Savvy Saving Bytes

I have seen maybe ten New York City shoplifters in action, myself included. My own shoplifting episode occurred shortly after I moved here. Shopping in the old Alexander’s department store for a new shoulder bag, I selected a few I liked and tried them on, slipping the straps over my shoulder to see how comfortable each felt. Not sufficiently impressed to breakout my wallet, I left the store, passing as usual the security guard stationed at the door. A block away on Lexington, I felt an odd, unfamiliar sensation on my right side. Looking down, I was flabbergasted to see I was wearing two shoulder bags – my own — and one of those I had tried on in the store. Oh boy! Sporting two purses hanging from my shoulder, including one with a large dangling Alexander’s sales tag, I had calmly sauntered past the store security guard. What if he had spotted it? What if he had hauled me in as a shoplifter? What if the police had been called? I could have been (gulp) arrested.

I stood in the street, uncertain what to do. If I returned the bag, what could I possibly say to store personnel that would sound plausible? Who would believe that anyone would have been dopey enough to leave the store unaware they were carrying store merchandise – and then compound that dopiness by attempting to return it? And if I simply attempted to replace the purse back on its peg without a word to anyone, that could look weird to their cameras too. Suspicious even. Every possible move seemed impossible.

After a tidy donation to the American Ballet Theatre, a friend was rewarded with two member passes to a dress rehearsal of their new ballet, Lady of the Camellias, and invited me to come along. Cool. A member of stage crew in school, I’ve always been as fascinated with what’s happening behind the curtain as in front of it.

I also looked forward to photographing Lincoln Center, especially the interior of the ballet’s home theatre, the Metropolitan Opera House, with its great, curved staircases and dazzling crystal lights. But when I arrived at the Met — alone, my friend had suddenly been hit with a virus — I received the disheartening news from a security guard that no photographs were allowed in the house beyond the ticket takers. Bummer! I consoled myself with some rapid shots in the gift shop and lobby.

In past posts I’ve praised living a simple life without luxuries or fancy schmancy things. But today I want to say three cheers for all the material things in my life. I feel especially fortunate to have them when Mother Nature exhibits her wicked ways, like today  – when it’s hot, steamy and oppressively uncomfortable.

As soon as torrid summer temps arrive in the city I shift into summer hours, namely going to bed earlier and waking up earlier – a lot earlier. This allows me to get out on the street during the coolest part of the day, accomplish all my errands and appointments and scurry back home before the noonday sun sizzles me senseless. Even still, after walking a few miles, sometimes weighed down by bags containing cannon balls disguised as  groceries, I’m usually in pretty frazzled condition by the time I climb those four flights in my brownstone.  When I walk in the door and turn on my fan or air conditioner, I exhale an instant thank you for these instantly refreshing goodies. I also say a heartfelt thanks for the big white material possession in my kitchen – my refrigerator, containing the cooling wonders of ice cubes, cold drinks and a pitcher of chilled water to revive my baked body and spirit. And why is this such a big deal? Because there are people outside in the street and all over this city and country and world who are also suffering in oppressive heat, but who have no air conditioner or fan or refrigerator or clean clothes to change into, or shower to cool off in, or even a simple glass to fill with cold water.

In an Antique store in Virginia, a friend spotted a desk wastebasket on sale that looked strangely familiar. When she turned it over she recognized the label that had been pasted on the bottom when she had thrown it out a few weeks earlier. That’s when she first discovered that antique store owners in her area made regular rounds through better neighborhoods during hushed early morning hours, cruising for treasures among the trash left out at curbside. And it was amazing, some of the things people so casually tossed out. Last Christmas, at the house next door, I spotted two huge, brand new looking children’s cars (the big kind that kids drive) that had been dumped simply because the kids received gifts of even bigger cars to tootle around the neighborhood.

But for street treasures per square foot, I doubt that any place can match Manhattan on nights when furniture and large objects of all kinds are hauled to the curb for next day pick-up. When I moved into my first apartment, these street displays became my Bloomingdales, my chair store, my table store and my antique store.

Titled “Whaa? Positively Puzzling Celebrity Shoes,” the Daily News recently featured a collection of the newest shoes celebrities are putting on their feet these days. Thanks to these red carpet style setters, we’ll soon be seeing everyday fashionistas wobbling in the streets in super high stilettos and holding on to lamp posts trying to balance themselves on stilt-like platforms, while their spiked and studded shoe straps mash passing ankles.

It appears a number of these footwear creations are not made for hitting the pavement. Gwyneth Paltrow needed her bodyguard’s help to clomp down a flight of stairs in her towering pencil thin stilettos.

And just when did shoe straps suddenly multiply into five, ten or twenty straps on a single shoe? The only function this overload performs as far as I can tell is to bite into more flesh, cut off more circulation and leave behind longer stairways of red welts.

At midnight on Friday at the start of a long, three-day holiday weekend, my computer turned into a pumpkin. A very dead pumpkin. When I pushed the power button, it gave off a faint, sputtering glow, then instantly died. No power. Which meant — gasp — no computer for…how long? Finding kangaroos on Fifth Avenue would be easier than finding IT guys this weekend, so we were talking at least a week here with no Mac. Maybe even (groan) two weeks. Wow. I hadn’t gone that long with no computer to play with since…I honestly couldn’t remember when.

My Mac’s rebellion was not unexpected. Though less than 10 years old, the machine had been labeled that dirtiest of words in Apple-land — OBSOLETE. Apple no longer listed or sold parts for it.

I didn’t need a calendar to tell me Labor Day was on the horizon. The corn told me. Up until two weeks ago the corn on the cob at the farmer’s market had been pristinely golden. Then the week before last, a few brownish kernels popped up along the golden rows. And last weekend, I had to race a bunch of equally aggressive Manhattan women to the bottom of the corn barrels searching for corn without brown, dried-out tips. We all knew the corn honeymoon was over for that year.

Yet I for one am happy to wave goodbye to summer with its brain-frying heat and to welcome cool Autumn with the hopes of a little gray cell regeneration. So as Labor Day sails closer, here are some global quotes on the subject of work:

• “This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”– Alan Watts
• “It’s easy to say no.  But to say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows.” — Jean Anouilh
• “There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.”– Indira Gandhi
• “Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard taskmaster to yourself — and be lenient with everybody else.” — Henry Ward Beecher
• “Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed quietly and unobtrusively by someone else.” — Barbara Ehrenreich
• “The man who doesn’t relax and hoot a few hoots voluntarily, now and then, is in great danger of hooting hoots and standing on his head for the edification of the pathologist and trained nurse, a little later on.” — Elbert Hubbard
• “The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” — Joseph Addison
• “How to attract honey from the flower of the world – that is my everyday business. I am busy as a bee about it.” — Henry David Thoreau

Selling stuff on the streets of New York City is for the strong, the tough and the relatively young. Along with the daily setting-up, selling and repacking of merchandise, vendors also have to deal with the city’s light-fingered and mentally unbalanced. So when I saw her selling used books on a Lexington Avenue street corner, a frail old woman who looked to be FAR north of 80 years old, I wondered how she was physically and mentally up to the job. I had already walked a few blocks past her when curiosity reversed my course and I returned to her book-covered table.

Up close, she was quite the snappy dresser, a beige corduroy cap rakishly tilted over an eye, a big shirt layered over a tee shirt and narrow black pants. She was sitting beside a collapsible table, surrounded by boxes of hard and soft-covered books, each selling for a big buck. Propped up among them were pen drawings of stylized heads in black and white with touches of red. In the illustration game myself, I asked her who had created them. Perking up, she sat up straight, her sharp blue eyes looking straight into mine. They were her drawings she said and the main things she was selling. The old books were there more or less as add-ons. This started a conversation about the problem of storing artwork, which we both shared, having small apartments, the resemblance of artist’s faces to the art faces they created and a new clothes designer we both admired, who had recently opened a nearby shop.

Bored with getting haircuts every few months and deciding to let my hair grow long, I suddenly found myself with little piles of new barrettes and elastic cords to tie the mop back. Not about to do anything as dramatic as cough up dough to purchase containers for them, I cruised around the apartment searching for some storage ideas. Aha! Little glass candle holders — perfect. After dumping a whiskey shot glass I had been using to hold a few old bobby pins, I consolidated the pins and barrettes into the candle holder and collected the corded bands into a heart shaped lacquer box I had been using in the studio for pencil shavings. These went into my straw make-up box, which had started life as a napkin holder. Many storage containers in my apartment have done double, triple and more duty stashing all kinds of items never designed for them. This includes the large gift bag on my bathroom floor — now clipped shut, enclosing goodies I prefer storing in private.