When it rains it pours. Metaphorically, anyway. Yesterday was a perfectly sunny day. But on the drawing table it was a different story. Jobs from Runner’s World, New York magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, The New Yorker, and the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine were all before me.
I won’t bore you with the details. Like people with real jobs in offices, I put off doing the work for as long as I could. Then I went to lunch. I sat outside at a nearby “hipster” cafe on Hester Street.
The neighborhood I live in is diverse. Traditionally a Jewish community, this triangle below Delancey Street (“Tribedel?”) has increasingly fallen prey to an expanding Chinatown and “hipsters” like yours truly. Add the Hispanic and black communities that live near the river and you have an eclectic mix.
At lunch I ordered a sandwich and basked in the sunlight. The street was bustling with workmen and passers-by. A young British woman and her dog shared a table with me. She sat studying a script while I studied her. Without attracting attention, I managed a sketch of the entire scene. Her dog sat still for me and so did she.
Meanwhile an old woman shuffled by with a younger man holding her arm. “There used to be a butcher shop in that building,” she said. Elderly folks revisiting the old neighborhood are a common sight around here. “Oh, a coffee shop,” the woman went on. “I’d have a coffee here, but I’m an old lady. … You don’t want an old lady hanging around the young people.” It broke my heart. I almost grabbed her arm and sat her down next to me, but it was getting late. (Besides, she wasn’t quite doing it for me in the looks department.)
If this wasn’t enough excitement, along came a scruffy middle-aged man wearing a hooded sweatshirt. “Excuse me,” he said to the waiter, “Do you mind if I have that straw?” He motioned toward a straw on my plate that was now being taken away. The waiter handed it to him. “Thank you,” the man said, “It’s the only thing I find handy for getting at the teeth.” And he proceeded to jam the straw into his mouth.
Back home, I started my illustration work. The New Yorker called with a last-minute revision for an illustration I did for them recently. They now wanted the illustration to fit into a square space instead of a rectangle! And they wanted me to make “the woman with the cell phone” look less like she was “eating the cell phone.” I happily obliged. Thanks to computers, these changes can be made with little fuss. (Using PhotoShop, I selected specific areas of the illustration—which I had scanned into my computer—moved them, and erased others.) Of course, I would have to charge a “revision fee.”
With the twilight’s last gleaming, I made it outside again. It was that magical hour between day and night; the sun had just set in New Jersey, and Manhattan was aglow. The municipal building (one of New York’s most beautiful) stood silhouetted at the end of East Broadway. I rode my bicycle north toward Nolita. I met my friend and bandmate CM, and we made a move to have dinner at Cafe Habana. The place, however, was packed with beautiful women and the wait would be 40 minutes for a table. We ate at Mekong instead.
As we were paying the check, I got a call from The New Yorker’s art director. Could I redo the new crop lines on the revised illustration of the woman on the cell phone? I told CM I would meet him in an hour and that I had to go back to the apartment to finish a job. But one hour later, I found that CM had lost steam and had gone home. Left to my own devices, I went to Veselka on Second Avenue for dessert.
