Street Corner Theater™ 4

Street Corner Theater™:
High Drama in Low Places

I didn’t write the script, I only recorded the events.
No plot, just people.


It was the day after Christmas. No sugar plum fairies, no quite mice - though it being a big city, if you paid attention to open dumpsters you might find noisome rats - and this year, no snow! For that I was grateful.

The train was busy, the streets of midtown full of gawkers and hawkers, philistines and stalkers. Madison south of E. 34th was okay, Union Square had a small greenmarket going on, but the holiday shopping stands were shuttered and fenced off - is there anything more desolate in the middle of the city than an abandoned holiday mall? Well, yeah, but this rates high on the desolation list. But no people, so no photos.

There was this kid walking his dog and this lady just couldn't believe how cute (she thought) the dog was, and she insisted on taking it's picture. This dog had the patience of - I don't know, not Job, - of a worn out commuter who expects the train to be late. The kid was more than happy to get the dog to pose. I didn't ask any of them if it was okay for me to take the picture. I just did.

And here's the top floors of the Flatiron Building. In and around Madison Square you dodge the tourists posing in and around the building. Somebody was nice enough to park a vehicle in just the right spot for me.

Street Corner Theater™ - 3

Street Corner Theater™:High Drama in Low Places
I didn’t write the script, I only recorded the events.


No plot, just people.

Look at these folks. They are acting and they don't even know it. Academy Award quality here, or at least Golden Turkey.

Hell, I couldn’t get them to pose for me like this. Okay, you – look straight ahead. And you, the guy with the tie, look left, look straight ahead, look right, look ahead.  Skateboard guy, one handed texting, right? Goodl That's it. And now, the second car. 

 lady, just talk on your phone and stare blankly into the middle distance, that's good. And let's get a cameo of the dog in the last  frame. Great

Street Corner Theater™ 2

Street Corner Theater™: High Drama in Low Places

I didn't write the script. I only witnessed and recorded the events.


Hey, it was cold, so we went to the movies, but the movie theater was even colder. It was more fun to go out and watch the show on the street.


Thanks to the AMC Loews on Broadway and E. 19th St. for the entertaining sign. I can imagine people shivering in their seats - the outside temp. was in the high 20s, probably in the 50s in the theater, watching some hot film.

The rest of the photos were taken around Manhattan on the same Sunday afternoon in December. It was pre-solstice, and the weather was a little cooler than normal. You'd think, to look at the way some people dressed, that we were in Frostbite Falls, or something.

The Unbearables PEN Award Winners read at Tribes - Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011

The Unbearables PEN Award Winners read at A Gathering of the Tribes
Sunday, December 18, 2011
As always, to see a picture full sized, click on it, or all of them.
Right or Ctrl- or Cmd-Click to open in a new tab. 





There was a good crowd at A Gathering of the Tribes on East Third Street to hear Steve Dalachinsky and John Farris. They are both deserving of their audience. There is something so damn New York about them, a New York that persists despite the invasion of Home Depot,Target, The Gap, Best Buy and their national retail allies, that survives long past the long lamented death of the Fourth Avenue Booksellers – what’s left of that? The Strand and the more recently arrived Alabaster? Well, at least the Strand is carrying The Unbearables Big Book of Sex, but so does the St. Marks Bookshop and Posman's, and soon to be available on The Unbearables newly relaunched website.

Susan Scutti

Somebody should take a grease pencil and scrawl the word “writer” across Steve’s and John’s foreheads so that all those newcomers, gawking at the celebrities, might stop to gawk at these two who shuffle unnoticed along Broadway, when people should be stopping them to get their autograph and maybe some words of wisdom. No wonder things become unbearable, no wonder that they are two of the Unbearables. 


Two excellent and truly lovely people, as Unbearable as the readers themselves, Susan Scutti and Tsaurah Litzky, introduced the readers.


Listen to them reading.

Steve Dalachinsky

Steve Dalachinsky read from The Final Nite & Other Poems (Ugly Duckling Press, 2006) with a rocking, staccato rhythm. It’s not machine gun rhythm, more the chug . . . chug . . . chug of an old hand-fed letter press, putting 2000 lbs. pressure behind the lead slug of type, permanently changing the structure of the page. He’s on that page, yet he’s with the audience, pushing the lines out, chanting and incanting. He hears himself, or maybe he loses himself. There’s a kind of madness that emerges, not dangerous, not harmless. He’s compelling, intruding, forceful, you listen despite yourself, but if you didn’t want to hear him, then why are you there? 

John Farris

 John Farris (The Asses Tale (Unbearable Books/Autonomedia 2101)) reads with deliberation, shaping the words into phrases, the phrases into sentences, leaving images dangling in mid-ear. He shambles through the East Village of the mind, his rhythm is complex, an adagio against the presto grain of the neighborhood, of the city. You expect a gunshot, you get a whisper. You hear the words scream, but he whispers and cajoles, bemused and amusing. When he finishes, you wait, absorbing the truth, wondering why he stopped. If you made it all the way down here, thanks for looking. 

 I got lazy about putting captions in every photo. Most are of Steve or John, there's one of the artist who illuminated some of Steve's poems, with Steve, and some audience shots that include Ron Kolm, Carl Watson, Tsaurah Litzky and others. You know who you are.

 

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