MORNING BULLETIN: CONCERT KICK-OFF, POETS IN THE PARKS AND SUBWAYS, CENTENARIAN CELEBRATES
The parks department suddenly has a poetic streak, and we love it! This sign was placed in Riverside near the bike path around 68th street. Photo by Tarik O’Regan.
May 23, 2016 Weather: Partly cloudy, with a high of 74 degrees.
Notices:
Flo Rida kicks off the Good Morning America concert series on Friday and dozens of other local events are on our calendar.
A message via the UFT: “The Children’s Museum of the Arts in Manhattan is accepting applications for scholarships that will waive the fee for one week of Summer Art Colony Day Camp. These scholarships are for children with disabilities who need one-on-one assistance to attend camp. To learn more about the day camp, visit the website or apply for a scholarship online.”
Also: “Sports classes for kids in NYC parks this summer: The City Parks Foundation offers free sports classes in soccer, track and field, golf, tennis and more. Register online now.”
More about summer jobs and internships.
News:
Don’t worry, parents. Just because junior got a degree in poetry doesn’t mean he’s not going to get a job. “For Columbia University junior Ethan Barretto, the subway isn’t just how he gets to work. It’s also where he works – as a self-styled poet of the underground. He sets up just outside the turnstiles on the Bronx-bound side of the 1 line’s 86th Street station. There, a couple of nights a week, he handwrites poems for any price you pick – even if it’s nothing! – on any topic a rider wants…Barretto figures he makes, on average, $3 a poem, though he sometimes gets slipped a $20 or a couple of quarters for words he can string together in minutes.”
Upper West Sider Arlene Brauer celebrated her 100th birthday on Sunday. She has led quite a life. “Arlene sang all over the world with Bob Hope during WWII,” wrote ABC’s Lucy Yang. “The troops loved her. She debuted at Carnegie Hall. She survived the Great Depression! And that’s just some of her many milestones.”
If you have a UWS-related haiku that can compete with the sign above, leave it in the comments.
Heard an anti-Haiku on the Riverside path further uptown, that I can share:
Bicyclist merging at high speed onto walking/biking/skateboarding path shouts: “Watch for cyclists!”
He got everyone to jump out of his way.
Check out the size of
the line at Barney Greengrass.
Let’s go to Murray’s.
“Be scared.”
Does anybody know if there was something going on in the neighborhood that warranted a significant number of enormous tour buses to be parked up and down Columbus ave? From 70th street upwards to 85th street, we noticed 8-10 large-scale tour buses, all apparently from Ontario origins, lining the smaller-scale block (and standing illegally in no parking zones).
We know that tourist season may be heating up, and we’ve seen some tour buses before, but the large number of them leave us wondering if that many people can take a picture at Strawberry Fields at the same time. Would anybody know if there was an event going on that would account for this?
1. They were in town for the Amsterdam Avenue street fair.
2. They came for the opening of the Amsterdam Avenue bike lane.
3. They didn’t want to use the buses but there weren’t enough CitiBikes go around.
4. They were here for the poetry.
Maybe CB-7 could propose to reduce Amsterdam ave to 2 lanes so the buses can have a place to park.
Yes, they came down from Canada to buy pickles and mustard.
Re: “If you have a UWS-related haiku that can compete with the sign above, leave it in the comments.”
Well-lll-llll (to quote the late “Jack Benny”, né “Benjamin Kubelsky”) it’s not REALLY “UWS-related” and it’s NOT a haiku, but there is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”, which begins:
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;….”
Of course, today, standing TOO LONG on one and looking down as far as you can, means risking having some Spando-wearing creep on a super-trendy bicycle yelling, “Hey, GED OFF DA PATH, JERK!!”
Happy Birthday Arlene! And thanks for your service to our Armed Forces. “The Greatest Generation!”
Tourists at Shake Shack
blocking double-wide strollers.
Violence ensues.
Good Enough to Eat?
Not Good Enough to Wait in Line For.
Fairway grows too fast,
Can’t handle debt service costs.
Result? Bankruptcy.
I wrote a haiku some time back when our boys were still going to River Run:
https://meadonmanhattan.com/category/riverside-park/
Squealing children run
Through effervescent sprinklers.
(Parents read the Times.)