I Survived the NYC Portal!!!
Plus! Conversation Styles Poll!! Weird Trash Heap #27!!!
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #121 of CAFÉ ANNE!
So the big news this week was the city’s announcement that it is not only creating some new public restrooms, it has now produced an official map of every public restroom in town. That’s 1000 bathrooms located in libraries, parks and public plazas!
Many found development amusing, as amateur map and app designers have already published many similar guides over the years. It was sort of as if the MTA had finally, in 2024, created an official subway map.
Others had ideas for related efforts. “Can they also show the last time they were cleaned?” wondered Preston on Twitter.
“F— restrooms—arrest more kids selling fruit,” suggested mattschinesefood, who was perhaps being sarcastic.
“FREE PALESTINE,” added Hal.
In other news, I need your help with an upcoming feature story!
Some time ago, long-time reader Nick, in response to my story about my effort to go a whole week without lying, posed the following question:
“Anne, I have a number of friends that like to monologue during our lunches. I can be a good listener, but like you, I also find they become tedious. Because you are the great Anne of NYC, please give me some wonderful input into how to either deal with my friend or myself.”
OK! First, can everyone from now on please refer to me as “the great Anne of NYC”? Thank you.
Second, I’ve been thinking about this ever since I got Nick’s note. The question of how to gracefully deal with a long-talker is a common dilemma, I suspect. While these days I am usually delighted to let whomever I’m chatting with rattle on for as long as they please about whatever they like, there have been times in my life when frequent contact with champion long-talkers left me feeling annoyed or erased.
So I need your input. Here’s what I’m looking for:
Calling all long-talkers and monologuers! I’d love to understand you better. Please write in and explain why you talk so much! And what can others do when your long-talking gets out of hand? A note in the comments is great, or even better, drop me an email at annekadet@yahoo.com. I’m happy to keep your thoughts anonymous if you wish.
Anyone who has successfully gotten a monologuer to stop—how did you accomplish this miracle? Or if you tried and failed, or found a way to accept the situation, or decided to end the relationship entirely, what happened? Again, please respond in the comments, or drop me a note.
Finally, everyone please take the CAFÉ ANNE conversation style poll!
I am very excited for this week’s issue, of course. We’ve got a new Weird Trash Heap and an account of my recent visit to the Portal where I got ridiculously lucky with my interviews. Please enjoy.
Regards!
Anne
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Weird Trash Heap #27
Boy, did I find a doozy last week, on a stretch of Worth Street in Lower Manhattan. The more closely I inspected this curbside garbage tableau, the stranger things got.
Contents:
-Eleven medical-grade latex gloves.
-Bottle of Activa Probiotic Yogurt Drink, “flavored with mango.”
-A receipt from a post office in Harlem for the purchase of one (1) Betty Ford 68-cent ““Forever” stamp, paid for with a Visa card.
-Used tube of “#23 Nucadamia” lip gloss with “juicy lasting tint.”
-A torn sheet of paper with horoscopes printed on one side and, on the back, the word “CONSTRUCTION,” hand-scrawled in pen, in huge letters.
-Several Post-It notes decorated with word fragments including “TH” and “IE.”
-One “Box Air Bar” disposable vape.
So what’s the back story here? Reader, I can’t even!
Please send your weird trash photo to annekadet@yahoo.com and I will include it in a future issue.
FEATURE
I Survived the NYC Portal!
It was just a month ago that the Portal—a live video link between New York City and Dublin—was installed to great fanfare on a traffic island at the intersection of 23rd Street and Broadway in Manhattan. It was meant to provide a 27/7 connection between New Yorkers and Dubliners.
But to the surprise of nobody—except perhaps the folks who installed it—the shenanigans started immediately. As everyone who's been following the story will recall, those merry pranksters in Ireland kicked things off by displaying swastikas and pictures of the Twin Towers collapsing in 9/11.
Not to be outdone, an OnlyFans performer here in NYC flashed her bazongas to the folks in Dublin.
This last incident got the New York Post very, very excited. Over the next few days, it ran no less than seven headlines about the episode:
"OnlyFans model flashes NYC-Dublin portal as organizers try in vain to stop gross behavior"
"Organizers pull plug on NYC-Dublin portal — for now — as raunchy behavior runs rampant"
"OnlyFans model who flashed NYC-Dublin portal same woman who told Dr. Phil she'd rather 'die hot than live ugly'"
"OnlyFans model who flashed her 'homegrown potatoes' has made $30K in two days from NY-Dublin portal scandal"
"Mom of OnlyFans model says she's 'proud' after NYC-Dublin portal flashing scandal — which dad learned about in The Post"
"Bosom buddies: Brooklyn influencer part of bad girls club of 'portal' flashers"
As the Post noted, the incident also spurred the Portal's backers—which include the city and the local business improvement district—to unplug the link. New Yorkers were disappointed. "This is why we can't have nice things," was the common lament.
“It shows that we humans are doing very human things. It also reflects our current state of humanity,” Benediktas Gylys, the Lithuanian artist who invented the Portal, told the Post in an interview.
But never fear! A week later, the Portal was reactivated with shorter hours, full-time security and barricades. The hype died down and the installation vanished from the headlines.
Which got me to wondering—what's the scene like now?
When I stopped by last week, on a sunny Wenesday morning, I found a small crowd gathered in front of the eight-foot circular screen, facing a similarly-sized gathering at the Portal on O'Connell Street, the busiest thoroughfare in Dublin.
A goateed security guard in shades stood on one side of the metal barricade, sucking a lollipop. A Portal ambassador sipping an iced coffee stood on the other side, repeating the same phrases over and over:
"Make sure to wave guys, we're live with Dublin, Ireland!"
"We're live with Dublin, Ireland! Make sure to wave!"
The Portal does not transmit sound, only images, so folks on both sides are limited to faces and gestures. Visitors employed an array of communication strategies including giving the thumbs up, waving, waving extra hard, waving with both hands and waving with water bottles. Folks with babies held up their infants as if offering a sacrifice to the gods. A trio of private school girls had a little dance-off with a group of similarly-aged boys in Dublin.
One visitor in particular caught my attention. Melvin, a construction worker who lives in Bushwick and was carrying a mini-stereo blaring 80s rap, gave the folks overseas a big wave, a thumbs up, a heart signal and he blew kisses.
"I walk by maybe three times a day," he said. "I be working over here. I love the brothers and sisters on the other side, know what I'm saying?"
"No kidding!" I said. "Three times a day!"
"It's another world, on the other side," he said. "But I'm trying to find out, what's that side? That's another country. I try to figure that out, every time I see it. What country is it?”
"We're live with Dublin, Ireland!" the Portal ambassador shouted for maybe the zillionth time that morning.
I asked Melvin where he'd like to see additional portals. "Puerto Rico!" he said. "That's where I'm from. And I want to see Cuba, Panama, Italians, Jewish, Iraqs, you know? Show them we're not the enemy."
As I chatted with more Portal visitors, it became clear that the vast majority were tourists: I met folks from Chicago, Miami, Germany, Delaware, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and Bulgaria. Also Italy, Germany, Australia, Iowa, Atlanta, San Francisco, Dallas, Tennessee, London, Barcelona and New Orleans.
I couldn't help but wonder: were the folks on the Dublin side also tourists? Judging by the number of Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts they were sporting, the answer is yes. And if the Portal is mainly connecting tourists with other tourists, what does that mean?
I was delighted when the next lady I approached proudly declared that she was a local.
"What brings you by the Portal?" I asked.
"I'm one of the owners of the Flatiron Building," she said, gesturing toward the iconic 22-story skyscraper across the way.
I later checked this out, and the lady was indeed Jane Gurel-Senders, a principal in the family-owned real estate company that co-owns the building.
"Oh wow, there was an auction last year, right?" I said.
"There was!" she said. "We auctioned it and got it back, and removed an owner. We had to do it twice. Some guy came, bid on it, offered a ridiculous price and then didn't pay!"
This was one of my favorite NYC stories last year, by the way. Gurel-Senders's company sold the famous office building for $130 million to a little-known venture capital guy who, it turned out, didn't have enough for the down payment.
"Now it's going to be residential—condos," she told me.
"Can I have a condo?" I asked.
"If you have a lot of money," she said. "They're going to be very expensive.”
I took that as a no.
"You must walk by the Portal a few times a day," I observed, shifting the conversation to the installation.
"So here's another factoid," said Ms. Gurel-Senders. "I'm also on the board of the Flatiron-Nomad Business Improvement District, which made this happen. So I know about the Portal. I haven't seen it before, I was traveling. But now I've seen it and I'm going to go back to the group and let them know how fantastic it is. It's fabulous. Fabulous! Absolutely just fabulous! Here we are, saying hello to people in Dublin. I mean, come on, that's pretty cool."
"Did you dance in front of the camera?" I asked.
"No I did not," she said. "Those days are over."
I realized this was my big opportunity to suggest my own Portal vision. "Do you know what I want to see?” I said. “A portal in each borough. So people in Brooklyn can say 'hi' to their neighbors in the Bronx and Staten Island."
"That's kind of interesting," said Ms. Gurel-Senders. "I have to run now."
I took that as another no.
I continued my survey, looking for locals, but everyone I approached was visiting from outside the city, including a young man in black who said he was from Lithuania. I was about to move on when he added a fact about his homeland: "We have a Portal there too!"
Suddenly interested, I asked if he'd seen it.
"Well, I created the Portal," he said.
He was the artist and Portal inventor, Benediktas Gylys!
Mr. Gylys told me he's been staying in NYC since the Portal was installed. He’s been visiting a couple hours every day, just to observe.
"Humans are doing very human things," he said. "And humans bring a lot of smiles, a lot of light, a lot of happiness to it. I think people bring what they have. Some people have a lot of joy and express that joy. Some people have some sadness, so they bring some sadness as well. I think it's a great reflection of humanity in 2024."
"I'm sure you've visited your Portal in different cities," I said. "How is the interaction in New York different?”
"It's interesting to see that some people spend five hours sometimes," he said. "I have never seen that anywhere else with the Portal. And some people self-appoint themselves as ambassadors. They say, ‘Now let's wave with only the left hand, now only the right hand, and now let's do the Macarena.’ That’s also something I've never seen before. I love it!"
"New Yorkers love to tell people what to do," I told him. "Sometimes you see regular people here start directing traffic. Just for fun!"
I asked if he’s tempted to tell everyone visiting the installation that he's the creator.
"Sometimes I want to stay in the shadows," he said. "It requires a lot of energy to talk to multiple people. Some days I just feel like talking, so I step into the conversations people are having, to see if they have questions. And that's how they discover I'm the creator. And sometimes I pretend I know nothing about the Portal and just start spreading my theories—my urban legends about the Portal."
I asked to hear one of the legends.
"The urban legend is that everything inappropriate that ever happened was directed by the people behind the Portal to gain more attention for the project," he said.
"Haha! That's a good theory," I said.
"That's a good theory, right," said Mr. Gylys.
"I'm sure it's not true," I said.
He smiled.
Not everyone loves the Portal. Three men who work at a nearby tech company specializing in retail fraud software ("Stopping the fraud, not doing the fraud!” explained one), observed for a few minutes and shrugged.
"It's cool, but it's not much different from a Zoom call, which we do every day," said Ben, the chattiest of the three. "It's a novelty. It’s a live screen, in public. But I don't think the tech is very exciting."
I was delighted to run into Claire Akkan, a fellow writer with a NYC-themed Substack, who said she loves the idea of the Portal. "But I think it's random to be paired with Dublin,” she added. “I think if the point is to foster cross-cultural connection, it's Beijing or Moscow we could use better relations with. We're fine with Dublin!"
Danny Wong, an architect who was born in Hong Kong, grew up in LA and has lived in Manhattan the last 18 years, said he found it interesting to observe how people were willing to goof around with each other through the Portal in a way they’d never do with strangers on the street. "When we see the world through a little square or a little circle, the inhibition comes out, doesn't it?" he said.
But the last person I interviewed, TL Keith, a delivery worker who lives in the Bronx and has stopped by the Portal numeous times, was a huge fan.
"I think it's something that every city should have. So maybe we can get a little closer to each other, get to know each other, see we're not really that much different," he said.
"Does it brighten your day to come here?" I asked.
"Yeah, makes it feel a little bit more fun," he said, “knowing that somebody else—however far Ireland is—is, you know, kind of jumpy and jokey just like you."
"If you could put another Portal anywhere in the universe," I asked, "Where would you put it?"
"That's a good question," he said.
He took a long pause before giving his excellent response: "On heaven!" he said. "See who made it or not!"
CAFÉ ANNE is a free weekly newsletter created by Brooklyn journalist Anne Kadet. Subscribe to get the latest issue every Monday!
I saw a woman doing a jig in front of the portal on Friday. It got a huge applause from the other side of the Irish Stargate. ☘️ ⭕️
I'm down with calling you "the great Anne of NYC". No problem.
Also: long-talkers and monologuers. I'll be very interested to see if any of them are self-aware enough to identify as such and answer the questions you posed to them. VERY.