|
|
SubTitle: Telling It Like It Is
Posted by: rs on 11/21/1997@20:28hrs:
In Reply to: Re: The Staten Island Ferry posted by: t.j. on 11/21/1997@01:34hrs:
tj, that was great! If you aren't an unvarnished realist there's no such thing. The SI Chamber of Commerce is likely to throw y o u overboard for that. How we gonna get the World to want to ride the fairies, excuse me, ferries (on the West Coast they have a tendency to mispronounce our favorite mode of waterborne transportation). Okay, so there's no tourists on the 7:40am. How about when there are tourists? I remember the Japanese tourists with the cameras during the 'fifties. Edna St. Vincent Millay has a poem..."We rode back and forth on the ferry..." You could look it up. Everybody like the nickel ride, even the poets; especially the poets. I studied torts on the ferry; maybe that's why I don't practice much tort law.
I have a ferry story for you. I worked in the liquor store in the ferry terminal circa 1960. The reason I remember the year is because Jack Kennedy came thru with his brother, Bobby, and my boss handed a gift bottle to Jack, who handed it off in an instant to an aide. Couldn't be seen enjoying one of the classic vices, I guess, not ol' JFK. The Marilyn stuff must have come later.
At any rate, the liquor is at one end of the terminal and the boats dock all along the terminal. If the boat docks at the wrong end, 3,000 passengers all rush to their buses and trains without passing by the liquor store; but if the boat docks at the proper end, 3,000 folks in need of spiritual sustenance pass the liquor store and many enter to stock up. My job was stocking up and ringing up, and taking brown paper bags to the bank in St. George, and delivering cases to places like Columbia (records, pictures, I dunno) in NYC. Even to a few houses of ill-repute. They apparently had such things in those days. At any rate, we need to get the 3,000 folks from the boat to disembark past the liquor store, regardless of where the boat docked. Solution: encourage the men who control the gates to close the gate closest to the buses and SIRT (SI Rancid Transit?) to walk the long way around, past the store. This was how you made for a Merry Xmas.
We sold Gallo Wine, and Jaquin's Gin, Chinese booze and Jew's Booze (Schen-ley, J & B). We sold a ton of stuff. If you ever get to own a liquor store, make sure it's located in a place where a new load of 3,000 people off-load every twenty minutes, in order to have time to restock the shelves. rs