Bill is a marvelous artist, writer and actor, part of the original Performance Group that pushed all boundaries with productions like Dionysius in 69.  Long before there was a formal Ultimate Akademy, he recognized Al Hansen as a wandering art sage and thus his connection to my wife.  Susan is also a terrific writer and the Executive Director of The Producer’s Project, a not-for-profit organization that works with school kids by giving them the means to create media projects based on their own experiences. It is a tremendous organization.

I was chatting with Susan about this blog when I told her that the one thing I really didn’t like was blogs that merely re-post other blog entries. While I recognize that sharing information is vital I also get a bit tired of blogs that are little more than a series of regurgitated posts. Needless to say I could feel the few strands of hair I have left brushing against the ceiling as I made my pronunciamento from that awfully high horse I was sitting on.

The party was wonderful, the company superb and the hosts warm and welcoming. When it was over I said my goodbyes and almost as soon as I hit the street it began bothering me. Why did I have to go and say that? Now I can never re-post anything ever. What if there was something important I needed to convey and someone else had already covered that topic much better?

The feeling has been bugging me off and on since. Well, it is 3:35 AM on Christmas Day 2009 and here I am again, making deep-dish apple pies with a long list of things not done and hoping to catch a few hours of sleep before company arrives.

I had such high hopes this year, but as it sometimes happens, time and money ran out.  This year all that is possible now, in the way of gifts and greetings for my friends and family, is a simple blog entry. I do wish everyone a warm and safe holiday but to leave it at that, though sincere and heartfelt, is a bit ordinary.

I could write about my favorite Christmas in East LA when I was growing up or recount the way my family used to attend Midnight Mass at Mater Dolorosa, the Passionist Monastery in Sierra Madre, California when I was young. But let’s be honest, it is now 3:45 in the morning so I’ll have to leave that too for another year.

In its place the only thing that comes to mind is a wonderful story I once read online about the famous Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles. Back in the days of 16 mm film, I used to work as an assistant editor and one of my job assignments was at the old TAV Studios in Park La Brea just across the street from the Farmers Market. I remain grateful to my dear friend Martin Cohen; he was the editor on that project and he taught me a lot about the art and craft of editing. I am also grateful for the wonderful way we used to spend lunchtime together.

I looked forward to our lunch everyday. It made the sometimes tedious task of editing more interesting by affording us the opportunity to step outside the closed dark little room editors often inhabit for months on end without ever seeing sunlight. Martin made sure we went outside for an hour everyday and it made all the difference in the world.  Everyday at noon we would go across the street to the Farmer’s Market and select something from one of the many vendors; then we would sit at one of the nearby tables and eat like civilized gentlemen.

Now my day is done, the pie is cooling and I would like to share an enchanting story I stumbled upon some years ago. Since it was written by someone else, I am about to break my own cardinal rule, but I have never been a slave to fashion or foolish consistency.

Happy Holidays and may all your wishes come true, because life is a song, sometimes sung by a group of carolers and a guy at a table at Farmer’s Market having coffee and an English muffin.

CLICK HERE FOR THE STORY BY MARK EVANIER

I remember his house was on Garnet Street in Boyle Heights and he did have a real barber chair set up al fresco in his back yard.  I found that both out of place and fascinating.

My friend Daniel went to a fellow named Dan the Barber who had a baby grand piano in his shop on Brooklyn Avenue. Daniel would go in late in the day and Dan the Barber would pour himself a drink and then play the piano. After a while he would stop and cut Daniel’s hair free of charge. East LA was like that back then; part lower middle class neighborhood, part Fellini movie.

I don’t remember much else about the backyard barber without a shop except he cut me accidentally and my mother was quite unhappy about that. He was a little too heavy handed with the electric clippers and left a small mark. It was enough to determine that I would never have my hair cut out of doors again.

A few years later, my father started taking me for haircuts to the father of a classmate, Mr. Mike Ramirez. Mike’s Barber Shop was on Olympic Boulevard in East Los Angeles. He was my regular barber for the following several years of my childhood.  Eventually, I stopped having my hair cut there but then I rediscovered it again as a young man. From that point on, I never went anywhere else.

One day I was sitting in the chair exchanging the usual pleasantries with Mike. It was a reassuring and predictable exchange. He asked about my parents and I inquired about two of his children, Michael who had been my classmate and his brother Alfred who was two years ahead of us. We had dispensed with the customary small talk when it occurred to me to ask Mike how he had become a barber.

Then he explained to me how a simple twist of fate and harsh weather came to determine his life’s path. He said he was in the military and was originally working as an air conditioning and heating technician. He had been trained as such and did his job well. One day while working to repair a broken air conditioner on a hot roof in the blistering sun, he looked through the hole in the roof where the air conditioning duct had been removed and saw a young man in uniform cutting another man’s hair.

He recognized immediately that whereas he was being baked alive on this blazing hot summer day, they were just slightly inconvenienced as a result of only temporarily being without air conditioning. He told me that they looked very calm and pleasant chatting with one another as the barber cut the enlisted man’s hair. He resolved then and there to change careers. I don’t know how long the process took, but here in East Los Angeles, California, my friend Michael’s dad was now Mike the Barber with his own shop on Olympic Boulevard. From then on, I enjoyed haircuts even more because Mike was a good storyteller and had many a story to tell.

Mike was my idea of what a barber should look like. He was tall and handsome with a brilliant smile and a thick black head of hair parted on one side that said, “hair, here.” It looked as if he had not lost a single strand of hair ever. He was one of the “younger” dads in my school, especially when I compared him to my father who was born during the first world war.

Mike was also one of those barbers who took his time no matter how many men were in line behind you. He never rushed and never made you feel as if he was hustling you out because there were too many customers.

Sometimes the line would be four or five long and if someone else entered they might sit down or they might not because a line of four or five could be a two hour wait. Of course waits were always longest on Saturdays and Mike was closed Sunday and Monday.

Mike was also a talented painter. I remember he used to paint portraits of horses and other pastoral scenes and hang them in the shop. Maybe some were paint by number maybe not. It didn’t matter. They all looked good and they added to the character of the barbershop in a way that no store-bought poster or graphic ever could.

Unbeknownst to many people the site of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles was once a Mexican-American neighborhood. The only vestige of its former life is now the occasional allusion to “Chavez Ravine” by the legendary Dodger announcer Vin Scully.

Many people came to live in Chavez Ravine when it was a Mexican-American neighborhood. In the 1940’s Mike the barber was one of them. Mike told me a story one day of a man named Chris-Pin Martin who lived in Chavez Ravine. He was an actor who played the sleepy Mexican or the bumbly Mexican or the whatever ill-conceived, racist stereotype sprang forth from the brightest minds in Hollywood.

It seems Mr. Martin had a big house in Chavez Ravine and sometimes employed local people to do work at the house. One day he hired an eager youngster that grew up to be Mike the Barber. As a boy, Mike remembered working all day in the hot sun for the actor for a sandwich at lunch and 25 cents at the end of that day. Perhaps Mike’s aversion to working in sweltering heat began there.

According to our family mythology, my own father had once spent a day with this actor as well. In the 1930’s and 40’s Los Angeles was the final destination on a journey that began in El Paso, Texas courtesy of the Southern Pacific Railroad. My father used to ride the train as a tramp when he was a young man. Having no money and in the midst of the Great Depression, I imagine tramp riding was a common undertaking back then when young men were looking to start new lives under cooler skies closer to the ocean.

My father was not yet married to my mother and came to Los Angeles to visit relatives and explore the working and living conditions. One morning, after everyone had gone to work, he arrived at the Chavez Ravine home of his relatives.

Some of my uncles then worked for the Department of Transportation building the highways that have come to symbolize Southern California. It was hard backbreaking work in extreme conditions; sometimes they toiled in hellish heat and other times endured freezing cold. Pouring asphalt back then was not the mechanized process it is today; much of the work was still manual and it required hours of labor to accomplish it.

My father probably did not know this when he arrived with the promise of a job in the 1930’s. Seeing no one around and mesmerized by the gentle breeze and the summer sun he stood on the porch and took in the sights of Chavez Ravine. It might have been a poor neighborhood or a barrio or little more than a ramshackle enclave to some but to him it seemed paradise.

As he stood on the porch listening to the birds in the trees and children playing in the distance he heard a voice interrupt the silence. “Oye, Oye, tu!” which roughly translates to “Hey, hey, you!”

He looked around and saw a man on the porch of a large house nearby calling out to him. The man was Chris-Pin Martin and he asked if my father would like to work that day. Without asking a single question my father agreed and off they went to the MGM studios across town riding in Mr. Martin’s automobile.

A friend of the actor was unable to report for work that day and my father would take his place instead. The work was easy if somewhat humiliating. He wore a grass skirt, no shirt or shoes and had to raise his hands in the air and then bend at the waist when a certain celluloid potentate walked past. The movie was called The Firefly. My brother says he found it some time ago on DVD and watched it in slow motion. I don’t know if he was ever able to spot my father and I have never seen it. Certainly it was not a featured role.

Many years later after nine children, several wars, one wife and a lot of hardship he was still able to muster a winsome smile when conjuring the memory of his one day in Hollywood. He confessed that he thought he would be a movie extra forever and imagined all he had to do from then on was wear grass skirts and bow ceremoniously in fake native tribesman style. He said that the pay was an extraordinary five dollars a day at a time when five cents bought a loaf of bread.

My father returned to El Paso, Texas the same way he arrived, on the Southern Pacific Railroad. He met my mother, they married and then they both went to Los Angeles to start their life together in 1941. Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. My father was drafted and was posted to Goose Bay Labrador, Canada. After some time he was honorably discharged.

My family moved from Chavez Ravine. Battles over eminent domain ensued and the turmoil over the land made headlines.  Eventually the stadium was built and the Brooklyn Dodgers, a team my wife’s cousin, Harry Eisenstat, once played for, moved west.

Fortunately for the O’Malley’s, my family, and many other Mexican-American families, love baseball and especially the Los Angeles Dodgers. My brother Tony, the most Dodger crazy of them all, has been to countless games at Dodger Stadium and although he has lived in Germany for over thirty years, he still attends whenever he is in Los Angeles. He attends ballgames the way I attend concerts.

He has a remarkable memory of games he attended back when he was a teenager. He is able to remember where he sat, what he ate and how he got there. He recalls each game in amazing detail including plays and lineups. I also find it ironic that my brother is such an ardent fan considering that he was named after my uncle Tony who was killed by police gunfire in Chavez Ravine in 1940. The policemen were cleared of any charges but that was a different Los Angeles. Or was it?

I can remember attending games with my father but most of the fun for me at those events was in a red and white striped bag full of salty unshelled peanuts and of course a “Dodger Dog.”

Dodger Stadium, unlike Wrigley Field which sits in the middle of Chicago at ground level, perches atop a precipitous hill just north of the city. In the early 70’s my father was a janitor at Cathedral High School at the bottom of the hill, very close to the stadium.  One way my father saved money when attending a game was not to pay for parking; a common trick used by stadium fans everywhere, I’m sure. He parked at the High School and then the only catch was the treacherous climb up the hill to the park.

It started out innocently enough, as we hiked up a narrow desert scrub and brush lined dirt path. Gradually the path grew steeper until it narrowed to a twelve-inch wide trail between a chain link fence and a sheer drop. We were forced to inch our way sideways up the last harrowing bit of trail with both feet together wedged into the fence. First the left foot moved and then the right foot followed, like two chopsticks opening and closing, clinging with our hands for dear life to the aging rusted out chain link fence while behind us was the fearsome sheer drop down the canyon.

Surviving this, the path suddenly grew wide again until you emerged at the edge of the stadium parking lot with all the lights blazing like the klieg lights at a Hollywood premier, but you were the movie star and the movie was baseball. As others less economically constrained emerged from their vehicles in nicely pressed clothes, we creatures of the night emerged out of the darkness at the edge of the lot, dusted off our jeans and sauntered in to see the game. This was a trip to the ballpark for me.

Some years later when I discussed going to the ballpark with a friend of mine, she recounted a tale of climbing a treacherous hill that seemed to accompany every trip she made to the park. I guess my father was not the only one willing to risk life and limb to save a few dollars, but looking back, our hair-raising walk up the hill was thrilling fun.

Hair raising experiences seem fewer and farther between now but maybe it is because I have much less hair to raise. Strangely, finding a barber is even more important now than when I had a full head. Four years ago I moved across the country to New York City.

Since Mike’s Barber Shop was no longer just a short ride away, I needed to find a new place to get my hair cut. After trying many different barbers I finally settled on David’s Barber Shop on East 84^th. It is an old school shop and both of the older gentlemen, Joseph and Yuri, are brilliant.

When I am traveling I never mind trying a new barber either. Sometimes it opens doors to new experiences sometimes it just provides a window on another world like the wonderful haircut I received in Biddeford, Maine a few years ago from a fellow with a shop in his home. He had been in that location over thirty years and it was a pleasure to sit in his chair.

While in Berlin recently I found myself in need of a haircut. I was walking along Zossener Strasse in Kreuzberg when I noticed a simple establishment. From the area and listening to them speak, I figured they were Turkish and decided that it was a good idea. The price was right and the place looked like barber shops everywhere, magazines strewn about, some chairs for waiting patrons and a coat rack. I took my place and waited for the only person ahead of me.

When it was my turn I sat in the chair and made my preferences clear. The barber spoke much better English than I spoke German and together we agreed upon the type of cut. Everything proceeded exactly as haircuts usually do, first the scissors and then the electric clippers. Finally, the hot foam is applied to the sideburns and edges and a straight razor is used to complete the cut.

Just when I thought we were done, leaving the plastic around my neck he went to a small device that resembled a mini-torch from the Middle Ages the kind you light to see your way in a castle except it was about the size of a fat Q-tip. He soaked it in some liquid and then struck a match to light it. Through my alarm, I determined that whatever was about to happen was either going to be extremely painful or was merely part of the normal  tonsorial experience in Turkey and I had no need to worry.

Before I knew what was happening he was moving the mini-torch about with precision and flair. He was pushing it into my ear canals and removing it as quickly as he put it in. It was all very fast and accompanied by the distinctive smell of burning hair.

I then realized that he was burning the small errant hairs in my ears. It was a crude but effective method and once I got over the fact that I was not going to be seriously injured, the slight scorching seemed like a walk in the park. All in all it was a great finish to a pretty good haircut and one that would not have been out of place in a barber shop on Brooklyn Avenue with a baby grand piano and maybe some raki.

Celebrity is often more accident than accomplishment and it is good to remember that health care workers, waiters and waitresses, drivers and busboys, grocery store clerks and bag boys of both sexes (are there any left?) janitors (like my dad), auto mechanics, animal care workers, maids and house cleaners (like my mom), receptionists, nail girls and shoe shine boys (and girls), school teachers, and of course the most invisible workforce, without whom we would starve to death, field hands and farm workers and all the other un-acknowledged laborers that work hard to make our lives easier, are and will always be, the real celebrities as far as I am concerned.

Note: The list does not include the famous people I met while driving a limousine since it hardly qualifies as a “spotting” if I am given the address to their home and required to transport them. It also does not include anyone I met while I worked the graveyard shift as an elevator operator at The Beverly-Wilshire Hotel since that was a captive odd-ience, or anyone I met through employment of any kind. My memory is not what it used to be. Often I can’t remember breakfast but I find the distant past sometimes returns for an encore so I may add names as they come to me.

Celebrity Spotting Memories from East L.A. and Beyond

George Segal – Calvary Cemetery

Walter Matthau – Commonwealth or Occidental between 3^rd & Beverly

Ray Charles – LAX

Muhammad Ali – LAX

Jack Lemmon – LAX

Tony Roberts – #6 Train NYC

Tony Roberts – Public Theater Lobby

Nathan Lane – Public Theater Lobby

Wallace Shawn – St. Marks Place 1995

Wallace Shawn – NY Post Office 2005

Philip Glass – a local restaurant

Julianne Moore – a local restaurant

Alicia Silverstone – a local restaurant

Pearl Bailey – Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

William H. Macy – Beverly Center

Tony Bennett – Lexington Ave

Sophia Loren – Toluca Lake Post Office

Pierce Brosnan – Cross Creek Shopping Center

Bud Cort – a local market

George Clinton – Santa Monica Blvd near Gower

Frank Sinatra Jr. – driving east Santa Monica Blvd.

Chevy Chase – driving south the PCH

Placido Domingo – Grand Street Downtown LA

Sara Gilbert – El Rey Theater

Sara Gilbert – a local restaurant

Tom Waits – The Black Rider opening night in San Francisco

Chancellor of Austria Franz Vranitzky – Salzburg Festival

Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman – Universal Amphitheater

Mickey Rooney – Santa Anita

Dick van Patten – Hollywood Park

Martin Sheen – Hollywood Park

Smokey Robinson – Burbank Airport

Crispin Glover – A local market

John Houseman – Market in Malibu

Sam Waterston – 3rd Avenue

Jason Schwartzman – a local restaurant

Ray Bradbury – Old World Restaurant

Pat Riley – Piero’s

Natalie Merchant – Le Petit Four restaurant

Jennifer Coolidge – a local restaurant

Sir Michael Gambon – Newark Airport

My all time favorite celebrity spotting was the legendary Udo Kier at the Goodwill on Hollywood Boulevard. He was trying on jackets and looked very dapper indeed. Was he shopping for a role? Was he shopping for himself? It matters none.

To shop at thrift stores is to recycle. To shop at thrift stores is green. To shop at thrift stores is treasure hunting and you never know who you might run into.

When we opened Troy homelessness was at an all time high, due in no small part to the twelve years of Reagan-Bush-economics. Somehow that trickle seemed to stop quite a bit  short in the actual practice of trickle down economics.

Today there are still between 1.5 and 3 million homeless in the United States in any given year. In a country that has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world this seems an unjustifiably high statistic. Identifying a problem is one thing; doing something about it is another. In many ways, large and small, many of us do what we can. Some do more.

Instead of adopting an aggressive or intolerant policy, we decided to try to live symbiotically and interact productively with our homeless friends. Over the first few months, the opportunities for exchange unfolded and an endearing few became a part of the café.

Flower Guy was a tall and slender man. I never learned his real name. He was cheerful and always made people smile.  He collected nearly dead flowers from the trash bins at the central flower mart then manicured and revivified them for sale at discount prices. The flowers never lived very long, about as long as the money remained in his possession probably, but they looked great while they lasted.

Flower Guy almost always dressed entirely in white and maintained extraordinary hygiene for one without an address other than “Flower Mart – General Vicinity”.   He made his rounds at night when homeless people and old flowers look their best. They both begin to wilt at dawn.

One night he showed up with a large stainless steel brace attached to his shoulders with circular rings holding his head in a stationary position. It looked like shiny rings of Saturn around his head.

Between his bright white clothing, his tremendous smile and the rings of Saturn he was quite an apparition. I’m sure his business increased with the addition of the medical device. People tend to give more when the disadvantage is enhanced by real or perceived disability.

Sadly, Flower Guy’s injury was all too real. While walking through downtown, he had been struck by an automobile. Without insurance, he was discharged as soon as he was deemed ambulatory.  Hours after his release, he was working his beat once more.

Tommy was another of our downtown denizens. He was known as Nitro to some but I know he preferred Tommy so that is what we called him. Tommy always called me Daddy. I was about thirty at that time and Tommy was easily twenty years my senior, so it always made me smile. Tommy lived from recycling. One doesn’t teach the poor to be “green,” they can teach a master class. Tommy came in at night and picked up the bottles and cans and in exchange took our trash out to the dumpster out back.

Every now and then, Tommy had to borrow a little money; it was never more than a few dollars and he always paid it back. I sometimes wondered what it was for, but thought it was demeaning to ask him. I could either lend it to him or not. That was my business. If he wanted to tell me what it was for, that was his business.

One night about eleven o’clock, he came in very excited saying, “Daddy, I need three dollars. Daddy, lend me three dollars, Daddy.”  This time, his obvious excitement intrigued me and my curiosity got the better of me.  I asked him why. He took me by the arm escorting me out back to his shopping cart where a woman stood waiting for him.  Tommy pointed and whispered she would sleep with him for three dollars.

In one glance I saw her emaciated frame, her gaunt face, and her tattered clothes. She smiled at me and winked.  Her grin revealed more gaps than teeth. None of that was important. She was lovely.  If she was going to make Tommy happy for a few minutes or a few hours, that was all that mattered. Three dollars seemed a very small price to pay.

Frank Parker, the artist, was a Troy mainstay.  He had a quick wit, a keen mind and was charming and graceful.   He made wonderful jewelry from the leftovers of technology, mostly copper wire from buildings as they were being installed. Frank came and went as he pleased in the café and even slept there for a time as a stand-in “night watchman.”

We became friends, as much as one homeless person can be friends with a non-homeless person.  It was an easy but sometimes awkward relationship.

Frank’s bracelets were called “frangs” and were quite popular with the Downtown LA art scene at that time.  He would charge anywhere from two to five dollars depending on how much he needed the money and what the customer might be willing to pay. Some people paid more. Frank was cool about the entire process. I liked that about Frank.

He was always working. When he sat around drinking coffee or smoking he would be making frangs. He started with a thick gauge copper wire and removed all the insulation so that it was only copper. Then he took very small copper wire with brightly colored insulation and wound it around the larger wire very tightly. Finally he bent back the ends of the thick copper wire and dipped the ends in a plastic like sealer made of the melted insulation removed earlier.

It was a brilliant use of what would normally be discarded, tossed out during the installation of a phone system in a building. Frank would find these piles of discarded wire everywhere, so he had endless free materials for his work.  Once I became aware of these discards, I saw them everywhere too.

Frank was so easy-going about his craft that he could sell in the café whenever he wanted yet he would always ask permission, each and every time. He would approach people and if they were not receptive, he would move on.   If they were interested then he showed them the current merchandise.

I often discussed his process with him because I was curious. I asked if certain colors sold better than others and how long it took to make them and if some wire was better than others.

One day I was standing behind the counter and Frank was at the back of the café working on his frangs.  I looked up as a very tall man entered like he owned the world with large steps and an infectious good-natured grin.  His big voice boomed out:  “Frank Parker!”

The men embraced. The tall man was followed by someone I recognized, a very talented young lady, an artist and friend of my nephew. That’s my dad, she said, pointing at the big fellow. Indeed, it was the film director Ron Shelton. Frank and Ron had known each other years before.

After the café closed for good in 1995 I would sometimes see Frank downtown outside of Al’s Bar or in the area. I would always buy a frang or two. Sometimes he didn’t look well. I felt guilt. Illogical perhaps, but I did.  If only I had been able to keep the café open then he might have more customers, like the old days when the place was packed night after night.

Several years later I received a phone call from a mutual friend, the acclaimed poet Dr. Mongo Taribubu.  Most people call him Dr. Mongo. He left a message that Frank Parker was terminally ill and living in a hospice in East LA.  He urged me to visit.  It was a busy time for me and I didn’t return Dr. Mongo’s call right away.

The next call I received was to inform me of the services. The hospice house was packed for Frank’s service. It is surprising that one person without an address could know so many people. That was Frank. Bartenders, doormen, artists, community organizers, filmmakers, poets, musicians, everyone seemed to know Frank. Stacey, the bartender from Al’s Bar, tried to speak a few words about her friend but broke down and was unable to continue. It was then I decided not to speak.  There was nothing to say. I participated as one of the many lives this wonderful man had touched in a very special way.

Near the end one fellow stood to speak. He had also been homeless and had known Frank from the streets. He spoke eloquently of what a good friend Frank had been. He spoke of his kindness and generosity. As he continued extolling Frank’s virtues he began to get emotional. Finally, he too had to stop. I will never forget the last thing he said. “We shared a box, man. We shared a box.”

I had shared many things with Frank, a coffee, a cigarette, a hamburger, a conversation. None of it seemed as substantial to me as the memories that fellow carried of his friend Frank Parker.

The next contestant in tonight’s episode of Meet the Homeless is a man known to one and all as Wyatt Earp. Wyatt was a maniac, plain and simple. He was about five and a half feet tall and never shut up. He had scruffy hair and a scruffy beard. His clothes were unkempt and he shuffled around like a midget Harlem Globetrotter, constantly moving. Hyper beyond bearing he would tease and harass you until you gave him money just to go away.

He operated a mobile car-washing service throughout the Little Tokyo area of Downtown LA. He usually carried a bucket with soap and water which he used to wash your car in our parking lot or on the street or wherever. He just wanted some money.

To this end he was also a sometime purveyor of all manner of dubiously acquired merchandise, each with an impeccable provenance, explaining its acquisition in spurious but intricate detail.  The list of items ranged from museum quality artworks to single windshield wipers.

He was fast and bright and could be quite hilarious and entertaining. He would ask you your name and then make up a rap about you and the person you were with. It was very complimentary of course and he would rap while walking backwards, facing you and carrying a bucket full of soap and water.  He also had a distinctively easy be-bop jive gait. It was as if his limbs were jointed with rubber; he was bendy and flexible and shuffled around like a little mad man. He was as high as a kite of course.

He had a catchphrase he would often repeat like a crazy man’s mantra. In a deep and seriously funny voice he would ask: “Flavor flavor, who’s got the flavor?” This provided yet another nickname, Flavor Flav like the rapper.

Several years after the cafe closed my wife and I were attending the opening of an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles.  As I stood looking at the crowd from the steps outside a very distinguished and well dressed man approached me and nearly whispered in my ear, “I believe we know each other. My name is Frederick Carothers.”

One meets so many people in a café and the effect is that sometimes it is difficult to keep track of everyone. They see you behind the counter every time they are there but in the same time span, you are seeing hundreds of people. I was certain this gentleman was one of them. My mind was efforting to remember but all I was conjuring was a headache.

He could see I was straining under the pressure and offered me a life preserver. “Would you like a hint,” he asked? I nodded as I began to un-scrunch my brows. Then he moved close to my ear again and said very softly, “Flavor Flavor, who’s got the flavor?”

“Oh my God, Wyatt Earp!” shrieked my wife.

I just about dropped right where I stood. The maddest hatter of them all was now greeting me at an art opening at a museum only several blocks from the site where we first met nearly ten years prior.

“Wyatt?”  I asked tentatively.  Searching this man’s face, there was almost no trace of the man we had known as Wyatt Earp. We became reacquainted over cocktails, as he told us his story with assistance from his lovely partner Professor Dagmar Demming.

Sometime after the café had closed, he was foraging in the dumpster of a visiting professor living downtown in the warehouse district of the city. Slowly she befriended him and eventually his foraging became an invitation to lunch and then dinner and then more.

He gave up drugs and rekindled his passion for painting. He moved in with her and they were very much a couple. Currently they live in Norway where she is a professor of Fine Art at the academy in Oslo.

That night I learned two things, Wyatt Earp’s real name and that some do more, much more.

Thinking back to my own youth, my grandfather lived in El Paso, Texas, was about a hundred and two, spoke only in Spanish and wore a hat for so many years that it had altered the shape of his head. I only met him a handful of times and he died when I was still quite young. I can’t remember a single conversation but we always knelt to him for a blessing before leaving and driving back the 800 miles to Los Angeles.

This summer, the first night Aubrey arrived I met him at JFK. He is almost fifteen and nearly six feet tall. (I swear they’re putting something in the milk.) After dropping his bags at the apartment we decided to head downstairs stairs for a slice. I told him I had noticed that Luzzo’s of downtown fame had opened a small to-go shop on 96^th street, four blocks from our apartment.

We eagerly walked the four blocks with much anticipation. It was time to see if their uptown shop would pass muster. As we approached I noticed it looked awfully dark. When we got to the door we were met by a hand-written sign. On vacation, will be back September 1. All I could think was “Bastards! How dare they!”  Then upon further reflection, I realized I was actually glad they were gone for the entire month of August. It was very Italian and could only lend credence to the authenticity of their pizza.

So, Luzzo’s was closed and now we had intense pizza yearning. Well, what the hell, I thought. Let’s jump on the crosstown bus and head over to our all-time personal favorite Sal & Carmine’s. I checked my watch.  10:30 PM already.  I knew they closed at 11:00, so we jumped on the next bus and then, once on the west side, I made him walk as fast as I do (my friend Jim calls me Rocket Ass). We covered the five blocks up Broadway in record time but as we approached, once again, we were met with darkness. You can imagine our disappointment. No vacation just a dark and lonely closed pizzeria.

We decided the pizza gods were against us that night and gave up on pizza altogether. We quickly settled on hamburgers and root beer floats at a nearby diner and I must admit they were really good. It is probably the only thing that can even begin to make up for no Sal & Carmine’s.

A week passed and one evening around 7:00 PM, I decided to give pizza another try. This time, I suggested Aubrey look up the opening and closing hours before venturing across town.  I never expected what he said next. While searching the net, he came across a rumor that Sal had died. I jumped on my laptop and a quick search of my own confirmed that the rumor was probably true.

Sal and Carmine were two men in their 70’s from the old country. They stood next to each other behind that counter in their small shop and made pizza every day for decades.

They did not deliver, accepted only cash and sold no alcohol in their simple establishment. Most restaurants only sell food as a way to push booze. That is where a restaurant’s real profit lies. That Sal & Carmine’s sold nothing but pizza from this little shop on Broadway and 101^st Street is proof that their product is stellar.

There are dissenters. Some claim that it is too old school or too salty or too this or too that but as my wife stated, that is exactly what pizza tasted like when she was growing up in New York City more than thirty years ago.

Sal was often called the crankier of the two although my wife claims he was always very nice to her in an endearing gruff sweet way.  He was always business-like with me and I never minded one bit. I had enough friends, what I needed was great pizza and Sal & Carmine never let me down.

I had a special reason for liking the place above and beyond their delicious pizza. When I was growing up in East LA there was a corner store called Ornelas Market. It was owned and operated by a father son team of Angel and Richard Ornelas. It was on the corner of 8^th Street and Concord in Boyle Heights.

Ornelas was a classic corner store. It sold candy and sodas and food products in small sizes. Against the wall behind the counter arose a clutter composed of all manner of handy things you might run out of or misplace like batteries and toothpaste and black plastic hair combs. Etched in my mind are the names of products you never see anymore like Vitalis and Brylcreem and Pepsodent.

In the back of the store was a meat counter complete with butcher in a white chef’s apron and white cap. Whenever my father went in to Ornelas he always called the butcher “maestro.” I never knew why but it sounded so professional and everyone seemed to cheer up when he said it. I assume it was part of the uniquely Chihuahua/El Paso dialect of Spanish spoken by so many in East LA at that time.

Richard was a large man, about the size of Jackie Gleason and not very old but his dad looked ancient. He had deep lines in his face and dark hair mixed with gray. The thing I remember most about Angel was his distinctive hands. His knuckles were larger than normal and his fingers had grown misshapen over time. I assume he couldn’t hold his fingers out straight; they bent at the knuckles and leaned over to one side.

Ornelas extended credit to the neighborhood by keeping a running tab on an index card marked with each family’s name in a little box. He knew my parents well.   We were there everyday and I guess we might not have eaten sometimes if not for their simple credit system.

One day Angel asked me to fetch a small bottle for him from the ice cream freezer behind the Neapolitan sandwiches. I looked in the freezer and there it was; a small flask-like bottle of clear booze. I was only about seven years old and didn’t know if it was gin or vodka or schnapps. He poured a little into a coffee cup and then asked me to put it back. He thanked me and let me pick a candy from the small stuff. It might have been a simple task but I enjoyed it and I suppose he appreciated it. Going to Sal & Carmine’s reminded me of this, because Sal had these same misshapen knuckles and hands.

Last night my grandson and I finally made it to the pizzeria. Carmine, the less cranky of the two, was alone. I didn’t say a word to him about Sal or mention his unusual absence. We ordered our pizza and ate in silence.  My grandson Aubrey and I never speak much but we enjoy each other’s company.

One night I asked him if we took all the things we said to each other in a week and put them all down on paper, would it add up to one page? In typical Aubrey fashion he looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.

After pizza we decided to walk back to 86^th Street for the ride across the park. We happened to pass one of the new Tim Horton’s Manhattan locations.  The time seemed right so I decided to introduce him to “Timbits.” We were still full from the pizza and I knew we could never finish a dozen.  I thought perhaps I would ask if they would sell just a few.

The nice young woman behind the counter asked how many? I said I’d like two glazed and asked Aubrey how many he would like. He said two as well. She said she would give us four Timbits and there would be no charge. I was a bit surprised and thanked her. She wrapped them up and I left something in her makeshift tip jar.

Aubrey and I walked down Broadway toward the bus stop eating our wonderful Timbits on the way. We didn’t say much but I guessed we were both glad we had known the incomparable and taciturn Salvatore Malanga of Sal & Carmine’s.

She’s got a lot of money and she’s a little bit crazy. Put it this way, she owns two houses right next to each other in Freeport. She lives in one in the summer and the other one in the winter.

Columbus, as we used to call it, was a limousine and Town Car service that dealt specifically with businesses and corporate accounts in the entertainment industry. Large organizations like Warner Brothers or Paramount Studios would hire our company to drive their executives and talent from the airport to their homes and also to other locations as required by the job.

Mike Rappaport (not the actor) was the owner of the company and had started the business from the ground up. He was its first driver and in the early days he dispatched from a car while driving. As a result he knew the business from the driver’s point of view. I respected this about Mike. He had a great family and they all chipped in whenever necessary.

His sister Karen, a UCLA student at the time, answered the phones and his dad would sometimes pitch in as a driver if we were short. His father was a retired jeweler in Beverly Hills. Not the Beverly Hills of today’s mega chain glam shops on Rodeo Drive but the old Beverly Hills. Back then the Beverly Hills of Bedford and Cañon and Beverly Drive had “nice” little shops owned by men and women who lived in the neighborhood. Mike’s dad had one of these.

I took pride in my work and I enjoyed driving. I was on time, courteous and I had a black suit. It was curious to me how many drivers couldn’t grasp the uniform idea. They arrived in navy blazers with faux-military buttons and tan slacks, or corduroy jackets with leather elbow patches and pink shirts. It was a fascinating study.

Over time I realized that becoming a limousine driver is like joining a circus. Everyday the customers are different and soon you get the feeling that the people you work with couldn’t work anywhere else.

Ron was my trainer. I rode with him for two days before it was determined I was able to do the job on my own. He was from Boston and had previously made his living as a ski instructor. I think he missed skiing. He was a good driver and a great trainer. From him I learned the three most important rules.

Number one: Safety Comes First. If they miss their plane, they miss their plane. Don’t rush to the airport because they are prodding you to. More than likely you waited an extra forty-five minutes outside their house and now that they’ve made themselves late, they want you to step on it. Don’t do it.

Number Two: Be courteous. Good manners are an international passport to people’s “good side.” And if they are jerks, bad manners won’t help, so stay on the bright side.

Number Three:  Try not to argue with the client. This was the most difficult. Here was the gray area of my responsibility.

An example: A woman writes a book on surviving divorce. It becomes a bestseller and she is asked to appear on a nationally syndicated talk show based in Los Angeles. I pick her up at her home and drive her to the set. After the taping I return to the studio to take her home. Does she want to go home? No. She does not. Where does she want to go? She wants to go to her ex-husband’s office on the other side of town so that he could see her in a limousine and she could talk about being on television that evening.

Could there be anything more ironic? What kind of message was this sending? What if her readers found out?

I nearly jumped in the backseat and gave her a talking to. As an alternative I gently explained that it was against company policy to deviate from the pre-arranged route but that if she had a short stop along the way to her house I would be happy to stop for her and keep it between us. She made a call and decided to stop at her friend’s office instead and I think she felt better as soon as someone saw her in the limousine.

I have spent a good deal of time in limousines and Town Cars, mostly behind the wheel but sometimes as a passenger.  It is a nice way to travel but I don’t feel more attractive in a black car with tinted windows. They don’t make me feel special or as if I am a better person. Riding in a limousine, I am merely me, riding in a limousine.

Maybe the allure of the limo is more common than I suspect but not everyone falls prey to it, especially not studio executives.

A Town Car to them is like a bus ride to you and me. I know because I listened to a few complain all the way to the airport. “Oh god, I have to go to New York on business. I hate the airport. I hate flying. I hate me. I hate you. Blah, blah, blah.”

I called them Chronic Complainers. I doubt they will ever be happy and frankly, I pity them. They seemed to have no idea how fortunate they were to have just emerged from a beautiful home high above Beverly Hills. They did not seem to realize or appreciate that I was driving them to the airport at 6:00 am and they didn’t have to park a car or even carry their own luggage. No, the world was a sorry problem for them and I was just a part of it. Fortunately, they were the exception.

More regularly, I drove wonderful people grateful for my services and the studio’s (ostensible) generosity. We often chatted on the way to the airport and I must say that it was especially pleasurable for me because I love listening.

One day I received a call to pick up the actor James Farentino. The pickup location was Tina Sinatra’s house, his girlfriend at the time, in West Hollywood.

It was a nice area and not pretentious at all. It was a quiet street off the main boulevard. The kind of place you could imagine Ozzie and Harriet living. It had big trees and lovely homes and although you were only steps from Sunset Boulevard, it felt safe and quiet. In fact, during the day you might not see another person on the street.

I arrived my usual fifteen minutes early.  I made this a practice so that the client could finish packing or getting ready, secure in the knowledge that their car had arrived and everything was on schedule.

I made a right off Sunset, passed the house and then turned the car around so that it would be facing south in order to leave efficiently for the airport.

I went up to the door to let Mr. Farentino know that I had arrived.  He gave me his bag and said he would be a few more minutes. I said no problem and carried the bag away.

I had popped the trunk upon arrival as a matter of course, so I needed only to lift the lid in order to put the bag inside. After placing his bag in the trunk I shut it, but not too hard.  I am a gentle person by nature and have always believed things should be done with just enough force to accomplish the task. Some things need a lot of force, like splitting logs for firewood, most other things need quite a bit less.

Oddly, upon closing the trunk this time, I noticed it didn’t shut and click the way it did ordinarily. In fact, I could see there was a small crack between the edge of the trunk lid and the place where it met the car body. It seemed as if it did not shut properly.

I turned my hands palms up and put the tips of my fingers in that crack in order to lift up the trunk lid and shut it once again. Immediately I noticed my fingers stopped at the first knuckle. I also noticed the lid was not going up. It was not open or closed. Worse yet, it was closing all on its own.

Before I realized what was happening, it was too late. Apparently some Lincoln Town Cars were equipped with automatic trunk-closers that operated hydraulically. You easily bring the lid to within two inches or so of the closure and it does the rest. Unfortunately, it does this with vise-like efficiency.

Now it is 11:00 am and I am standing outside of Tina Sinatra’s house in West Hollywood. The sun is beating down on my head, I am wearing a black suit and it looks like I’m butt-fucking a Town Car facing Sunset Boulevard. My fingertips, up to the first knuckle, are locked in the space between the trunk lid and the car and it can’t be wider than a quarter of an inch. Try as I might, I can’t pull them out. I’m completely stuck. There is no one around who can hear me, but I can see the cars whizzing by on Sunset Boulevard.

My fingers were really starting to hurt and I didn’t know what to do. My brain tried to kick into some sort of survival mode by invoking the name of the last person I had spoken to before this unfortunate event.

At the exact same time, my pride was locked in a battle with the excruciating pain emanating from the tips of my fingers and coursing through my body. My pain wanted to scream and shout at the top of my lungs but my pride was having none of this humiliating affair and preferred to weather the event stoically until help arrived on its own.

The result was a half-hearted unconvincing plea you could have mistaken for a whimper that sounded something like, “Uh…. er…. Mr. Farentino…?  Mr. Faren-tino?”

The traffic on Sunset Boulevard made it impossible even to hear myself and the heavy wood door separating Mr. Farentino and myself made calling out to him ridiculous. How was I ever going to get out of this? I supposed I could wait until he eventually emerged and then he could release me.

My fingers were turning purple and starting to ache quite badly. Just then a green Volkswagen pulled up to a nearby house across the street. A young woman emerged and started for her home.

“Psssst. Pssssst. Hey–over here!”

I am only five feet eight and standing behind a Lincoln Town Car in a black suit, she could probably only see the top of my head. She looked around as if to see who or what was calling her. At moments like these you realize how helpful waving your arms can be.

With only my voice to deliver me from this predicament, I yelled more forcefully. “Hello, it’s me. Over here!” She turned and looked at me.

“I know this sounds crazy (the only way to begin this conversation), but, it seems I’ve locked my fingertips in the trunk of this car. Do you think you could help me?”

“Where’s the key?”

The car was running, so if she had thought for a moment she would have realized where the key was, but in fact we didn’t need it. I calmly told her, “We don’t need the key. I need you to go around to the passenger side. Open the door and get in. Then open the glove compartment and you’ll see a yellow button on the left-hand side. Press the button.”

As she slowly made her way up the slight incline of the street, I could see that she did not fully understand the gravity of the situation. She approached the car with trepidation and meekly asked, “You want me to open the door?”

At this point all the pressure being exerted on my fingertips rushed toward my brain like an embolism and caused me to explode in a Tourettes-like outburst. “GET IN THE DAMN CAR!”

She moved quickly now and as soon as she was in the seat I continued giving her orders with the same intensity. This system worked well and when at last she pushed the little yellow button I felt a surge of relief as I had never felt before.

Just then, Mr. Farentino emerged and I made my way to the passenger door shaking the blood back into my fingertips. I held it open for him and he greeted me. She looked at him with the “Don’t I know you?” expression so common in Hollywood, as I shushed her and gave her a gentle, “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

Without further incident, I delivered my passenger to LAX precisely as scheduled. I never saw Mr. Farentino again and I never again put my fingers in the crack of a Lincoln Town car’s trunk lid.

A sign advertising a store called T-Poutine is now at 168 Ludlow on the Lower East Side. I called the number but all I got was a recording. A little net research disclosed that they were cited for faulty plumbing by the Health Department on July 6 of this year. This is typical prior to the opening of a new restaurant. It is fairly routine and when everything is in order I’m sure it will open with great Canadian fanfare.

I must admit I have never had the fabled Poutine but maybe soon and in my own backyard.

There is no sign on the door or the exterior of the building. You wouldn’t know what it was called if someone didn’t tell you. Many a taxi driver has responded with a quizzical expression when asked if they knew the location of Chin’s Bar Americano. But these are merely obstacles designed to keep the Sunday Christians at bay. The truly devout will saunter down the street, their little hearts pounding ever faster as they approach …6, 12, 14 until finally you reach 18-20, Chin’s Bar Americano.

As you enter, the kitchen bustles behind the bar on the right. The restaurant sits like a big flat “L”. You enter the long part of the L at the base and walk through the restaurant towards the patio. The patio is a staple of all good restaurants in Germany. The annual opening of the patio is a significant event. From October through March it is far too cold to even consider sitting outdoors. Smoking is allowed indoors. In Germany second hand smoking is a team sport.

But it is winter and the few tables available indoors are beginning to fill. You are hungry and you need sustenance and a cup of coffee. But a drink might be nice, after all the evening is quickly descending upon us. As the sun sets in the dark and gloomy Cologne winter sky it seems we need so many things. It is good we’re at Chins because here you can find all of them.

From the kitchen emerges a man in a waiter’s white apron His demeanor is a bit brusque but he moves through the restaurant with grace and quiet efficiency. When he passes within earshot, you ask for a menu and he points at the blackboard two meters long and one meter wide on the wall.

You try to make out the German words. It’s time to refer to your handy German phrase book. Schweinfleisch is pork, rindfleisch is beef, kalbfleisch is lamb. Don’t these people ever eat chicken?

The man in the apron reappears and you ask for a suggestion. His English is perfect, though he seems to speak with a slight Irish accent. He suggests the pot roast. It arrives and is sublime, big hunks of beef cooked to perfection with potatoes roasted in drippings.

After dinner, a digestif, armagnac or calvados, it doesn’t matter; the point is to “ease on into the evening” as Al Hansen often said. When you speak the name “Al Hansen” in Chin’s, the man in the apron comes over and introduces himself. His name is Hanjo Scharfenberg, half owner of Chin’s and a dear friend of the late Mr. Hansen. He pulls up a chair and orders a bottle of good French Medoc. A waitress brings it over and glasses go all around. It seems appropriate to begin the first of many toasts with a toast to Al, and then another.

Chin’s is more than a bar, more than a restaurant, more than an art world pit stop. If Cologne was Al’s home for the last 15 years of his life, then Chin’s Bar was the fireplace around which he sat nightly; it was his domain, his tiny kingdom, his emerald isle set in a silver sea. It was where he kept his heart and soul in case he needed them.

Hanjo tells stories of Al and all the great times they had there at that table. He remembers the long discussions about art and life, Germany, the US and Ireland, where Hanjo spent his youth. They discussed the million myriad ways to make money in the art world, the restaurant business and life, all of which eluded them.

Al could talk endlessly and the only person who could interrupt him, because actual dialogue was impossible, was Hanjo Scharfenberg. Fueled by wine and lust for life both Hanjo and Al never ceased creating. Ideas, places, people, everything fascinated them and a seat at their table could be an invitation to a marathon listening party. Other times they drank too much and talked too much and loved too much to stop.

Before you realize it the sun has set, the crowds have come and gone. The wine bottle never seems to end and the waiters and waitresses are cleaning the tables and placing the chairs upside down on the tabletops. It doesn’t matter. You are at the “house table” and more friends arrive.

Hanjo introduces you to Amedeo Balestrieri from Napoli, now living in Cologne. Amedeo is an artist and a man of the world. Then there is Gio di Sera another of the Napolitani. None of them would be there if it wasn’t for Al. He encouraged them to visit Cologne to do a show at the school he founded, the Ultimate Akademie. They did the show and remained in Germany.

More wine, more stories, and more fun. Hanjo’s ex-wife Barbara Pellini enters and all the men rise to their feet. This is the sort of effect Barbara causes wherever she goes. She takes a seat and orders a sekt (dry champagne). The restaurant is closing, the staff wants to leave but there’s no cause for alarm. We simply move downstairs to the real “bar” part of Chin’s Bar.

Tabs are calculated and money exchanged; you’re never quite sure which wine you paid for or which you ordered, all you know is, you drank it so you put your trust in Hanjo and it’s not a bad call.

You exit the restaurant take two steps to the right, through a door and down steep stairs to the dark red room with recessed lighting and music that makes you want to cry or drink or both. The saddest music plays in the bar downstairs at Chin’s. Music to Prepare for Suicide, Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Edith Piaf.

There’s no rest for the wicked at Chin’s and it’s rumored no one has ever heard the words “last call”. As long as you would like to drink, Kei the brilliant bartender will gladly be of service. It’s time to order. Unlike its counterpart, Chins, The Bar has a menu. There are over 150 cocktails listed on the menu as well as French, Italian and German wines but there is only one beer.

In Germany, the brewers control distribution through exclusive contracts. It is assumed that if you prefer Früh Kolsch to Dom Kolsch you will visit the appropriate bar serving your beer of choice. In practice everyone drinks everything always, and usually, while smoking.

What is kölsch? (pronounced kuhlsh while pursing the lips like a supermodel). Like any language many things have different names in their own language than they do in English. Cologne is called Köln and people from Cologne are Kölners. Because the local dialect is also called kölsch there is a joke that goes: What is the only language you can drink? Kölsch.

The danger of kölsch is that it tastes so good. It’s a very light beer; smooth, tasty and almost a little sweet, like spring water. So you decide to slow down and have a kölsch. But 21 centiliters doesn’t go very far so you order a “grosse kölsch.” And the artist Stefan Wewerke walks in with Luisa and Mimi Klein from Munich and Stefan starts telling stories.

He was also an old friend of Al’s and that requires another round and another toast. And of course it is November and the Cologne Art Fair is in full swing so Hans Hermann T. walks in with some Italian gallerists from Modena. Hans is an artist. In addition to his own oeuvre, he makes exquisite editions in collaboration with other artists like Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys. He knew Al and loved him dearly. Al often stayed at his villa in the north of Italy near San Remo. More drinks.

A few minutes (or is it hours) later the American Artist Jack Ox enters with collector Joyce Ann Scheuch and she begins railing against the latest art world evils which have beset her. But through it all she survives and even prospers. Al loved that about her.

Finally, just when you swore you could see the sun rising (there are no windows and you are in the basement) in walks Francesco Conz, the collector from Verona with his friend the curator Wayne Baerwaldt. Francesco was one of Al’s early supporters and collected him for years. Francesco orders a round for everyone in the bar (does he even carry money?) and the party goes full tilt.

Kei the bartender is smoking and keeping three conversations going while mixing four drink orders in five languages, the journalist from Wales is talking madly away in loud British English, several women are crying (no one knows why), the music gets louder, the smoke gets thicker, you can hardly see across the table.

Edith Piaf is shaking a tremolotov cocktail in her throat, Francesco is rolling around on the ground and mumbling something about museums and through it all a single figure sits remotely unaffected by the drama.

His name is Sing Ling Chin; the calm center of the raging storm. Chins namesake and part owner sits at the far end on a stool like a customer; he is having a quiet conversation with his girlfriend the lovely Susanna. Like the chambers of a revolver, the guilty parties spin back and forth in a “hash booze miasma” around and around like the figures of the clock that chimes in the City Hall in Munich.

It’s time to leave and you gather your coat, scarf and gloves from the chrome coat rack by the bathroom door. You say goodbye to those whose names you remember, and wave goodbye to the rest. Your head is spinning and you realize why handrails were invented as you make your way up the stairs.

A deep dark blue becomes brighter as you ascend and you can make out a lighter shade of Prussian blue on the horizon. You begin to regret the evening, the kölsch, your life, and then you realize that might just have been the best night of your life.

The last strains of Piaf follow you down Im Ferkulum toward the taxi stand at Chlodwigplatz.

I wonder who’s going to be at Chin’s tomorrow night?

Ed note: Chins closed some years ago. This was written before that.

I remember going to a municipal pool once when I was very young. I loved the idea of the pool and longed to be a part of the splishy-splashy group of gleeful children cavorting about with joyful abandon.  All I could muster, however, was a hopeless white-knuckled, desperation, clinging-to-the-pool-edge, filled with terror and dread. As much as I wanted it not to be true, the pool only represented certain death to me.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to learn to swim. I truly did, but if I went anywhere near the deep end of a swimming pool, I sank immediately like a lead weight. I knew this to be true because I had done experiments on this very subject. Seeing lead weights in my father’s box of fishing tackle, I had placed them in a bucket of water when he wasn’t looking. They sank fast and furiously, just like me.

Years later, I found myself in the majestic Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. I was inspired by the ancient and deep Adirondack lakes and realized then that I must conquer the attitudes and fears that were preventing me from enjoying all the Adirondacks had to offer.

When I was twenty-four years old I acquired a godson thirty years my senior, a psychologist and educator from upstate New York. He was my wife’s godfather but had no godfather of his own. In an effort to fill this void we discussed my becoming his godfather and since I found him utterly charming and we got along famously I agreed. He has been my godson ever since and we have spent many happy summers together.

We even invented a form of fishing that is 100% harmless to fish. It is called magnet fishing and all you need is some form of transportation on the water, a long rope and a big magnet.

It was in this spirit of love and friendship that my godson, Dr. Emmanuel Bernstein of Saranac Lake, New York, offered to teach me how to swim. He said we should go to the indoor pool at the Howard Johnson in nearby Lake Placid and begin there. I am a fan of adventures that begin inside a Howard Johnson so I agreed without reservation.

My first lesson found me confronting my old fears and attitudes once more. I found again, that if I went near the deep end, I sank like a rock. Curiously, in the shallow end I was a cork, popping around on the surface, unable to submerge my entire body without great effort. How could this be? What was the difference?

I read somewhere that Thai people are able to float in a sitting position while holding their ankles with their legs tucked beneath them. A curious foreigner saw a group of Thai people floating in a pool with their heads just above the water. He could not believe what he was seeing and asked one of them, “Why don’t you sink?” The floater replied, “Because I don’t want to.”

I felt as if the answer to my question, why I sank like a coke bottle filled with cement in the deep end and floated like a cork in the shallow water, must have something to do with the Thai people. The secret to my occasional buoyancy, and inconvenient lack of it must lie somewhere between my ears. I did not want to sink; I wanted to swim.

It was clear that first I must conquer buoyancy. My godson suggested that I attempt to simulate swimming gestures while he held me up by the back of my swim trunks. This only exacerbated the situation since I discovered that anyone coming near me while I was struggling to swim, immediately caused me to panic and thus sink quickly as I wrote my will and saw the bottom of the pool coming ever nearer. In addition I don’t like anyone grabbing my swim trunks when all I am wearing is swim trunks. After an hour of being chased around the pool by my would-be shorts-scrunching swimteacher godson, interspersed with some failed solo attempts at self-flotation and several near-death experiences, I realized that this approach would not work for me.

The Howard Johnson affair left me with an even greater desire to learn to swim. My dear wife, ever the problem solving autodidact, suggested a methodical and intellectual approach and provided me with several books on “Learning To Swim As An Adult,” courtesy of our local library. We had recently moved to an apartment complex with an Olympic-sized swimming pool; and thus, under cover of twilight, with my stack of swimming books and a firm resolve, I began my self-instruction.

I was determined and dedicated, and slowly but surely, I began mastering flotation and moving into deeper and deeper waters. I still had a few panic moments.  One day I found myself in the deepest part of the pool, realized that I did not yet know how to swim and immediately sank to the bottom.

Thinking quickly I realized that even if I was in the deep end with water all around and nowhere near an edge I was actually standing on the bottom of the pool. A rare moment of clarity gave me the idea that as a temporarily non-buoyant object, given the power of ambulation, I could, if I wanted to, simply walk to the shallow end of the pool and save my life.

I began walking and soon felt the water pass the crown of my head, then I felt it touch the tops of my ears and soon it was below my nose and I could breathe normally as I continued walking. It was a watershed moment when I realized I would never die in a pool. I could simply walk out.

Some weeks later, having conquered these mental aspects, my swimming improved until I could swim the entire length of the pool. It was a milestone and inspired by it, I continued my daily swims. For non-swimmers I cannot recommend it enough. It is a tremendous exercise. I felt refreshed and rejuvenated after each swim. I did not think it could get any better until one day it began to pay real dividends.

I was on the fifth or sixth lap of my daily twenty-five.  As I neared the shallow end and was about to turn for the next lap, I noticed something floating on the water. As I approached I realized it was three single dollar bills. Instinctively, I grabbed them with one hand, stood up and looked quickly about the pool area for their rightful owner.

Seeing no one, I continued swimming. On my return lap, I saw another bill, this time a five-dollar note. I did the same thing again. Once more, observing no one, I continued swimming. On the next lap, I saw another bill; this one was a ten. I was an experienced money-catcher by now and hardly interrupted my stroke as I collected the bill in passing.

Giddy with delight yet struggling against an incipient sense of guilt, I began to wonder. Where was it coming from? Was someone standing on one of the overlooking balconies tossing bills into the pool just to watch me palm them as I swam? Was I being taped surreptitiously for some new type of television show? What would happen on the next lap? Would there be a twenty floating on the shallow end this time?

I was absolutely flabbergasted when on my next lap there was, in fact, a twenty-dollar bill floating in the water. I grabbed the bill, continued swimming and could hardly breathe from all the excitement. I had no hopes at all of finding a fifty-dollar bill. I suppose Las Vegas had trained me to walk away from a table after modest wins, instead of holding out for an elusive bigger jackpot.

On the next lap there was no money, only a dark rectangular object on the shallow end floor. It was a man’s wallet and I knew at that very moment that I would not keep my “not so” ill-gotten gains. It was a deflating moment. Too many years of Catholic school had impressed upon me the idea that I must return the wallet and all the money to the office of the apartment complex adjacent to the pool.

Depressed by my honesty and short-lived affluence, I decided to end my swim and head for the office. As an afterthought, I decided to look in the wallet in case it was a neighbor I knew. It turned out to be someone I knew well but not well enough. Staring back at me from inside the wallet ID photo display was me.