mistake it for a recent shot.
Simone “Sal” Ricovero, 46, found his way into the business after trying just about “everything” else. Growing up in Ridgewood, Queens, Ricovero was given an ultimatum by his father, an Italian immigrant, when he decided school wasn’t for him. “‘You go to work or go to school. No bums in the house.’”
He worked as a pizza man and in his father’s deli among other places, before attending a barber college in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Less wired for formal education than on-the-job training – he says that all barber college had to offer was a license. “Didn’t teach me nothing.”
He had his own barbershop for six years, but ultimately sold it. Cutting hair in someone else’s shop, he works on commission, makes the same money, and doesn’t have to deal with the headaches of running a small business, he says. “In this business, your station’s your own business.”
Ricovero downplays Astor Hairstylists’ loss of square footage that, as reported in Newsday, was due to an undisclosed rent increase. “It’s good for Cold Stone,” Ricovero says coolly when it’s brought up. After all, he says, it was really just a matter of bringing about 20 barbers down to the basement, originally an annex that was opened in 1986.
Paul, a manager at Astor, says that although the shop is much less visible from the street, the shift has not had a significant impact on business.
Now there are about 30 barbers working below street level, and Ricovero says that while it’s no longer got the buzz it had in the 80s to the early 90s, when customers lined up outside to have pictures like the four-leaf clover (“that Irish thing”) for one, shaved into their heads, and Astor barbers gave live performances at clubs and on television – the shop still has a steady stream of customers, several of whom were acquired during that halcyon period.
The shop is busy today, which is the norm, he says. Ricovero estimates that the shop is busy “99 percent” of the time.
In a city as fashion conscious as New York, a multi-generational, Italian-owned barbershop is not the first thing that comes to mind when women and hair are mentioned, but Mike Saviello, also a manager at Astor Hairstylists, estimates that women make up 40 percent of the clientele. They come for “the convenience and price.” He’s seen a lot of them go uptown for “300” dollar haircuts, and then come back down. Wash, cut, dry – the price makes no difference, he says.
And the prices are inarguably cheap: 13 bucks for a basic cut, add two if you want shampoo with that.
Ricovero encourages customers to check out the competition, confident that they’ll be back. He thinks that the quality, the price and the speed – customers are in and out of their chairs within 15 minutes, he says – are the main draws that keep the regulars coming back.
Sometimes customers show up, on their way to work for example, as the shop is being opened around 6 a.m., and the barbers have no problem accommodating them then and there, Ricovero says, a diamond stud in his left ear.
He says barbershops falsely claiming to be run by former Astor Place employees sprouted up at a time when barbers like Ricovero were cutting people’s hair on the stages of clubs like The Limelight and appearing on shows like “Good Day New York,” and there were 110 barbers in residence at the shop. Those shops are no longer in business he says. “You know how they say ‘only the strong survive?’”
Many of the staff enjoys Astor’s relaxed work environment, he says. Some leave to try other places, but they often come back.
Fran, a young barber from Queens who’s been at Astor for three years, wanted to work here for a long time. When she was finally hired, it was a relief from her old job in Forest Hills, Queens, where, she says, the environment was “very snobby” … “You can be yourself here.”
Ricovero says that as much as he likes working at Astor, it’s not for everyone and there’s a high turnover. He calls people who don’t belong “shoemakers,” and says one type is the “hungry” barber, the one who tries to steal his co-workers’ business.
Ricovero is enjoys being able to work in jeans, and says that if someone wants to bring their dog to work, that’s okay too, sometimes.
Ricovero has a goatee and today he’s wearing a t-shirt that betrays what may, or may not be underneath his tan camoflauge hat. “I’m not going bald, I’m just getting more head” it reads. To most of his co-workers, this shirt and another of his that says “every dog has its day” and has a picture of a German Shepard in a compromising position on it, is no big deal, but just in case, he uses his black smock for cover when he’s around customers he doesn’t know well and some of his female co-workers.
Each barber has his own station and is pretty much free to decorate it as he chooses, though every now and then the management asks someone to tone things down. For example, the men get carried away with “girly pictures” sometimes, Ricovero says.
In the back there’s a barber named Alberto Amore, who Ricovero says is obsessed with soccer, especially Juventos, the Turino team. A soccer ball hangs inside a net above his work area.
And on Ricovero’s mirror, there are pictures of his son (“I only make boys”), a picture of a former customer who committed suicide, and a picture of an FHM babe (“that’s how my wife looked before she got pregnant. [Just kidding]”). There’s also a poster of Al Pacino as Tony Montana in “Scarface.” Ricovero says he put it up because it’s a good model of the “Caesar” cut, and also because Pacino’s “a good actor.”
He calls Jay Babaev, the barber who works next to him “the Rabbi of Astor Place.” Today the rabbi is away and his station, papered with color landscape photos, is empty.
The staff is as varied culturally as the clientele – which Ricovero says runs the gamut from hot dog vendors to politicians to athletes – is professionally. Cubans, African-Americans, Russians, Puerto Ricans cut hair at Astor. “My boss picked me [to talk to you] because I’m probably the only one who [can] speak proper English” Ricovero says. His parents came to the United States fifty years ago and still do not speak English, he says. Ricovero says this why he’s fluent in Italian. He breaks in and out of it in conversations with Luigi Valois, who’s working been at Astor Hairstylists for 21 years and got Ricovero his job.
Ricovero says the staff gets along “99.9 percent of the time,” although Fran says that with space between stations at a premium, a good deal of squabbling goes on.
In an occupation that requires a heightened degree of trust, it’s not uncommon for barbers to hear some of the intimate details of their customers’ lives. Fran says that customers gossip and joke around with her, but that she’s heard shocking stories too. She won’t elaborate.
Requests the barbers get can be as shocking as their stories.
These days, when customers ask for special images to be etched into their hair, they’re asking for the linear, on-the-fly, freestyle designs that have fallen into favor – as opposed to the preconceived pictures that were big in the 80s and 90s. Valois remembers a girl who had a male member shaved into her head back in the 80s. Management wasn’t pleased.
Ricovero is unfazed by most of what he sees and hears in the shop, having worked in this historically unconventional neighborhood for so long, but he remembers one customer vividly – a man who silicone balls implanted beneath his scalp all the way to the back of his neck. With his head shaved he looked like an alien.
Tico Ribecca usually cuts Tommy Maldonado’s hair, but he’s on vacation, so today, Maldonado’s sitting in Ricovero’s chair. One thing he likes about Astor is that “anyone can come in … there’s no discrimination.” A city worker, Maldonado has been coming here since the 80s, when Mike Saviello stood on a ladder in the front and called out the names of customers waiting on line. Back then, Maldonado’s do of choice was the “pushback.” He doesn’t agree that the East Village was ever a “bad neighborhood.” “It was very diverse,” he says.
Although Ricovero admits that he sometimes misses the days when Astor Hairstylists was a jam-packed tourist attraction and he cut hair under flashing lights at clubs, he seems content right where he is, here and now, and says his partying days are behind him.
These days, when he has time off, he spends it at home with his family, in Middle Village, Queens. Other than that, “I’m Sicilian, so I like playing cards.” One day, he might like to write a book about all the crazy things he’s seen go down in the Astor Place neighborhood over the years, but it’s just an idea. And yes, he might give up his station at Astor Place Hairstylists one day, but he doesn’t think he’d ever want to stop working completely.
If he weren’t cutting hair, he’d probably be in the restaurant business, he says. He might like to open his own restaurant someday like his brother did in Sicily.
-- Matt Elzweig
September 11, 2006
Buzzing and hammering are the dominant sounds on Broadway between Astor Place and 9th Street. On the West side of the street, several teams of workers are strung around a high rise on scaffolds at various points in the sky.
A man sits on the steps of Gap Women with a cell phone in one hand, papers and a pen in the other. He’s young, and wears a baseball cap, a red, patterned neck tie, and a dress shirt that’s tucked into dark chinos. A little later, he’s inside the store, on the Astor Place side, talking to a man in a dark suit. Renovations are underway. The 21-story Astor Place Tower – a luxury condo development that went up last year, and whose ground floor is a bank – is just down the street.
This neighborhood, the East Village, is a place where “the [Hell’s] Angels were” once “a dominant presence … (not always in a bad way)” Ron Roberg says, just before he has his hair cut at Astor Place Hairstylists. He began coming here over 30 years ago. He remembers when Dojo, the Japanese restaurant on St. Marks, was an ice cream parlor, with flavors like Panama Red and Acapulco Gold. The Angels could often be found hanging out at Central Park Mall, a barbershop, also on St. Marks, high on various substances.
Just looking at the tiny block that Astor Hairstylists has made its home since Enrico Vezza (Sr.) opened it in 1945, it’s obvious the East Village is in transition. Astor’s neighbors are now a Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks, a well-regarded liquor store, the Harvey Milk School, and the Cold Stone Creamery (which ate up Astor Hairstylists’ street level space last year, after the shop gave up its lease). The inside walls of the barbershop are covered with a hoard of photos of celebrities who’ve stopped by for haircuts over the years. The age of each picture is implied by the sharpness of its colors. Some of the subjects seem less affected by the ensuing years (Susan Sarandon) than others (Marky Mark, now Mark Wahlberg) do. There is one among them, though, that is as close to timeless as any. It’s a photo of the shop’s interior, with no celebrities to speak of that reads, simply “Astor Place 1945.” When you look at it, ignorant of its finer details, it is easy to mistake it for a recent shot.
Simone “Sal” Ricovero, 46, found his way into the business after trying just about “everything” else. Growing up in Ridgewood, Queens, Ricovero was given an ultimatum by his father, an Italian immigrant, when he decided school wasn’t for him. “‘You go to work or go to school. No bums in the house.’”
He worked as a pizza man and in his father’s deli among other places, before attending a barber college in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Less wired for formal education than on-the-job training – he says that all barber college had to offer was a license. “Didn’t teach me nothing.”
He had his own barbershop for six years, but ultimately sold it. Cutting hair in someone else’s shop, he works on commission, makes the same money, and doesn’t have to deal with the headaches of running a small business, he says. “In this business, your station’s your own business.”
Ricovero downplays Astor Hairstylists’ loss of square footage that, as reported in Newsday, was due to an undisclosed rent increase. “It’s good for Cold Stone,” Ricovero says coolly when it’s brought up. After all, he says, it was really just a matter of bringing about 20 barbers down to the basement, originally an annex that was opened in 1986.
Paul, a manager at Astor, says that although the shop is much less visible from the street, the shift has not had a significant impact on business.
Now there are about 30 barbers working below street level, and Ricovero says that while it’s no longer got the buzz it had in the 80s to the early 90s, when customers lined up outside to have pictures like the four-leaf clover (“that Irish thing”) for one, shaved into their heads, and Astor barbers gave live performances at clubs and on television – the shop still has a steady stream of customers, several of whom were acquired during that halcyon period.
The shop is busy today, which is the norm, he says. Ricovero estimates that the shop is busy “99 percent” of the time.
In a city as fashion conscious as New York, a multi-generational, Italian-owned barbershop is not the first thing that comes to mind when women and hair are mentioned, but Mike Saviello, also a manager at Astor Hairstylists, estimates that women make up 40 percent of the clientele. They come for “the convenience and price.” He’s seen a lot of them go uptown for “300” dollar haircuts, and then come back down. Wash, cut, dry – the price makes no difference, he says.
And the prices are inarguably cheap: 13 bucks for a basic cut, add two if you want shampoo with that.
Ricovero encourages customers to check out the competition, confident that they’ll be back. He thinks that the quality, the price and the speed – customers are in and out of their chairs within 15 minutes, he says – are the main draws that keep the regulars coming back.
Sometimes customers show up, on their way to work for example, as the shop is being opened around 6 a.m., and the barbers have no problem accommodating them then and there, Ricovero says, a diamond stud in his left ear.
He says barbershops falsely claiming to be run by former Astor Place employees sprouted up at a time when barbers like Ricovero were cutting people’s hair on the stages of clubs like The Limelight and appearing on shows like “Good Day New York,” and there were 110 barbers in residence at the shop. Those shops are no longer in business he says. “You know how they say ‘only the strong survive?’”
Many of the staff enjoys Astor’s relaxed work environment, he says. Some leave to try other places, but they often come back.
Fran, a young barber from Queens who’s been at Astor for three years, wanted to work here for a long time. When she was finally hired, it was a relief from her old job in Forest Hills, Queens, where, she says, the environment was “very snobby” … “You can be yourself here.”
Ricovero says that as much as he likes working at Astor, it’s not for everyone and there’s a high turnover. He calls people who don’t belong “shoemakers,” and says one type is the “hungry” barber, the one who tries to steal his co-workers’ business.
Ricovero is enjoys being able to work in jeans, and says that if someone wants to bring their dog to work, that’s okay too, sometimes.
Ricovero has a goatee and today he’s wearing a t-shirt that betrays what may, or may not be underneath his tan camoflauge hat. “I’m not going bald, I’m just getting more head” it reads. To most of his co-workers, this shirt and another of his that says “every dog has its day” and has a picture of a German Shepard in a compromising position on it, is no big deal, but just in case, he uses his black smock for cover when he’s around customers he doesn’t know well and some of his female co-workers.
Each barber has his own station and is pretty much free to decorate it as he chooses, though every now and then the management asks someone to tone things down. For example, the men get carried away with “girly pictures” sometimes, Ricovero says.
In the back there’s a barber named Alberto Amore, who Ricovero says is obsessed with soccer, especially Juventos, the Turino team. A soccer ball hangs inside a net above his work area.
And on Ricovero’s mirror, there are pictures of his son (“I only make boys”), a picture of a former customer who committed suicide, and a picture of an FHM babe (“that’s how my wife looked before she got pregnant. [Just kidding]”). There’s also a poster of Al Pacino as Tony Montana in “Scarface.” Ricovero says he put it up because it’s a good model of the “Caesar” cut, and also because Pacino’s “a good actor.”
He calls Jay Babaev, the barber who works next to him “the Rabbi of Astor Place.” Today the rabbi is away and his station, papered with color landscape photos, is empty.
The staff is as varied culturally as the clientele – which Ricovero says runs the gamut from hot dog vendors to politicians to athletes – is professionally. Cubans, African-Americans, Russians, Puerto Ricans cut hair at Astor. “My boss picked me [to talk to you] because I’m probably the only one who [can] speak proper English” Ricovero says. His parents came to the United States fifty years ago and still do not speak English, he says. Ricovero says this why he’s fluent in Italian. He breaks in and out of it in conversations with Luigi Valois, who’s working been at Astor Hairstylists for 21 years and got Ricovero his job.
Ricovero says the staff gets along “99.9 percent of the time,” although Fran says that with space between stations at a premium, a good deal of squabbling goes on.
In an occupation that requires a heightened degree of trust, it’s not uncommon for barbers to hear some of the intimate details of their customers’ lives. Fran says that customers gossip and joke around with her, but that she’s heard shocking stories too. She won’t elaborate.
Requests the barbers get can be as shocking as their stories.
These days, when customers ask for special images to be etched into their hair, they’re asking for the linear, on-the-fly, freestyle designs that have fallen into favor – as opposed to the preconceived pictures that were big in the 80s and 90s. Valois remembers a girl who had a male member shaved into her head back in the 80s. Management wasn’t pleased.
Ricovero is unfazed by most of what he sees and hears in the shop, having worked in this historically unconventional neighborhood for so long, but he remembers one customer vividly – a man who silicone balls implanted beneath his scalp all the way to the back of his neck. With his head shaved he looked like an alien.
Tico Ribecca usually cuts Tommy Maldonado’s hair, but he’s on vacation, so today, Maldonado’s sitting in Ricovero’s chair. One thing he likes about Astor is that “anyone can come in … there’s no discrimination.” A city worker, Maldonado has been coming here since the 80s, when Mike Saviello stood on a ladder in the front and called out the names of customers waiting on line. Back then, Maldonado’s do of choice was the “pushback.” He doesn’t agree that the East Village was ever a “bad neighborhood.” “It was very diverse,” he says.
Although Ricovero admits that he sometimes misses the days when Astor Hairstylists was a jam-packed tourist attraction and he cut hair under flashing lights at clubs, he seems content right where he is, here and now, and says his partying days are behind him.
These days, when he has time off, he spends it at home with his family, in Middle Village, Queens. Other than that, “I’m Sicilian, so I like playing cards.” One day, he might like to write a book about all the crazy things he’s seen go down in the Astor Place neighborhood over the years, but it’s just an idea. And yes, he might give up his station at Astor Place Hairstylists one day, but he doesn’t think he’d ever want to stop working completely.
If he weren’t cutting hair, he’d probably be in the restaurant business, he says. He might like to open his own restaurant someday like his brother did in Sicily.
-- Matt Elzweig
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
The Catalyst: How 9/11 shaped Chinatown, and what the community is doing to shape its future, five years later.
Our Town downtown
September 4, 2006
In an ironic twist, one of the darkest days in recent memory was also one of the brightest, inside the Museum of Chinese in the Americas (MoCA). Cynthia Lee, now Deputy Director of Programs, was walking down Mulberry Street. She saw smoke and flames. The second tower was still standing, and why the first tower had been hit was still unclear. Entering the converted school building that houses the museum, she was concerned about Windows on the World, the restaurant inside the towers where MoCA held its fundraising dinners, and where another dinner was being planned for the following year. She and her co-workers gathered around a television set. The next thing they knew, another plane hit the remaining tower, and “… things got really surreal.” It was when the second tower fell, that sunlight streamed into the museum for the first time.
With both towers gone, the museum lost its TV reception. Information, much of it rumors, trickled in over a radio they found. “And it just felt like ‘War of the Worlds.’”
Lee, who was instrumental in putting together “Ground One: Voices from Post 9-11 Chinatown,” a digital archive of oral histories about the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, says that September 11th “exacerbated problems,” that already existed in Chinatown – problems like the declining garment industry, basic services for new immigrants, housing, sustainable infrastructure, sanitation issues, the language barrier, daycare.
Before September 11th, nonprofit groups were in survival mode, competing for whatever funds were available, Lee says, but then, they began to collaborate. There was “more talk than usual of, you know, ‘what can we possibly do to pool together?”
Lee says Chinatown’s need following September 11th was obvious, so the world was watching to see how it would recover, for a short while. That the outsiders were viewing it as a single entity was key, Lee says, because it forced the various organizations within Chinatown to assess the community’s specific needs and think up initiatives they might work on together. One product of this new effort to collaborate was an economic impact study conducted by the Asian American Federation of New York (AAFNY). Another was the formation of Explore Chinatown, a tourism marketing campaign, and the Chinatown Local Development Corporation.
People outside the community may not realize that immediately following the attacks, Chinatown’s infrastructure was effectively put in a stranglehold that lasted for months due to restrictions put in place by the city. From the 11th to the 13th, all “vehicular and non-residential pedestrian traffic,” was prohibited from going below 14th Street, according to the AAFNY economic impact study. From the 14th to the 18th, the border of the “frozen” zone was pushed down to Canal Street. The Canal Street subway station was closed for three days during this time, inconveniencing its regular 49,000 weekday riders. For two months following the attacks, telephone service south of East Broadway was disrupted, and an increased police presence led to several street closures and the loss of 1,000 parking spaces.
Jan Lee a business owner and lifelong Chinatown resident says it was a “military lockdown” and that the loss of a sense of permanence made people less quick to purchase high-end items. Restricted access to the neighborhood especially changed people’s buying patterns, he says. So far, Lee says, research conducted and proposals drafted by the various nonprofit organizations in the area have not taken this – people’s long-term buying patterns – into account. Had it not been for his decision to expand his antique furniture business to include custom home furnishings, he would likely have gone out of business in 2003 for these reasons.
Lee has been very vocal on the effects of placard parking by police and other civil servants working in the area. He says a significant portion of these workers were on nonessential business. They were generally not cops from other boroughs on the way to court, for example. He made a documentary, “Clogged Arteries,” to raise awareness of the problem, and worked with Community Board 3 and the NYPD to solve the problem. Only recently, he says, has the number of these preempted parking spaces begun to trickle back.
September 11th forced scores of neighborhood fixtures – stores and restaurants that had been in the community for years – to close their doors. These were “unique businesses [that] made the fabric of the community,” Lee says. Since 9/11, a restaurant down the street from his store has changed hands four times, he says.
Wing Ma is the former president of The Continental Garment Manufacturer’s Association, and though he no longer runs his women’s sportswear business and works in another industry, he is currently on the association’s board.
Ma says that due to NAFTA and related issues that drove the heart of the garment business, including Chinatown’s, overseas, it is now a “sunset industry.” 9/11 was a “catalyst to make [it] even worse” he says. From the mid 1980s to the early 90s there were 27,000 to 30,000 garment workers in Chinatown, but by the late 90’s there were less than 200 garment factories in Chinatown. And now there are less than 10, he says.
Ma says that the tourism industry has been affected too, because of the city’s stringent parking policies. Potential tourists, customers who at one time came to Chinatown from other parts of the tri-state area to eat, every Saturday, are more likely to head to NY’s other Chinatowns – Flushing or Elmhurst in Queens, Eighth Avenue or Sunset Park in Brooklyn – since they risk heavy fines for meter violations and even heavier ones for parking in illegal zones.
Park Row has been closed since September 11th, so travel from the City Hall area to Chinatown is inconvenient now. This is another blow to tourism, he says.
Ma also thinks that Chinatown business owners have been shorted on post-9/11 aid. His own situation illustrates this point, he says. Ma is the owner of a five-unit commercial building south of Canal Street that remained vacant for over two years after 9/11. He estimates that he received less than $6,000 in government aid, and thinks all Chinatown businesses need more government subsidies.
The post-9/11 problems that Chinatown is still contending with go beyond dollars and cents. Frances Wong, a social worker who is Director of Asian Services at St. Vincent’s Hospital – Manhattan, says the effects of September 11th on the mental and physical health of Chinatown community members are ongoing.
Since 9/11 she has seen large numbers of patients suffering from what she says amounts to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, with symptoms that include nightmares, difficulty communicating with family members and working, and fear of leaving the house, among others. These are people who in many cases saw people jumping – choosing one death over another – and their numbers cut across all ages and both genders.
Wong also does psychiatric social work, and says she has seen patients recover from September 11th-related trauma, but not before 30 or so therapy sessions.
Treatment is complicated by cultural factors, especially since there is a stigma attached to seeking out counseling, in the Chinese community, Wong says. “We’re just taught not to complain.”
To address this, she runs an ear acupuncture clinic in Chinatown. It is an “innocuous,” way of addressing the emotional fallout of September 11th, she says; patients can get treatment that is ostensibly for physical, not mental ailments, and is not billed as 9/11-related either.
Wong says that fear of another attack has prompted parents in Chinatown to keeps their kids indoors and can be correlated with a documented rise in Type II diabetes among them, and that this needs to be addressed.
She also says that since U.S. immigration policies were stiffened after 9/11 there are a lot of single-parent homes in Chinatown now, with one parent here and one stuck on the other side.
Wong hopes that in the next 5-10 years there will be more healthcare services available to the community and more educational and media programs to raise awareness about these and other health issues, as well as the funding to make it all possible.
Wing Ma is willing to do whatever he can to help improve Chinatown’s prospects, but thinks that in the next 5-10 years the community will shrink. Most of the residents are elderly, he says, and with Chinatown’s high real estate values, younger residents are likely to migrate to the outer boroughs and the suburbs where they can get more for the same money. He thinks the neighborhood will retain its Chinese character, but will be less prosperous.
If the business owners are hoping the government will come around with aid, they will be disappointed, Ma says, because “Chinatown has no vote.” He estimates that there are currently 100,000 commuters to Chinatown and the surrounding areas. There are only about 20,000 registered voters he says. And among them, only 8,000 actually turn out to vote. In his view, improving Chinatown without government assistance is impossible.
Jan Lee, whose family has been in the Mott Street building that houses his home furnishing showroom since 1890, says that 1 Police Plaza needs to move. He feels that keeping 1 Police Plaza in Lower Manhattan as a post-9/11 “security barrier” is an excuse for the NYPD to stay put. Not only has the presence of 1 Police Plaza caused street closures. Having it there puts Chinatown residents and workers at risk. He also feels that the building is vulnerable and that a state-of-the-art facility needs to be constructed, somewhere else – in a location that would not put Lower Manhattan at risk in the event of another attack. One of the small islands surrounding Manhattan would be an ideal choice, he says. “The police department has told this neighborhood time and time again, ‘the reason why we need the security barrier is because we are a target. Terrorists want to kill us. Shoulder-launched rocket missiles can be aimed at our building’ … So if you now in this modern age tell us that ten years ago you weren’t a target and now you are a target, move the target because the impact on the neighborhood is not just the street closure, it’s the danger factor.”
Frances Wong, who heads the Asian Services division of St. Vincent’s – Manhattan, says that her organization recently trained five people – restaurant workers and home health aides, some of whom lost their jobs after September 11th – as emergency services workers.
Talking about the cultural factors that have affected post-9/11 treatment for members of the of the Chinatown community, Wong mentions their tendency to avoid visiting a doctor until things get really bad. “[They] have a high tolerance for pain.”
On a beautiful Thursday afternoon, there seem to be a good number of tourists in Chinatown. The elderly Chinese who gather around Columbus Park seem to be in good spirits, especially the gentleman in blue pants and a leather golf hat, who strums a banjo-like instrument with his gold ringed fingers and sings loudly. There’s a boy of about ten, sitting on the steps outside the building that houses MoCA. He looks lost in a copy of “Charlotte’s Web.”
Then there are the conspicuously empty storefronts, among them Sweet and Tart, a restaurant on Mott Street, just across the street from Jan Lee’s shop, with a long history.
-- Matt Elzweig
September 4, 2006
In an ironic twist, one of the darkest days in recent memory was also one of the brightest, inside the Museum of Chinese in the Americas (MoCA). Cynthia Lee, now Deputy Director of Programs, was walking down Mulberry Street. She saw smoke and flames. The second tower was still standing, and why the first tower had been hit was still unclear. Entering the converted school building that houses the museum, she was concerned about Windows on the World, the restaurant inside the towers where MoCA held its fundraising dinners, and where another dinner was being planned for the following year. She and her co-workers gathered around a television set. The next thing they knew, another plane hit the remaining tower, and “… things got really surreal.” It was when the second tower fell, that sunlight streamed into the museum for the first time.
With both towers gone, the museum lost its TV reception. Information, much of it rumors, trickled in over a radio they found. “And it just felt like ‘War of the Worlds.’”
Lee, who was instrumental in putting together “Ground One: Voices from Post 9-11 Chinatown,” a digital archive of oral histories about the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, says that September 11th “exacerbated problems,” that already existed in Chinatown – problems like the declining garment industry, basic services for new immigrants, housing, sustainable infrastructure, sanitation issues, the language barrier, daycare.
Before September 11th, nonprofit groups were in survival mode, competing for whatever funds were available, Lee says, but then, they began to collaborate. There was “more talk than usual of, you know, ‘what can we possibly do to pool together?”
Lee says Chinatown’s need following September 11th was obvious, so the world was watching to see how it would recover, for a short while. That the outsiders were viewing it as a single entity was key, Lee says, because it forced the various organizations within Chinatown to assess the community’s specific needs and think up initiatives they might work on together. One product of this new effort to collaborate was an economic impact study conducted by the Asian American Federation of New York (AAFNY). Another was the formation of Explore Chinatown, a tourism marketing campaign, and the Chinatown Local Development Corporation.
People outside the community may not realize that immediately following the attacks, Chinatown’s infrastructure was effectively put in a stranglehold that lasted for months due to restrictions put in place by the city. From the 11th to the 13th, all “vehicular and non-residential pedestrian traffic,” was prohibited from going below 14th Street, according to the AAFNY economic impact study. From the 14th to the 18th, the border of the “frozen” zone was pushed down to Canal Street. The Canal Street subway station was closed for three days during this time, inconveniencing its regular 49,000 weekday riders. For two months following the attacks, telephone service south of East Broadway was disrupted, and an increased police presence led to several street closures and the loss of 1,000 parking spaces.
Jan Lee a business owner and lifelong Chinatown resident says it was a “military lockdown” and that the loss of a sense of permanence made people less quick to purchase high-end items. Restricted access to the neighborhood especially changed people’s buying patterns, he says. So far, Lee says, research conducted and proposals drafted by the various nonprofit organizations in the area have not taken this – people’s long-term buying patterns – into account. Had it not been for his decision to expand his antique furniture business to include custom home furnishings, he would likely have gone out of business in 2003 for these reasons.
Lee has been very vocal on the effects of placard parking by police and other civil servants working in the area. He says a significant portion of these workers were on nonessential business. They were generally not cops from other boroughs on the way to court, for example. He made a documentary, “Clogged Arteries,” to raise awareness of the problem, and worked with Community Board 3 and the NYPD to solve the problem. Only recently, he says, has the number of these preempted parking spaces begun to trickle back.
September 11th forced scores of neighborhood fixtures – stores and restaurants that had been in the community for years – to close their doors. These were “unique businesses [that] made the fabric of the community,” Lee says. Since 9/11, a restaurant down the street from his store has changed hands four times, he says.
Wing Ma is the former president of The Continental Garment Manufacturer’s Association, and though he no longer runs his women’s sportswear business and works in another industry, he is currently on the association’s board.
Ma says that due to NAFTA and related issues that drove the heart of the garment business, including Chinatown’s, overseas, it is now a “sunset industry.” 9/11 was a “catalyst to make [it] even worse” he says. From the mid 1980s to the early 90s there were 27,000 to 30,000 garment workers in Chinatown, but by the late 90’s there were less than 200 garment factories in Chinatown. And now there are less than 10, he says.
Ma says that the tourism industry has been affected too, because of the city’s stringent parking policies. Potential tourists, customers who at one time came to Chinatown from other parts of the tri-state area to eat, every Saturday, are more likely to head to NY’s other Chinatowns – Flushing or Elmhurst in Queens, Eighth Avenue or Sunset Park in Brooklyn – since they risk heavy fines for meter violations and even heavier ones for parking in illegal zones.
Park Row has been closed since September 11th, so travel from the City Hall area to Chinatown is inconvenient now. This is another blow to tourism, he says.
Ma also thinks that Chinatown business owners have been shorted on post-9/11 aid. His own situation illustrates this point, he says. Ma is the owner of a five-unit commercial building south of Canal Street that remained vacant for over two years after 9/11. He estimates that he received less than $6,000 in government aid, and thinks all Chinatown businesses need more government subsidies.
The post-9/11 problems that Chinatown is still contending with go beyond dollars and cents. Frances Wong, a social worker who is Director of Asian Services at St. Vincent’s Hospital – Manhattan, says the effects of September 11th on the mental and physical health of Chinatown community members are ongoing.
Since 9/11 she has seen large numbers of patients suffering from what she says amounts to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, with symptoms that include nightmares, difficulty communicating with family members and working, and fear of leaving the house, among others. These are people who in many cases saw people jumping – choosing one death over another – and their numbers cut across all ages and both genders.
Wong also does psychiatric social work, and says she has seen patients recover from September 11th-related trauma, but not before 30 or so therapy sessions.
Treatment is complicated by cultural factors, especially since there is a stigma attached to seeking out counseling, in the Chinese community, Wong says. “We’re just taught not to complain.”
To address this, she runs an ear acupuncture clinic in Chinatown. It is an “innocuous,” way of addressing the emotional fallout of September 11th, she says; patients can get treatment that is ostensibly for physical, not mental ailments, and is not billed as 9/11-related either.
Wong says that fear of another attack has prompted parents in Chinatown to keeps their kids indoors and can be correlated with a documented rise in Type II diabetes among them, and that this needs to be addressed.
She also says that since U.S. immigration policies were stiffened after 9/11 there are a lot of single-parent homes in Chinatown now, with one parent here and one stuck on the other side.
Wong hopes that in the next 5-10 years there will be more healthcare services available to the community and more educational and media programs to raise awareness about these and other health issues, as well as the funding to make it all possible.
Wing Ma is willing to do whatever he can to help improve Chinatown’s prospects, but thinks that in the next 5-10 years the community will shrink. Most of the residents are elderly, he says, and with Chinatown’s high real estate values, younger residents are likely to migrate to the outer boroughs and the suburbs where they can get more for the same money. He thinks the neighborhood will retain its Chinese character, but will be less prosperous.
If the business owners are hoping the government will come around with aid, they will be disappointed, Ma says, because “Chinatown has no vote.” He estimates that there are currently 100,000 commuters to Chinatown and the surrounding areas. There are only about 20,000 registered voters he says. And among them, only 8,000 actually turn out to vote. In his view, improving Chinatown without government assistance is impossible.
Jan Lee, whose family has been in the Mott Street building that houses his home furnishing showroom since 1890, says that 1 Police Plaza needs to move. He feels that keeping 1 Police Plaza in Lower Manhattan as a post-9/11 “security barrier” is an excuse for the NYPD to stay put. Not only has the presence of 1 Police Plaza caused street closures. Having it there puts Chinatown residents and workers at risk. He also feels that the building is vulnerable and that a state-of-the-art facility needs to be constructed, somewhere else – in a location that would not put Lower Manhattan at risk in the event of another attack. One of the small islands surrounding Manhattan would be an ideal choice, he says. “The police department has told this neighborhood time and time again, ‘the reason why we need the security barrier is because we are a target. Terrorists want to kill us. Shoulder-launched rocket missiles can be aimed at our building’ … So if you now in this modern age tell us that ten years ago you weren’t a target and now you are a target, move the target because the impact on the neighborhood is not just the street closure, it’s the danger factor.”
Frances Wong, who heads the Asian Services division of St. Vincent’s – Manhattan, says that her organization recently trained five people – restaurant workers and home health aides, some of whom lost their jobs after September 11th – as emergency services workers.
Talking about the cultural factors that have affected post-9/11 treatment for members of the of the Chinatown community, Wong mentions their tendency to avoid visiting a doctor until things get really bad. “[They] have a high tolerance for pain.”
On a beautiful Thursday afternoon, there seem to be a good number of tourists in Chinatown. The elderly Chinese who gather around Columbus Park seem to be in good spirits, especially the gentleman in blue pants and a leather golf hat, who strums a banjo-like instrument with his gold ringed fingers and sings loudly. There’s a boy of about ten, sitting on the steps outside the building that houses MoCA. He looks lost in a copy of “Charlotte’s Web.”
Then there are the conspicuously empty storefronts, among them Sweet and Tart, a restaurant on Mott Street, just across the street from Jan Lee’s shop, with a long history.
-- Matt Elzweig
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