Keeping your ear to the ground and getting it cut off

I have been pretty busy lately as a lot of stuff is happening. We had been indecisive as to whether or not we were going to stay in New York. Or move to a new space. I managed to negotiate a pretty decent deal for my current space so it looks like we are staying put for the next five years.

We had a meeting at the store to sign the lease and pay the bribes we needed to keep the space. Everything went swimmingly as we paid the price and all was well. I haven't had a chance to chat with them for over a year  and we had a chance to catch up.

These guys are old line Mafia. The real mafia not the bullshit Mafia. I was asking them about Casa Rosa the restaurant on the corner.

You might remember that I had a beef with the owner and have not been going there for the past three years. Well he passed away this past September while I was on the cruise and I got sick so I didn't have a chance to get to talk to the family or anything. It seems their lease was up and they got tossed at the end of January. Now I heard that this Jewish lady had bought the building for about 3 mill. She was a restaurateur and she planned to bring one of her joints to that spot. Well for some reason she decided that she wasn't going to do that. I wonder why?

My landlord told me that Markey who owns the fancy pizzeria on Summit St that Beyoncé loves was interested in the space (pictured serving his kid and her school friends in the pizzeria). But he didn't want to pay the $14,000 a month that the lady was asking. Now Markey was the guy who got stabbed at Joes Superette a couple of years ago supposedly over a woman by Bennie who is connected with the guys at the Bagel store who are a Genovese crew. It seems that they are having an ongoing beef. Markey is with the Colombos and has one of them with a no show job there. Anyway now Bennie is taking to robbing the pizzeria when Markey or the Colombo guy is not there. He is just walking in with a piece and taking everything out of the register. Now it hasn't been in the news because nobody is reporting anything. Bennie is locked about something else right now so they are all laying low. They are supposedly going to have a sit down soon or they are going to take care of it themselves one way or another. In any event I am not going to buy any bagels or pizza anytime soon. Not that it matters. I can't eat that shit anyway anymore so who gives shit. It is just good to know what is going on so I am not in the wrong place at the wrong time so to speak.

The downside is that the lady who bought Casa Rosa is no looking to sell it as she was "encouraged" not to put her restaurant in that space. That means the block will be dead going into the spring. If Markey can pull it off and transfer his restaurant that will help me a lot. The pretentious cunts who go there are the perfect customers for my new lingerie store. So lets hope they sort that out soon.

Now I will have to concentrate on renovations to the back store. I am going to be on busy motherfucker.

Hari Krishna baby......

In 1969 a lot things changed. The surety and the rock hard unity that was the basis of the church and neighborhood was starting to shatter. We didn't know it at the time but the process was begining where the kids riding bikes with baseball cards in the spokes were to be replaced by people with tattoos sipping $2 cups of coffee while walking a frou frou fucking dog on a leash would take over the place where Nunzio and Enzo and Guiesseppi used to hang out on the corner and sing Dion songs.

There was a convent on the corner of Kane and Henry Street that housed an order of cloistered sisters. The Nursing Sisters of the Poor. They worked in hospitals and hospices but had little contact otherwise with the outside world. Well quite of few of the sisters had decided to leave the convent and go out in the world of the wild and wooly 1960's. There weren't enough of them to make it worthwhile to maintain this big structure so the church put it up for sale. And it sold pretty quickly. To the Hari Krishna's.

Now this was long before we knew anything about cults or eastern religions or new age or any of that stuff. We just saw these people in orange robes banging tamborines. They would come and go from the house and didn't have much contact with the neighborhood. Of course there was a reason for that.

One day in one of the first weeks after the cult  moved in they had a couple of the Krishnas start to talk to some of the kids who hung out at PS 29's School yard which was across  the street from the Krishna's new temple. One of them went and told his father who was a connected guy. Now he wasn't connected to Con Edison if you know what I mean. So the next day this guy and couple of his friends from the Wimpy Boys Social club knocked on the door and asked to talk to the head freak. When they came downstairs Big Louie grabbed him by the neck and held him up against the wall. They politely informed him that tif any of the bald headed freaks talked to the neighborhood kids they would burn down the temple and everyone in it.

So the Hari guys sort of kept to themselves after that.

It was what you called neighborhood community policing as it were.

I miss those days.

I fit in then.

I don't fit in so much anymore.

Wait I have to go to the front of the store. Somebody wants to bring a frou frou fucking dog into the store.

Mr. Eddie kuài jì se

My first boss in accounting was my Dad's old boss. My Dad worked as an auditor for Irving Trust but to make extra money he used to do tax returns for people in the neighborhood. There were no computers in the 1960's and '70's and the forms were a lot simpler. You could go to the bank and get all the forms and instructions you needed for free. Then you would do the returns by hand. One copy for the government and one for you to keep. There was no such thing as a copy machine. You might do it with carbon paper but if you made a mistake you had to start over. So you just re wrote it. It was safer.

Then one year about 1970 my Dad got an after work job with an Public Accountant in the City. He would go a couple of nights a week and on Saturday to do tax returns. The way they worked it was one guy would do the return and the other guy would check it for addition and accuracy. Then there was a break through. They got a copy machine!

It was a "wet paper" copier. You would do the returns on stencil paper which was transparent. Then you would line it up with some treated paper and run it through a solution like a photograph. It would be exposed to light and come out soggy and dripping. You would lay the pages out to dry and then collate them and staple them together to send to the government. The machine was called a Bruning Copyflex. A xerox machine was something that you found in Governor Rockefeller's office not in an accountants joint.

I was about 12 years old and my Dad brought me to work with him. I would run the stuff through the machine and collate it and stuff and make coffee and sharpen pencils. My Mom would make these great big sandwiches that everyone would eat. Sausage and peppers. Meatballs. Chicken cutlets. Eddie was a Reform Jew who ate everything. He loved ham and sausages. And he loved my Mom's cooking. He was a very personable guy and had a great way about him. I was just a punk kid but I did notice that he had a lot of women as his clients. They all hugged him and kissed him and were overly affectionate with him. What I didn't get then is that he was banging them. Maybe not all of them. But a goodly amount of them. It was pretty funny. They would show up decked to the nines in fur coats and diamonds and tons of make up. Who wears a fur coat to get their taxes done?

One of them in paticular fascinated me. She was a knockout. Looked very much like Christina Hendricks except that she was a brunette. Everyone salivated when she came in with her fur coat. Eddie would close the door and get her information. He had to be pretty creative. You see she didn't have any reciepts or records. Just bank deposit slips. It wasn't till years later that I figured it out. She was a hooker. A high class hooker.

Just like Elaine Mardell in the Scudder stories. A sexy Jewish girl who made her way in the world depending on the kindness of strangers.

It's funny how art imitates real life.

I wish I could back and talk to Eddie and his client. I bet there are some great stories there.

Remembrance of things Pabst

So we went to Fraunces Tavern to celebrate our anniversary last week and it was a major disappointment. It used to be a fine dining establishment with just about the best steak you were ever gonna taste. To this day people who were there at our wedding love to talk about how good the steak was.

Now an Irish Brewery bought out the trust of the Sons of the Revolution who used to run the restaurant. They weren't making it because the Wall St guys weren't spending like they used to in the boom years. I have no right to complain because we only went there once a year and we really didn't support them the way we should. It is just that it is a pain in the ass to go there and it was a big ticket when you add in the cost and the car service and the whole dealio. So we really can't complain too much.

The Irish Brewery turned it into a beer hall. Long family style tables and four bars are all over the place. They basically copied "Ulysses" which is another very successful upscale Irish pub around the corner on Stone Street. They must have the formula down pat because it was packed on a Wednesday night.

We had gone to the Tavern for two reasons. One was to celebrate our anniversary and the other to see if we wanted to have the wife's birthday party there with the new ownership. I spoke to the general manager and we scoped out all of the rooms and saw the changes they had made. Then we sat down to eat at the Talmadge Room which is where we had the DJ and dancing when we got married. It is a wood paneled room with lots of historic paintings on the wall and is the first room off of the front door. We went through the menu and of course it was mainly pub food. Burgers. Bangers and Mash. Shepard's Pie. That kind of stuff. We ordered several dishes including both of the most expensive steaks on the menu. Let's just say it was underwhelming. Not very good. Not up to our standards. The pub stuff would be fine. But not for the party.

The upside is that these guys know their hospitality. They comped the bottle of wine and the drink we had later at the bar. Typically Irish. Great at the craic and the hospitality but with crappy food. So it was a real mixed bag. I mean I have been at plenty of joints with much better food but they never comped me a fuckin bowl of peanuts. So you pays your money and you takes your choice. Most of the people who are coming to the party are not big drinkers so that is not a big concern. They will be more interested in eating. So I am waiting to see what alternatives they will come up with for passed Hors d'oeuvre and stuff before we decide.

Still Fraunces Tavern is good old style Irish pub now and that is personally one of my favorite places to be. So if you are downtown give it a try. You will like it for what it is.

It is just not what it was.

The only thing worse than April 14th is April 15th...I mean April 18th...whatever!

Sorry I have not been posting as I have only had time to drop in comments in between running returns. I hope this is my last tax season so I am finishing off what I can so I don't leave the clients who I have worked for the last thirty years in the lurch.

When you drop a client it always ends badly. It is like a rejection, almost like a break up. I am using the "It's not you..it's me" approach but it is not really working out all that well.

I can't wait for it to be over.

Lent sucks man.

To top it all off I had a rotten day today. I went to a client in the city but when I got there nobody was in the office. So I had to wait outside for an hour wondering if somebody would come in.

Now in the old days I would just adjurn to the bar for a burger and a couple of beers. But now I am living on the straight and narrow and can't do that kind of stuff anymore. Plus it's a Friday in Lent and there is no meat.

I could really go for a burger right now.