NYC Coffee

With the prospect of not living in NYC for a bit I’m trying to hit up as many things that I love and I’m reminded about the little things that make new york, new york.  At 6:30 this morning I was looking for a bank of America and on my walk I past a few man in the cans but no BoA.  I was reminded of a conversation that I had back in the day when I was working at a company where basically everyone was from a different part of the country.  On my walk to that job I would stop off at a man in the can and grab a coffee.  It was a strictly business transaction with minimal chit chat but after a few weeks our comfort level was such that if I didn’t have a bill small enough for him to break he’d cover me until the next day.  The conversation with my then coworkers was about how terrible the can coffee was comparatively to their precious Starbucks.  If you are basing it solely on taste, they’re probably right.  If you factor in price and that the man in the can is working for himself, trying to scrape by and appreciates every sale, it’s far more of a toss up.  Not to say that Starbucks isn’t convenient but there’s something to the early hours that these people endure to get ready for the day. 

Back in 2008 we had played a show in Brooklyn which an open bar.  From there we ventured to Manhattan where someone’s friend was bartending.  We ended up closing the place.  After walking to Union Square and I had the bright idea to walk the 8 miles back to Astoria instead of jumping on the N train.  Bear with me I’m going somewhere with this.  My beer soaked logic was grounded in my strong consideration for running for City Council and on some level I thought it would be poetic  to see the city come alive.  Honestly, it was.  It was wonderful to see the ground work laid out for all the things we take for granted.  Seeing the newspaper delivery guys rolling up at 5 am.  Seeing people in power suits drag themselves into the office at 5:30.  The biggest one was seeing the coffee cart guys setting up at 4am because it takes a good half hour or so for their coffee to brew, so they have to be ready to fuel the newspaper delivery people, the power suits and the drunken idiots walking home.  

Pappou

There are a lot of reasons why I admired my grandfather but most of them are summed up in this one anecdote.  The way I heard the story was that my mom and grandparents had made their way to the United States via Greece then Germany and ended up in New York City.  My grandfather had scraped together enough money to open a fruit cart by working odd jobs.  He set up shop in Central Park skirting the permitting laws that apply to street vendors.  Mind you this was the late 60’s early 70’s and Central Park was far sketchier than it is today.  Thinking about it now this might have been before the police department had an internal affairs department but I’m getting ahead of myself. 

The days were long and there wasn’t such a thing as an off day when you’re bringing in most of the money for a family of four.  The best way to describe his command of the English language is basic.  He, like me with Greek, was far more adept at understanding people than he was at speaking; which is helpful but still incredibly difficult when you think of his daily interactions with his English only speaking customers.  Doing what you have to do to survive and take care of those who you love is a big thing, no matter the insecurities that you feel and insults that you are subjected to because of a language barrier.  I am purely speculating how the customers treated him but what I’m not speculating on is the cops. 

Since he was operating without a permit the cops would come around and harass him.  Before anyone jumps down my throat, I understand that it’s a police officer’s responsibility to enforce the laws and make sure everyone follows them.  I get that and I agree that this lets society operate in the best manner for everyone.  What isn’t part of the cops’ job description is soliciting and taking bribes along with threatening deportation.  They would come around and ask for weekly bribes so they could overlook his lack of a proper street vendor permit.  He did what any reasonable person would do when you have mouths to feed, you pay the bribe and keep your head down.  Now we’re getting to crux of what really stands out to me.  So they wouldn’t look incompetent or biased, I guess, the cops on top of asking for bribes would also issue violations with regularity.  Keep in mind the margins on fruit is very slim.

My grandfather would collect all the tickets that he received and put them in the suitcase that he used to emigrate here.  He’d bind the bundles of unpaid tickets with rubber bands because there would be so many of them that they’d become unmanageable. He stored them under his bed as a nightly reminder and a challenge. 

The routine went on, weekly bribes and violations.  It got to the point that the suitcase was full.  I often think about him collecting all those tickets and how much they must have weighed on him.  The unfairness of it all.  Working brutal hours, struggling to communicate with uppity Manhattanites, paying off corrupt cops, eeking by to have a mountain of debt hanging over your head while trying to do what’s right for your family.  Comparison to today’s record keeping, it would have been easier to throw the violations away and completely ignore them until one fateful day that you might have to deal with the authorities.  Since everything was done by hand there would have been a chance that records might have gotten lost or overlooked, and that day might have never come.   But he wasn’t willing to take that chance especially when it might mean having to forcefully leave the States. 

He vowed to pay off every single one of the tickets no matter how long it took.  Slowly the cart did better and better and it turned into a store.  After years of running the store, the suitcase was once again as empty as it was when it was first slipped under the bed.  

Pixar

Last year I flew in to play SF Sketchfest and I was going to stay with some friends in Berkeley.  The night before I flew out I looked at the Bart map to figure out how I was going to get from the airport out to Berkeley when I saw that Emeryville was smack dab in the middle of the two.  I called Pixar and they told me that they don't offer open tours.  I sighed and reluctantly accepted my fate.

After I told them about my disappointment my friends took me to a diner (owned by Mike Dirnt of Green Day) which was right across the street from the Pixar HQ.  Seeing the gate was pretty cool and you could see the ball and the lamp but the coolest thing was the giant seagulls perched around the building.  Seeing those seagulls made me change my plans and wake up early the next day because if nothing else I'd get a sweet shot of them.

I had heard about the store that was only open to employees and had shirts that weren't available for sale anywhere else.  On the Bart I formulated a plan to go to the security gate and ask the guard if he knew of any employees who might be cool enough to do me the favor of buying any shirt from the store for me.  I sprung my plan into action and the security guard very nicely told me that since it was a little after 10 am, most of the cool people had already come in and anyone coming in now would most likely be an executive who may or may not have security on autodial.  I stood by the gate peeking into the next few cars that came up and I felt like an infamous NYC street window washer waiting to pounce on someone who didn't want to be bothered.  So I quickly gave up and convinced myself that the trip was still worth it since I'd get better pictures of all the cool stuff in the daylight.

I was a little disappointed as I walked around the campus since I was expecting more cool, easter eggs around the building but the seagulls seemed to be it.  I got a little past half way around the campus when I passed two guys smoking.  After about 10 steps past them something clicked.  People don't stand and smoke outside of buildings unless they work there.  I stopped on a dime and pulled a 180.  I started the conversation by saying, "Hey guys can I ask you a weird question?" They said, "sure."  "If I give you money will go into the company store and buy me a shirt?"  They started asking me where I was from and why I was in the Bay area.  It turned out that one of the guys had taught right by where I live and lived not too far from where I grew up and went to high school.  They very politely said that they'd do it but they'd like to finish their cigarettes.  I said absolutely, please take your time and handed them a $20 and a business card, hoping that the card would humanize me a bit more, and continued to walk the rest of the campus.

After an excruciating 10 minutes of walking and waiting I doubled back to the smoking spot feeling a little disappointed by the lack of more easter eggs.  My heart sank as I saw the two guys who looked like they hadn't budged an inch since I left.  Not wanting to feel like I was hurrying them along since they were doing me a massive favor I slowed down my pace until I made out something in one of the guy's hands.  I picked up the pace and was greeted with the sentence, "Oh hey man, bad news, the company store doesn't open until 11."  It was about 10:30.  "But you can have my shirt that they gave everyone who worked on the sets for Brave, there are only 12 or 13 in the world."  There are a handful of times at best that I've been speechless in my life.  "Oh and here's your money too."  I ineffectively tried to convince them to keep the $20 and to use it for lunch but they insisted.   "it took Bravery (the capital B is an editor's choice) for you to go up to strangers and ask for something." That day even further cemented my unbridled love of Pixar.

Here are some pictures, http://i.imgur.com/36UsA63

The Pyramid/Opening

I’ve played in bands since I was 14 or 15 and I don’t think any of us had any delusions of grander in the sense that we really believed that we’d be huge rock stars.  That being said, I was definitely of the mindset of what I’d imagine a baseball prospect goes through.  There are steps you have to take to advance to the next stage or level. 

On labor day of 1995, we had recorded a demo tape in a professional studio, (remember tapes?) of something like 7 songs in 8 hours and excited played it for all of our friends and family.  For some sense of perspective, in punk rock a session of 7 songs should take somewhere between three and four times as long.  Figure a few hours to get sounds, about 8 hours to get basic tracks done, a few hours for overdubbing mistakes and extra guitars, between 4 and 8 hours for vocals, a few more hours for axillary percussion and keyboards and about an hour and a half to mix each song.  Now that’s a middle of the road estimate.  Obviously 7 songs can be done in 8 hours and 7 songs can take an entire month if you have the time and money.  The point being here is that doing 7 songs in 8 hours when you are 15 and have been a band for about a year or so means the recording is going to straight up suck.  My test for how good a recording is how long does it take to notice things that bother you about it.  A few months is a sign of a pretty good recording.  A month isn’t bad.  In the case of these songs it was the drive home. 

There was a bbq brewing when I got home and I immediately popped the tape in for everyone to hear.  One of my uncle’s friends who was there, unbeknownst to me had just started a music management company with a partner and she told me that we have potential and that she’d manage us.  Looking back it’s all pretty ridiculous but at the time when most of our ideas about how the music industry works came from tv and movies, it seemed par for the course.  Obviously after you record for the first time you get a management deal.  We knew we weren’t great but being insulated from other bands and having incredibly supportive friends, we thought we were pretty good. 

After a couple of meetings with our new managers and some orders of diner French Fries, they were eager to book us at some places outside of Queens.  The first and come to think of it, only show they got us was at a pretty divey bar in the Lower East Side called the Pyramid.  The beauty of booking us at the Pyramid was that it was 18+ for entry and it was a weeknight so none of our “fans” (read friends) could come.  The highlight at the time for us, and the impetus for me writing this, was that we weren’t opening the show.  We were playing second out of four or five bands.  Now this might seem like a small or insignificant event but in entertainment there’s a hierarchy.  The later you are on, the bigger you are.  Playing second was yet another step towards our goal of getting bigger and more popular as a band.  I love looking back on it and seeing how skewed the little things in our lives are when you are removed from them on a day-to-day basis.  The band that opened for us, Bottom, was a group of thirty something year old guys who were legitimately good. They could play circles around us and seemed like they just enjoyed playing music.  I think back to what those guys thought of us while they stood there with some of our parents, our manager and the sound guy watching us play what my cloudy memory says was a good set.  Were they thinking, what is this shit and why did we open for these teenagers?  Or were they thinking, good for these kids getting into music and feeling elated for playing in Manhattan and not opening?

I got more involved in music and went to more and more shows but I never saw Bottom’s name again.  Similarly after months of phone calls and messages, we got back in touch with our manager who famously said, “Oh, we don’t do those things anymore.”