On a remarkably mild Sunday in early March, Union Square Park was crowded with New Yorkers bursting out their winter cocoons. Skateboarders rolled and bumped down the wide stone steps, occasionally separating from their boards as they became airborne. The artists were out too, with their paintings and crafts displayed on folding tables along with Native American t-shirt hawkers selling shirts in a variety of colors from black to tie dyed pink that read: "Homeland Security Fighting Terrorism Since 1492." www.westwindworld.com
A chatty and intense 50-something woman approached me as I sat on one of the steps crocheting an afgan for my granddaughter. We talked knitting and crocheting and then a demonstration broke out a few feet away from us. She said she once asked a rabbi why the Jews support George Bush.
"We need him, for Israel," the rabbi told her. "You have koshered a pig," was her response to him.
The peaceful Sunday afternoon became charged with hyper energy as two young people unfurled a banner, approximately ten feet long, and began speaking about 9/11. To quote from one leaflet:
"Why is revealing the truth of 9/11 so important? Because this administration has used 9/11 as a pretext to launch 2 wars, undermine civil liberties, create an Orwellian surveillance "police state", and keep the American people in a state of panic so the military contractors can loot our treasury. Becoming aware of this information now requires action. We can't wait decades for the truth. We urge you to investigate further. Read "The New Pearl Harbor" by theologian David Ray Griffin. Read these recommended web sites: www.911truth.org; www.st911.org; www.911proof.com; www.wtc7.net; www.911busters.com.
For info on The 9/11 Info Resource Series on Sundays, get details at: www.ny911truth.org.
Hotline: 212-714-7147.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has a 470 page report on what led to the collapse of two WTC towers that you can download at http://wtc.nist.gov/
There are questions unanswered they assert, and to quote from some of the leaflets the activists handed out:
"The building came down so orderly, floor by floor, that I presumed it was a controlled demolition." Beth Fertig, WNYC Radio
"There was an explosion...the base of the building shook...the second explosion happened and then there was a series of explosions." -Steve Evans, BBC TV
"I was hearing a noise and looking up. The lowest floor of fire in the south tower actually looked like someone had planted explosives around it because everything blew out on the one floor. I thought, geez, this looks like an explosion up there." Brian Curran, Battalian Chief.
"Many other firemen knew there were bombs...but they are afraid for their jobs to admit it because the higher ups forbid discussion of this fact...There were definitely bombs in those buildings."--Paul Isaac, Jr, Auxiliary Fire Lieutenant.
A heckler kept asking why no "reputable" media had reported (the questions raised by the activists.) For a few tense minutes, a shouting match escalated between the heckler, who smelled slightly of alcohol, and the passionate young woman holding one end of the 9/11 Truth banner.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the demonstration ceased, and by late afternoon calm had returned to the park. A lone singer/guitar player stood in the spot that had been crowded only minutes before. She struggled bravely to be heard over the traffic noises, but not for long. A New York City cop told her she had to move on. A female voice from the crowd called out: "Leave her alone; let her stay," but to no avail. The singer packed up her guitar and disappeared into the crowd.
On the L train, two Latino guys did a magic show, pulling a rabbit out of an apparently empty green holographic box, and other stunts that made the otherwise dour subway train riders laugh out loud.
Then there was the guy in the 8th Avenue subway station, playing a guitar while singing the song about the cotton fields back home. I had to laugh at this one, remembering a co-worker who used to sing that song when our boss got overbearing. I gave the man a dollah.
On an uptown train, a young guy who said his name is "Swiss Cheese" spoke eloquently to the subway riders, asking for donations so he could travel abroad this summer. His rap was so seamless and articulate he might have rehearsed it beforehand.
This is the Eight Ring Circus that is New York City. Always expect the unexpected. You'll be thrilled, you'll be amused, you'll be aggravated, you'll be shocked, you'll be exhausted; but one thing New York City promises and delivers: you'll never be bored here.
Showing posts with label Union Square. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Union Square. Show all posts
3.15.2007
2.22.2007
Ladies and Gentlemen..
Ladies and gentlemen of New York, this is Dawn. She is twenty something, or so she appears. She could actually be younger; living out in the open, in the cold roughens up your skin, reddens it, makes it tough to stick to a beauty routine. People who've lived on the street for awhile tend to look older than they are.
She is street smart; likes to "write" as in tagging, and likes skateboarding. She is punky, with silver jewelry piercing her face, and she is loyal--to Tabitha, the large brown and white Boxer; the dog that sits quietly and watchfully beside her, wearing a heavy vest and snuggled under the jumble of blankets and other belongings gathered around the two of them on the sidewalk.
Dawn is from San Francisco and she plays flute and piccolo. As a kid, she says she "only" made it to second chair in the San Francisco junior symphony, downplaying her accomplishments. First chair is best, she explained. So second is really not bad, I suggested. Not bad at all.
She didn't say what prompted her to hop freight trains and travel across the country, and I didn't ask. She said she has no family to go back to, and again I didn't press the point. She had a brother who didn't make it out of Iraq alive, and she is angry that the government would not pay to fly his body back home. She says she does have friends in San Francisco she can stay with, and she's ready to go back. Her dog Tabitha must go with her, as will her boyfriend, and the only way is by plane. For lack of a pair of airline tickets from New York City to San Francisco and about $50 for Tabitha's ticket they stay here, on the sidewalks of New York.
She had been traveling with a friend before she landed here, and as she puts it: her girl got deported back to Montreal, and it wasn't (her friend's) fault, but it left Dawn and Tabitha alone in the world. Or more specifically, alone in Michigan, a place she didn't much like; and so she made her way here to New York.
So here they are now: Dawn and Tabitha, for too many days sitting on a cold hard sidewalk in Union Square as when I first talked with her. She is always cold, she says. In the summer, unable to shake off the cold, she still wears hooded sweatshirts.
It's February. Today Dawn had her head down, face hidden, maybe to keep warm or maybe because she is tired of looking at the world, and all the people swirling around her. And this time, I don't start a conversation. I just put a couple dollars in her empty coffee cup and go into the subway.
She told me she needs a sleeping bag and a backpack. I told her I'd write about her on my blog and maybe somebody would read it and help. She can't stay in a shelter because Tabitha can't go, and she won't leave her dog.
It seems there are a lot of Dawns in this fair city, and maybe not as many Tabithas, but certainly a few. I don't know why this one captured my attention--maybe because of her neatly printed cardboard sign, its message more detailed than most, its words "SHOW SOME COMPASSION," both a plea and an admonishment.
Homelessness is everywhere. It's in the sundrenched, stardusted streets of L.A., and it's in the steamy, dusty, jungle rot roadsides of the South, but here--like no place else--it's right in your face. Not swept away under a highway overpass, or tucked behind a stand of scrubby palms; here in New York City the homeless are truly in our midst. They sit on the subway stairs where teachers and construction workers and lawyers and students and nurses and retail workers race up and down, completing the cycle of their daily commutes. They sleep on hot air sidewalk grates, (which are getting harder to find) and on the benches and chairs of our parks; they rest against the walls of million dollar real estate. They can't be ignored--not here--and they're not. They're written about every day, in the news dailies, and the news weeklies; the long term homeless, the recently made homeless, and the housed threatened with imminent homelessness. Despite the public vows of Mayor Bloomberg to reduce and eventually eliminate homelessness in New York, their numbers have risen.
Against all odds, sometimes, through the efforts of dedicated social workers, housing activists, politicians who remember what public service means, and probably more than a few lawyers--some of the homeless get moved into homes.
It's like standing in the ocean, trying to push back the tide with your hands. You're going to get soaked, and if you can't swim, you might even drown. Once an activist, I believed I could fight for social and economic justice and make a difference. Until I lost my job for health reasons, and became homeless myself, and found more and more of my energy diverted into basic, barebones survival. I told Dawn: I'm not that far from where you are now.
Where I "live" is temporary. It's on shaky ground, thin ice. There are no pets here; no kitchens, no refrigerators, and bathrooms are shared. It's life out of a suitcase, eating take out. It's day to day survival, and it's not uncommon in New York. The welcome mat is out only as long as your money holds out, and only for 28 days. Still, as Dawn pointed out, "It's better than nothing,"
which is certainly true. But is better than nothing the best we can hope for? Is better than nothing our highest aspiration?
Where a lot of New Yorkers live is temporary because real estate here is more precious than gold, and just as surely as New York winters are cold, the apartment or room someone lives in today could be sold tomorrow, converted into condominiums, or destroyed in a fire. This life--the nomadic life--probably agress with some people but for others, it wearies the mind, runs down health. If you think about it, it's a good way to keep the rabble down; keep them moving--from apartment to apartment, from SRO to SRO, from street to shelter to cheap hotel and back again; the profiteers of real estate snapping at your heels.
In Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where does shelter come in? What energy does one have left for chasing higher goals (self actualization) after fighting for the basics day after day? Organizers, activists, political leaders, Nobel prize winners--how many do you see among the ranks of the homeless?
There's a commonly held view of the homeless, that most are mentally ill. Which came first: the homelessness or the mental instability? Try this yourself--spend a few nights in a shelter, and watch yourself begin to unravel.
When I told my son, a travel agent, about the cost of rent in Manhattan, he said he thinks only celebrities live there. Manhattan--playground for movie stars? This is where my son, now in his twenties, was born. We moved away when he was a toddler. He won't be moving back anytime soon. He said he'd like to visit sometime.
Out of curiousity, I took a train uptown to the neighborhood where we lived for two years: east 93rd Street and Second Avenue. Key Food market is still there. Metropolitan Hospital is still there, looking more run down than I remember it, with cops and security guards stationed at every corridor, and the playground, still on the corner of 96th Street, seems much smaller than before, but nothing else looks the same. Most of the people I talked to on the street were pleasant and helpful; a Latina, a Muslim woman. But the white American seemed fearful when I asked her if she knew what apartments were renting for on this, my old block. She answered quickly: "I don't know; I live in a co-op," and hurried away. The Puerto Rican woman working in the hospital doing janitorial work was friendly, but said, in a resigned way, "They steal everything. As soon as I put soap in there, five minutes later, it's gone."
And in the men's room she told me, they even steal the toilet paper.
The street vendor selling fresh strawberries, bananas, oranges, and other fresh fruit from his
cart somehow talked me into buying a container of perfect strawberries, an orange, and two bananas--all for $3, when I'd stopped to buy one banana. He's a born salesman, this one. He wanted to go home soon, he explained, and he needed to sell as much as he could before leaving. I had a bad cold. It's as if he sensed what I needed--this fresh fruit, with its vitamin C. After a couple days eating this food, I began to feel better.
Where does Dawn eat, I wonder. Her dog can't go inside most stores and restaurants. How does she buy food? Maybe she has a partner--a friend who helps her with this. I offered her one of my cookies--vegan, I explained, in case she doesn't eat animal products. "My teeth are really bad," she said, declining the cookie, and who can blame her?
I doubt I'd accept a cookie from a stranger. I know I wouldn't.
You can't save the world, somebody (a lot of somebodies) said.
"When you try to help people, they think you're stupid," somebody else, a former co worker, said to the idealistic union steward.
"They don't want you to help them," a boss told me once, when I was that idealistic union steward.
Maybe the best you can do, the best you can hope for is to save yourself? (So you don't add yourself to the sum total of human misery in the world) And maybe those are the most cynical words ever written; but I think the truth is somewhere in between, maybe in the Middle Path or Middle Way I read about somewhere--I think in a book about Buddhism. Whatever it is, this path, we seem to have lost the way.
If you read this and can help Dawn get to San Francisco, go to Union Square.
She is street smart; likes to "write" as in tagging, and likes skateboarding. She is punky, with silver jewelry piercing her face, and she is loyal--to Tabitha, the large brown and white Boxer; the dog that sits quietly and watchfully beside her, wearing a heavy vest and snuggled under the jumble of blankets and other belongings gathered around the two of them on the sidewalk.
Dawn is from San Francisco and she plays flute and piccolo. As a kid, she says she "only" made it to second chair in the San Francisco junior symphony, downplaying her accomplishments. First chair is best, she explained. So second is really not bad, I suggested. Not bad at all.
She didn't say what prompted her to hop freight trains and travel across the country, and I didn't ask. She said she has no family to go back to, and again I didn't press the point. She had a brother who didn't make it out of Iraq alive, and she is angry that the government would not pay to fly his body back home. She says she does have friends in San Francisco she can stay with, and she's ready to go back. Her dog Tabitha must go with her, as will her boyfriend, and the only way is by plane. For lack of a pair of airline tickets from New York City to San Francisco and about $50 for Tabitha's ticket they stay here, on the sidewalks of New York.
She had been traveling with a friend before she landed here, and as she puts it: her girl got deported back to Montreal, and it wasn't (her friend's) fault, but it left Dawn and Tabitha alone in the world. Or more specifically, alone in Michigan, a place she didn't much like; and so she made her way here to New York.
So here they are now: Dawn and Tabitha, for too many days sitting on a cold hard sidewalk in Union Square as when I first talked with her. She is always cold, she says. In the summer, unable to shake off the cold, she still wears hooded sweatshirts.
It's February. Today Dawn had her head down, face hidden, maybe to keep warm or maybe because she is tired of looking at the world, and all the people swirling around her. And this time, I don't start a conversation. I just put a couple dollars in her empty coffee cup and go into the subway.
She told me she needs a sleeping bag and a backpack. I told her I'd write about her on my blog and maybe somebody would read it and help. She can't stay in a shelter because Tabitha can't go, and she won't leave her dog.
It seems there are a lot of Dawns in this fair city, and maybe not as many Tabithas, but certainly a few. I don't know why this one captured my attention--maybe because of her neatly printed cardboard sign, its message more detailed than most, its words "SHOW SOME COMPASSION," both a plea and an admonishment.
Homelessness is everywhere. It's in the sundrenched, stardusted streets of L.A., and it's in the steamy, dusty, jungle rot roadsides of the South, but here--like no place else--it's right in your face. Not swept away under a highway overpass, or tucked behind a stand of scrubby palms; here in New York City the homeless are truly in our midst. They sit on the subway stairs where teachers and construction workers and lawyers and students and nurses and retail workers race up and down, completing the cycle of their daily commutes. They sleep on hot air sidewalk grates, (which are getting harder to find) and on the benches and chairs of our parks; they rest against the walls of million dollar real estate. They can't be ignored--not here--and they're not. They're written about every day, in the news dailies, and the news weeklies; the long term homeless, the recently made homeless, and the housed threatened with imminent homelessness. Despite the public vows of Mayor Bloomberg to reduce and eventually eliminate homelessness in New York, their numbers have risen.
Against all odds, sometimes, through the efforts of dedicated social workers, housing activists, politicians who remember what public service means, and probably more than a few lawyers--some of the homeless get moved into homes.
It's like standing in the ocean, trying to push back the tide with your hands. You're going to get soaked, and if you can't swim, you might even drown. Once an activist, I believed I could fight for social and economic justice and make a difference. Until I lost my job for health reasons, and became homeless myself, and found more and more of my energy diverted into basic, barebones survival. I told Dawn: I'm not that far from where you are now.
Where I "live" is temporary. It's on shaky ground, thin ice. There are no pets here; no kitchens, no refrigerators, and bathrooms are shared. It's life out of a suitcase, eating take out. It's day to day survival, and it's not uncommon in New York. The welcome mat is out only as long as your money holds out, and only for 28 days. Still, as Dawn pointed out, "It's better than nothing,"
which is certainly true. But is better than nothing the best we can hope for? Is better than nothing our highest aspiration?
Where a lot of New Yorkers live is temporary because real estate here is more precious than gold, and just as surely as New York winters are cold, the apartment or room someone lives in today could be sold tomorrow, converted into condominiums, or destroyed in a fire. This life--the nomadic life--probably agress with some people but for others, it wearies the mind, runs down health. If you think about it, it's a good way to keep the rabble down; keep them moving--from apartment to apartment, from SRO to SRO, from street to shelter to cheap hotel and back again; the profiteers of real estate snapping at your heels.
In Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where does shelter come in? What energy does one have left for chasing higher goals (self actualization) after fighting for the basics day after day? Organizers, activists, political leaders, Nobel prize winners--how many do you see among the ranks of the homeless?
There's a commonly held view of the homeless, that most are mentally ill. Which came first: the homelessness or the mental instability? Try this yourself--spend a few nights in a shelter, and watch yourself begin to unravel.
When I told my son, a travel agent, about the cost of rent in Manhattan, he said he thinks only celebrities live there. Manhattan--playground for movie stars? This is where my son, now in his twenties, was born. We moved away when he was a toddler. He won't be moving back anytime soon. He said he'd like to visit sometime.
Out of curiousity, I took a train uptown to the neighborhood where we lived for two years: east 93rd Street and Second Avenue. Key Food market is still there. Metropolitan Hospital is still there, looking more run down than I remember it, with cops and security guards stationed at every corridor, and the playground, still on the corner of 96th Street, seems much smaller than before, but nothing else looks the same. Most of the people I talked to on the street were pleasant and helpful; a Latina, a Muslim woman. But the white American seemed fearful when I asked her if she knew what apartments were renting for on this, my old block. She answered quickly: "I don't know; I live in a co-op," and hurried away. The Puerto Rican woman working in the hospital doing janitorial work was friendly, but said, in a resigned way, "They steal everything. As soon as I put soap in there, five minutes later, it's gone."
And in the men's room she told me, they even steal the toilet paper.
The street vendor selling fresh strawberries, bananas, oranges, and other fresh fruit from his
cart somehow talked me into buying a container of perfect strawberries, an orange, and two bananas--all for $3, when I'd stopped to buy one banana. He's a born salesman, this one. He wanted to go home soon, he explained, and he needed to sell as much as he could before leaving. I had a bad cold. It's as if he sensed what I needed--this fresh fruit, with its vitamin C. After a couple days eating this food, I began to feel better.
Where does Dawn eat, I wonder. Her dog can't go inside most stores and restaurants. How does she buy food? Maybe she has a partner--a friend who helps her with this. I offered her one of my cookies--vegan, I explained, in case she doesn't eat animal products. "My teeth are really bad," she said, declining the cookie, and who can blame her?
I doubt I'd accept a cookie from a stranger. I know I wouldn't.
You can't save the world, somebody (a lot of somebodies) said.
"When you try to help people, they think you're stupid," somebody else, a former co worker, said to the idealistic union steward.
"They don't want you to help them," a boss told me once, when I was that idealistic union steward.
Maybe the best you can do, the best you can hope for is to save yourself? (So you don't add yourself to the sum total of human misery in the world) And maybe those are the most cynical words ever written; but I think the truth is somewhere in between, maybe in the Middle Path or Middle Way I read about somewhere--I think in a book about Buddhism. Whatever it is, this path, we seem to have lost the way.
If you read this and can help Dawn get to San Francisco, go to Union Square.
1.06.2007
Dawn
Sitting on the sidewalk near the Union Square subway station and the Whole Foods store was Dawn. Twenty-something, with reddish blonde hair and silver facial piercings, she sat with her dog tucked between her legs. Her dog's name is Tabitha. She is a large affable brown and white boxer who rose to sniff the stranger who stopped to talk with Dawn, in an obvious show of protectiveness.
Like most of the homeless who take up a space on the sidewalks of New York, Dawn had a hand lettered cardboard sign. It was more extensive than most, and the writer of this sign is obviously educated and articulate. It explains: the shelters will not take her dog, so she is living out on the street rather than abandoning her Tabitha.
Dawn is from San Francisco originally, and has traveled around the country in the grand tradition of such folks as Woody Guthrie. She doesn't mind letting you know that she's a "tagger," which to me translates into someone with an artistic bent. She also enjoys skateboarding. She was in the San Francisco junior symphony as a kid--played flute and piccolo--and she made it to second chair, with first being the best. Not too shabby.
So how did she get here, to the Big Apple? She was separated from her traveling companion when her friend was deported back to Montreal-- through no fault of her own, Dawn assures you. They had been staying in Detroit, and Dawn just couldn't deal with the climate and /or culture there.
In New York we have recently enjoyed a long stretch of mild weather, which is predicted to end very soon. Dawn said her immediate needs are a sleeping bag, and a backpack. She is in Union Square often, she said. If you can help, look for her and Tabitha in front of the subway station near Whole Foods.
Like most of the homeless who take up a space on the sidewalks of New York, Dawn had a hand lettered cardboard sign. It was more extensive than most, and the writer of this sign is obviously educated and articulate. It explains: the shelters will not take her dog, so she is living out on the street rather than abandoning her Tabitha.
Dawn is from San Francisco originally, and has traveled around the country in the grand tradition of such folks as Woody Guthrie. She doesn't mind letting you know that she's a "tagger," which to me translates into someone with an artistic bent. She also enjoys skateboarding. She was in the San Francisco junior symphony as a kid--played flute and piccolo--and she made it to second chair, with first being the best. Not too shabby.
So how did she get here, to the Big Apple? She was separated from her traveling companion when her friend was deported back to Montreal-- through no fault of her own, Dawn assures you. They had been staying in Detroit, and Dawn just couldn't deal with the climate and /or culture there.
In New York we have recently enjoyed a long stretch of mild weather, which is predicted to end very soon. Dawn said her immediate needs are a sleeping bag, and a backpack. She is in Union Square often, she said. If you can help, look for her and Tabitha in front of the subway station near Whole Foods.
12.07.2006
The Union Square Button Guy
This is going to be a short one; life is so hectic these days. Learning my way around NYC all over again, and covering a lot more miles in a day --without a car---than I used to in medium sized Tampa.
A couple of posts back, I commented that political buttons were no longer interesting to me, after looking at a few on a vendor cart at the entrance to Strawberry Fields. Well, today I'm eating my words for lunch...
A quiet, smallish man on the outer edge of Union Square Park (which is what I call it, but is probably the wrong name) was selling all kinds of buttons on his table last weekend. I bought four: one with John Lennon's image reads "Give Peace a Chance;" another that reads "Support Organic Farmers;" a couple more for family members: one of Rosie the Riveter with the words, "Si Se Puede," and "Books Not Bombs," and another one for my granddaughter that says "Peace Through Music." At eighteen months, she already has a decent sized book collection, although right now her real love is music. She loves to listen to Beatles' CDs, and she'll dance to almost any song playing on radio, TV or one of her toys.
Anyway the point is, this guy who is from the Phillippines, had an amazing assortment of buttons, big and small, political ( I especially liked the one that says: "Republican Health Plan: Don't Get Sick") and the not so political, and some cool t-shirts too. And some Tibetan prayer beads that I wanted to ask him more about, but I forgot, and so I caught up with him again the following Sunday.
The t-shirts sold by the button guy and a number of other vendors around the park's perimeter are Native American made, of heavy duty cotton, and come in a rainbow of colors, including hot pink tie dye. There's a print of an old photograph circa 1800-?, of four Native Americans on the front, with the caption: "Homeland Security Fighting Terrorism Since 1492." The website for the t-shirt designers is www.westwindworld.com. T-shirt sales benefit native peoples directly.
I 'll look for the button guy again on Sundays, since he said he's "always" out there. There are lots of vendors in and around the park, and so many talented artists. Something was special about the button guy, though. His placidness while I-- and others-- rummaged through his buttons reminded me of a couple of Buddhist monks I ran into at an airport once.
If this is considered a plug, well that's OK.
A couple of posts back, I commented that political buttons were no longer interesting to me, after looking at a few on a vendor cart at the entrance to Strawberry Fields. Well, today I'm eating my words for lunch...
A quiet, smallish man on the outer edge of Union Square Park (which is what I call it, but is probably the wrong name) was selling all kinds of buttons on his table last weekend. I bought four: one with John Lennon's image reads "Give Peace a Chance;" another that reads "Support Organic Farmers;" a couple more for family members: one of Rosie the Riveter with the words, "Si Se Puede," and "Books Not Bombs," and another one for my granddaughter that says "Peace Through Music." At eighteen months, she already has a decent sized book collection, although right now her real love is music. She loves to listen to Beatles' CDs, and she'll dance to almost any song playing on radio, TV or one of her toys.
Anyway the point is, this guy who is from the Phillippines, had an amazing assortment of buttons, big and small, political ( I especially liked the one that says: "Republican Health Plan: Don't Get Sick") and the not so political, and some cool t-shirts too. And some Tibetan prayer beads that I wanted to ask him more about, but I forgot, and so I caught up with him again the following Sunday.
The t-shirts sold by the button guy and a number of other vendors around the park's perimeter are Native American made, of heavy duty cotton, and come in a rainbow of colors, including hot pink tie dye. There's a print of an old photograph circa 1800-?, of four Native Americans on the front, with the caption: "Homeland Security Fighting Terrorism Since 1492." The website for the t-shirt designers is www.westwindworld.com. T-shirt sales benefit native peoples directly.
I 'll look for the button guy again on Sundays, since he said he's "always" out there. There are lots of vendors in and around the park, and so many talented artists. Something was special about the button guy, though. His placidness while I-- and others-- rummaged through his buttons reminded me of a couple of Buddhist monks I ran into at an airport once.
If this is considered a plug, well that's OK.
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