A guest by any other name...

It seems that sales clerks in stores are now referring to customers as 'guests'. It happened twice on the same day recently and left me far from amused. The first time I thought it may have been a simple and honest oversight by the staff member. However, only an hour after the first occurrence I was in another store when, after standing in line waiting to pay for a pair of jeans, I heard the line attendant state, 'Would our next guest step down.' 'Our guest!' Really? Now I know it's not the fault of the poor floor workers, instead it's the ill-designed phrase conjured by some half-wit in the marketing dept. paid too much and sitting too far from reality...Yet naturally, I brought the matter up when I approached the counter, saying that, I would in fact like to revoke my guest status and re-install instead, myself as a customer. A customer who expects nothing more then decent service as opposed to a guest who feels truly humbled and in fact honoured that 'said store' might consider him worthy of being a guest in this holy-of-holiest shrine to the denim jean. The bemused clerk corrected me, saying that in fact I was a guest. Withholding any payment I informed the clerk that I had not received an invitation to appear at said store, there was no rsvp to attend to and in fact referring to your customers as 'your guest' changes the dynamic in the customer/clerk relationship. Indeed, should this outlandish behaviour continue I will take my 'guest' money to an alternate store where I am known simply as a customer. By this time the shift manager had approached the scene and interjected, saying, 'Don't you want to be our guest?' 'Well, if you refer to me as a guest, then I suppose I could consider these jeans a gift?' The shift manager looked around for someone higher up in the food chain. 'And,' I continued, 'if that's the case don't you think it's a bit much to ask your guests to pay for their gifts?' Muttering almost inaudibly they agreed to refer to me as a customer...yet no doubt referred to me by a few different names after I'd left their temple of cloth.

guns

finished work last night at 2am. sat down to have a staff drink at the bar. some fella from Georgia started talking to me. told me they have guns down there. this fella talked about the right to bear arms. how it was a good thing. I disagreed. mentioned tassie massacre. he then told me that a buddy of his had recently committed suicide. how? I asked. 'Shot himself in the head,' came the reply.

shaky

bless the weary

fugged abud et

For those of you with eyes glued to the tales of late night griper let me firstly apologise for having not griped much lately. Life has been very, very busy and there have been many adventures that have begun....The gripe man has moved house to Union Street Brooklyn, from downtown Manhattan....should have done this several months ago! I'll try and post some pics of the area soon. The new Gripe Headquarters are in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn which boasts a very strong Italian population. There are many old Italian club houses, statutes of saints and Madonna (no, not that one) in the front yards (well front patios), great bread shops, restaurants etc etc...Some of the conversations I have already eavesdropped on are the stuff of drama. Lots of wogs (including myself) sitting on stoops or in chairs out the front of their place watching the world go by. My neighbours Carmine and Josephine, an old couple with Palermo in their blood, keep a watchful eye over the street. I stop by when passing and talk about the weather. Yesterday they tried to give me a giant fake plastic tree, 'you don't gotta water it cos it's ahh...it's not ahh real, ya know....' Then there are the guys down at the local pizza joint; 'that scumbag owes me twenty-five hundred! I seen him sneaking around here lower than the belly of rat!' that motherf&%#$@# %$@# &*%@!' There are two old Italian clubhouses on the block. One is the size of a kitchen with a bar on a diagonal in one corner. I spoke with Tommy, a young guy in the hood, who told me 'It's more friends and family than an actual, an actual clubhouse if you know what I mean...' Anyway, on Friday and Saturday nights the 'friends and family' sit out front on chairs or at the bar, 1950s jazz belts out from the dimly lit interior. You could imagine old blue eyes stepping out from inside. Anyway, there's plenty to see and do here in our new digs. Beyond that I will leave you with a scene from the recent spell in Australia.

Have some manners sonny!

New Yorkers have for a long time, ever since the days of Adam and Eve really, been regarded as being quite rude. I disagree. For the most part they are engaging, helpful, sincere and open-hearted. Think about how New York and its citizens have been featured in films from the 1970s and 80s compared to current representations. Travis Bickle v Carrie Bradshaw. In New York it is not uncommon for people on public transport to talk with each other, nor is it odd when conversation is struck up with people nearby in a bar or cafe. People talk to each other here. However two things have at times strained my relationship with 'the friendly city,' and I shall forthwith put considerable effort into rectifying both. The first concerns alighting from a subway compartment. The doors open and quite usually people waiting on the platform stand aside to let passengers off, so that they may then enter. Every now and then however, this does not happen. The doors open and several individuals have clustered together in a wall formation so that no-one can get off or into said compartment. It happened to me a few days ago and so I just remained standing there instead of trying to force myself through the bottle neck of human traffic. 'Stand aside people! Stand Aside!' was really all that was required before my fellow passengers and I were able to hot-foot it out of the subway. The next issue of the day concerns the phrase 'I appreciate it.' The phrase seems to pass as a 'get out of jail free' card, allowing its speaker all sorts of leeway, which quite frankly I just don't buy. It goes hand in hand with another common 'get out of jail free' card response which is the 'uh-huh'. The 'uh-huh' usually follows an apology for having bumped into, trodden on, gotten in the way of, or somehow in some godforsaken way, caused distress to some person, place, animal or thing. It's the equivalent of a handshake that feels like you've just touched a cold wet slab of cod! Say you bump into someone coming out the subway stairs. You say 'sorry'. They respond, 'Uh-huh'. What!!! You feel like taking it back! That's not good enough! It's like the no-wave when you've let the idiot driver cut in front! And breathe....and breathe......But, I digress. Let's get back on track here people. All the way back to the 'I appreciate it.' Fact; They Never Do! It's not true! It's thrown away like a cafe napkin. Discarded like the olive pip in a dry martini. Case in point. Yesterday as I returned from a haircut at Mikes Barbershop I noticed that the top of a tubular container being carried by a young fella had sprung itself loose and fallen to the street where upon it risked being run over by approaching traffic. A woman beside me noticed it too and while she went to get the guy I retrieved the 'lid'. Upon returning it to him he snatched it back and walked away, saying nothing. The woman and I continuing to walk on shook our heads and muttered about how miserable some people are. We passed the offending scally-wag screwing the lid back onto the container, oblivious to us and our gripe with him. Petty, this need to be thanked? Perhaps. But also it just sticks in my gut. And so, I stopped and waited for him to approach. He may well have seen me standing, waiting, as suddenly he seemed very concerned with a cloud formation way off in the distance. However I did manage to ask him to hold up there for a minute. 'Is it really that difficult to say 'thank-you?' I asked. 'What?' came his blunt reply. Ignoring his stalling tactic I decided not to repeat myself as he knew full well what I had said. Eventually he added, 'I had my head-phones on.' 'Which prevents you acknowledging when two people have gone out of their way to help you?' I enquired.
'I couldn't hear you,' he replied. 'But you did see me hand the lid back to you or do your headphones make you blind and mute as well?' I asked. 'Nuh,' came his reply....Now, I just want to tell you that this guy was not a child. He was perhaps between 25 and 30. Maybe even a working professional. Anyway, I continued, 'and so what prevented you from saying thank you?' And here it comes, his reply, 'I appreciate it.' Now I know dear reader, that you may be thinking 'well he said a kind of thank you...' but No! 'I appreciate it,' has been made redundant by its ubiquity. Worn out by overuse. It's a tossed out token of manufactured sycophancy. A phrase as gormless as its speaker. I shook my head and started to walk away. You can't fight city hall kid!! A few steps on the guy called out, 'Hey, and Thank you.' 'You're welcome,' I replied. One down, eight million to go!

MISTER PLOUGH

anyone for brenfast

Delhi Beer

...long way to go just for a beer.....

spelling mistake #2

The pleas fell on deaf ears...

Spelling mistake #1

This sign is at 34th St/Penn Station on a very busy platform. It must be glanced at by tens of thousands of people a day. I might petition NY city council to fix it.

I am not...

nor have ever been, Grizzly Adams....
...although, looking at the back catalogue of the series, probably not so bad.

Overheard at the hardware store

Overheard at Tribeca hardware: Day 1

Customer: I heard that in California they found a cancer causing ingredient in this paint.
Hardware shop dude: What don't they think causes cancer in California? You live in New York, cancer's everywhere. You want the paint?
Customer: I guess.

Day 2
Customer: Are these heaters any good?
Hardware shop dude: To tell you the truth they're all crap.

Top of the Hill

Two snaps from the top of the run. The wind would whip fiercely over the peaks whipping up flurries of snow. Cold, yet by the end of the run you'd be warm and sweating. Then ready to do it all again. We had a ritual at the end of each day to imbibe a Speckled Hen at The Old English Inn where we listened to and told our own tall tales and truths....

Snow drifters

Here's a little bit of snow action from the slopes of Vermont. It was so great to get out of the city for a week. Stowe, the small town in Vermont is about a 45 minute flight from NY. It's a small town, about 3000 people. I thought that it must have been a decade since I've last skied, but then doing my sums I realised it was actually closer to 22 years!!! Which just doesn't sound right.
We went out twice to the slopes, lasting only about an hour on the first day due to incredibly bad weather. The second day was amazing. We skiied from about 9am until around 4pm. After a few skies down the easiest runs I started to experience the old muscular memory and shortly felt that I had found my ski legs. Interestingly, I found that when I took things slowly and concentrated too much I had less luck re-learning the basics of parallel turning/stopping etc, then when I just threw myself off the slope and had to respond quickly. The body had no chance to stop and think and had to learn instantly...so that's the approach I took. After a couple of runs and a pretty good stack we decided to hit the higher runs...we found one that was about three miles long, downhill, through beautiful pine forests and with views down into the valley and the township of Stowe. It was exhilarating. Our first attempt took us about an hour up and down, but by the final ascent we were doing it all in about 20 minutes! Had one really good stack, legs and arms flailing and skies being tossed asunder and a head-full of snow - but bloody good fun too! Had some lovely moments skiing together, weaving down the mountain, through fog, in silence save for the whoosh of the skies through the whitest snow.