I moved to New York City in 1969 to attend NYU as a mathematics major. It took very little time to realize that a career as a mathematician would be a high road, reserved for the crème de la crème and not for a boy from a small town in Connecticut who fancied himself to be a math whiz. I dabbled in other curricula, and in my third year, disillusioned, I dropped out.

I did various odd jobs, and by 1975, I was very underemployed. And bored. My Siamese cats were bored also. I purchased three small hollow plastic golf balls sold as cat toys. My cats, as they are prone to do, showed no interest in commercial cat toys, preferring to play with anything else, particularly things verboten.

Frustrated with my useless purchase, I decide to try and JUGGLE the three balls, but to no avail, reminiscent of my childhood, when I would occasionally try to juggle batteries taken out of a toy. But I was curious and decided to put closure to this childhood fascination. I purchased the only book in print on juggling at the time. In its pages, I was informed that a juggling ball needed proper size and weight and that, in a pinch, even the clichéd oranges would suffice. A trip to the refrigerator, and voila – my efforts at learning three were met with an immediate improvement.
Soon, I located the only juggler listing himself in the yellow pages: Jay Green, a jewelry engraver and professional juggler. I visited his studio in midtown Manhattan. There, he demonstrated his extraordinary juggling talents.  Right there, on that day, my love and romance for the art of juggling began.

Before leaving, he informed about an ongoing workshop in Wall Street. I attended the workshop regularly and discovered that there was a dearth of readily available equipment for juggling. I began making for myself, and soon a business was born. You can read the entire story here.
In a way however, I find that success stories, including my own, can be a bit boring; behind every success, there is always a story, and unless one comes from money, traced back far enough, behind every example of someone with more, there was a time with less, usually much less – Warren Buffett delivering newspapers, or Steve Jobs as an adopted child and college drop out.

In New York City, there are many failures, infinitely more than the successes. The city is built atop business failures. The plethora of retail store closings boggles the mind. Heartbreaking efforts, determination, and stamina against all odds with closures and bankruptcies nonetheless. Millions invested, millions lost. Beautiful retail spaces created, only to be ripped out months later. I see it every day. Often, the road to failure is as interesting and harrowing as that to success. But people need inspiration, not discouragement, and the details behind the failures, unless part of a longer road to success, largely remain untold.

Recently, rummaging through my desk at my office on lower Broadway, I found one of the original cat toy balls, shown in the photo. Sadly, it is the only one remaining of the original set of three, the other two lost or misplaced and not seen in years, a reminder that material success and personal good fortune are fragile and fleeting, as easily lost as gained. Perhaps a metaphor for tenacity and good luck in business, I have been hanging on tight to That Last Ball…

More on my juggling business: Luck of the Irish, Smile by Fire, Not Of Them, Please Rub Off on Me, Just Like Steve Mills, Think Big, On the Road, Really Smart Guys, Fish and Ponds, Kind Words, Signature, Spinning, Juggle This

This street sign was pointed out to me by a fellow friend and photographer. It has created a small stir and is the perfect fuel for those who like to believe that the age of Orwell’s Big Brother is coming soon or has already arrived. Civil liberties advocates are running with this, and the Internet is abuzz with articles and comments/opinions as to the seriousness of this intrusion into the privacy of civilians by the use of UAVs (Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles).

However, it is not clear that these signs are actually the work of the NYPD, and the stir is going as planned. According to an article in the New Yorker on January 23, 2012 by Nick Paumgarten, the signage is the work of a 28-year-old photographer in Manhattan who had served in Iraq as a geospatial analyst for the army. He’d worked with satellite and drone images to provide maps for troops on the ground.

After his discharge from the Army, he became a radical art school student who was dismayed with the Army’s use of drones to kills militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan which were being tested on home soil. From the article:

He found a municipal sign manufacturer in a state far from New York, so as not to raise any alarm, and ordered a series of drone-alert parking sings that he’d designed to look as if they’d been issued by the NYPD. Very late on several nights a few weeks ago he set out with a crew of five to install the signs in SoHo, the West Village, Chelsea, Dumbo, and Williamsburg. Two of them did the installing, the others were on the lookout. The had walkie-talkies and, since they were on an open frequency, communicated in military code.

Eleven such signs were installed – some have disappeared quickly, while others remain. References to the New Yorker article populate the Internet alongside assertions that the signs and threat of the use of drones for civilian monitoring is real. Comments are dominated by alarmist reactions, as would be expected.

If the work is not that of the NYPD and by an activist, I am puzzled as to why these signs would remain prominently posted. I called the local precinct, and they seemed unaware of the signs and not particularly alarmed. The community affairs officer said that if the sign bothered me, I should take it down. When I asked regarding the legality of posting signs appearing to be those of the NYPD, she mentioned freedom of speech. I have no intention of attempting to remove a sign prominently located on Washington Square North and 5th Avenue and test the law. But I will occasionally look up and Listen for the Drone 🙂

More signs: $57.50 (Part 1 and Part 2), Eyes on the Signs, Asbestos Sticks, Martin Luther King, Jr., No Students After 1, WFF ‘N PROOF, Small Achievements, ArtKraft Strauss, Dead or Alive, Store Policies, Advertising Gone Wild, Colossal Missbehavior, Pepsi-Cola in Neon, Vintage Mural, One Hour

The Anonymous Shoe

Perhaps I should have a rule: if something in New York City is enough to stop me dead in my tracks, no matter how trivial it may appear, it is worthy of a photo and story. After all, it would be rather stingy to seek out photo ops and then, when something truly piques the interest of denizens of the city, share it only with other fellow New Yorkers, would it not?

Yesterday, during the evening rush hour, on a highly trafficked intersection of Spring Street and Broadway, I encountered this woman’s dress boot and sock. Thousands just walked by it, leaving it completely undisturbed. But it was very, very perplexing. It seems unlikely that someone would lose one shoe and one sock. It seemed equally unlikely that someone would discard one shoe and sock.

This was not a monumental occurrence but rather something so deliberate that it begged for attention. Was this another example of Lost and Found – the Hanukkah star cat I discovered in 2008 which appeared to be more deliberately placed than lost? If lost and left for the owner, it was in the least likely of places, New York City, where the prospect of finding or recovering lost articles, seems about as remote as humanly possible (see Area Code 714, Part 1 and Part 2). On March 15, 2011, in Titillation of the Day, I wrote:

On December 26, 2008, in a story called Lost and Found, I told of my experience in Paris, where lost articles were often repositioned prominently in near where it was found, in hopes the original owner will return via that route and find it. Since that time, I have noticed this practice on the streets of New York City. It may come as somewhat surprising, but the more aware you are of this practice, the more likely you will notice it.

I approached a woman nearby purchasing a cupcake at the Melissa window bakeshop and asked her opinion. She appeared to be equally confused. Another passerby commented that someone was trying to make a statement. When I remarked that it may be the subject of a story, he suggested “The Anonymous Shoe.”

Related Posts: Front Window, One Size Too Small, Urban Road Warrior