Standing Strong on Pier 17
Fried food is the last thing I need to eat, but I needed to eat at a seafood restaurant at the South Street Seaport just to give them my business.
As I approached the Pier 17 mall, I found it surrounded by barricades with the only entrance guarded by a security guard turning people away. He admits that the restaurant is open, but calls it a “café” when it clearly is not.
“I understand there’s one restaurant still open inside,” I said to the guard, who was discouraging someone from entering.
“Well it’s not a restaurant, it’s a café. If you want to check it out it’s on the third floor.”
The restaurant that remains open among dozens of empty storefronts is called ‘Simply Seafood’ and it’s clearly a restaurant like any other food court restaurant in any food court, only this one is the only business left in a large three-level mall at the South Street Seaport.
The restaurant is the lone holdout in a large mall that a developer is trying to tear down. They have a lease and expect it to be honored. The landlord has used illegal and very underhanded tactics to try to remove them, such as locking the doors to the mall and reporting that the restaurant had closed, and is still using dirty tricks today. With shady developers normally getting away with their violations of private property rights in the name of economic development and the city normally either turning a blind eye or helping out in with corrupt deals, the urge to score one for the little guy is immense and well worth the price of fried shrimp.
Howard Hughes Corp. owns the property and wants to build another, fancier mall there. I would hope that if Howard Hughes were alive today he’d throw a jar of his collected urine at the people running this namesake corporation. Howard Hughes didn’t need to harass small business owners; he flew airplanes and banged Katherine Hepburn.
Security guards pace the otherwise empty mall eyeing customers suspiciously. There are bathrooms open on the second floor, but otherwise the mall is a ghost town of abandoned stores, makeshift barricades, ‘No Trespassing’ signs and caution tape.
Despite the best efforts of the rent-a-cops, people continued to come for seafood. The restaurant’s struggle with the landlord generated publicity that has brought some people; it’s why I was there. The allure of touring a mostly-abandoned place brings more, and hopefully the chance to stick it to a real estate Goliath will bring more. New Yorkers can’t help but respect and admire the people who fight for their rights even against overwhelming force.
New York landlords are notorious for their unscrupulous behavior. The price of real estate is so high and both the expenses and potential profits so huge, a hold-out tenant can cost an owner lots of money. In the case of a prime commercial real estate in New York’s tourist-heavy downtown, developers stand to lose millions of dollars if they have to maintain a mostly abandoned building for the next seven years.
A small group of tourists asked the men working why they were the only business still open at the mall.
“We’ve got a lease,” said one of the men. “We’ve have a lease until 2020.”
I had a lunch of friend shrimp and fries. What made it such a delicious meal was helping a determined small business stick to their guns.
As I left the mall, the security guard at the entrance was turning away another group of potential customers, wrongly calling the restaurant a café. But not everyone was turned away, many continued through and moved on to give the restaurant their business, and I hope Simply Seafood is there for a very long time.
Atheist Church: A Most Unholy Dumb Idea
I don’t remember the exact time I converted to atheism, but the September 11 attacks were the nail in the coffin of religious faith for me. The deadliest faith-based initiative in New York’s history, the attacks illustrated religious fundamentalism and proved that human decency and religious faith were two very separate and unequal things.
For years I had tread that line in the middle of the road as an agnostic, but that’s long over. I don’t believe there is a God or any gods. Of course I could be convinced if presented with evidence of the Devine, but so far none has been forthcoming. It’s not something I like to argue about or point out in conversation; most of my family and friends follow some sort of religion or another. But I left religion behind and never looked back. I gave up church for Lent years ago and my life has been improved.
So it’s with a church scold’s dismay that I have learned that the “atheist church” that was started in London as a joke has become a real mega church with branches in several cities including New York.
These gatherings, known as The Sunday Assembly, feature some interesting speakers at times, at least according to their web site, but otherwise seem to promise all the obnoxious kumbaya of hippie-poisoned religion with the self-congratulating zeal of evangelical nonbelievers.
The atheist church is an illustration of the spineless nature of our times. People want the comforts of religious faith while being able to look down their nose at people with religious faith. They want to revel in the label of atheist while cocooned in a congregation of followers.
Atheists don’t go to church and that’s one of its greatest benefits. We don’t have to sing hymns or put money into collection plates. Atheism is turning away from the comfort of religious faith because intellectual honesty and cold hard facts make it impossible to accept.
Be above the constant navel-gazing identity affirmation that gums up so much of the current discourse. Not believing in God is a fine thing, but replacing faith in a mythical creator with an obnoxious need to belong just makes you another weak drone.
These atheist groups are either a smug mocking of people who are religious or a sad admission that people can’t live without religion. When atheists flock to church, or some sad excuse for a church, they’re trying to have it both ways.
The whole point of being an atheist is that you can’t be a follower like that. And this whole free-form meeting to read and discuss whatever you want, that’s been done already. The Society of Friends (a Christian denomination) beat you to this racket by almost 400 years, so congratulations: you’re Quakers.
This is the same garbage attitude that sends people to new age religions. People want the transcendence of spirituality but don’t have the stuffing to make up their minds about the tenets of a religious faith.
So please, if you’re an atheist, be an atheist. Atheists don’t go to church.
Cyclist Jerks from Hell
One fine morning as I was about to cross a street in lower Manhattan and go to work, I had barely stepped off the curb when I heard the thin chimes of a bicycle bell. I looked to see a cyclist moving towards me.
“Get out of the bike lane,” sneered the cyclist as he pedaled past me.
Not only were we not in a bike lane, he was going the wrong way down a one-way street. I stood there flabbergasted as he rolled by. A few seconds later, I heard him ring the tinny bell once again from farther up the street.
That incident pretty much encapsulates much of the New York bicycle situation. A very large segment of the cycling population not only regularly violate all laws of traffic and common sense, they have an entitled attitude about it. They want all the rights of an automobile owner and none of the responsibilities of sharing the road.
Let me iterate that I am not against cycling or cyclists. I have many friends who enjoy riding bicycles and if I didn’t live 16 miles away from work, I’d gladly consider riding a bicycle to and from work. It’s good exercise, better for the environment and all that jazz. When I was a youth I rode a bicycle constantly and terrorized adults and other children with it whenever I could. I’m all in favor of bike lanes, bicycle parking and even the bike sharing programs that are finally starting to take shape in the Big Apple.
A good rule of thumb for cyclists is: If I can’t do it with a car, don’t you try it with a bicycle. That does not apply to keeping the bike in your apartment and walking it on sidewalks etc. If I drove my truck on a sidewalk, ran a red light and then drove the wrong way down a one way street, I’d expect to be arrested for reckless driving. Just because you can do less damage with a bicycle doesn’t excuse you from riding it recklessly, and the Big Apple is sick with reckless cyclists.
Walk the streets of New York and without fail you will see cyclists do one or more of the following routinely: running red lights; riding the wrong way down one-way streets; riding on sidewalks; passing traffic on the right, even passing cars making turns. It’s without fail. If a motorist is making a right turn and I try to pass them on the right, I’d be the biggest jerk in the world, yet a cyclist will yell and pound on a vehicle to protest their imagined “right” to be a reckless idiot. I’ve seen it happen.
They operate on the theory that they are an endlessly persecuted minority and thrive on being the victims of ignorant motorists, homicidal drivers and overzealous police.
In many cases cyclists are treated unfairly. Every cyclist I know has a litany of horror stories that involve being struck by car, hassled by the police or confounded by ignorant pedestrians. People that I know have been the victims of aggressive motorists who think they own the road, and I’ve had to break myself of the habit of prematurely stepping into the street before I have the right of way.
But bicycle culture has given us another urban horror that the city doesn’t need, that of a cyclist every bit as entitled and boorish as the most reckless motorist or thuggish pedestrian.
Witnessed one night on Stanton Street on New York’s Lower East Side: A van was driving the wrong way down this one way street. Next to the van was a man on a bicycle, yelling at the driver of the van for driving the wrong way while also driving the wrong way.
“You’re both going the wrong way,” I said to the man.
“I can do that faggot!” he called to me as he bravely sped away on his bike. Actually he can’t; cyclists have to obey the same rules of the road as cars. And unless he’s just won the Tour de France, a grown man in bicycle shorts has no business calling anyone a faggot. But more to the point, riding the wrong way down a one-way street is especially odious in New York, where pedestrians are accustomed to looking only one way before crossing a street because so many streets are one way. Yet many cyclists do this all the time and think nothing of it.
Many of the cyclists are good people trying to escape the dual hells of public transit and city driving. I can’t blame them for wanting the freedom to move in a city that is so often confining. But having a smaller carbon footprint doesn’t absolve you from the rules of the road or the precepts of human decency.
Kosher Pedophilia, NYC Approved
New York mayoral candidates agree: it’s OK to suck a baby’s penis.
There’s a little-known and thankfully infrequent practice called metzitzah b’peh where a mohel (rabbi who performs circumcisions) briefly sucks the wound of a freshly-circumcised baby’s penis. The stated purpose is to clean the wound of blood.
In addition to the fact that parents voluntarily are letting someone suck off their newborn infant, a rabbi managed to kill two babies by infecting them with herpes in this manner. After this happened, some city officials wanted to ban the practice. It couldn’t be too tough to outlaw performing oral sex on an infant, right? One would think that would already be covered by laws against sex with children and such. But some Jewish groups complained and instead of giving these baby-blowing rabbis a one-way ticket to the big house, the city’s board of health requires that parents of the infant receive notice of potential health hazards and give written permission.
The matter has recently come up as a question to mayoral candidates, with only City Council speaker Christine Quinn defending the Board of Health rule, though with some pandering blather about a “lack of engagement” with people who defend this practice.
So there’s a religious ritual that allows a member of the clergy to perform oral sex on a newborn infant and the political class is debating whether or not to force parents to fill out a permission slip?
In a sane society, pedophiles are put in prison. Just because you have a Hebrew word for a sick ritual doesn’t make it acceptable. I’m not sure what the Latin translation is for “infant blowjob,” (“oralis coitum cum infante?”) but if the Vatican published one it wouldn’t make their legions of pedophile priests any less perverse.
And keep in mind, this is only done by a very small minority of a very small minority. Most Jews are not members of the black hat squad, and this is very rare even for them. It is a miniscule population of religious fanatics that do this, what are the electoral benefits of turning a blind eye to a pedophile ritual that has actually killed babies through disease? Apparently the candidates for mayor think that the well-organized Hasidim can deliver enough votes to make it worth their while to play ball.
Religious freedom is one of the founding principles of the U.S., but that’s no cover to commit horrible crimes. The people who brought down the twin towers were earnestly following their heartfelt religious edicts. Could I sacrifice a chicken at my desk at work if I started to practice Santeria? I’m sure if researched the pagan rituals of the ancient Celts, I could find a religious excuse to paint myself blue and fornicate with 24-year-old nubiles. It would be a beautiful celebration of my Irish heritage, I’m sure, but that wouldn’t get me very far in divorce court.
New York is home to every minority you can dream of, and you can covert to whatever religion you want to. Let’s at least draw the line at sucking babies’ penises.
The Cold Harsh Light of City Lights
I have not visited San Francisco without visiting City Lights Books; I’d feel guilty not visiting if I’m there. It’s a great rite of passage for any lover of the written word.
So it was with usual enthusiasm that I entered again on my most recent trip to California and the great city of sourdough.
City Lights is well known for its fiction and poetry. It is of historic note as a center of the Beat writers and it is owned by the still-living beat writer and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (his book of poems A Coney Island of the Mind is one of the best ever by the beat generation).
Looking at the political books near the register, there was no attempt at balance. There was the latest from an aging academic and Soviet apologist, a diatribe from a racism hustler gloating over the demographic changes in the U.S., and the usual suspects. I bear no grudge against my many leftist friends and there are many left-wing causes I agree with, but a good bookstore will try to provide some balance, and you couldn’t balance this bookshelf if you put Mein Kampf on it. A bookstore has a right to stock whatever it wants on its shelves and I’m sure most of City Light’s customers gladly drink what passes for the “progressive” Kool-Aid today. But would it hurt to stock some opposing viewpoints? Politically speaking, our literary world has become an echo chamber of self-hating marshmallows.
The upstairs room is dedicated to poetry and to the Beat writers. A chair by one of the bookshelves had a sign on it that read ‘Sit Down and Read a Book.’ The larger rocking chair next to it had ‘Poet’s Chair’ painted on it. I decided to sit there, since I do indeed write poetry. I picked up a book of poetry from a nearby table that looked interesting. It was a large but not thick book that had an interesting cover with what looked like a bloody doll or puppet on it. I don’t remember the poet’s name. I sat down and read some poetry and realized the stuff I write is better. I turned the book over and read the brief blurb about the author: someone with a predictable pedigree of the literary establishment and not the poetry power to match it.
But a good literary scene happens when people go off on their own and take inspiration from the real world around them. Flocking to a bookstore because Allen Ginsberg once took a shit there doesn’t promote good writing.
I was no longer in the magical place of wanderlust young poets. I was in a retail store that helped suck the life out of literature by cashing in on long-dead celebrities and following the same institutional claptrap that would have made Jack Kerouac puke in his backpack.
There is a fine line between inspiration and commoditized hero worship. My latest trip to City Lights made me believe the venerated bookstore had crossed the line. But then again, it’s a business. It knows we’ll keep buying books there. I’m guilty as charged. I bought a large R. Crumb coffee table book and Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil.
City Lights Books inspired me once again, but differently than in years past. I left with a determination that the current guardians of our culture’s literary estate need to have their throats cut. Let the call go out in America today for a ninja army of a new vanguard who will make poetry and literature real to people again, and not the province of the sad sacks of coffee shops and admissions offices. Great writers don’t eat tofu. Great writers eat sausage, spinach and pussy.
American once found its writers among its strongmen, housewives, sailors and hardscrabble journalists. It will once again.
Matthew Sheahan 
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