The Luna Park Gazette

Life got so awful last week I just had to ship out. I didn’t go far, but my brief voyages downriver did help wash away some of the rage, worry, and fear that have been eating away at me. The city recently introduced a ferry service from my neighborhood in Bay Ridge that stops at Red Hook, Dumbo, (that's "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass" for all you out-of-towners) and ends up at Pier 11 in Manhattan. Red Hook and Dumbo are difficult to reach by subway or bus from Bay Ridge so the ferry makes my life a lot easier. The ferry leaves from the 69th Street pier, which is a few minutes from my house, and where the Staten Island ferry used to sail from back before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964. I have an extremely faint memory of sitting in my parents’ car as we lined up to get on that boat. The city shut down this service shortly after the bridge opened and that was it for the ferry in my corner of the world—until now. This ride costs the same ...

When in doubt, there’s always the little yellow book. I’ve been going through a rather strange period lately. My identity has been hacked, my bank account has been robbed, I’m making all sorts of bonehead mistakes in all facets of my life, and I’m starting to seriously wonder just what in the hell is my mission on this earth. About the only bright spot in all this grief is that my missing funds have been restored, and I’m incredibly thankful for this. I still don’t know how the theft happened and so right now my personal computer is in the shop getting a malware check to make sure it didn’t occur on my end. I blame my bank, but then I am pretty angry about the whole situation. I’m a great believer in signs and portents—fuck logic and facts—am I right, people?--and I’d like to think that this all started a few weeks ago when my cable unit went all schizoid and the repair guy decided that the only way to address the problem was to replace the entire unit without telling me. I ...

This is the day that never should’ve happened. Today is the 16th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, when I stood with a crowd across the street from the World Trade Center and watched life as we knew it go straight to hell. That day was also my father’s 80th birthday and the day after my parents’ anniversary. My mother was in Lutheran Medical Center’s intensive care unit at the time, but they moved her in anticipation of a wave of injured victims that never came. On 9/11, it was just the living or the dead. I recall the horror of that day, the chaos that followed; I remember the flyers, the desperate appeals that papered the city, looking for missing people who would never be seen alive again. And I remember the smell, how I remember that awful stench that hung over the city like a funeral shroud. I was listening to the radio on Sunday and Jonathan Schwartz played this fabulous recording of Frank Sinatra singing “Where or When.” He made that record nearly 70 years ag...

I saw this loser heading my way as I prepared to take a picture of the Tower Bridge in London. He was hairless, like yours truly, but nowhere near as gorgeous, of course. His eyes were bugging out of his head as he walked in front of a guy aiming his camera at the bridge and flipped the two-fingered salute—a variation of the American middle finger. I was on vacation and didn’t want to deal with freaks, but I realized that all big cities have their lunatics. I didn’t make eye contact as he walked by me—I am a New Yorker, after all--but I watched him until he was gone. To be quite honest, the incident paled in comparison with the belligerent costumed characters and aggressive desnudas who stalk Times Square on any given day. But a few days later I saw a poster outside my hotel with the douchebag’s face under the words “Urgent Appeal.” “ City of London Police have released a CCTV still of a man they are looking to speak to in connection with a number of harassment incidents ...

Well, that was pretty stupid, wasn’t it? I pulled a first-class hayseed stunt last week when I returned from my vacation in London—a move so dumb I still can’t believe it. So this is what happened: I get off the plane at JFK after a 7-hour flight and switch on my phone to call a car service to come pick me up. This was the same company that had taken me to the airport 9 days early so I knew I could trust them. But the dispatcher had put this bug in my brain when I called them earlier in the week and asked for a car. “Call us when you land,” he told me. “If the driver has to wait too long we’ll double the fare.” Double the fare? I had run into this problem once before at JFK when a driver threatened to double my fare because I had supposedly kept him waiting too long and it took a lot of screaming on my part to turn things around. I guess that ugly little scene was on my mind when I walked out of the terminal and was approached by this young African man. He offered to give ...

My finger quivered on the mouse as I moved the curser over the “Cancel Vacation” tab. One click and I wouldn’t have to go anywhere or do anything. I wouldn’t have to dig out my passport, fly on an airplane, or rent a hotel room and exchange currency. One click and I could stay in my nice little comfort zone eating wonton soup and watching DVDs. That was me about 10 days ago just prior to my most fabulous trip to England, where I was so stressed, so nervous, so freaked out that I was ready to scrub the entire mission and stay hidden under the blankets for a week. I was worried about my job, my health, the plane going down, terrorists, alien invasions, and a whole slew of nameless emotional gargoyles lingering on the rim of my subconscious ready to bum-rush my brain. But I couldn’t give into the fear. I had told just about everyone I knew that I was heading to the U.K. and it would like pretty ridiculous if I suddenly bailed on the whole shebang. And I had people to see, includi...

I couldn’t stay in the house one second more. It was late Saturday afternoon and I was losing my mind. I had spent a good part of the day either at the bank or in front of my computer as I prepared for my upcoming vacation and I still hadn’t knocked off several important items on my to-do list. I was angry at myself for blowing two hours on a Netflix detour and for failing to make plans for the day or evening—but the weather report said it was going to rain all day and I figured this would be a great time to get my chores out of the way. Then my computer starting slowing down and my blood pressure starting climbing and, once again, I found an excuse to get angry over nothing. When the sun finally came out at around 5pm, I grabbed a book, bolted out of the door, and made for nearby Shore Road Park where I could read, relax and rejuvenate. And that’s when I met Jacob. He was nine-years old and he walked right up to me, giggling and clutching a plastic ray gun. His father was...