Wednesday, April 10, 2002
Lucky American thinks Springtime thoughts, away from the horrors
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
You know that Spring is here when you start finding copies of the Hampton's "Dan's Papers" in East Midtown stores. This chatty fat weekly, mostly written by Dan Rattiner himself, has 22 pages (pipe that, Corcoran and NY Times) of real estate for rent or sale ads. If you are so minded, you can rent an apartment this side of Montauk Point for upwards of $18,000 for the season, a nothing room for $6K and a house for $30K minimum, ranging to about 115K if you want a modest pool, tennis court and a Jacuzzi and stuff. An acre of land costs around $300K ($500k with water frontage) if you are not too particular.
I read these figures with wonderment, since in South Florida you can buy similar properties, not too shabby, for the price of a Hampton's rental. A little problem, if you are looking at a $35K Fla two-bedroom condo - it will be in a community founded 25 years ago by New Yorkers, and your pleasant next-door neighbors that you made friends with may not be with you that much longer. In fact, the price is so low because of too many estate sales. An enterprising friend who moved into such a condo colony in West Palm has actively searched around and located same age neighbors, to bond with, to go walking together and to learn the art of golf. He has founded his own neighborhood. Establishing a friendship with an ancient can lead to a heartbreak.
More signs of Spring are the early flowering trees in our streets and parks. Now may be a good time to visit our four parks, the treasures of the T&V country. The small white-flowered tree you see blooming in East Side streets, the blossoms a little greenish in color, is a Callery pear. NYC is rich, we have nearly 500,000 street trees, one-tenth of them in Manhattan, and being replenished. The Parks people started a Greenstreets Project in 1996, to plant on barren traffic islands, concrete triangles and such, with 1,765 in place to date. Do not expect to see new Norway maples and London lindens, the trees that constitute some 40 percent of the current inventory. The Norway is the prey of the notorious Asian longhorn beetle, a creature that arrived as part of packing materials for import goods, and has invaded American trees here and in Chicago. Victims must be destroyed. The linden is also prone to get sickly. Fortunately. there are still plenty of ginkgo (pie-slice leaves) and honey locust ( orderly pinnate leaves, like feathers). Cherries and magnolias are in flower too, and the white scholar or Japanese pagoda tree will bloom soon. And 1.5 million new daffodils are opening up, as we speak. I should write a song. [Ed.: Actually, someone, a W. Wordsworth, did write one, about ten thousand of them. He reported seeing them while wandering lonely as a cloud.]
Also, a Spring report from Collegiate School, my late life love affair, after Friends Seminary. We went to the annual parent's get-together, met the new principal Kerry Brennan and said hello to Elaine Genkins the math wizard, the Rev. Tod Houghtlin, retired admissions officer Jim Jacobs and his successor Joanne Heyman (had a long chat with husband Adam), Upper School head John Beall, and the legendary Bruce Breimer, the college placement officer who in 33 years has sent literally a thousand boys to Ivy League schools, or equivalent (my estimate). That is out of an annual graduating class of 46 or so. He can do it because the school is good, the kids are good, his judgment is good and the colleges trust him. The only thing I don't quite trust is the school's claim of a founding date of 1628. It is a tad early. But history, as I find it recorded on cocktail napkins, can be kind of wishful. Floreat, and many more years to the oldest US school!
Lucked out to surf into "Singin' in the Rain," the 1952 musical, on TV, just as Donald O'Connor started his "Make 'em Laugh" extravaganza number, hoofing, rolling on the floor, running up the side of a wall, tossing a somersault, and then doing it all over again, without the aid of special effects. Then, Gene Kelly, badly fallen in love with 19-year old Debbie Reynolds, kicking rain puddles while screaming out his adoration for her until calmed down by the glance of a a passing-by cop. Such innocence, they don't come like that any more, in the age of psychodrama, stupid-drama and horror-drama. And sweet Debbie and the sultry-nice Cyd Charisse, with legs that never stop, charming the audiences in their own individual ways, nearly beyond the endurable.
Producer Arthur Freed thought he'd just slap together a thing of the songs he and his Afro-Hispanic composer associate Nacio Herb Brown had written over some 20 years, and they created a miracle (some tunes, such as "Moses Supposes," the tongue-twister, were new).. Sophisticated Pauline Kael came out of her tower to name it "just about the best Hollywood musical ever." It was the climax of several careers, including Jean Hagen's (d.1977 at 54 ), who played, with gusto, the bad guy, a squeaky-voiced silent movie seductress who could not make the transition to sound ("You'd think I was stupid or something"). And the cutting-edge technology went to the limit when the studio hired an airplane engine to blow Cyd's 50-foot scarf skyward in the closing number. Coincidentally, this Spring MGM is issuing a 50th anniversary enhanced CD and DVD edition of "Singin'," their flagship treasure.
.
Best street music in NYC. Walking along Broad Street, past the New York Stock Exchange after closing hours, you can hear a black saxophone man play a Desmond-style "Take Five" and "These Things Remind Me of You," the sounds reverberating in the quiet promenade. (There is another player on Mount Carmel, Haifa, near the Nof Hotel, with a similar repertory - but that memory dates back to better days, two years ago.}.
Wally thanks Sibyl the charming Forest Ranger, and the Parks web page. An e-mail from Dr Paranoia: "Good thing you got away from thinking about the horrors. Now, eat some comfort food, mash potatoes and pasta, and stay away from hamburgers. Yech, details of potential dangers to follow. " Spare us.
You know that Spring is here when you start finding copies of the Hampton's "Dan's Papers" in East Midtown stores. This chatty fat weekly, mostly written by Dan Rattiner himself, has 22 pages (pipe that, Corcoran and NY Times) of real estate for rent or sale ads. If you are so minded, you can rent an apartment this side of Montauk Point for upwards of $18,000 for the season, a nothing room for $6K and a house for $30K minimum, ranging to about 115K if you want a modest pool, tennis court and a Jacuzzi and stuff. An acre of land costs around $300K ($500k with water frontage) if you are not too particular.
I read these figures with wonderment, since in South Florida you can buy similar properties, not too shabby, for the price of a Hampton's rental. A little problem, if you are looking at a $35K Fla two-bedroom condo - it will be in a community founded 25 years ago by New Yorkers, and your pleasant next-door neighbors that you made friends with may not be with you that much longer. In fact, the price is so low because of too many estate sales. An enterprising friend who moved into such a condo colony in West Palm has actively searched around and located same age neighbors, to bond with, to go walking together and to learn the art of golf. He has founded his own neighborhood. Establishing a friendship with an ancient can lead to a heartbreak.
More signs of Spring are the early flowering trees in our streets and parks. Now may be a good time to visit our four parks, the treasures of the T&V country. The small white-flowered tree you see blooming in East Side streets, the blossoms a little greenish in color, is a Callery pear. NYC is rich, we have nearly 500,000 street trees, one-tenth of them in Manhattan, and being replenished. The Parks people started a Greenstreets Project in 1996, to plant on barren traffic islands, concrete triangles and such, with 1,765 in place to date. Do not expect to see new Norway maples and London lindens, the trees that constitute some 40 percent of the current inventory. The Norway is the prey of the notorious Asian longhorn beetle, a creature that arrived as part of packing materials for import goods, and has invaded American trees here and in Chicago. Victims must be destroyed. The linden is also prone to get sickly. Fortunately. there are still plenty of ginkgo (pie-slice leaves) and honey locust ( orderly pinnate leaves, like feathers). Cherries and magnolias are in flower too, and the white scholar or Japanese pagoda tree will bloom soon. And 1.5 million new daffodils are opening up, as we speak. I should write a song. [Ed.: Actually, someone, a W. Wordsworth, did write one, about ten thousand of them. He reported seeing them while wandering lonely as a cloud.]
Also, a Spring report from Collegiate School, my late life love affair, after Friends Seminary. We went to the annual parent's get-together, met the new principal Kerry Brennan and said hello to Elaine Genkins the math wizard, the Rev. Tod Houghtlin, retired admissions officer Jim Jacobs and his successor Joanne Heyman (had a long chat with husband Adam), Upper School head John Beall, and the legendary Bruce Breimer, the college placement officer who in 33 years has sent literally a thousand boys to Ivy League schools, or equivalent (my estimate). That is out of an annual graduating class of 46 or so. He can do it because the school is good, the kids are good, his judgment is good and the colleges trust him. The only thing I don't quite trust is the school's claim of a founding date of 1628. It is a tad early. But history, as I find it recorded on cocktail napkins, can be kind of wishful. Floreat, and many more years to the oldest US school!
Lucked out to surf into "Singin' in the Rain," the 1952 musical, on TV, just as Donald O'Connor started his "Make 'em Laugh" extravaganza number, hoofing, rolling on the floor, running up the side of a wall, tossing a somersault, and then doing it all over again, without the aid of special effects. Then, Gene Kelly, badly fallen in love with 19-year old Debbie Reynolds, kicking rain puddles while screaming out his adoration for her until calmed down by the glance of a a passing-by cop. Such innocence, they don't come like that any more, in the age of psychodrama, stupid-drama and horror-drama. And sweet Debbie and the sultry-nice Cyd Charisse, with legs that never stop, charming the audiences in their own individual ways, nearly beyond the endurable.
Producer Arthur Freed thought he'd just slap together a thing of the songs he and his Afro-Hispanic composer associate Nacio Herb Brown had written over some 20 years, and they created a miracle (some tunes, such as "Moses Supposes," the tongue-twister, were new).. Sophisticated Pauline Kael came out of her tower to name it "just about the best Hollywood musical ever." It was the climax of several careers, including Jean Hagen's (d.1977 at 54 ), who played, with gusto, the bad guy, a squeaky-voiced silent movie seductress who could not make the transition to sound ("You'd think I was stupid or something"). And the cutting-edge technology went to the limit when the studio hired an airplane engine to blow Cyd's 50-foot scarf skyward in the closing number. Coincidentally, this Spring MGM is issuing a 50th anniversary enhanced CD and DVD edition of "Singin'," their flagship treasure.
.
Best street music in NYC. Walking along Broad Street, past the New York Stock Exchange after closing hours, you can hear a black saxophone man play a Desmond-style "Take Five" and "These Things Remind Me of You," the sounds reverberating in the quiet promenade. (There is another player on Mount Carmel, Haifa, near the Nof Hotel, with a similar repertory - but that memory dates back to better days, two years ago.}.
Wally thanks Sibyl the charming Forest Ranger, and the Parks web page. An e-mail from Dr Paranoia: "Good thing you got away from thinking about the horrors. Now, eat some comfort food, mash potatoes and pasta, and stay away from hamburgers. Yech, details of potential dangers to follow. " Spare us.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 4:20 PM 
