nothing is happening

Finally, a pet peeve, the base of all blogs. So I have been a bit down and susceptible to accepting bullshit, at least for a half a minute longer than usual. I was walking over to Sal's at 7th Street and Avenue A to get an Iced Coffee and sit in the park. This fellow B A was there, he had been there a couple of nights ago as well. Basically, he got a large settlement, about $100,000 or maybe more, for getting bashed by the police in the Tompkins Square Park riots in the 80s. Clayton Patterson taped some of the cops doing things on that riot day, and wouldn't give the video over to the Court or the NYPD, and as a result his footage gave a few people who got whomped big bucks in a settlement. Now B A has never thanked Clayton for this. What he does is stand on that corner every night, taking photos, especially happy if there's a brawl, and put them in the Villager. That's fine, but....

The other night I was taking my friend Popcorn somewhere for a snack and was jokily complaining about the short hours the street vendors keep, because I'd had a donation and had to leave it in there area. My friend Jim Flynn was there, a young guy who did this amazing book Stranger to the System letting people tell their own stories that lived in the park and the East River park. 

"I'm not responsible for that!" B A responded, meanly, energetically. I had become the man, because he has no funnybone and cannot perceive me clearly.

"I'm taking my friend Popcorn for a snack" I continued.

"Why don't you take her to Sal's?!" he queried rebelliously. Well Sals has been there forever and has egg creams and hot dogs and coffee and newspapers, but the point he was making was that I was just an upscale newcomer and Sal's was valid because the proprieter is an old man and from the old Polish days and has hung in there as the neighbhorhood transitioned into being one full of NYU students, small dogs, and small children. What a dick.

I could respond at length, but then it turns into "No, I"M more valid, or as valid! Oh, I know - I know about the longstanding egg cream vending!" and that is ridiculous in the middle aged. Anyway half of society is pretending they have it better than they do and the other half is competing to expound on their huge amount of bad breaks. 

So then anyway when I was walking past him by myself, well, first I  got my huge Iced Coffee, then I handed him a little card flyer for something I'm having, and it really is just something, a get together, a bunch of art, local kids, a remote genuis across the country represented in a very small manner due to a couple of drawings I fished out of a stack in his closet, and its going on for 6 fricking hours five blocks away. I also gave him my related zine.

"It's summer, but nothing is going on."

"My show is going on" I  pointed out.

"You know what I mean" B A replied. Yep, got ya. I am not going on. Nobody doing things on Thursday is going on. Everything that was going on was 20 years ago, probably male. I stupidly gave him a zine after he attempted to hand it back to me as if I were a common solicitor. Now why did I do that? That zine costs me a dollar per, much more in time and effort. He had already let me know I was nothing going on. I will NEVER get that paticular dollar back. I know that. He will never get back any kind of mojo back but middle aged complaining and I hope that Jim Flynn flies flies away safely to the land of current life. Go. Go now.