Watertown, MA. March, 2013

If all goes as planned, I will be selling my beloved 1998 Subaru Impreza hatchback today. I bought it new and it’s served me well. Maybe because I’ve taken such good care of it for 15 years. Mainly through the skills of the world’s most honest car mechanic whose garage I’ve been patronizing for more than three decades now. The new owner, a young woman who’s a manager at a local Starbucks, found me through Craig’s List. (It goes without saying that many less desirable respondents found me through CL, too, including one who kept telling me that she was “single again!”) I’m happy that my faithful car will be going to a new home, one not that far from my own, so maybe I’ll even be seeing it on the streets for years to come. 

Venice, Italy. October, 2012

Why does everything sound so much better in Italian? Butcher shop. And why do things always look so much better in Venice? Just because. Tucked away in a back alley somewhere between the Rialto Bridge and the Frari Church, this beautiful and simple sign. Jay and I just wandered, sat down for a picnic lunch in a quiet square, then joined the crowds again for some “sights” before heading back to our peaceful digs on the isle of Giudecca. Butcher shop.

New York, NY. December, 2006

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed these simple steps. Or at least that’s what the owners of this short-lived but earnest automat on St. Mark’s Place had hoped. Alas, for all their burger sliders, their peanut-butter-and-jelly tidbits, their mac and cheese offerings, the place failed. Still it was fun (and pink) while it lasted. And their attempt to revive the automat trend of the early 20th century was admirable but not all that sustainable. The backwards cap on the “how it works” fellow should indicate the demographic they were hoping to capture. Didn’t work.

Ostia Antica, Italy. November, 1986

How many tourists over the centuries do you think have had their picture taken here at these ancient toilets in the old port of Rome? Ostia, now far inland, used to be on the seacoast before silt and such robbed it of its enviable position as the chief Italian seaport of the Roman Empire. About an hour outside of the capital by train, it’s a wonderful, slowpokey activity for a Sunday afternoon, too far from the centro to attract many non-Italian tourists. I was mostly by myself here in autumn warmth and sunshine. So I suspect I set the self-timer on my camera, rested it in a fine spot and smiled with impunity. Hand sanitizer, anyone?

Ortaköy, Istanbul. June, 2007

Just a few miles north of downtown Istanbul is the neighborhood of Ortaköy. Quieter, less touristed, beautifully set along the Bosphorus. You take the city tram to its furthest northern stop, then hop on a bus for 15 minutes and here you are. The waterside Grand Mecidiye Mosque is somber and architecturally important. The flying banners of Ataturk and the Turkish flag announce the area’s gentle nationalist pride. The Bosphorus bridge (connecting this European part of the city to its Asian side) just seen in the distance speaks to the country’s technological and sociological advancement. Ortaköy has slowly become one of the city’s chicest and coolest (street artists set up a market on Sundays) areas, and it was a great stop for us on our day trip up and across the Bosphorus.

Paris. December, 2005

No wonder I spend so much time in the market whenever I am traveling. Look at what greeted me here in Paris on the Rue Cler on market day: French breakfast radishes and perfect artichokes. I suspect they were served that same day by a savvy Parisian housewife who snapped them up for lunch. Or breakfast. 

Watertown, MA. April, 2012

Oh, what must it have been like before the FDA, back when any snake-oil salesman could cook up some cockamamie brew and sell it as medicine. Making outrageous claims for its miraculous benefits. And not just on April Fool’s Day. A quick internet search for some of these 19th- and early-20th-century elixirs finds ingredients more likely to be found on the streetcorner these days than in a pharmacy. For example, Psychine. The bottle is pretty (and I kept it in a window for years) but Dr. T. A. Slocum’s claims that it cures “consumption and all disorders of the throat & lungs” (when “taken in conjunction with his compound emulsion of pure cod liver oil and hypophosphites of lime and soda”) seem questionable. (The bottle has been passed on to my friend Marin, who sometimes prefers to go by the name Psychine these days, opting for a French pronunciation that I won’t even try to type phonetically here.)