Last Day Of Summer In Washington Square

 

 

It’s the last day of summer in Washington Square

 

Where the intermingling sounds of jazz horns and children play

Where kings and queens are pawns for one more play

Where words from poets now dead still have a say

 
It’s the last day of summer in Washington Square

 

Where pretty young co-eds make old men look twice

Where young men with flirty intentions make pretty young co-eds think twice

Where those hustling by and for the grass can make nice

 

It’s the last day of summer in Washington Square

 

Where you sit for a fix of the sun before dusk

Where you wish under the arch that autumn and winter will have a gentle touch

It’s the last day of summer in Washington Square.

-Glenn Mann

 

Slices Of Life

 

Whenever someone visiting from out of town asks me where is the best place to get pizza I get very nervous. This is a serious question, one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. When a person makes this inquiry it isn’t just for the purpose of obtaining sustenance. When someone asks you where is the best place to get pizza they are asking you where can they momentarily find true happiness. To have a bad slice of pizza is to kiss death in the mouth, tongue and all. The complicated ratio of sauce and cheese meeting proper crust density is a mysterious equation, but like the origins of the known universe it is one that calls for constant inquiry.

The palate is the extension of man and woman’s soul, it must be honored and nurtured and if it’s led astray there is a sense of void.  However, every palate/soul is different and what might be divine to one may indeed be spiritual death to another.  This is why when I am asked that question, I don’t give a blanket answer, I pray for guidance in that instance so that I many lead no one hungry astray.  That I may help them truly find a slice of life.

 

Photo by Vinicius Benedit on Pexels.com

 

Bleecker Street Pizza and Joe’s Pizza both located in Greenwich Village are my favorite suggestions but am I also very partial to the pizza shop of my teenage years; Sacco Pizza in Hell’s Kitchen. 

Photography: Street Cross Selection

Walking Tall And The Heights Of Fashion

I’m 6ft tall, so whenever I meet a woman who is taller than me, for a moment I feel a sense of distortion and unspoken questions race to my mind like “Where in the WNBA draft were you selected?” or “What part of Wonder Woman’s home island did you grow up on?” Now some men eroticize vertically empowered women while others are intimidated, perhaps feeling that not having to be asked to reach for something on a shelf diminishes their manhood, but despite these challenges tall girls stand above it all, mostly because they have no choice.

In some relation to this subject, as I write this New York’s Fashion Week is near conclusion. You can always tell it’s Fashion Week because of the extra amount of attractive women (some very tall) riding the subways or racing through Manhattan for the next show.  Fashion can be a polarizing subject, some find it frivolous while others treat it as a religion. As someone who does not spend a lot of money on clothes and is in no danger of posing for GQ anytime soon, it would surprise some people to hear me say that I think that fashion at its core is very important. What you wear and how you wear it can be the most important form of expression you exercise.  Show me what kind of t-shirt a man is wearing and I will tell you what’s in his heart. Fashion is a form of communication in which we consciously or unconsciously tell the word how we feel about ourselves and each other.  From tattered sweaters to designer suits and borderline haute couture dresses, clothing can give insight to low or high moods, or symbolize the bottom or heights of our aspirations.  So watch how you wear it

 

Voiceless

 

It was announced less than a week ago the Village Voice would be no more, gone forever, at least for now. It was just last year that the publication ceased producing a weekly print edition and went strictly digital, but apparently this is truly the end. The Village Voice for sixty years played a vital part in shaping the culture of New York and the lives of many of its residents. I remember the first time I bought my own copy of the Voice when I was a teen. It felt like a very grown-up thing to do and with all the racy ads of a sexual nature on the inside and outside it felt like a scandalous thing to do. But the Voice was more than vice, between muckracking journalists holding city hall accountable, critics with deep examinations and explorations of arts produced in and out of the mainstream, and shining a light on the marginalized of society, the Voice was indeed a voice, and being a dedicated reader felt like a lifestyle choice, a choice to listen, learn, accept, and celebrate humanity.

The era of Greenwich Village Bohemia has long been gone but the Village Voice remained a thread woven through counter-culture past and present, with the Village Voice I could feel a connection with dead poets and old folk singers of Washington Square. New York got cleaner and safer but the Voice reminded me of the old grime of the Lower East Side, and those uptown kids that birthed a new culture with rhymes. Downtown became more straight and narrow, but the Voice never let me forget drag queens, or the guys and gals chilling on Christopher street. Now the Voice is silent, but what it represented still speaks loud to many, still speaks loud to me. Goodbye Village Voice.

Bees Do It

 

Yesterday in Times Square, a swarm of bees surrounded and took over a hot dog cart. People ran for cover and the police came to restore order to the hive that is also known as the crossroads of the world. If you visit Times Square you may run into people dressed in character costumes who will charge you money to take pictures with them, but you must be careful because some have been known to be hostile. Once a Spider-man punched a cop, a Batman got arrested, and an Elmo was apprehended for unwanted tickling. There are also young women walking around dressed mostly in body paint, prompting interesting stories back home in places like Iowa,Ohio, and Indiana, for returning tourists.

I believe but have no evidence to confirm that back in the day in the Bible Belt if you came home from visiting New York City you were met at the airport to be baptized with holy water, no chances could be taken, a bite of the Big Apple came with soul damning risk.  But these bees, probably on a honey making break were not there to put on a show or entertain, you could say that they were just in a state of being.  In the midst of everything around them, these extraordinary bees were simply living in a moment true to themselves. How sweet.

Street Walker GPS

 

When I was fourteen years old and just a school boy freshman. I had an experience with a trio of ladies elegantly dressed in assorted work uniforms of  leopard print,fur,leather, and fishnets. I went to high school in an evolving gentrifying Hell’s Kitchen when it still had just a singe of the devil’s flame, and we were only blocks away of course from Times Square, where not all vice had been conquered yet.  It was one of those early September days that mistook itself for July, and as I walked the sidewalk towards the subway and probably eager to get home to play a video game, I saw this small group of women looking like they had walked off the set of Taxi Driver stopping strangers to ask them for directions.

A few took a judgmental quick look at these women, dressed in their street walking best and moved away as quickly as possible from them, while others simply said they didn’t know.  As I continued along my way, they turned to me to inquire on the location of their desired destination. “Hey cutie, can you help us?” one of them said. Now being a male teen, this daytime proximity to these ladies of the night made my inner teen wolf howl. As sweet and polite as anyone could be they asked if I knew how to get where they wanted to go, with one eye still nervously on them (puberty hormones don’t fail me now) I took a glance at a piece of paper with an address written on it that one of them held, and with more confidence than James Bond and John Shaft combined I told them how to get there.

They returned my display of supreme urban navigational skill with heartfelt thanks and as I watched them walk away a schoolmate came running up to me and said “Hey, what’s wrong with you? why were you talking to those prostitutes?” I said “they needed help” and that was the end of that conversation. Now if there is a moral to this story that moral would be always be willing to point someone in the right direction, but the point of me sharing this story wasn’t to convey some greater good. I just wanted to reminisce.

What Ever Happened To The Man With The Knife On The Train?

 

Over a year ago I decided to record a podcast on a regular basis. This was done after many starts and stops in the preceding years, and also getting over the terror that the sound of my own voice often gave me.  For my first episode I decided to share the story of an incident long ago on a subway train not far away from memory. It was the story of a deranged man with deranged Don King looking hair, wielding a knife after throwing accusations that someone had took his wallet.  I’ve witnessed many things growing up in New York, but this was one of the most vivid experiences because it managed to be a frightening incident that afterwards I found very hilarious (you had to be there).

But recently looking back on that story, I wondered what happened to that gentleman. Did he continue to lead a life of violence? Perhaps he was ashamed of his behavior that day and went on to become a practitioner of non-violent mediation and mindfulness meditation ? Maybe he decided to follow his true passion and become a sushi chef?  I have no idea but if there is a point to anything I’m saying right I guess I should get to it, and that point is that lives our bigger than the fleeting moments they may appear in. It may be easy to see others as side characters in the continuous moving story of our existence, but I believe that on the grand stage of the universe we’re all  stars.

 

You can listen to the Mann From New York podcast on Apple podcasts, Google Play and Spotify.

Reconstructive Aperture: Path

Untitled (The City Seems So Unreal)

 

From up high above the old waters
The city seems unreal
Just the dream of man or woman whose gone mad
An imagination running among the wild.
But it’s all so true
The moving hordes, the shadowing concrete, the idea of glorious tomorrows.
And aspirational towers.
This is New York.

by Glenn Mann