The Lost Art of Angling
I: BITTERNESS
Capitol Fish Tackle, which had been in its present location on the ground floor of the Chelsea Hotel for sixty-five years, was moving at the end of July 2006. Since we’d never been in there before, Susan and I figured we should visit the store at least once and maybe even buy something to show our support.
On our way out the door we noticed that, as happens frequently at the Chelsea, preparations for a movie shoot were under way. There were cones set up on the street in front of the hotel, blocking off every possible parking place anywhere near the Chelsea. One lone man guarded the cones, sitting in his cloth chair under the shade of the scaffolding to escape the ninety-eight-degree heat of the afternoon.
Inside the tackle store, we looked at various lures and bobbers and sinkers and finally decided on a cheap rod and reel to use to play with the cat who lives on our floor. At the register a tall, gaunt man with red, curly hair rang up our purchase, scarcely even glancing at us.
“I heard you guys were moving,” I said. “What happened? Did Stanley raise the rent on you?”
The man looked up. In an angry, incredulous tone, he quoted an exorbitant figure as the amount of his rent increase.
“He’s raising it on a lot of us tenants too,” I said.
“He’s got a good thing here, good people,” the man said in a Brooklyn accent. “Why’s he want to screw it up? He don’t know what he’s gonna get with the new people, he don’t know who’s gonna move in here.” The man seemed bitter.
“At these prices he’s going to have to provide luxury accommodations,” I said, half-jokingly.
“Yeah. And this place is fallin’ apart. You don’t know the kind of shit we’ve had to put up with here. It’s just greed. Greed is all it is.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Sixty-five years,” he said. “Why would he want to ruin a good thing?”
II: IRRITATION
Outside the temperature was topping out at a hundred, and the shit had hit the fan. A man roared up in a gray SUV and parked right in front of the hotel, knocking several cones out of his way. One of the cones became stuck in the underside of the car.
The guard got up from his chair and walked up to the window of the SUV: “Hey man, what are you doing? You’re running over my cones.”
The driver sat rigidly in the car with his hands clutching the wheel. He stared straight ahead and didn’t roll down the window.
“You’re disrespecting me by running over my cones, man,” the cone guard said.
The driver threw open his door and got out. He was a short, thin, tightly wound man. “You can’t just set up cones in front of the hotel!” he declared, irately. He then proceeded down the line of cones, kicking several of them up onto the sidewalk.
The driver was being an asshole, but I could understand his frustration, and I felt that ultimately he was in the right.
The usual cursing and yelling ensued as the two men squared off. “You better be glad I don’t react!” the driver exclaimed.
“React! Go ahead, react!” the cone guard said. He was husky and muscular and could have throttled the driver with one hand.
The reason for the SUV man’s visit became clear when the artist Joshua Thurman emerged from the hotel lugging a huge canvas. Cheerful and easygoing, Joshua had his usual smile on his face despite the heat, though it turned to a frown when he saw what was going on. With a wisdom that comes only from a lifetime of dedication to one’s art—or maybe he’s into yoga or something as well—Joshua chose to stay out of the dispute. He set down his painting for a moment, opened the back hatch of the SUV, and then loaded the painting in. Giving one last glance at the two men arguing, he shrugged his shoulders, shut the hatch of the SUV, and went back into the hotel.
Amazingly, but probably because he didn’t want to lose his job, the cone guard ultimately backed down and retired to his seat under the scaffolding. Grimly triumphant, the driver got into his SUV and drove off with the cone still wedged in the underside of the vehicle.
III: A BIG FISH
Back on our floor at the Chelsea, I couldn’t wait to try out my new toy. I unwrapped the reel—a Shakespeare!—and fastened it to the rod, then threaded the string through the eyelets and tied it to a plastic casting plug. But the cat was nowhere to be found.
It was sweltering inside the hotel as well. Susan and I went out to the stairwell, and I hung the rod over the edge and let the plug drop the eight stories down to the first floor landing. “Works pretty good, eh?” I said as I reeled it back up.
Somebody came into the stairwell on the second floor and started down the stairs. “I’ll freak this dude out!” I said, and I let the plug drop.
As I reeled it back up, a gray-haired man stuck his head over the railing and looked up at me. “Oh, shit!” I said, ducking back out of the way. “It’s Stanley Bard!”
Susan laughed, and said, “Quick, do it again!”
I let the plug drop. This time our illustrious proprietor was on the final flight of stairs before the first-floor landing. When he heard the plug hit the ground he reached out for the line. I jerked it out of his way but he ran down a few stairs and grabbed the plug as I was reeling it in. He was surprisingly spry for a seventy-year-old man.
“Oh, we caught a big one!” Susan exclaimed.
Plug in hand, Stanley looked up and called out, “Why are you doing that?”
I was at a loss to explain it. “We’re practicing for our fishing trip to Montana,” Susan said. Sounded good enough for me.
“Well, stop it!”
My rod bowing, I jerked at the plug and tried to reel it back in, but Stanley didn’t want to let go. I think he was trying either to break the line or to untie the plug, but I had it on there pretty good. Finally, he released the plug, and it shot back skyward.
Stanley came up in the elevator. “It’s you!” he said with surprise when he saw me.
“Yes,” I replied.
“You could hurt somebody with that.”
“I’m just dropping it straight down,” I said. The first-floor landing is enclosed by the railing, and nobody can get in there.
“A little kid could stick his head out and get a concussion,” Stanley said.
Whoops. I didn’t think of that. Seemed unlikely, the plug was too light, but he did have a point. “Okay, I’ll stop it,” I said.
Stanley Bard: patron of the arts, sworn enemy of fishing. I guess he has to put up with a lot around here, too. As I mentioned before, Stanley has quite a bit of pressure on him from his board of directors. And now, to top it all off, here’s one of the inmates casting a fishing reel down the stairwell! What next?
