Pepper of the Earth – The Home Office Record & Mostly Daily Gazette

It has been scientifically proven that the Cyclone is the most awesome roller coaster in America. The last time they tried to measure the awesomeness of the Cyclone, the awesometer broke on the way down the first drop (85 feet straight down into the steaming heart of Brooklyn! — sorry, all that barker stuff gets stuck in my head after a while).

We’re inside the ride, waiting to board the next train. On the far wall there’s a big warning sign, five or six bullet points long, which basically says “this ride goes up and down fast.” I’m standing next to a sinuous girl with dirty blonde hair and a boyfriend.

Sinuous Girl: Look, it says the Cyclone is a “high impact ride.” Kind of like sleeping with me, right?
Startled Boyfriend: …

It’s last Friday, and Laura is in town (graciously excusing my Very Bad Habit of never answering emails) with her sister. Either I’ve never met the sister or I last saw her at Storyville in Kenmore Square up in Boston, which would make it roughly 1982. We pile into the car in Brooklyn Heights, zip onto the BQE, miss the turnoff to the Belt Parkway, and promptly get lost somewhere in Bay Ridge, and soon enough we’re in Coney Island for a last-gasp visit — the bulk of Coney Island as we know it closes after Labor Day, to be replaced by high-rise condos and a beachfront resort. Or something. They’re still trying to figure out what will suck most. Because what’s the point of developing if you can’t wreck people’s lives along the way?

It ends up being a glorious day of Brooklyn Celebration. August serves up a hot humid plate, deliciously spiced with sea breeze off the harbor. We avoid running over the parking lot attendant with some fancy wheelwork and head to the Boardwalk, meandering down to the Steeplechase Pier with its earnest fishermen, marveling that the long-abandoned Childs Restaurant building is at last being restored. Up the way is a portable yellow beach stadium for pro amateur teen beach volleyball or somesuch, which apparently exists largely as an excuse to put up signs for Snapple and Crocs.

For lunch it’s Totonno’s, one of the city’s legendary pizza joints (established 1924, and you have to love a place which claims that only God makes better pizza). This is my first time here, and the pie is mighty good. I’ll have to come back to see if it’s legendary — that’s a big word in pizza circles — but it’s very good indeed, thin-crusted and fully-loaded without getting drippy and gooey. I love that one of the crafters at this traditional foodie shrine wears a lip ring. The rebel daughter or niece, presumably. Halfway through the meal we realize that we’re sitting at the George Bush table, the wall above us adorned with pictures of Senior and Junior. We manage not to fling anchovies, but it’s a close thing.

The Coney Island Museum costs 99¢ at the door and has bathrooms, which makes it a mandatory stop after beer with lunch. “Uh, I’ve got this one.” “No no, my treat.” We probably have much more fun in there than we’re supposed to; it’s a small collection, but we’re the perfect age for it. There’s a Whirl-a-Gig (or something) car in there which I’m sure I rode in as a child, because it’s one of the few favored cars that has a gun mounted in the front and in the back, and I was always looking for that one.

Can it be that I never rode the Wonder Wheel before? I don’t remember ever going, so maybe this is the first. We ride a swinging car, like everyone else, which means as soon as we get toward the top our car rolls forward down a track toward the center, where it swings back and forth in what is, to be honest, a kind of irritating way. Where’s the brake on this thing? From up here we can see how much of Astroland is a dense frolicking buffer against the kind of empty lots that just can’t stay vacant forever in New York.

Then the Cyclone, bless it, my second or third time this summer and it gets me every ride. There’s just enough hang time at the top for the brain to flash a Wait! Wait! Bad idea! alert before the thing crashes pell-mell (pell-mell = 60 m.p.h.) down toward certain death and then twists up and away, and does it again and again and again. The judder of the cars along the steel-braced wooden track and the roaring clatter of the bucking wood go a long way toward making this the King of the Coasters. It’s just under two minutes of twists and turns and yanks and jolts, and in the din you can’t ever quite get your bearings. Once upon a time I’d ride the Cyclone over and over. These days, not so much. We wobble to the exit. Ride again for only four dollars! the attendants cry out. You two, you two, just five dollars for both! Okay, three for six! You can choose your seat when you go again, so if you want the front car this is how to get there. With a flash of tempted regret, we choose the exit.

I need to cajole a bit to get everyone into Sideshows by the Seashore, the last traditional independent sideshow in the States. A couple of people I know are working today. You’ll probably have to take my word for this, but it’s a great inner thrill to be recognized at the Sideshow. Some people know fancy maîtres-d’ and A-list actors, and some people know really good sword-swallowers. Makes a guy preen a bit. I make sure everyone has tipping money handy so we don’t look like tourists. Laura hides her eyes when Diamond Donny V. sticks a nail up his nose, and curls into a ball when he shoves a live drill armed with a masonry bit in there. You might as well watch, he advises. You paid for it. Heather Holiday coaxes her up on stage for the next act — settling the score, no doubt — and Laura gets to pull a huge serpentine sword out of Heather’s mouth in the finale. Everyone is thrilled and envious and a little glad it wasn’t them up there.

A day like this can only properly end at The Waterfront, one of the best fine-cuisine home-style restaurant bars I’ve ever found (conveniently located about 30 seconds from my door). We wait for a table over a couple of glasses of Monk’s Cafe Flemish Sour Ale and a Spaten Pilsner, and chow down on flank steak, a Kobe Beef burger, and the Waterfront’s amazing home-smoked ribs. Bread pudding closes the day, and half a block later the sisters are bound for exurbia and I’m already halfway down in visions of the shower and nap ahead.

New York drives me crazy a lot. And then some days I remember why I live here and have so much trouble moving away. It’s no end of hassle, but where else in the world?

Prints of the photo above are available for purchase from the ImageKind online photo service. Buy a print, and support your local Peppers (me)!

Sudden smoke over Manhattan on a gorgeous blue-sky day takes a New Yorker down some dark ways.

On Saturday I’m walking after late brunch (wild greens with grilled chicken strips, tarragon dressing), spending the afternoon with quiet space and a large book. The dark smudge over the skyline is completely unexpected, completely unwelcome. The chalky burnt dead smell of 2001 is in the air, faint but that’s not something you ever forget, ever.

Let’s be clear: this is nothing like 9/11, nothing at all. On that morning the smoke bank — I’m not exaggerating — covered this entire scene and more, from shoreline to highest point, from Chambers Street to the tip of the island, and blocked even the outlines of the river buildings from view. On that morning, time stopped and ran out like broken film spilling out of a stuttering projector. Still, I can’t help but flash for a moment from this crisp sunny beautiful day back to that one.

Brain: Hey, look at that. You know what that’s like?
Linus: It is not.
Brain: Well excuse me, pardon me for thinking.

I text a few friends, leave a couple of messages. What’s burning? The Brooklyn Bridge looks open to uneventful traffic moving both ways. The ferries are still running. No military presence in the harbor, no combat air patrol overhead. We know how to look for such things, these days. If the city troops aren’t on the road, then there’s nothing I can do. I look, snap a few pictures, and move on down the Promenade to the bridges, and the lazy park on the river.

Fast Forward, Change Gears: Usually Wednesdays are working days on my short schedule, but today I’m home on break after a Tuesday catalepsy incident with a failing network switch (which, my lucky friends, I will not tell you about — I am learning that one of the great cherished secrets of being the Computer Guy is that the less you tell people about your day, the happier they are about it). It’s cold and rainy, and if ever a set of days said “Summer’s Over,” it’s these ones rah-cheer. Now, either I can get started on all sorts of stuff that really needs doing at home, or I can go to the movies — so that’s an easy choice, and I want to see Stardust before it slips away. So off I go.

It’s a beautiful picture — not quite as magical as The Princess Bride, but running the same roads. There’s some this and some that and the story is as easy to wear as a familiar pair of warm gloves. Soon enough (no spoilers here) Charlie Cox as Tristan is chained up to Claire Danes as Yvaine, which never seems to happen to me as anyone.

While they await certain death and destruction, he explains why he’s rushing to finish his quest by the end of the week. You see, there’s this girl. Of course. But not just any girl. She’s Sienna Miller. And he needs to get The Thing and bring it to her before her birthday, which is Tuesday or something. Claire Danes nods sagely, to indicate that this makes no sense to her at all.

So, you’re trying to buy her love, she offers. Are you sure that’s wise? No no, he explains. It’s not that he’s buying her love, he’s proving how much he loves her by making this trip, mounting this voyage, plunging into the heart of this matter. It’s to show how much he loves her and how worthy he is, that’s why he’s here.

I see, says Claire Danes, who does. And … what is she doing to show you how worthy she is of your love?

Hmm, I think to myself. Hmm.

The world seen through the window, and that’s most of what I’ve been seeing of it lately, darkens down to olive: they’ve been forecasting storms and torrents for weeks now, and all we ever get is the tailing sigh of humidity. Except when the deluge is drowning the subway, and isn’t that fun? Today we’re headed for rain, rain at last, severe but normal rain. Thunder is grinding in the distance, the rain flicks its first warning spatters onto the Friday hustle home. Outside the light is mossy, the air smells like freshly-cut grass.

Misheard Lyrics: I was never a big fan of Tears for Fears, but I liked them well enough back in college’s radio days. Apart from the big bland hit Mad World — I favored Pale Shelter — there was some good offside material on their first album, which is the only one I know well. My sweet and wistful side curled up with Memories Fade one long night after a few ruminating plays, and never left.

A few months ago I discovered that I had nearly every line of that song dead wrong. The heart of my inner Memories Fade is close enough to the one Roland Orzabal wrote, just with different words. The biggest (and best) of the blurs is in the chorus.

Song says: Memories fade, but the scars still linger.
Linus hears: Memories fade, but the sky still lingers.

Which has always been my sense of broken, dying love: we with our ragged hills of beans, under a mute regretful sky.

Today, or yesterday, or around here somewhere, is when my girlfriend was supposed to come to New York for a couple of weeks to visit. She’s not here, she isn’t coming, and she isn’t my girlfriend any more, and the last weeks have been gray and snubbed and sad. I wouldn’t mention it, really, since gray and snubbed and sad is part of the regular routine here at Chez Pepper — OK not always, but I didn’t say always, did I? — but I was so happy these last few months: multi-colored, we might say, happy and confident, full of bubbly stuff.

We live 668 Googlemap miles apart, my ex-GF and I, including a detour around the butt end of a Great Lake, and we had only a handful of days together. Then again, we had two years of joshing and jostling and looking at each other across the Internet before those days, fleshed out with endless time on the phone, a volume or two of emails, and daily cascades of text messages. My current phone is just a few months old, and nearly every minute of the 62 hours of talk on there went her way. I would go to bed with the cell in my hand, drifting to sleep on a raft of randy texty talk. And wake up on the shoals of day to an insistent buzz: Morning, sunshine.

By the time we finally held each other and stripped the clothes away in the smackdown hot of crazy stormy lunar June, we already knew one another in every way but taste and smell and touch. We carried all those months of trust and confidence and desire together into life and into bed and landed, tangled and sweated and whirled, on a ground that felt solid. Do you want to give this a try? I asked her, and she buried her face in me, let her hair swarm my head and body. Yes, she answered, Yes. This is what I want. Yes. I was delirious. It was a miracle we’d found each other at all, and a gift that we had the future ahead of us.

But I’m not to come out to see her in July, because she’s busy. I don’t think that’s a great idea, given that a glorious weekend is the start but not the spine of a relationship, but in exchange we’ll trade up for a longer stay, two weeks, in August. When the bulk of her busy is done.

In June, we tremble with love. You, this, us, she says: the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened to me. In July she is reticent, distracted. By early August she has lost the power of speech, and why am I so unreasonable? Don’t I know how hard it is to deal with all of the stuff she no longer tells me about? She thinks she might have time for me maybe by December, but there’s no guarantee. What’s all the fuss? Didn’t we see each other just a couple of months ago? That’s all I ever think about, is sex. Well she has needs too.

It’s a beautiful day — a Saturday — as we nail the last 90 minutes into those 62 hours. I’m watching a tugboat push a barge up the Hudson, I’m watching the joggers pushing up and down the shoreline paths. I’m thinking of all the things I love in this City that we will not do together, all the places we won’t go. After goodbye I walk until it is full night. The photo above is on the homeward leg of that walk, on the near side of the Brooklyn Bridge. My body feels like wind. It moves, and if it didn’t move it might not exist. It moves, but it contains nothing.

Outside tonight’s storm slouches in, grumbling each gust of the way. Out the window it is glowering black; it is blank green; it is poisoned orange. The sky still lingers.

Prints of the photo above are available for purchase from the ImageKind online photo service. Buy a print, and support your local Peppers (me)!