I’ve been a devoted patron of the New York Public Library since I moved here, even holding cards for both Manhattan and Brooklyn systems before they cross-honored then merged. Like a lot of young people starting out in the city, I didn’t have a lot of money and I didn’t have a lot of living space. So it was an easy decision to buy LPs then CDs (cheaper, thinner, more likely to be enjoyed multiple times) and borrow books.
Back then the cards were paper instead of the barcoded plastic they are today. Librarians just needed to see it, not scan it. And everybody had the same one. My original card having a writable surface came in handy the first time my brother came to visit me in New York. We went to Michael’s Plum on a Monday night, figured out what to eat and drink that would keep the tab near the minimum, and saw Woody Allen play with his New Orleans-style jazz band.
There were some surprises. First, it really was Woody Allen’s band. For some reason, I assumed he’d be sitting in the second line, spotlight-shy, deflecting attention, but he was front and center, not leading the band, not counting songs in, certainly not tossing off one-liners and engaging with the audience. But clearly positioned to be the musical focal point of the group. And he wailed away on that clarinet.
Another surprise — at least to me — was the group itself. This is going to sound terrible, but in my mind, knowing what type of music they played, I expected to see an ensemble similar to the one at Preservation Hall, older black men, lifelong musicians that Woody (okay, I’ll call him Woody from now on) came upon somewhere, and in exchange for letting him sit in and squawk away, he got them the Monday night gig at a place more comfortable to him, a better paying, more brightly lit venue than any they had ever played. Yeah, I know. A little nearsighted there.
Instead, positioned around Woody in his signature khakis and workshirt, the other musicians looked like accountants or lawyers or businessmen, all white and in non-matching suits like they’d come straight from the office and hadn’t changed. Michael’s Plum seemed more likely to be their regular hangout than Woody’s.
The final surprise? It was announced that Mr. Allen would be signing autographs. Now even at that point, I’d figured out that his reclusive reputation and zero-sum approach to guarding his privacy was a bit of a ploy. For an unreachable public figure, we sure knew a lot about him – his neighborhood, his romantic partner, his friends, his interests, where he ate. Still, there was no reason to suspect he would do something as fan-friendly as a meet-and-greet.
And yet there he was, at a table just off the stage, signing as if it was a repetitive act of pure muscle memory, no eye contact, not really meeting and greeting anyone. There was one hulking man behind him warding off disruptions in the flow of people with his mere presence, and another equally humorless man gatekeeping the line. He did this wordlessly, with eye contact and the slightest of head movements to authorize the next person to step forward. The line moved quickly. Which put the pressure on me because, as I could see, it was up to the patron to provide something to be signed and I didn’t have anything appropriate. Then it came to me, the perfect thing for Woody to make even more precious to me.
My library card.
I guess I thought he’d think it was funny. I hoped he’d think it was funny. But when I put it down in front of him and he recognized what it was, everything stopped, like someone had pushed a Pause button on an autograph-signing automaton. He looked up for the first and probably only time, but instead of a sly smile of acknowledgement and acceptance, that look was one of bewilderment and not a little anxiety and fear, open-mouthed, who let this guy in, that kind of thing. Although we’d been instructed not to talk to him, I said, humiliated, that it was all I had. Head back down, he got back into his rhythm, signing it and working on the next person’s before I cleared the table. The man behind him was unamused.
I still have that card somewhere. And I believe I was the only one in the line that got eye contact or said a word to him. I doubt he’ll remember.
Some weeks earlier, I was at a cafe on MacDougal Street with some classmates from my NYU summer course. It was a month or so into the course, and we were trading “Best Celebrity Sightings” stories. Had my encounter with Woody Allen occurred before that gathering, I still would have come in no better than third. The person who had spotted Woody and Soon Yi together in Central Park came in second. First place went to someone who saw — on the same day and also in Central Park — Yoko and Sean go by on bicycles.
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Not only are library cards more durable now, but you can customize them as well. Before that option became available, the library would occasionally offer special cards commemorating notable events or people. I was perfectly content with the standard red card with the stylized lion logo. But then I got the notice that a new special card would be available, and I knew I needed to do whatever was necessary to get one.
A Lou Reed library card.
Lou Reed. Caustic. Cantankerous. Both abrasive and thin skinned (funny how that happens a lot). Seminal New York City figure. Oh, and the leader of my all-time favorite other-than-The-Beatles band (who Reed unabashedly hated, or said he hated). And now I learn we had something more specific in common beyond each of us being New Yorkers and big Lou Reed fans. He too cherished the New York Public Library! Why else would he have arranged for his personal collection of papers and recordings to go there after he passed away? It meant a lot to me to think that he too had a library card. It also meant a lot to me that the library would not only make a home for his archives, but would be proud to tell everyone about it.
The announcement about the upcoming release of the Lou Reed library card came with instructions for how to get one. There was a specific window of days when they would be available, but only at one location, the Performing Arts branch at Lincoln Center. You could only get one in person. There was a “while supplies last” disclaimer that made me realize I needed to take care of this as soon as possible. So I took off work on the first day of availability and timed my bike ride to be at Lincoln Center as close to the branch’s opening time as I could get.
Walking through the plaza between the opera house and the concert hall, I feared I’d bungled it, because there was no line waiting to get a card. Had I read the date wrong? Come on a day when the library was closed or had a later opening time? Or, oh no, oh please no, had they already run out?
I went in and told the librarian at the counter why I was there and braced for the bad news. But with no change in expression, she reached down and brought up a box full of Lou Reed library cards. Must have been a couple of hundred of them.
The card was, is, gorgeous. They weren’t shying away from Lou the Provocateur. The image of him is from the cover of Transformer, the album with “Walk on the Wild Side.” The card was black so the white face seemed to emerge from it, with Lou’s deeply mascara’d eyes looking at something no one else could ever see. As the librarian prepared mine, I wondered if she knew who he was. She might have thought he was a mime.
I got the card on a Wednesday, and that evening, as was usually the case, my wife and I were at the Waterfront Ale House across the street from our apartment. Sitting at the bar that night, I was spoiling for the moment when I could brandish that library card. Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer and took out the card to show everyone. We were in the last two seats on the left hand side of the bar (or as I used to call it, The East Wing), and as soon as I raised my arm to show the card all around, four of the nine people sitting at the bar to my right, raised their arms to show their own Lou Reed library cards as well. Neither Lou, nor the card, were all mine.
One of the first concerts I attended after moving to New York was Lou Reed at the original Ritz on 11th Street and it was the only time I would see him live. You can find the exact show on YouTube. Not that long ago I found out my fellow bandsman, Matt, was at that same show (“That was you? I thought I recognized you.”)
A couple of years after that show, I had a one-of-a-kind firsthand encounter with him. Lou, I mean. I’ve had lots of firsthand encounters with Matt.
It was at a small, sadly gone restaurant on Greenwich Avenue between Seventh Avenue and Bank Street called Chez Brigitte. Really small. There was a counter with maybe six stools then maybe six tables on the floor (my memory of the size of the place varies every time I think about it.) A guidebook might have called it French comfort food. I didn’t go there a lot, but as I remember it, for what that’s worth, it was always the same middle-aged, stocky woman in an apron taking orders and dishing out the food. So let’s just call her Brigitte. The menu rotated through a series of daily specials and had only a few other options besides that. On this particular day, the special was Pot au Feu, and as I was beginning to get into mine, the person sitting at the other end of the counter, asked me, in I swear, an instantly recognizable Lou Reed-like monotone drone, “Can you pass me the pepper?” I did, and looked at him as long as I dared. “Thanks.” “Sure.”
Many years later I wrote a song about moving to New York with a verse about this encounter (it’s at 2:19, if you just have to skip ahead). What better moment to include, to mark the transition from visitor to newcomer to New Yorker? Because I passed him the pepper and did nothing more and let each of us get on with lunch. That’s how New Yorkers are supposed to act. No stupid attempts to strike up a conversation {“Golly, Mr. Reed, Velvet Underground is my all-time favorite band other than, you know, The Beatles.”) And no knowing conspiratorial looks (“Don’t worry, man. I’m cool. Won’t blow your cover.”) I’d initially planned to sing the whole song, or at least that verse, in an instantly recognizable Lou Reed-like monotone drone. But I thought better of it.
After a few plays in the band room, when the guys finally got around to looking at the lyrics instead of focusing exclusively on the chord changes, one of them asked me, really, tell us the truth, did this actually happen? Was Lou really up and about in the daytime? Wasn’t he a vegetarian? My response remains consistent and unequivocal.
I honestly believe, to my bones, that person was Lou Reed.
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Which brings me to my favorite all-time celebrity encounter, and wouldn’t you know it, it too involves having a library card.
I used to work in an office building at the corner of 26th and Madison, right off Madison Square Park, a dark monolith (yes, it reminded everyone of that monolith), not extravagantly tall by Manhattan standards but taller than any other building around it. I had an enviable commute – an eight-minute walk. A number of places in the blocks between had become personal go-tos – a couple of delis, a bagel place, stores, takeout places. More than once, I ordered lunch from a place we also called for home delivery, and got a call from one of our building doormen telling me my food had arrived.
On this particular day, after lunch (delivered to the right location), I headed out to another favorite spot conveniently located between work and home. My local branch of the New York Public Library.
It could have waited. The book wasn’t due and the library would have still been open on my way home that afternoon. But no, I decided it was necessary to take the book back right then. The book was The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley, author of, among many many titles, the Easy Rawlins series of detective novels. This wasn’t one of those. It was about a young black man in danger of losing his home, until a strange white man asks to live in his basement in exchange for $50,000. Things get unsettling from here. It was a slim book, not much more than 100 pages even with its small trim size and spacious leading.
With authors as extraordinarily prolific as Mr. Mosley (I would imagine), there comes a point where the book dedications range far afield from family, agents, editors. This one was dedicated to Harry Belafonte, with Mosley calling him admiringly, “the man of the world.” Mr. Belafonte was a genuine favorite of mine, as a singer, an actor, and indeed as a man of the world. And on top of all that, apparently he was friends with a favorite author. How’s that?
There were three elevator banks for the building, the one to the highest floors being furthest from the front door. The section it serviced started one floor below mine, so going up or down, there could at most be only one stop before my destination. That floor below me was home to a large legal practice, so it wasn’t unusual to be in an elevator with duos that appeared to be attorney-and-client. One of the attorneys in that law office was as recognizable as any in New York City – Bruce Cutler, John Gotti’s lawyer and the man very much responsible for Mr. Gotti’s nickname, “The Teflon Don.” (Nothing stuck.) I have a whole other story involving Mr. Cutler.
On a less “avert-your-eyes” note, that practice on 34 also seemed to have lawyers with celebrity clients. I’d ridden alongside Ted Danson and his attorney a couple of times. Exciting enough, but of course, I acted like I had better things to do than care. But I just couldn’t help myself that day I returned Walter Mosley’s Belafonte-dedicated book to the library. I got in the elevator on 35, it descended one floor, the doors opened, and in what was definitely the most uncanny coincidence I’ve experienced in my entire life, there was (along with his lawyer, at least a foot shorter)…
I should make you scroll a blank page or two here to heighten the drama. But I suspect you know who it was by now.
Holy heck.
It was Harry! Him! This wasn’t a case of convincing myself to believe it, like I’d done with Lou (oh that was Lou alright). Anyone would know Harry and there he was. Impassioned artist, indomitable activist. The man from “We Are the World!” From “Odds Against Tomorrow” and a Robert Altman movie. I’d read he was neighbors with Altman in Paris. He lived in Paris! He sang “Make the World Go Round” with The Muppets, for heaven’s sake!
And best of all, I had something non-stupid to say to him, something that wouldn’t violate the New Yorker’s nonchalant, co-conspiratorial approach to encountering celebrities. No, I had a genuine icebreaker.
When I turned to him, his lawyer tensed up, as if I was about to shatter the impervious cocoon of the select, but he relaxed pretty quickly. “This book?” I said, holding it up for him to see. “It’s dedicated to you.” I opened it and showed him the page.
“Ah,” he said, that familiar, breath-encased voice. He really talks like that!
“Ah, Walter.”
And that was it.
We rode down together in silence, and when we stepped out of the elevator, he shook my hand warmly, and said, “Take care, my brother. Give me your name and I’ll tell Walter of this lovely meeting.”
Okay, no he didn’t. There’s no punchline. No postscript. No late period Harry Belafonte song called “The Man I Met in the Elevator with a Book Dedicated to Me.” I deferred to him and his lawyer to let them exit first but the lobby’s wide expanse gave me plenty of room to quickstep by them and leave the building first.
“What a charming young man,” I overheard him say.
Well, I know I heard something. But with that voice of his in a bustling lobby, you can’t be too sure.