#64 June 19, 2013

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One of my favorite parts about this one was making the ant farm. It seems to help this giant machine devised by large-brained aliens run well. Although maybe it is really just cosmetic. Regardless, I enjoyed drawing it, and I am not sure I had ever drawn one before. It's funny how there are some things that you never draw even though they are part of your history. When I was a kid, we had an ant farm. I am pretty sure we were inspired to get one by Raul's Wild Kingdom on the classic Weird "Al" movie, "UHF." Whatever the inspiration, my brother and I thought it would be a cool thing to have an ant farm. So, we went to the mall, and picked one up from Kay-bee toys or from the Nature store. You don't get ants at the store, which I initially thought was a little weird, but these kits are all sealed up so there's no way the ants would be able to survive on the shelf for so many weeks/months/years, so instead you had to send away for the ants. The company who makes the farms will then send you live ants through the mail. At this time in my life, I was living in Syracuse, New York, and anyone who has been to Syracuse, knows that it is cold there pretty much 10 months out of the year. So, when we finally got our ants from the real farm/factory, they were frozen solid and dead. It's crazy to think back on that, only because I am remembering them all frozen and dead, but also packaged in a test tube, essentially. So, my brother and I are looking at all these dead ants in a frozen tube and we are obviously pretty bummed out because we want to see these ants dig! Right? That's why you get the ant farm in the first place, because you can't believe that they will actually be able to do the digging (even though your whole life you've seen ants doing just fine on their own). So we sent back the frozen ants, and soon enough we had ants in a tube that were totally alive! We put them in the green plastic farm that was three-quarters filled with white sand, and watched to see if they would really dig. And weren't we pretty excited when they did! Wow, those ants really digging tunnels! Minutes of fun!
We had the ant farm for about as long as the average kid has an ant farm, which is to say, until the first batch of ants dies. Once they were in there and working away, the whole novelty of thing had worn off. Don't get me wrong, the inventors of the ant farm are geniuses. Whoever can make money by mailing bugs to suburban homes for 50 years is pretty smart. Not to mention, the simple design of the thing is pretty amazing. It's no more than a couple inches deep, and about the size of an 11 x 14 poster that is a self contained, living  picture. The more I write about it here as an object, the more I want to get one again, but in my adult life. I think I want one just to see if I could take better care of the ants now that I am a relatively normal, functioning adult. Or, would the ants grow to be a finite age and die, but not cannibalize each other. Because, that was one of my questions then, as it is now. What happens to the remains of the ants when they die? I doubt the ants bury one another, so where do the corpses go? Also, since there is no queen sold with the set, how does one continue the colony except by introducing new ants into the existing farm?
Luckily for me, there are still thousands of people buying and selling ant farms. In fact, NASA developed a new gel as a sand substitute which also contains nutrients for the ants, so they could be observed in zero-gravity. All of the questions I have just asked have been answered by the internet. That is a great thing about writing these blog posts. While I am writing, I have some pretty random stories that send me down strange rabbit holes of internet. This post is a perfect example of this; I would never look up ant farms or be interested in getting one, but since I was going down memory lane, it just kind of happened. Now I know NASA is interested in ant farms and their history goes back to 1900's era France. Yes, this knowledge is all but useless, but it might make for some interesting conversations at the bar tomorrow.

#62 "Blue Shirt, Period." June 6, 2013

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New York City certainly has it's share of pests.
They say that the rat population in New York is 8 million, meaning one rat for every person who lives here. I like that idea and I will continue to spread that myth even though there seems to be a much smaller number of rats living here. But, like anyone who has grown up with cartoons on the mind, the idea that there is one rat for every person makes for a great cartoon idea. I like the idea that there is a "rat Tim" and a "rat Jeremy" and so on and on until every person has a rat doppelganger. Like in the movie, "Ratatouille" the rats are having their own lives and going about it in a parallel miniature New York right under our feet. Some of the rats wear glasses, some of them have funny haircuts and tattoos. Sometimes they get into KFC and run around for the camera crews that show it on the news.
Thankfully, we have never had any rats in the restaurant. We've had other things, but never rats, thank goodness. As long as I have worked there, we have had cats. The first one was old when I got there, and though he was very loved by the staff and the late-night patrons, he wasn't very good at his job. Namely, catching mice. Now, before I go on, I just want the light-hearted readers to know that mice are a part of living in a big city. They live outdoors, but like any warm blooded creature, they like being warm more than being cold, so if they get the opportunity to be inside, the are going to take that opportunity. Sometimes, this means that they will live inside a huge building complex with multiple underground entrances that houses over 100 apartments, multiple restaurants and other businesses. So when you are in a New York City restaurant, remember that there has been, or currently is, an active pest presence. So anyway, this cat was pretty old and didn't have the will to hunt anymore. I resented him for that and I would always tell him to do his job and get rid of these little dudes. Well, he never listened to me and soon he died.
We replaced him with a brother and sister duo by the names of Coco and Felix. Coco was the star, and Felix was the workman. Coco would come upstairs at 10 or 11 and lounge on the bar liked she owned the place, which she kind of did since she was a "child" of the actual owners. We would put out plates of ice and she would lick the ice and the people at the bar would go gaga over her. Felix would hang back in the basement until everyone was gone and then he would do the patrol. This was the case for years and years until the NYC Health Department started cracking down on all furry residents and started giving out grades. Before the grading system, it was just pass/fail. Now they grade you. It's a racket though, as it is just another way for the city to squeeze money out of it's business operators since you can essentially pay your way to an A. When this system was first put into place, you might remember, the restaurant got a "C." I talk about it a little more extensively in this post from a couple years ago. Well, the cats got kicked out and we ended up getting an "A," but then we had mice. And those mice were brave. They didn't care about business hours or waiting until everyone had left the place to start foraging for the occasional french fry. No, they came out all the time. It was crazy. For a year or so, we had a really big problem with the pests. That was, until we finally had Felix come back to live there again. Now we have our friendly little buddy back with us and are once again pest free. We even maintained our "A."
I guess I started talking about pests since this one has some sort of bug being gassed while an evil Wibblesmack looks on laughing. I realize that this image might not even be the focal point of this piece, but I feel sometimes with these sprawling drawings, I have to pick one thing to discuss, since finding symbolism in a piece like this is usually difficult at best. I think some of them have overall themes, but this is one of the pieces that is a bit more abstract. I realize that sometimes these can hit you over the head with the themes, but this one is more like lightly patting you on the shin. Or brushing up against your rat doppelganger's tail.

#61 "Richard of XIII Street" In Color! May 30, 2013

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Coloring this one was very satisfying. I got to really bring out Tim's welt, bring out the insanity in Richard, and costume all of the super heros. Although I am almost most proud of the scaffolding behind Richard and the wall behind that. If I told you that this was a picture of 13th St. any time between now and 2010, you would say, "Of course it is, there's the scaffolding." As anyone who frequents the street knows, there is scaffolding there all the time. At the time of this drawing, there had been scaffolding around our building on the corner for years. They were replacing the windows or something. Then, when those were taken down, they did the same thing to the building across the street so up went the scaffolding for another couple of years. I am not exaggerating when I tell you these are up for years. In fact, people would come into the restaurant when the scaffolding went up and would express their shock and concern for the place. Because, you see, 13th street in the past 15 years has been almost constantly under construction. The fact that the restaurant has survived through this constant work zone is a testament to the owners and the regulars who frequent the place. Without hard work from the staff and the loyal patronage from the neighborhood regulars, this place would've folded like so many uptown places that can't survive the constant construction (yes, I am talking about those poor guys stuck in the way of the forthcoming 2nd avenue subway line).
When I first started, there was an awning like the kind you see uptown; it stretched from the building all the way to the edge of the sidewalk. You could fit ten smokers under there if it was raining, and it looked grand and inviting. That was replaced with the one that hangs there today during the first round of construction. That was when the MTA was putting in ventilation fans for the New Jersey Path train that has a station underneath 13th Street and 6th Avenue. The underground system is massive and so although the train station itself is across the street on the opposite side of 6th, the underground network stretches far beyond that. In fact, during the blackout in 2003, I saw angry commuters being shepherded out of a hatch on the corner of 13th, a block from where they usually emerge. Anyway, the construction of the ventilation fans was the longest and most detrimental to the restaurant. The whole sidewalk was ripped up and the north side of the street was essentially closed, which meant that any new customers were not going to be walking on that side of the street and thus not coming into the restaurant. The owners had to refinance their apartment to keep the place afloat, and were even interviewed for the NY Times. We survived that storm, and soon the fans were up and working (to the dismay of unwitting women with loosely fitting skirts who sometimes find themselves in "Marilyn Monroe on the vent" situations).
The next project started not too long after that, with the building in which the restaurant resides deciding to  tear up the whole sidewalk in front of the place so they could replace the marble facade along the base of the building. So now there was no sidewalk again and a wooden plank leading up the the restaurant. I was still a smoker in those days and would smoke in the little pits on either side of the plank. People would come in and ask what was happening out there and our go-to response was that we were putting in a pool, so just wait until summer! The truth, of course, was way more mundane, but the people who were asking usually were the same ones who had been coming in during the ventilation fan debacle so they were essentially in on the joke. Or, they were at least sympathetic about the whole thing. This lasted a year or so, and then they had to replace the windows, so for almost a decade, the restaurant was blocked from the street by some sort of construction. When the scaffolding went up, Phillip would joke about putting problem customers on "The Deck." That would have been great, although they probably would have liked it so much that we would have to take calls for years with the person on the other end saying, "Can we have a table on the deck... what do you mean you don't have a deck? I remember you having one... I am a regular there and I know you have a deck.... Can I talk to Floyd?"

P.S. There is currently scaffolding up in front of the restaurant because part of the parking garage next door fell off onto the sidewalk. So, expect to see some scaffolding next time you're on 13th Street (it'll no doubt be the same purple hue as pictured above:).