Postal Palazzos—And Other Sources of Wonder in Gloucester

By and large, Gloucesterites are a frank and voluble people.  So for those with the time and inclination, diligent public eavesdropping can be a deeply rewarding activity.  Such was the case yesterday, as I walked through one of the city’s most fruitful snooping grounds: the downtown Shaw’s parking lot.

Directly in front of me ambled two rangy fellows whose heads were bent together in animated conversation.  Their grooming and attire were decidedly scruffy—unruly beards, muddy sneakers, voluminous flannel—so I wasn’t altogether surprised when I overheard them planning their acquisition of a 3-liter jug of Carlo Rossi.  As they fished in their pockets for crumpled bills to pool, I noted this exchange:

 

“Let’s get the Burgundy,” one said in a gravelly voice.  “Good tannins.  Sweet finish.”

 

The other cleared his nose into his palm before offering his assessment: “Too sweet.  Chianti’s better.”

 

The texture of their conversation—the connoisseur’s intensity and erudition lavished upon discount wine—flooded me with a familiar feeling.  It is a special blend of wonder, equal parts confusion and delight, born of ironic juxtaposition.  And it is something I associate with Gloucester just as much as I do fish, seagulls, and a devotion to tanning as a religious sacrament.

 

Allow me to provide another illustration.  The post office building on Dale Avenue is a truly impressive pile of masonry.  With its soaring granite façade, Doric columns, and rooftop balustrade, one might expect it to house an Italian aristocrat.  And I don’t mean a six-time winner of the Greasy Pole, but rather some member of the Medici family—a fringe cousin, at the very least.  Yet a Gloucesterite with a parcel to mail will mount the building’s broad stairwell, enter its vast, hushed chamber, and discover someone far more humble: a single postal clerk in a frayed uniform, hunched behind a Formica counter, counting the days until her pension kicks in.  Over her shoulder you might catch sight of another employee shuffling past, wraithlike, pushing a half-empty collection bin beneath the vaulted ceiling.  It both confounds and charms me that such modest activities would unfold within one of the city’s most ostentatious structures.  Proportionally, it’s a bit like commissioning Renzo Piano to design a cantilevered glass dome for your kid’s roadside lemonade stand.

8498790155_330986ec71_z


[Nice digs for your PO box]

There’s a different irony but a similar response when I pass the wooden sign of an establishment on Main Street that sells nothing more than olive oil and a few specialty vinegars.  I don’t question their fundamental business model.  Gloucester is home to many individuals of Italian extraction, a population that—I suspect—enjoys a plate of spaghetti aglio e olio from time to time.  By the same logic, nearly every for-profit entity in town—from the roast beef joints to the salons to the insurance agencies—devotes part of its operations to selling pizza pies.  But I do not often see frail Italian nonnas ducking into the Cape Ann Olive Oil Company.  Presumably, these women seek out economy-sized drums of extra virgin and balsamic, the transportation of which requires a team of strapping nephews.  Whereas this retailer—bafflingly, endearingly—insists on peddling slender green vials better suited to the rectal concealment of prison contraband.

web_6564

[Lemon-infused methadone]

I’ve crunched the numbers, and it seems the most common type of ironic juxtaposition in Gloucester involves the collision of class and cultural opposites.  Think of the Common Crow, with its bulk bins of stevia and refrigerated cases of probiotic yak butter.  Just across the street sits Cameron’s, a defunct townie watering hole whose interior of crumbling plaster, chipped tile, and three-legged chairs looks roughly as it did four years ago, when it heard its last sea chantey.  Everywhere you look in Gloucester, the gritty rubs elbows with the genteel, and the old-timer’s bearded cheek brushes against the newcomer’s mustachioed jowl.  For the most part, the city’s diverse constituencies live, work, shop, eat, and drink next to—if not quite among—one another, yielding a social fabric that is something like a patchwork quilt.  Of course, it’s a quilt stitched with monofilament, whose batting is not wool or cotton but rather vodka-soaked clams.

 

Gloucester is no utopia.  Frictions exist.  And it’s true that the yachting crowd of Eastern Point have attempted to escape the unwashed masses by backing onto a narrow, easily defended peninsula.  But the last time I was there, I noticed that Dog Bar Breakwater, the furthest extent of the yachtie redoubt, may occupy the grittiest real estate in all of Gloucester.  In the shadows of million-dollar sailboats bobbing in the cove, seagulls paint the granite slabs with ammoniac shit, and striper fishermen fill the air with tinny music and salty jokes in their native Portuguese.  Perhaps this is all unremarkable to you.  But it’s truly wondrous to someone like me, who has spent long years in the suburban South, where people turned White flight into an art form and, in many cases, the divisions still hold.

i-xGd76tt-M

[The Jackson Pollocks of Dog Bar]

I happen to be paler than the underside of a flounder.  So I can’t do much to contribute to Gloucester’s racial diversity.  Instead, I savor my part in blurring its tenuous class and cultural lines.  Last fall, my wife and I were enjoying a drink and perfect blue weather on the refurbished patio of The Studio, a Rocky Neck institution.  A quick look around the bar revealed that just about everyone was better dressed than we were: breezy linen shirts, madras shorts, and more anchor motifs than you could shake a stick at.  I did notice one fisherman on hand, but he was a crewman on the Hot Tuna, a veritable reality television star.  Halfway through my gin and tonic, a silver-haired gentleman strode in from the dining area to deliver an urgent question: “Is there someone here who came in on a kayak?”

 

My wife raised her eyebrows at me, and I shrugged my shoulders before standing and waving at the fellow.  “That would be me,” I said. Indeed, we had borrowed our friends’ tandem for the day.  After putting in at the Harbor Loop public landing, we had dodged whale watches and lobster boats and tied up at The Studio’s own spacious private dock.  It turned out that now another vessel was attempting to moor, and our kayak was in the way.  As I eased past many sets of eyes and down the floating ramp, I discovered that this other vessel was only slightly smaller than a trash barge, except it was gleaming, graceful, and purring like a big cat.  Standing on the deck were a young man and woman whom a brisk shake had liberated from the pages of a Vineyard Vines catalog.

Indian Empress- Photo credit Oceanco

[Enlarged slightly to show texture]

In my younger and more Socialist days, I might have put up a fuss, pointing out that my boat had carried the exact same number of patrons as theirs had.  That it wasn’t my problem they wanted to bring their jacuzzi and Viking range to the restaurant.  That they probably wouldn’t expect someone to leave his table and move his Mini Cooper from a parking spot, so that their Winnebago could be accommodated.  But raising a stink would have only reinforced that line between them and me.  Instead, I just took my sweet time untying from the cleat and climbing into the cockpit—relishing that familiar feeling of slack-jawed wonder at the irony of it all.  “Nice day to be on the water,” I called up to the deck, while paddling toward a vacant sliver of dock.  But I can’t be certain they heard me.

KT’s Wicked Tuna Recap: S4, Episode 5, “Go Hard or Go Home”

Crap guys, sorry I’m like two weeks late on this show. I know you’re dying, DYING for me to recap this show. Anyway, let me get to the highlights so you save 44 minutes of your day. Or you can watch it along with me at home, and turn it into a drinking game like I do. Funsies! Anyway this episode starts off with the promise of STORM DRAMA ahead! And in the opening few minutes, every boat says they need a fish. My left eye twitches involuntarily, but I continue watching.

 

The first boat to catch a fish is the Pinwheel, who again, say that they “need this one.” This cannot be anything but an elaborate troll, an attempt to make my brain explode. It almost works.

what?

what?

So anyway I had to google “googan” and its definition came up on Urban Dictionary and I was like “well here we go” but it turns out it doesn’t involve some kind of unmentionable term, it’s just a fishing insult, like “n00b of the sea.” I’m somehow both impressed and disappointed. They catch their fish. Go stonerboat!

They switch over to the Hot Tuna and it suddenly looks like the end of days up there.

storm

And in one of the smarter things I’ve seen on this TV show to date, TJ and the Hot Tuna book it the fuck out of there, because they realize their lives are not worth a fish. This is a smart and adult thing to do, especially when smaller people look up to you do make rational decisions. I’m not even being snarky here. I want to see more of this.

I don’t see more of this, because Tyler from the Pinwheel decides that weather will never bring him down, for he is The Most Competitive! He talks about how they have to stay out no matter what even though it’s gross out, so they can get a leg up on everyone else. I feel like this has ended badly before at some point in our history and perhaps we should all be cautious and learn from others’ mistakes, but then again, I have no idea how fishing works anyway.

The Tuna.com gets a fish, and continues fishing. Over on the Kelly Ann, Paul Hebert says, “Hail Mary, full of tuna” and this may or may not be successful. Oh, it is successful. Well, there we go.

amazing choice of safety footwear

amazing choice of safety footwear

They originally have two fish at the same time, but end up only keeping one. I have to give credit that Paul Hebert is actually a pretty good reality show character, what with the laughter. They decide to stay in because of the storm. Again, smart.

Over on the Hard Merchandise, they are attempting to catch a fish that is “a bitch” which, I mean, it’s trying to remain alive so I kind of give it a little slack there. It fails to remain alive, and Dave calls it “a cow, no matter which way you slice it.” This is the best line I may have heard ever.

Are you drunk that is a tuna not your bed.

Are you drunk that is a tuna not your bed.

The episode ends with a bunch of fish, and some splashing, and I forgot to even turn this into a drinking game.

“We need this fish” count: 7

Fish Caught: 6

Men Splashed: 4

 

No Snark Sunday: Jason Grow’s Second World War Veterans Photo Project

We’ve all grown up on a steady diet of Second World War lore. From movies, TV shows, books and documentaries the “Big War” is embedded in all our imaginations. Yet it’s sometimes easy to forget it was fought by regular guys, our family members and neighbors who we’ve lived alongside all our lives. Mostly silent about their experiences we think of them in their post-war civilian roles: barbers and fishermen, uncles and teachers. But in their youth they were part of the greatest group effort in the history of the world, each as one of millions of soldiers tasked with pulling the world back from the grip of fascism.

The world may never again see anything like it. Let’s hope not, anyway.

Noting that this is the 70th anniversary of the end of the war,  that every day there are fewer and fewer WW II vets and that Gloucester pound for pound sent more men and women to war than most any other community in the country, professional photographer Jason Grow decided that those remaining needed to be recorded and their memory preserved before their entire generation was gone. This makes sense remembering the youngest vets are 87 years old today. So he decided to shoot as many of these vets as he can, hoping to capture all the WW II Vets on Cape Ann as part of a photo series. It’s a personal project borne out of respect and the desire to capture a part of history before it’s lost forever. He hopes to turn it into some kind of exhibition the the upcoming Veteran’s Day in November.

Joe Favazza, 94, Gloucester

Joe Favazza, 94, Gloucester

One of the most interesting facets of the project is how diverse the experiences are. Some guys were shipped to stateside bases for years, being deployed only later in the war, often to combat zones just as the Japanese surrendered. There were those who helped open the gates at concentration camps. Others saw the horror of battle, but respond with the humility typical of their generation, “The medics, those guys were the heroes.”

The pictures speak for themselves, here are a couple of the images so far, We’re going to publish a few more later in the day/tomorrow.

Robert Zager, 90, Gloucester

Robert Zager, 90, Gloucester

If you know of any WWII vet living in Gloucester, Rockport, Manchester or Essex who should be part this project –  please contact Jason Grow at: jason@jasongrow.com or 978.884.7964  –

As the project develops portraits and the stories of these men and women will be athttp://www.jasongrow.com/PORTFOLIO/WWII-VETERANS-PROJECT/1/

Lego Humans of Gloucester, Renee Dupuis and Joe Cardoza

Another entry from TheSupercool, chronicling our fair city in bits of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene

unnamed

We are short people with tall hearts and a true love for making music.  We are musicians who can also fit into small places which makes us an ideal band to share a stage with.  We are also good sharers.  

Renée Dupuis and Joe Cardoza