Fred:
You missed quite a night last night. It started with cocktails, delicious and strong drinks served by men with shaved heads and handlebar mustaches. Nicole can handle her liquor. Must be her Irish genes. I saw the ring Jeremy designed for her. He fretted over the details for months but it was worth it: a gleaming orb of gold, green and bling. It somehow looks antique and super-modern. Definitely one of a kind. Drinks done, we walked over to the restaurant where Jonathan, Shelley, Ora and Rob were meeting us. My friend Phil runs the place and he gave us the VIP treatment: red velvet banquette, Champagne on the house, dance music providing a mellow throb while we ate tuna and bruschetta and pasta and salmon and artichokes and wine, more wine! and chocolate and cheese and blueberries and cream as the music started to pulse with more urgency, as models and old perverts and bachelorettes and wall street wannabes got up around us and filled the restaurant floor, dancing and grooving. How could we resist? One last toast for the newly engaged and then we joined the dance party, our own little circle boogie. Nicole and Jeremy were beaming, the place was hopping...it was something to see. The dinner party wound down. Jonathan and Shelley peeled off to make the drive back to Englewood. I thought the night was over, and what a night it had been but no - Rob convinced us (he's good at it) to make one more stop at the cafe at the Spanish Historical Society, over on 14th and 8th. Thursday is Tango Night. You wouldn't have believed it. Stepping into the club was like a wormhole to Europe, the romanticized Europe Americans crave, where people are gentler and more alive. Dimly lit room, some soft lights strung from wall to wall, a large wood dance floor surrounded by metal chairs that lined the brick walls on three sides (the same chairs you'd see at a shul kiddush). On the fourth side of the dance floor was a small stage. The DJ played soft and slow orchestral music. The dance floor was filled with people of all ages and colors, the melting pot we aspire to be. (I have been here 18 years, but that might be the first time I have referred to myself as a true New Yorker) Rob handed out bottles of beer while we watched the dancers, as others waited expectantly in the metal chairs for the song to end, and for the next song to begin, and for all the new partnerships that would then give way to the next song, and the next group of dance partners, and on it would go. But then the DJ stopped the music and said something in Spanish, and everyone cleared the floor. We pressed against one of the brick walls and waited. After a few moments, a couple standing right next to us made their way out to the empty dance floor. He had a beard and was wearing a pinstriped blue suit and pink tie. She was dressed gypsy-style. The music started. The dancers held each other very close and very still, then their feet started to move in small steps. They pivoted, moved forward, backward, always as one. their strides became longer, their turns more dramatic. The music stopped. The crowd applauded and demanded another. The dancers obliged. The second dance ended. A third dance was demanded. The dancers never broke a sweat. They moved slowly, with purpose. Can something be "solemnly joyful"? That's how it felt to watch them dance. Like maybe there's still hope for all of us. The tango is hard to perform but easy to explain: You press your hearts together and you float around the room.
- Josh
May 25, 2012
May 04, 2012
Life and Death, Bread and Cheese
I recently watched the highly-acclaimed documentary Senna, about the life and death of Formula 1 racer Ayrton Senna. The movie tracks his unlikely ascendancy from Brazil go kart racing to international superstar and three-time world champion. As expected, Senna shows uncommon skill and fearlessness in his craft except near the end of the movie, when the film turns to the day that he died.
It was in 1994, at the San Marino Grand Prix. Senna had joined the Williams racing team that year. This was his first race of the season, and the car was not performing the way he wanted. The documentary offers footage of Senna expressing concern that the car was either over-steering or under-steering, and that adjustments by the crew team had only made things worse. Senna was a calm presence most of the time, but not on the final weekend of his life. He looks pensive, agitated, preoccupied. On the morning of the race his nervousness is transparent. By then, a rookie driver from Austria had been killed on the track and another racer had been badly injured. Senna was understandably spooked, perhaps for the first time.
The race began and before too long, Senna skidded out on Turn 7, known as Tamburello, and crashed into the side wall. A post-race investigation determined that the car's steering column struck him in the side of the head on impact, driving his skull into the back of the car frame and causing severe head trauma and blood loss. Senna never recovered consciousness and was declared dead later that day in Bologna, Italy. Ayrton Senna knew he was driving an unsafe car he could not control, but a lifetime of taking the wheel no matter the circumstances made dropping out of the race inconceivable.
Watching footage of the fatal crash was chilling, but my blood truly ran cold when the movie informed me that Ayrton Senna died in San Marino, far from home, on May 1, 1994.
Aron Sobel - same initials, similar first name - died on May 3, 1995, in Turkey, also along the Mediterranean Sea, also far from home, and also in an automotive accident.
Senna's death led to new safety measures, spearheaded by the doctor who treated Senna on the San Marino track. To this day there has not been another F-1 fatality.
Sobel's death led to the creation of the Association for Safe International Road Travel, spearheaded by his mother. To this day, Rochelle Sobel has devoted herself to the cause. The statistics on road-related fatalities across the world beg for further action. Please visit http://www.asirt.org/.
I won't belabor the parallels, and I don't want to end on a somber note. I'll finish with a quick story about Aron; sometimes, in honoring his life, I fixate on May 3 and forget to talk about his incredible joie de vivre. A perfect segue into the story, which has to do with the summer Aron and I spent in Europe, 1991.
We were backpacking college graduates and having a fantastic time across Switzerland, Italy, France and Spain. Being on a student's budget, most of our meals involved buying a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese, which we would then divide using one of our pocket Swiss Army knives. The rule was that one of us would cut the bread and split the cheese in half, and the other person would get first choice which piece he wanted. I'd love to say we could have been trusted to share equally without the Solomonic inspiration, but I'd be lying.
Invariably, Aron would invite me to do the cutting up and dividing. I'd clean the knife, measure thrice and cut once. I took painstaking care to cut the pieces as equally as possible because I was hungry and didn't want to lose a crumb to Aron, and because the challenge of cutting identically sized pieces became a game unto itself. That was always how things went with Aron - he could turn the most innocuous activities into personal contests, and life was always more fun when he did. When it came to apportioning our daily rations, however, I sweated it out.
Upon finishing the cut, I'd glance at Aron and gesture at the portions. He would study the two pieces of bread and two pieces of cheese as if they were strands of DNA. Then he would look at me, shake his head with great disappointment and say as ruefully as possible: "That's Josh for you."
Every time, though every logical fiber of my body beseeched me otherwise, I would protest. Every time, Aron got a good laugh.
Those were some of the grandest meals I ever ate.
It was in 1994, at the San Marino Grand Prix. Senna had joined the Williams racing team that year. This was his first race of the season, and the car was not performing the way he wanted. The documentary offers footage of Senna expressing concern that the car was either over-steering or under-steering, and that adjustments by the crew team had only made things worse. Senna was a calm presence most of the time, but not on the final weekend of his life. He looks pensive, agitated, preoccupied. On the morning of the race his nervousness is transparent. By then, a rookie driver from Austria had been killed on the track and another racer had been badly injured. Senna was understandably spooked, perhaps for the first time.
The race began and before too long, Senna skidded out on Turn 7, known as Tamburello, and crashed into the side wall. A post-race investigation determined that the car's steering column struck him in the side of the head on impact, driving his skull into the back of the car frame and causing severe head trauma and blood loss. Senna never recovered consciousness and was declared dead later that day in Bologna, Italy. Ayrton Senna knew he was driving an unsafe car he could not control, but a lifetime of taking the wheel no matter the circumstances made dropping out of the race inconceivable.
Watching footage of the fatal crash was chilling, but my blood truly ran cold when the movie informed me that Ayrton Senna died in San Marino, far from home, on May 1, 1994.
Aron Sobel - same initials, similar first name - died on May 3, 1995, in Turkey, also along the Mediterranean Sea, also far from home, and also in an automotive accident.
Senna's death led to new safety measures, spearheaded by the doctor who treated Senna on the San Marino track. To this day there has not been another F-1 fatality.
Sobel's death led to the creation of the Association for Safe International Road Travel, spearheaded by his mother. To this day, Rochelle Sobel has devoted herself to the cause. The statistics on road-related fatalities across the world beg for further action. Please visit http://www.asirt.org/.
I won't belabor the parallels, and I don't want to end on a somber note. I'll finish with a quick story about Aron; sometimes, in honoring his life, I fixate on May 3 and forget to talk about his incredible joie de vivre. A perfect segue into the story, which has to do with the summer Aron and I spent in Europe, 1991.
We were backpacking college graduates and having a fantastic time across Switzerland, Italy, France and Spain. Being on a student's budget, most of our meals involved buying a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese, which we would then divide using one of our pocket Swiss Army knives. The rule was that one of us would cut the bread and split the cheese in half, and the other person would get first choice which piece he wanted. I'd love to say we could have been trusted to share equally without the Solomonic inspiration, but I'd be lying.
Invariably, Aron would invite me to do the cutting up and dividing. I'd clean the knife, measure thrice and cut once. I took painstaking care to cut the pieces as equally as possible because I was hungry and didn't want to lose a crumb to Aron, and because the challenge of cutting identically sized pieces became a game unto itself. That was always how things went with Aron - he could turn the most innocuous activities into personal contests, and life was always more fun when he did. When it came to apportioning our daily rations, however, I sweated it out.
Upon finishing the cut, I'd glance at Aron and gesture at the portions. He would study the two pieces of bread and two pieces of cheese as if they were strands of DNA. Then he would look at me, shake his head with great disappointment and say as ruefully as possible: "That's Josh for you."
Every time, though every logical fiber of my body beseeched me otherwise, I would protest. Every time, Aron got a good laugh.
Those were some of the grandest meals I ever ate.
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