Record Explosion

One of my favorite places to walk in Manhattan is along 34th Street, in between 6th & 7th Avenues. This is how I get from the Herald Square subway station to the Long Island Railroad entrance on the north side of Penn Station. It's also one of my least favorite places to walk. To be cornball, let's say that everything right and wrong with Manhattan is represented on this block.

This is not an easy place to walk. Not for the faint of heart or lead of foot. It makes Canal Street on Saturdays seem deserted in comparison. I'm talking about the south side of 34th Street, across from Macy's. There you have the rubbernecking tourists looking to see whatever gigantic Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon Macy's has parked over its entrance. Then you have the sidewalk vendors selling back issues of Silver Surfer and the Mighty Thor, or cardboard-framed sketches of Tupac and Tony Montana, or the Sabrett's guy selling cold, hard pretzels.

And then there are the stores. Have you ever seen so many shoe stores all on the same block? Foot Locker used to be the store to hang out near, when on Saturday mornings they'd have a woman with a gospel-choir voice (incongruous in the Foot Locker referee-jersey uniform) clutching a megaphone and singing out cheers at pedestrians.

There's even a Tad's Steaks on this block. How quaint. It shares its space with Dunkin' Donuts, of course. I think the donuts are healthier. And the pretzels. The pretzels and donuts together are probably healthier than those grilled slabs of fat.

The place I used to "like" was Record Explosion, a hole in the wall selling old VHS tapes, and lots of DVD porn and kung-fu (or, even better, kung-fu porn) at low low prices. They also had new releases, but that was all the way in the back, and always at list price, or close to it. You didn't go there to buy new releases. You went there to buy "Justine's Exotic Liaisons" and "A Fistful of Yen", and "Bill Cosby's Picture Pages". All at the same time.

Record Explosion is still around, but not for much longer, if you believe their window displays. The windows are plastered with LOST OUR LEASE signs. There's even a huge countdown in one of the windows. 12 DAYS, it said today. That's the second time the countdown has dropped that low. I'm positive the countdown was reset sometime last month. In the city we call that the annual bankruptcy sale.

Stores like this -- these disreputable hole-in-the-wall record stores -- are being paved over to make way for chain shoestores and other soulless franchises. I'll miss them, but not because I shop in them. I'll just miss having them around.

For 12 more days (or more) you can look inside to see 100 customers desperately looking for bargains. Maybe four of whom will end up buying something. For 12 more days you can hear the endless audio loop of some paid actor shouting out: "We love you! We gotta go! We gotta move everything!". You can hear that from the sidewalk, but only as you walk past the entrance. They should have hired the Foot Locker lady if they wanted to be heard down in Herald Square. The voice goes on like that for minutes.

It's great stuff, it's great sidewalk theater. You can still find stores like this anywhere in the US, but only in New York City do they make grand opera out of the annual bankruptcy sale. Please, guys, stay open so we can do this again next summer.

The Lexington Avenue Distress

Train of the day: The Downtown 5 Express, running from 86th Street to Union Square.

Conventional wisdom has it that taking the 4 or the 5 (the Lexington Avenue Express) saves no time over taking the 6 (the local), if you're just going between two points in Manhattan.

I've had that experience before -- I once took the 6 uptown from 51st to 59th Street, and then got off to transfer to the 4/5. When I exited the express at 125th Street, I was amused to see the 6 I'd left behind, pull up alongside. After making 4 additional stops that the 4/5 didn't make.

On other hand, when it's running quickly, I love how the 4/5 cuts through Manhattan like a hot knife through butter. You can run from 125th to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall in about 20 minutes. That's a pretty impressive run.

Weekday mornings this summer, however, the 4/5 downtown local is running at "reduced speeds", due to track work at the Union Square station. Therefore, the 5 went at a glacial pace, and it took about 30 minutes to crawl from 86th to Union. I finished reading my AM New York shortly after we pulled out of Grand Central, and for the rest of the slow crawl had nothing else to read, except Bronx Zoo subway ads.

All this, and I didn't have a seat, either.

Next time, I'm just going to get on the 6 at 86th Street. It'll be a shorter ride, and I'll be able to sit the whole way, too.

So, in other words, this summer, the Lexington Avenue Express is about as "express" as the Long Island Expressway. The world's longest parking lot.

Strangers on a Train

Trains I rode today: The R (back and forth between Herald and Union Squares) and the B (from Herald Square to 86th Street). Local fever!

It's not even an original thought to say that, in a city of however many million people, you're going to wind up sitting right next to someone you know in a subway car, entirely by accident. This morning, while half asleep on the Brooklyn-bound R, I wasn't even paying attention to the people around me. Except for a very vocal blind woman who was trying to get a seat across the aisle. It took three people getting up to persuade her to have a seat, and then thirty seconds for all three of those people to maneuver her into a seated position.

It wasn't until I stood up to get off at Union Square that I recognized the guy sitting across the door from me, half hidden behind the Daily News and a rumpled tweed sports jacket. He's a worker's compensation lawyer I used to know from my previous job. His name is Woody, and he used to unknowingly enliven the long days I had to spend, drafting pleadings at a desk dumped out in the middle of a hallway. I'd listen to him bicker with clients on the phone and run verbal rings around them, tossing out casual insults it'd take them years to decipher. Even the letters dictated for his legal assistants were a joy to overhear. Not for him the monotone dictation. He'd really get into the spirit of his letters. Just talking into a tape recorder, he'd betray the venom in his voice with each "comma" or "period", or, especially, "question mark". I don't do dictations at my current job, but if I did, he'd be my dictaphone role model.

In the three seconds between the door opening at 14th Street, and my exiting the car, I wanted to turn around and say hi -- haven't seen the guy in the two years since I left that office and moved uptown, and from the C train to the R. In those three seconds, I had a whole conversation mapped out in my head, things I would've said to this guy after two years, all the way from random catch-ups like "How's the Knucklehead doing?", through the obligatory and wistfully insincere "Give me a call later".

Only, there was a large crowd waiting to get off behind me, so I didn't turn around or even nod at the Daily News blocking his face from view.

Anna Nicole Smith

I'm glad that the good people at TrimSpa have finally changed the look of their Anna Nicole Smith ad campaign.

For several months now, TrimSpa have been branding New York City Transit subway cars by filling one-half of the train with the same red poster of Anna Nicole Smith before-and-after photos, with the duelling slogans, Be Envied, and The Ultimate Comeback.

It wasn't until you stared at the old ad for several seconds that you realize the background of the ad was made up of 8 or 9 red-tinged Anna Nicole Smith faces. All of them staring right at you. It was enough to give a person ideas of reference. You'd walk off the train, down the platform, up to the street, and then: boom! You realized that Anna Nicole Smith was trying to talk to you. And maybe she was trying to sell something less innocuous than mere diet pills.

Sometimes I'd want to do nothing more than ride from Union Square to 86th Street -- a fifteen-minute ride, during rush hour -- and I'd feel Anna Nicole's eyes on me the whole time. Then, for hours afterward, I'd close my eyes, even for the most fleeting blink, and I'd see those white eyes peering out from a red face.

Well, those ads are gone now. The new ads show a far more idyllic beach scene, and Anna Nicole's face is only on the poster twice: we see her smiling at herself, as she frolics along the beach with a faceless male model. No more hidden faces, no more red tinge. These new ads don't inspire the same subliminal Big Brother fear in me. I can safely ignore these ads, the way I'd ignore the ads from the Peanut Council, or Kenneth Cole's Welcome to Miami.

Now the only person left in the subway ads who's freaking me out with that you-will-obey-me stare is Dr. Zizmor...

Brighton Beach

Like Judaism, the D train to Brighton Beach doesn't like
working on Saturdays. Today, service to Manhattan was
extremely sporadic. In other words, skipping the ten or so
stops between Bay Parkway, down at the end of Bensonhurst,
all the way up through 9th Avenue, which is further up in
the middle of the less-identifiable areas of Brooklyn.

Luckily, I'm within walking distance of Bay Parkway. However,
anyone else further uptown had to take the Coney Island-
bound D all the way down to Bay Parkway. Then get off, race down
the stairs, and race all the way back upstairs on the Manhattan-
bound side.

Usually, this is a sure guarantee that the Manhattan bound train
will pull in as you're racing down the stairs, and close its doors
and pull away as you're racing back up the stairs.

Once I got to Pacific Street, it was a simple matter to get off
the train and wait for the N up to Union Square. Most weekends,
N service into Manhattan is just as unreliable as D service
within Brooklyn. Today, however, no ill effects.

The D train is notable only for the fact that it never seems
to generate any performance artists. The N at least is usually
good for an appearance by the Doo-Wop guys, but today it was
fairly quiet.

During my hour on the train I managed to read about 20 pages of
Bill Clinton's book. Page 100 and he's barely out of Arkansas.

I will probably still be reading this book by the time the Second
Avenue line debuts its subway service on the Upper East Side.