Wow the comments on Pandagon really don’t understand me. You understand me; you do. The magnificent Cooper left a great comment.
I am totally overwhelmed by the comments on Courting. I’m either going to do a Sally Field or burst into tears.
I’m not the warmest person in the world, and I can be a bitch. But for the first time in a decade and some I have found my center, and it feels great.
Okay enough sentiment. In three hours eleven minutes there might be a transit strike. Loved the one in 1980. It was in spring and I would take an hour and half to walk from my apartment on East 63rd Street to Dekalb Avenue in Brooklyn. Should do a Google 3D map but I’m too lazy right now.
They said the strike began the walking craze. Not true. I, and others, had discovered walking a long time before. It’s the only way I can totally lose myself into me, become very creative and relaxed. Plus it’s great exercise. But I refused to wear those truly stupid white sneakers; mine were black, as I refused to wear bow ties. Did wear tuxedo shirts in White and Lavender, but with a few buttons undone; and of course I owned three Jones New York dress for success suits.
I wanted to look successful but I couldn’t be untrue to myself. I had been wearing vintage Rayon dresses with shoulder pads and tight waists. I also wore Diane Von Furstenberg, solid color Laura Ashley, Willi Wear, clothes made for a real woman. The Courting pin-up and I have much in common. Zachary, a jeans, tee and flannel shirt person, loved my style. We were living together during the strike and Zachary would pick a group of us up after work in his van. Sometimes if he wasn’t too hungover he would drive me. But I preferred to walk.
It was a good strike. Did a lot to make us proud to be New Yorkers. The blackout of ’77 had shown how torn apart we were. The strike began the healing. Mayor Koch would stand on the other side of the bridge in the morning, welcoming people to Manhattan. Koch was at his peak then. I was always looking for reasons to dislike him and just couldn’t.
I was on the bridge during the last blackout walking back from Brooklyn. Mayor Bloomberg was on the other side of the bridge.
But a strike in December ten days before Christmas? New York has had many problems these past four years. Most salaries don’t keep up with the rapid increase in prices. Christmas is the biggest store season; restaurants are packed; people are out having fun. I don’t think this would be good now. I hope they have the strike but put it off to a less hectic, less money making, and warmer season.
A transist strike in December is cruel. The easiest way for Lucia to get from her apartment in the West 80’s to her office in Penn Plaza, West 34th Street would be by feet. It’s going to be icey, rainy, slushy. It’s really only a two and half mile walk each way, but that can be long in bad weather.
When she walked home on 9/11 she left in such a hurry she forgot to change her shoes. Try walking it in stilletos!
Maybe a one day strike; but I have a party I want to go to tomorrow night, and I’m not about to walk it, in the rain/slush/ice. It’s a walk I do all the time; basically to my old neighborhood. But it’s been frigid, and right now all I can think about is hot ginger tea.
hi famous person.
shoulder pads look really good on me.
maybe i’ll get some for chanukah.
🙂
happy holidays and i truely hope you stay warm and have fun!
joe
I like that you’re a bitch. It lets me know where I stand.
Or where I’m flat on my rear.
Whichever.
Yes of course we got it.
It was a great piece but people like to grasp a point and run with it without really trying to grasp the meaning of the whole thing. In general sites such as that, and it is a good site, tend to be full of people that want only to spout their own rhetoric anyway and the comment section is just a place for them to do that.
Academic speak, which doesn’t reach much of the real world, is the hallmark of many of those places and although there is some good stuff there they are not writers or artists and they have their own agenda as well.
Yea waiting for the strike if it happens.
You like me! You really really like me!!!
Well, you gotta give credit to the union for figuring out the worst possible time to stage a strike for maximum effect. Although, in all honesty, it’s stuff like this that has made America dislike unions.
The last one in 1980 was in Spring so it was cool to walk. But a transit strike in Winter would be terrible.
Take care and God bless.
On 9/11, I had friends and family that walked from Varick Street, Church Street, the area around the financial center and BMCC all the way to the BRONX! They did it in heels and when they got home, their feet were bleeding.
I remember that strike. It was devastating for my family. My father was a track man (repaired the tracks) for the NYC MTA. My parents savings were depleted. Living paycheck to paycheck is tough enough, having three girls, three Catholic School tuitions and household expenses is even harder.
I still don’t know what the outcome was last night. I hope they didn’t strike, my close friend’s husband is a motor man (drives the train)and they are already stretched thin. Christmas is not coming for us this year! They are a two income family and they still have a hard time making ends meet. This strike would jeopardize their home.
Oh, life and its twists and turns…you just have to look at the bad and know that someone else has it even worse. It puts things in perspective for me…
Speaking of shoes and 9/11…one of my dearest friends lives and works in Manhattan, and she said that one of the things that remains vivid in her mind about fleeing from the scene was seeing shoes all over the ground where people just chucked them so they could run better.
Looks like you guys have at least a few more days of transportation. Fingers crossed for you.