On the waterfront

[31 President Street, Waterfront District, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Just some grocery store in the Waterfront District. Notice in the windows the signage for White Rose Tea, a brand once ubiquitous in New York. Notice too the three gentlemen standing on the corner. The guy on the right certainly looks ready for his close-up. He puts me in mind of Tony Galento, the ex-fighter who played Truck in On the Waterfront. And here we are, on the waterfront.

And if you look closely, you can see next to the corner store an outpost of the International Longshoremen’s Association.

The corner store and several adjacent President Street properties are now gone. In their place today, GreenSpace@President Street, a community garden. The darker brick building past the fire hydrant, 115 Van Brunt Street, is the only building still standing on that block.

[Click for a larger view.]

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard) : A short history of White Rose, Inc. : White Rose pencils, from the collection of my late friend Sean Malone

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Steve Mossberg, is YAUDS — Yet Another Ultra-Difficult Stumper. I made an inauspicious start with 9-D, three letters, “Eight dashes, for short.” I can’t believe I got the whole thing.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, letters, “Patagonian purrer.” I guesed. Could it be? It could.

1-D, four letters, “Jump-on-tail skateboard stunt.” OLLIE doesn’t fit. Now I know two skateboard stunts.

3-D, four letters, “Word from the Greek for ‘measure.’” I think I knew this, sort of.

6-D, twelve letters, “Venue offering theme rooms and costumes.” I’m relieved to find a tame answer here.

11-D, ten letters, “Unimaginable extent.” Happy to have seen it right off.

16-A, nine letters, “Drop-off remark.” Ha.

21-A, ten letters, “Understood.” The answer feels like something from a more reasoning time.

22-D, three letters, “What I might mean.” Tricky.

24-A, six letters, “Head turners.” My first thought was SPINES. Chalk that up to Pilates.

25-D, ten letters, “Salmon and squid.” The answer shouldn’t have surprised me but did.

30-D, three letters, “Proposal prelude.” A word due for a comeback.

31-A, three letters, “Craft that benefits craft.” A value-added clue.

35-A, four letters, “Delivered pitches.” I am wise to you, Steve Mossberg.

40-A, seven letters, “Folders for photos.” Very clever.

42-D, six letters, “Where clerical work is done.” Unexpected, even given the misdirection.

43-A, ten letters, “It’s not just a number.” I like the quaintness.

54-A, three letters, “He covered RMN’s reelection campaign for Rolling Stone.” Maybe the only giveaway in the puzzle.

56-A, nine letters, “Treat in a snow-capped wrapper.” But is it? Is it really? To me, the name itself says No, I am not a treat.

My favorite in this puzzle: 26-A, seven letters, “Modern verification solicitation.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

How to improve writing (no. 115)

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to have coffee with me — or tea, whichever I want:

One of Joe and my favorite parts about being on the campaign trail is meeting supporters just like you. I truly mean that, Michael.

“Joe and my” is just embarrassing.

Get me rewrite:

“Joe and I agree that one of our favorite parts,” &c.

“Something Joe and I both love about being on the campaign trail,” &c.

And yes, I’ve told them, or someone.

*

I finally read to the end of the e-mail:

If you’d like the opportunity to sit down for a Cup of Joe — with Joe and I — consider making a contribution to our campaign today.

*

November 29: They got it together. Witness this invitation on the platform formerly known as Twitter: “Have a cup of joe with Joe and me.”

Thanks, Rachel.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[Formatting as in the original. Bold, underlining, and italics always add authenticity to one’s writing. This post is no. 115 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

DO NOT DISTURB

From an e-mail interview with Steven Millhauser (Los Angeles Review of Books ):

Oddly enough, reading has rarely created in me a desire to see more of the world. Reading a work of deeply imagined fiction seems to replace the outer world so completely that I ask nothing except not to be disturbed.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

E.M. Forster on books on Frasier

From E.M. Forster, “A Book that Influenced Me,” collected in Two Cheers for Democracy (1951):

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

I spotted a few words of this sentence on the band that runs across the bookshelves of Niles Crane’s library.

[“Sharing Kirby,” November 20, 2001. Click for a larger view.]

That’s Kirby Gardner (Brian Klugman) on the ladder, son of onetime high-school goddess and Frasier crush Lana Gardner, née Lynley (Jean Smart).

No disrespect to the actor, but I think Frasier jumped at least a baby shark with the introduction of Kirby. Here he’s rearranging Niles’s library, pausing now and then to read and eat Cheetos. (Don’t worry: he’s wearing gloves.) Why is Kirby working for Niles? Because Frasier, claiming to feel guilty about not getting Kirby an internship at KACL, has talked Niles into hiring the lad. In truth Frasier is getting revenge for Niles’s not sharing a rare wine find. Kirby is no prize:

Kirby: I fudged a little bit on my job history.

Frasier: So you never actually worked at NASA.

Kirby : Or Burger King!

The book that influenced Forster: Samuel Butler’s Erewhon.

[Lots of English majors in those writers’ rooms.]

Domestic comedy

“Is it raining on the phone, or outside?”

“On the phone.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Welcome to Illinois

[As seen at a rest area recently.]

Yeah, not a great look for a state.

Pareidolia

[Click for larger fruit.]

A distant relation of Mac? It’s not saying.

Related reading
All OCA pareidolia posts (Pinboard)

Madeline Kripke’s dictionaries

“We don’t really know how many books it is”: Atlas Obscura visits Madeline Kripke’s dictionary collection, now housed at Indiana University. The Kripke collection may be the largest collection of dictionaries ever amassed.

A must-see: two pages from Dobie Gillis: Teenage Slanguage Dictionary.

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Words of the year Now with hallucinate and Matilda.