Pee 'vd in Paris

It was my first time in Paris. It was my first time in Europe. I was with this cute little Irish girl with cheeks like parenthesis around her radiant white smile. Dressed in black we tried to blend in, fancied ourselves sophisticated Euro types. Molly knew enough French to read menus. Together we knew enough not to starve. "deux café noir s'il vous plaît" and "une baguette de pain et de fromage" (Black coffee, French bread and cheese) At night it was a baguette, cheese and red wine.

In reality we were strangers in a strange land. A beautiful, fun and exotic new land. A landscape planned to be beautiful, intricately detailed and uniform in design. A land of good cuisine and an attitude of casual elegance and good living.

We'd spent the afternoon combing the streets of 1st arrondismont. We lingered at the Stravinsky Fountain...






















... and in the large plaza in front of the famed inside out building that is the Pompidou Center.


















We ate and drank little bits of Paris as we wandered. As we entered the Les Halles district I really had to go to the bathroom.

I spied a beautifully designed restaurant nearby and ducked in to find a bathroom. I followed the signs to les toilettes des hommes. I descended the stairs to the bathroom and there was a women standing there. That unverved me...and she wanted money. Hmmm. Never seen that before. Quickly I deduced this was nothing kinky. She had an apron on and had an assortment of cleaning products and personal hygiene items for sale. She was the bathroom attendant. I gave her 1000 francs ...whatever that was worth and quickly entered the bathroom.

I looked around the gleaming modern stainless steel room I just entered. I couldn't see any stalls or urinals. The walls were brilliant brushed metal panels. I walked around pushing on a couple panels thinking they would open a stall. Nothing happened. I felt the attendant watching me. On one whole wall was a pleasant waterfall gently moving like a liquid sheet of glass. It was nicely lit from the underside and it made me have to pee even more than before.

I started to wiggle and cross my legs like a 3rd grader. I danced in place like a jerky David Byrne turning around the room trying to unlock the puzzle of where I could relieve my surging bladder. Is the waterfall a urinal? It empties into a drain at the bottom like a urinal. I couldn't ask because I couldn't speak French and no-one else came in so I couldn't watch and copy! I couldn't bring myself to pee on the wall. The attendant was right there! What if it wasn't a urinal she saw me piss on the wall?

Driven to madness by the taunting waterfall I did what anyone would do. I ran... out of the bathroom, back up the steps and outside! :)

I came across this restaurant in a design magazine about a year later. It was designed by celebrity designer Philip Stark and it turns out the waterfall was the urinal!

Cathedral Ledge in winter, North Conway, New Hampshire

Molly took us on a winter hike to the top of Cathedral Ledge in North Conway New Hampshire. It was a warm winter day and steam was rising off the snow lending a theatrical look to the woods. I expected to see wolves staring at us from the shadowy woods like in the Polar Express. Frozen creeks were springing back top life sending throaty gurgles echoing of the forest.


























We walked down a wide path that's a gravel road in the summer. With two feet of snow on the ground the path was thankfully tamped down by snowmobile riders to give us some hard pack for walking. On our left, before the road started to climb, ice climbers picked their way up the crystalline walls of Cathedral Ledge. Solid walls of ice build up as the freezing, melting and refreezing winter snows layer on each other. Melt water trickled today, clearly seen under the ice walls. Kinda spooky.

As the road climbed so did my pulse. I unzipped my jacket as sweat sucked my flannel shirt to my skin. After a while I could hear my heart pumping in my ears. I took my scarf off, my gloves off. I completely unzipped. I like to have my head up when I walk, ears open, eyes watching, taking in the scene, camera at the ready. Now my head was down as we climbed elevation. I watched as one foot moved in front of the other. I was not having fun.

"How much further Mol?" "It's right up around the bend." "You know that for sure?" "I think so." Molly's bad at directions and knowing exactly where she is. She hiked this road earlier this year but there's not a lot of landmarks to mark progress. How does one tell one tree from the next? I knew she had no idea how much further we had to go.

The Duncan's were now 100 feet ahead of the Welch's. Molly & Drew calling back to Dylan & I, spurring us on! "Come on!"

























We climbed and rounded two more turns in the path. Molly once again said "We're almost there". Dylan & I stopped. We'd had enough. "We'll meet you at the bottom" we yelled. I could tell Molly was pissed. She trudged off stamping and beating the snow to a pulp under churning legs. Drew ran behind her.

Dylan & I took our jackets off and spread them on the path. We layed down on our backs. After a minute my ears opened again. We looked at the sky through the over-hanging pine boughs and listened to the majestic sound of silence. Silence is a BIG sound. We seldom hear silence. In the city and suburbs there's always something making a sound. Here it was vacuousness silence. My pulse slowed, my sweat dried up. I stopped thinking about me and took in the woods. We entered the silence and became one with it.

Feeling better we got up and hiked around the next bend and unbelievably we were at the top.
There, behind Molly & Drew, was a beautiful vista animated with moving walls of fog settling in between valley's and vales.

























The neighborhood where our house is was laid out below us like a winter diorama. Cranmore Mountain stood facing us far across the Mt Washington valley.












































Look at the sweat on Drew.


























A boy and his dog




















...then we had to hike down.

The Zan Charlotte, NY

There were two legendary rope swings in Charlotte....pronounced "Shar-lot", not Charlotte like that city down in North Carolina. Charlotte is a neighborhood in Rochester, NY that hugs the brown mushroomed mouth of the Genesee River where it empties into Lake Ontario.





















The first swing was behind 48 school. I heard the swing was 100' off the ground when you swung out. The river gorge fell off quickly there, almost cliff like. We heard kids were breaking arms, legs and puncturing ribs from falling off that swing and violently entering the tree canopy below.
I never went to that swing.

The other swing was called the Zan....as in Tarzan. It was down past 38 school, north of the Stutson Street Bridge also on the river gorge. It hung from a huge tree in the forested gorge. At the top of the slope the ground vegetation had been reduced to dirt. Plumes of dry dirt would explode around our feet when we walked making our white canvas sneakers all gray. We also created great mushroom clouds by jumping off the swing.

There was a dangerous feeling being at the Zan. We never knew what kids or thugs might show up. Charlotte was a rougher neighborhood than the one we lived in. It was an older neighborhood. The housing stock changed when you went from Greece to Charlotte. It immediately switched from suburban ranch and colonial homes built in the 60's to homes built in the last century. It was the Port of Rochester. Charlotte High School was well know for it's racial problems and violence. And there were gangs. Gangs were big in the early 70's. I had a house on my paper route down the street where all the brothers went to Charlottle High and were in gangs. They wore wind breaker jackets with their gang acronyms proudly displayed on the back of them. S.A.T. (Satan's Attack Team) and B.A.D (Bad Ass Demons). We once got trapped in Charlotte High School by a pair of criminal twin brothers who were firing pellet guns at anyone who tried to leave. We had to call the cops to get out. I remember a broken-armed Claude Lebeau transferring into my Catholic school relating his story of being thrown out of the window at Charlotte High during a recent riot. One of the great social events in Charlotte, the St. Anthony's Day Festival eventually had to be canceled because of the growing violence between biker gangs.

We fancied ourselves little hoodlums too. We'd seen West Side Story. We practiced flipping over fences like they did in that movie. We were more like Peter Pan's Lost Boys than real ruffians however. We formed our own little street gang. We had a call signal. "Heey Willieeee". If someone yelled that signal you had to come running to see what innocent kid was riding his bike down our street.

To get to the Zan we'd ride our bikes, making sure cigarettes stolen from our Mom's were tucked safely into a jacket breast pocket. Perched on our "chopped" bikes with banana seats and sissy bars we cut through the Vietnam-like gully to avoid going over the troll bridge or running into Crazy Craig on Denise Road. Piper, the P.R. Dooner & I rolled on over to Vatter's Market where we'd been sneaking off at lunch from Our Lady of Mercy to buy candy for years. We loaded some candy cigarettes along side our real ones. On the south side of Vatters were the railroad tracks. Over those tracks we entered Charlotte.

The Zan was legendary. It was tied 30-40 feet up in the tree. When you swung out you were way up in the air and dangerously over the railroad tracks. The feeling you got was of flying, wind in your face blowing your hair straight back. Standing around the swing I remember the unfamiliar taste of menthol in my mouth and sulfur up my nose as we tried to puff our way to coolness. Dirt particles mingled in the air with the cigarette smoke.

We put pennies on the railroad tracks to flatten them. We put stones on there too nervous they might derail the train. We hopped the lumbering trains too even though we were already aware of the tales of kids falling under the train and getting their legs cut off.






















One of the coolest sights down in the gorge were the giant turtles who showed up every spring. They varied in size. Some you could hold in the palm of your 12 year old hand and others were a good 15" in diameter. The effort to be cool went right out the window, we were boys again and in awe of nature. We marveled at the turtle shells. They were Painted Turtles and carried beautiful mosaics on their backs and bellies. We piled stones on their backs to see what they could carry. We flipped them over to see if they could get back upright. They couldn't. We even brought one home for a while where we tried to keep it wet and moist. Eventually we had to let it go.

Eventually we let boyhood go too but at that time we were still boys. Still innocents. Not babies but not teenagers. Still wrapped in the womb of Hilltop Rd not really knowing the realities of danger or violence but enjoying each day as a new adventure like the Lost Boys or Tom & Huck or the boys in Stand By Me.

Winter in Rochester

Remember the beginning of Rudolph when Burl Ives (the snowman) talks
about the storm that almost canceled Christmas? There were scenes of
cars covered in snow, people pushing cars out of snow piles, newspapers
proclaiming "We're Fr0zen" and "Ice Peril Warning". That's what it felt like
in Rochester last week. Winter's are "special" there. Upstate New York
and Minnesota are the only two places I've been where winter is sooo harsh.






















The temperature hovered in the single digits and went below zero when the
sun set. The snow screamed out in a dry high pitched scrunch under each
step you took. Fresh snow stuck to cars like road rash on skateboarders. It
moved away from your feet and fell from car tires in small cakes and slices.
There was no squashing or melting, it was too cold.

Foyer doors at building entries were glazed with a kaleidoscope of ice.
Icicles hung like hungry daggers from the overhangs of buildings and from
the under-carriage and bumpers of cars.



























People hunkered against the cold with faces squished and necks pulled
into their bodies. Most didn't even have hats, gloves or the appropriate
winter jackets as they huddled under car hoods emptying their back-up
bottles of wiper fluid into their wells. Car exhaust and breath sent plumes
skyward.

I remember those winters well. I remember strapping on ice skates and
skating on Hilltop Rd., right on the street. It was solid ice! I remember
reaching out of our second floor windows to pull 2' and 3' icicles off the
overhangs. We'd suck on them like popsicle's. When the snow froze
over and got a decent crust we could walk on the surface. We'd be
2 to 3 feet off the ground! And if you broke though you'd sink down to your
knee losing your boot when you tried to pull your leg out. It stayed below
reezing so long we built bobsled runs for our sleds and iced them down
with the hose.

As the world tramped over the purity of the heavens the snow eventually
took on the dirty patina of life. Cars added a layer of dirt and spray looking
like 4x4's that just came out of the desert. Dirty snow built up and caked
on the inside of wheel wells leaving just enough room for the
movement of the wheel.




















Behind the wheel little snow turds built up under the car chassis
eventually get kicked off or falling off to leave brown piles littered around the
landscape like buffalo poop on the prairie.













































...and no one blinks an eye at this severe environment. No-one misses
work or school. Streets are clean, sidewalks are plowed.

In fact if you live here or anywhere in the north lands of America why not
have fun with it? Enjoy. I did.

Abbey Road, London England

Night had descended on London. Molly & I were making our way back from a pub walking tour of Hampstead in the far north of London. We'd just toured one of the great Victorian villages on the planet and had a few pints in some of it's finer establishments. Instead of taking the Tube back to central London we grabbed a cab so we could watch London pass us by like a movie through the windows.

Our gregarious cabbie hears us speaking and asks us with his Irish brogue where we're from. We have a great conversation about America, Boston and the Irish. After a while he says "I've got som-ting you'll love. You want to see it? Free of charge. I just know you're gonna luv it." A brief kidnapping scenario goes through my head but I say OK given we've been having a great conversation already.

A few lefts and rights later pull up to Abbey Road. Yes that Abby Road. There in front of us is that world famous cross walk where the barefoot Paul and his three cohorts were caught mid-stride for the Abbey Road album cover.


























He pulls in through the wrought iron gates. "Can you do that I ask? Won't the guards come out"? "Not if we keep moving" he says. They don't want to upset anyone too quickly. They dunno who's in this cab. Could be John or Sir Paul ya know".





















No-one appears in the one lit window as we slowly roll though the front drive & car park peering at the legendary recording studio. I was thrilled. This was hallowed ground tred on by perhaps the greatest music masters of the 20th Century. I've looked at that Abbey Road album cover for all my life and to actually be in that scene felt like we'd stepped though the looking glass into a fantasy. There are legendary locations all over London. You can't hardly believe you're immersed in a landscape you've read about since childhood but this surprise was a great moment and a nice gift from our Irish cabbie.

True to his word he did not charge us for the detour....but I tipped him BIG.

















London's Black Cab drivers are all eager tour guides, ready and willing to talk and proffer the history of their famed city. I've had guys take me on little tours all over London just by starting to ask questions. If you find yourself in London. Do it.

For all UK posts click here

Bay View Coffee - San Francisco, Ca,

Pics from
whatimseeing.com/2007/12/07/hocus-pocus/

























The ferry stern recedes from view, disappearing into the fog,
spewing it's wake towards me.

Birds huddle against the cold just outside the window their
heads pulled back inside their feathers.

I'm at Peets Coffee in the Ferry Building in San Francisco.

I took my morning walk and spotted the Ferry Building.
I bee-lined towards it thinking coffee and a bay view would
be nice this morning. As I strode through the front plaza
under the clock tower it's carillon bells exalt my entry.

The sun climbs above the billowing fog to rake sunlight and
shadows across the boardwalk in front of me. The ferry
terminal's stainless steel docks gleam and glimmer in the
sunlight off-setting the pink fringed fog hugging the
bay behind it.

Business people and hipsters with their ubiquitious earbuds
parade pass as another ferry unloads it's charges.

Behind me on polished concrete floors are four foot square
common tables filled with newspaper readers, laptop surfers
and coffee klatchers. They get up intermittently in one's and
two's to make their way to their day's obligations.

Thick blooded natives take seats outside with spring
jackets on.

A flock of birds ducking the fog skips across the water
inches above it.

The ever changing scene morphs to gray again as another ferry
blows it's horn and backs out for the return trip to Marin.
Fog rolls up over the boat, chills the birds, covers the
boardwalk and blankets the ferry building. Mother Nature
closed the curtain on the sun, show's over. I pull my scarf
close, cap my coffee and begin the walk back up Market Street
to begin my work day.