Plus food: the various extracurricular food scams haven’t yet been mentioned. Imagine the opportunities — not only the overpriced all-cash concession stands but the enormous tented kitchens for the Corporate Hospitality Areas and the “U.S. Open Club” for V.I.P.s and so on, the massive sizzle and clatter of high-volume prep from these kitchens off along the south parts of the Main Gate. Let’s not even get into the little easements behind the strips of food stands, the furtive and on the whole unauthorized-looking deliveries and removals of large boxes, the various transactions and scurryings. Forget examples of that. Here’s a different incident. Let’s close L.D.W. with this:
Some of the time it’s hard even to know what it is you’re seeing take place. In one of the big communitarian fountainless circles that the promenade opens into as it leads to the Main Gate — the circle closest to the Gate, this one is — one of the circle’s green benches is controlled by gypsy-cab and — limo drivers waiting for anybody exiting who needs a gypsy-type ride back to Rye or Rockaway or wherever. Half a dozen of these guys sit on this bench in their cabbies’ berets, waiting around, smoking cigars, talking shit, etc. I’m on the next bench trying to organize my notes. This is at about 2100h., late. From this circle you can see the rear flaps of some of the tented high-volume kitchens. Through one of these flaps now emerges a stocky young guy in the unmistakable tall hat and whites of a kitchen worker (though on his feet are $200 Air Jordans so new they glow in the N.T.C.’s ambient light, so he looks like he’s floating). The kitchen worker’s carrying a broad low cardboard box through the employee- and Media Pass-entrance in the Gate and down the promenade and across the circle, making for the bench with the cabbies. The cabbies are making gestures like: Finally, Thank God. One of the cabbies rises and moves out and meets the kitchen worker; something subtle occurs between their hands that indicates a transfer of funds; and now the cabbie bears the box back to the bench, where the rest of the drivers circle and grab and reveal that the box is full of supper — burgers, chicken legs, wieners, etc. Vague contented noises from the cabbies on the bench as they dig in.
“Goddamn rip-off,” says a well-dressed Italian man next to me on my bench.
I say, “Pardon me?”
“Ripping the fucking place off,” the well-dressed Italian man says, indicating with a hand gesture the kitchen worker, who’s now making his way quickly back to the kitchen tent, hand in his pocket. The Italian man has a small filtered cigar in his mouth and a disgusted look and is sitting back with his legs crossed and his elbows up on the bench’s back’s top in that insouciant way savvy New Yorkers sit on park benches. He has heavy brows and wingtips and a Eurocut silk pinstripe suit of the type that Cagney-era gangsters wore. You half-expect him to have a white fedora and violin case. But it turns out, when he gives me his card, that he’s a legit businessman, a concessioneer, here to labor instead of recreate/consume; he’s scouting out possibilities for opening a couple of stands here at next year’s Open, when the new Stadium’s up and running and even more vigorous attendance and commerce can be foreseen. The stands he wants to open’ll sell gyros, he says. He’s not Italian after all.
— 1996
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discalced (adj.) — barefoot or wearing sandals… used to characterize certain religious orders discarnate—having no material body or form: “a discarnate spirit” disciform—flat and rounded in shape; a disciform fungus dished—concave; slanting toward one another at the bottom dishing—liquid sloshing back and forth dispraise (v.) — to express displeasure, censure; (n.) disapproval, censure distemper—a kind of paint-job using watered paint dobby (n.) — geometric figure woven into fabric; fabric with such a figure Dobro—referring to stringed instruments like guitars and banjos docent—tour guide in museum or cathedral doss—a crude or homemade bed; dosshouse is cheap flophouse doyen—senior or oldest man in group; the Alpha dragoman—interpreter in Middle East drape—clingy girlfriend dreidel—Jewish top w/square body dressage—equestrian skilclass="underline" guiding horse through complex maneuvers w/hands on reins and feet in stirrups dudeen—short-stemmed clay pipe, Scottish duff—organic stuff on forest floor; decayed leaves and branches dulcify—to make sweet or agreeable; to mollify durance—confinement or restraint by force; imprisonment dybbuk—Jewish myth: wandering soul of dead person that enters living body and controls the living body’s behavior ecce homo—depiction of Christ with crown of thorns eccentric—deviating from a circular path, as in anelliptical orbit; (n.) a wheel or disc with its axis of revolution displaced from the center so that it imparts reciprocal motion eccrine—relating to sweat or sweat gland ecdysiast—striptease artist ecdysis—shedding of outer skin, molting ecdysone—hormone that regulates molting behavior ecesis—successful establishment of plant or animal species in a region echinate—prickly, covered with spines th with spécorché—anatomical representation w/skin removed ecotone—transitional zone between communities containing the characteristic species of each ecru—grayish yellow effloresce—to bloom or blossom effluent—flowing out or forth electuary—mix of drugs w/sugar or honey to make them ingestible, tasty ell—wing of building at right angle to rest; a right-angled bend in pipe or conduit elute—to extract one material from another, usually with a solvent; (n.) “elution” eluviation/eluviate—sinking of dissolved material in soil when rainfall exceeds evaporation embrocate—to moisten or rub body with liniment or lotion embrown—to darken empery—absolute dominion or sovereignty or jurisdiction endive—two kinds, curly and Belgian, used in salads enuresis—uncontrolled discharge of urine epicritic (adj.) — related to nerves w/ability to discern very slight differences in the intensity of stimuli, especially temperature and touch epigraphy—the study of inscriptions epiphenomenalism—mentalstates are epiphenomena of physical neural processes (“epiphenomenal” means following or consequent to something) epistasis—suppression of bodily discharge (coming?) OR a film that develops over a urine specimen escarpment—a steep slope in front of a fortification; “LA lawns on hillsides form a kind of escarpmentish angle”; a steep slope or long erosion cliff that yields two relatively level plains (bottom and top) of different elevations