depressing, depressing....

is what one feels after reading 1) a facebook article about how larger corporations and wealthy people avoid their fare share of taxes, and 2) an article about how condo buyers are buying apartments in certain sections of Brooklyn with the goal of using them as rentals. Sometimes I am amazed that there is an economic structure in play that actually allows me to exist given the "small" amount of money that I work with. But it does. And isn't there a little bit of jealousy there as well, cityboy, admit it, when it comes to your generation financially, you have missed the boat! Well, anyway, life goes on and you exist in a healthy and "happy"  (or at least productive) framework.
  So we begin again in the beginning, in the Jewish neighborhoods of the Bronx and Brooklyn in the late forties and fifties, a place where all seemed easy and placid, where young men and women were groomed by their parents to do "better", economically. Its why so few baby boomers who were raised in these neighborhoods remained there, no they had to move to the "meccas of success" namely, first, the upper east side, and then gradually the upper west side. Park slope too, by the early eighties. And now.....
Yesterday evening: the choice was to go to Standings, so that I could simultaneously watch the Yankee-Brave game and the Red Sox-National game. The place was fairly empty, when I got there it was just me and Gary, the owner. I stayed about 2 hours, drank two glasses of bud light ( a lot for me) and then left. I was somewhat tired, although both games were important, neither game was terribly interesting to me ( a lot of long counts). Still hungry, I walked six blocks south on 2nd, to the incredibly rich and delicious friend chicken place and had a thigh. My god! Delicious! Although I was tempted to have one more, I refrained---did not want to "gump up" my stomach. But cityboy never gives up---and never simply walks to the nearest subway when he want to return to his apartment. So I walked west on Houston, until I reached the Film Forum (every time I pass it I think of Isabel, a graduate of Friends from a year ago, who lives around there), which is still being redone as its fourth screen is being rebuilt. At that point, I was tired, and returned home.
  Today, the plan is to hit Brooklyn around 3, maybe visit a library in search of a Paul Auster opus and then head to South fourth where bartender-manager Mark shows a movie every Tuesday afternoon. After that...not sure...just read a really good review by a reviewer whom I trust about the new movie directed by Deborah Granik---it sounds a little intense and lonely for me at this time. So the evening is opened---finally after four weeks from my last day at Friends, am beginning to understand what "freedom" means. Tomorrow also at South Fourth a cookout. What happens after that---can't say---will report on Thursday.