Contentment at Homespun

As the world knows, every other person in Beacon, NY is a refugee from Brooklyn. Our acquaintance who makes cowboy boots and children's shoes, and who recently moved into a loft in Newburgh (across the river) said, "When you can't afford to live in Bushwick, you know it's over." I wonder if these two once came from Brooklyn?

The spare chair

At Le Pain Quotidien, Madison Avenue. A late breakfast. Fun place. Wonderful apricot jam and perfectly boiled eggs. Groups and couples talked earnestly and cheerfully. Strangers in good spirits introduce each other at the long communal table. Then glancing over my shoulder, I saw a quite different mood.

Smoking lovers

In this photograph, taken in London in the buffet of Waterloo station, thirty years before I took the couple at Diner (above), there is more expectancy than surprise in the young lady's expression, and not a scrap of aggression. In fact, even without their shared love of tobacco, they seem made for each other. You could not be sure of that in "Surprise". Those were still the days when it was polite to light your girlfriend's cigarette for her and always before your own. And there is more in her look than the sweet anticipation of that first delicious drag on her cigarette.

A choice too great

The menu has more than a hundred items on it. The tender touch from the left hand of a friend is calming. Going out means you do not have to shop, cook or wash up. But... you have to decide where to go, drive there, park and choose from a menu that is too large. It can be a strain, worse than eating in. An old school buddy of Caroline's, Scott Kelly, once told me that the best meal he'd ever eaten at a restaurant was at a provincial airport in France. The menu consisted of one hors d'oeuvres, one main course and one desert. The relief was so great that he sank into his chair, downed the house wine and left a happy man.

Café Maya

Café Maya, which lay in a rundown plaza on the edge of Cold Spring, New York was an old diner with eight stools, eight tables, and a television set tuned to soccer from Europe. There was a small staff of devoted workers. Apart from the good cheap food, the reason you went there was Louis, the owner. He was irresistibly charming and his place became the place that made eating out a guaranteed pleasure. You brought your own bottle, but the lemonade always had a kick to it. Then it closed, just like that. We heard rumours, and they proved to be right. He opened a large place 5 miles up the road. A road house for commercial travelers, IBM on-their-way-uppers, and sundry dusty housewives and adulterers. We starved, and he made a fortune.

Juicy Bar proprietor

This place in Beacon, New York, came and went too. I do not know if the proprietor fared as well as Louis did from Café Maya.

Bar Tano

Tano Bar Saturday brunch. One superb waiter not able to cope with the unexpected crowd calls proprietress for help but first she must feed her children and children's friends. Within two minutes she had her sleeves rolled up, apron on, clearing tables and taking orders. Lovely place and v. tasty sandwiches.

Breukelen Coffee House owners

I spotted this couple in the window of the Breukelen Coffee House in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. When they told me they owned the place I thought the more time they spent sitting in the window the better their chances of survival.

Father and daughter

Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. It was a cold morning and we were glad to be immediately shown to a table by the window at the Robin Des Bois Sherwood Café. As I sat down I was at once struck by the man sitting at the next door table. He was with another woman who could have been his wife, but I never did find out. Also at the table, a young woman who certainly could have been his daughter. Here they are.

A young writer outside Café Orwell

He was standing outside Café Orwell smoking a fat yellow cigarette. Was Orwell a vegan? Because the café offers only Soy milk. It's a dark place, five or six writers tapping away at their illuminated keyboards. There was nobody talking to anybody. This man liked to talk. He lived in a hostel round the corner. They would find him a job if they had any jobs, but they didn't have any.

Friends at Boulevard Café

They were pouring over their laptops. I wondered if they were too much though. Just how well matched can you be? But then I thought, no, they really are wonderful. I got up and said "May I photograph you, you look wonderful together." They said, "Why, of course."

Because the light and the background were better at our table, I asked them to move. They wanted to bring their laptops but I liked the cup and saucer and the pepper and salt better. They are performance artist. They were writing the material for their next collaboration.

Off duty waitress

I was lucky. In a normally busy place there was nobody except her, the proprietor and one customer. She sat on the stool, tucked her leg under her and looked at the lens. My Rolleiflex, God how I miss it! But I'm addicted now, foully addicted to the damn digital life.

Solemn moment

More that Nikon shutters are as smooth as silk than my hand rock steady, but I believe that this photograph was taken at 1/5th of a second. Diner is a marvelous place where the waitress sits or crouches at your table and reels off the menu from memory and writes it at the same time on the paper tablecloth. Wine, (Julianénas out of a ten litre box, yes box, decanted into litre bottles) pasta and chocolate cake, out of this world. And a couple, heads together, her hand holding his ear. Why? Maybe just trying to concentrate on who owes what for the dinner.

Envious moment

I dug this out of the files: the bar at the Bolshoi, Moscow, 1980. The place much more brightly lit than Diner so no camera shake troubles, this time with a Leica. In this picture I want to know what the passing man is thinking as he watches the couple about to gobble up their glasses of champagne. Or is it the girl he's looking at?

Baker at Bakeri

I did him standing, sitting, straight on, and in profile, full length and close up. This was the one though, sitting, behind the fence, finishing his cigarette.

We were looking for bread, but Con Ed had not yet put in enough electricity for the ovens. Caroline was not , however, going to leave without a brownie. Delicious, she said.

Leopard hug

We're talking to Carly (see July 5th and June 9th posting) in Goodbye Blue Monday and this lovely girl with a glowing complexion and tattooed forearm, plonks herself down on a stool and beams at us out of the gloom. She's followed soon by her friend who beams at us too. (Most of the beaming directed at Nicholas who was with us last weekend.)

I think they are both there to help keep the place running smoothly, a bit of waitressing and clearing up etc. Although the whole atmosphere of the place during the day seems more like home to the people there, with Carly doing the work of coffee making and keeping in touch with Matthew, the manager, by cellphone, as to the comings and goings. (See posting June 9th.)

Adam the gardener

I was thinking recently who could play Raskolnikov. Twenty year-old actors today are too chubby. Adam is too old but he has the intelligence, and the leanness.

I wanted to take him and the girl he was with but she disappeared as we spoke. He tried to retrieve her from the store opposite but she would not be taken away from her shopping. Adam is a gardener and loves borage, as do we. He also dislikes (as do we) Beacon, NY, where he lived for a while but screamed for some genuine urban life and interesting people. So he is back in Bushwick doing lots of people's containers and gardens in Park Slope and around.

He has promised to come and see us in our Garrison haven of greenery and un-urbanness. Hope he does.

Carly and friend relaxing

Carly and a friend having a smoke outside Goodbye Blue Monday. She is almost unrecognizable from the picture I took of her inside the club two weeks earlier. What is it? The clothes, lighting, mood...? We heard The Steve Pardo band with Lindley Cameron playing something swingy and lilting.

Manager of Goodbye Blue Monday

As we walked from the glare of the sunlit street into Goodbye Blue Monday in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, we could see almost nothing. A lamp glowed here and there and the vague sign of daylight showed from the end of the room. I said, "Too dark for pictures," and left.

Out in the street again, Caroline said that she thought there was a garden and went back in to find out. She returned and beckoned me in saying that there was a garden and we could get a sandwich. The garden, in fact, was a junk yard, containing amongst other articles, cast iron wood stoves, TV sets, shopping carts, hand trucks and welding equipment.

On the left was an open ended shack with a dozen folding chairs in front of a stage, and rough wooden benches down two sides. On one of these benches sat a young man in his robe and pyjamas smoking a cigarette. He introduced himself as Matthew, the manager. He told us he lived across the street and this was a night place, hardly anybody came during the day.

A photographer and his assistant were photographing a model with a head of bushy brown hair that the assistant combed and brushed a lot between shots. When it looked right, the assistant became a wind machine by vigorously flapping a piece of cardboard, no doubt found in the garden, and no larger than an 11x14 print, close to the girl's head. It was remarkably effective and spread the hair just the right amount.

Carly at Goodbye Blue Monday

Caroline not only discovered the garden at Goodbye Blue Monday, but also Carly, who, as an artist, ("I only employ artists here," Matthew told us) had a job behind the bar. The lamp is one that was dimly glowing in the bar as we first entered.

As I was scrolling through the shots on my camera, Carly was looking over my shoulder and after many pictures of people had come up on the screen, she jumped in the air and exclaimed, "That's great." It was a picture of our cat Nutmeg sitting on a log with her tail hanging down.