New York on Four Rolls A Day

Nowadays, no sane parent would turn a twelve-year-old boy from the country loose in New York City, but times were different then, and I guess they figured that if I stayed between Madison and 7th and 34th and Central Park, no harm would come to me. And what joys and mysteries there were in that heart of Manhattan for a kid who couldn't see his neighbor's houses.

We always stayed at the Barbizon Plaza. Dad would have meetings all day long, and if mom were along, she'd shop and go to a matinee. I was on my own. We always got the same waiter for breakfast, who I only knew as "Crispy Bacon."

"Be back in the room by six."

Magic words. I was loose with twenty dollars in my pocket and my Nikkormat, which my brother-in-law had sold me for a song because he wanted to upgrade to "a real Nikon." Stop in the hotel shop for a bag of cough drops that would last all day. Negotiate the revolving door (didn't have those back home). Left, then right, down 6th.

Turn left on 57th to gape at the coins in Stack's, the Mecca of coin collectors, Nirvana of numismatists. Even the air in the place was expensive, but they let me look undisturbed. Gleaming proof sets in their original glassine packaging and complete, uncirculated series of Indian Head pennies and Buffalo nickels encased for all posterity in crystal-clear Lucite. You have to understand my methodology of coin collecting. Take ten bucks, go to the bank and get a roll of dimes, a roll of nickels, and six rolls of pennies. Comb through them to fill a hole or two, if you were lucky, in the cheap cardboard folders that had die-cut holes labeled with the year and mintmark of every coin in the series. I hated these things. You had to press hard on the coin (which was a sacrilege) to get it seated in the hole, and more often than not, when you opened the damn folder a half dozen or so would fall out. And you could only see one side of the coins. With the Lucite, you could just flip it over and see all the buffalos backing up Thom J. But those things were too expensive and you couldn't find them in my town except in Numismatic News which wanted you to send a check and I didn't have a checking account or anything like that. I was happy if I could fill a hole or two. Pray in vain for the occasional Mercury dime or 50-D Jefferson or the 14-D Lincoln. Then trade what was left (almost everything) to the kid next door for his rejects, then back to the bank.

Exit Stack's, head for MOMA to see if they had any photography exhibits. Then down to Harvey's to check out the ham radio stuff and to 47th Street Photo to lust after the Nikons and those long lenses. Sometimes I'd go down to 42nd Street and go to the magic stores, but by the age of 12, I'd pretty much given up on magic as a career. "Amaze your friends!" Been there; done that. Photography was better for impressing the girls. 42nd Street had other sights for a kid from the country though, and I had eyes in the side of my head.

Take a rest in Bryant Park to watch the people, shoot a few shots of the office folk trying to enjoy their lunches. No pushers then, at least none that preyed on kids with cameras at noon. Over to 5th, around the corner. Take a few pictures of whatever indignities Patience and Fortitude, the lions in front of the library, had been subjected to by the latest soapbox authorities. Down to the Empire State Building. No waiting lines back then, at least not on a weekday morning. Shoot the usual pictures in all four directions from the 86th floor observation deck, and a few more in the souvenir shop until the clerks started staring at you, then back down to 5th Avenue.

5th Avenue was not, to a twelve-year-old numismatist, conjurer and photojournalist from the sticks, what it was to most people. I was not a tourist, nor a shopper. The pre-cell phone era. I was comfortable here, not awed. Anonymous behind the shades I had long since learned would keep the city's debris and the glances of passers by from my eyes. I skirted the clusters of humanity waiting for the light to change at the corners, and led the charge across the street. I was a chameleon - the essence of nonchalance evaluating the contents of the display windows at Cartier's and Tiffany's; the precocious student wandering through Brentano's; the collector in Sam Goody's classical section; the bored New Yorker passing Atlas at Rockefeller Center without a second glance, and certainly not with any attention from the camera. I was the connoisseur peering intently at the latest pieces in Steuben's glass, looking as if I were considering whether this piece or that one would work best on the window shelf as it refracted the setting sun across Central Park from my apartment, instead of the artificially induced luminescence of Steuben's lighting artistes.

In FAO Schwartz, I was just another kid, but not so much a kid as to pause at the stuffed animals - I made right for the slot cars and the model planes on the second floor. At the Guggenheim, go straight for the top and let Wright's spiral bring you gently back to Earth.

I could be anyone, and I was everyone.

Crossing 5th, I entered Central Park, the wilderness within the City. Two o'clock - perfect timing. Central Park is one of the World's magic places. Not because of its design or its places of interest, but because of its people - New Yorkers at play. Nowhere on Earth were there better photographs waiting to be captured. People just ignored you! If you pointed a camera at them, it was invisible, the street photographer's dream. Kids in the zoo, roller skaters, lovers on the rocks, old men playing chess, divas walking their Afghans, nannies wheeling prams, girls in halters and hot pants, vendors hawking balloons - they were all unknowingly play-acting for the next Cartier-Bresson. And the best of them would re-appear gradually, in magical shades of grey in the red light over the Dektol - to be framed and displayed anonymously for posterity, while all the others would never make it beyond the contact sheet.

I was the master and controlled their fate. Immortality or obscurity, all on four rolls of Tri-X. Film is cheap, first rule of photography.

First rule for the Master of the Universe, be back by six.