On Thursday I met Veronica while taking my weekly schvitz at the Russian Turkish Baths. Jane came and met up with us afterwards and we went out for a late night drink...
My dad making Max laugh. ;) (I'm writing this in January 2019, four months after my father's passing and it's nice to see all these photos of him). Miss you, dad!
While I couldn't find the restaurant, I did find the addresses of two of my relatives that lived in NYC in the 1870s! Henry Battjer (my Great-great-grandfather) was a carman who lived at 49 Pitt Street. A few years later in 1880, he opened a bar called Smith & Battjer that after years of research I finally tracked down to be formerly located at 422 East 14th Street - just a few blocks from where I lived on 14th street for 4 years!
While going through old photo prints I also found these amazing pics from when Scott and I went to Florida for Spring Break '95 and we made friends with a racoon who loved Cool Ranch Doritos as much as we did. We got him used to the flavor...
We probably only lasted about 60 seconds or so, but we got in all the way and that's what counts! The Dude even got in a bit with us to make sure we were going to be alright! Maddy barked and barked from the warm safety of the sand.
Out of two becomes three. Spent the afternoon playing around my ruler and compass learning about how two overlapping circles (two) allows you to draw a perfect equilateral triangle in the resulting vesica pisces.
Back at the apartment, I was excited to take my latest AuraCam photo and compare it to seven other previous photos I'd had take over the last 18 months.
...and someone dunked their feet in purple paint and made footsteps that go between the two community gardens. (Adam Purple pretty much single-handedly created every garden in the Lower East Side by riding his bike up to the central park horse stables, collecting manure, and carting it back downtown to mix into the soil around all the empty lots where they'd torn buildings down. Over the years and through thousands of trips with manure, he turned all the empty lots into fertile topsoil where plants could grow!
Christmas 1987 - my brother and I freaking out about getting the long-awaited PHANTASY STAR for the Sega Master System. This was the first RPG I ever got into and it exploded both of our brains!
Brett & Me, Halloween 1989. I was Freddy Krueger. My brother asked me to help him look like a punk rocker. I dyed his hair pink, gave him Alice Cooper make-up and made him a rock-shirt with a bunch of hand-drawn logos of all the bands I was into! (I can't read them all, but I do see Anthrax, Metallica, Van Halen and TESLA! hahah).
...but went the extra mile this year and went full grim reaper. Including eight-inch platform boots (that made me 6'7"!) chain, hour glass hung around my neck and real scythe (not pictured).
After we had finished soaking the sponges attached to the electrodes with salt-water, we secured them to their proper spot on Grant's skull with a headband. Because hey, if you're going to get your brain fried, you may as well go out looking fabulous when it happens! But seriously...
Five minutes after laughing about this, a hiker passed us coming the other way on the trail telling us that a bear had been spotted by other hikers nearby! We made it to the top of the trail unmolested by nature.
