It went great. I woke up around 1:30 or 2, thinking it was late like 4. It wasn't. I got some food and coffee in me, cleaned up, and was out the door at 4 because I have to be out the door at 4 because it rhymes.
I had to push against the wind going downtown, but was able to get to the downtown post office at 4:30 and then take one box that I'd meant to ship by FedEx 1-day or something like that but I'd clicked on the wrong thing and it was going by UPS. So I rode down to the UPS and dropped it off, and then rode back to Whole Foods.
I got some baked chicken and a latke (they had latkes in the hot bar) and got a little 4-pack of those little bottles of wine. I set up to eat at a table and people-watched. There was a Black guy who seemed to be waiting for the bus or something. Looked like he was almost certainly homeless but "together" he seemed very "squared away" kind of like Wendall the flute player. So when he passed by I held out a little bottle of wine to him and we got talking.
He used to live in an apartment nearby and now is indeed homeless. I said if he has any musical inclinations at all, it's a good way to make money. He told me about an app called "Rap Fame" where he comes up with music and sells his songs for $5 each. He's been doing it a few months. He'd actually been waiting for a friend with a car to pick him up, who then showed up, so we didn't get to talk further about Rap Fame, but it's interesting. I don't know much about music-on-line apps, so the only one I can think of is Band Camp, but if I were musician'ing full time, I think I'd Rap Fame a try.
After eating I killed some time by looking around in Whole Foods, then hopped on the bike and rode over to the temple. I locked the bike and got out my ol' blue and white to put on my head, and got out the two bottles of Kosher for Passover wine, and my nifty silver Kiddush cup.
I made a name tag for myself and stuck it on and took a Haggadah and wandered around finding a place to sit. I eventually went to a table and it was "Is anyone sitting here?" and I was welcomed to sit down. I made a good choice too because some of the tables were grape juice drinkers only, plus I ended up sitting by Philip the trumpet player, and the guy on my other side is interested in learning the trumpet.
I opened my two bottles of wine (I brought my opener with me) and had my little cup there. It turns out no one had huge cups but had very reasonably-sized glasses and so I hadn't needed to bring it, but what did I know? At least I got to tell the story of getting the cup, and the lady with a German accent right out of Central Casting who I bought it from, who was not Jewish because all she knew was it's "ceremonial".
We dipped our parsley in salt water and poured our glasses of wine, and sang the songs and recited verses, and in general had a good ol' time. As for the wine, it was very appreciated (except for one old guy who, I tip my hat to him, went through the whole thing on the temple-supplied Manischewitz alone) and now I know the Jeunesse stuff tastes quite good, while the Elija stuff, eh, not so much. So it'll be two bottles of Jeunesse next time.
It was great fun, especially the song about the little goat that adds things on each verse, and is sung really fast like you're rapping.
The haggadah we used was the one put together by this temple, and as funny as it sounds, there were things in there that really meant something to me. About the situation with my sisters, and whether to retreat back to Hawaii or to go ahead. About family history I'll probably never find out for sure.
Among other things we talked about shofar-blowing and it turns out Philip plays the trumpet but not the shofar, and their official shofar-blower does that but does not play trumpet. Since I want to get something that's more of a "professional" shofar well before Rosh Hashana, I told Philip when I do so, I'll give him the one I have now.
The dinner itself was OK I guess. They had baked chicken but by the time I got to it, it was almost all gone so I didn't take any, just some cooked beets, half a baked potato, and some salad. It turned out there was plenty of chicken but I'd already eaten some at Whole Foods so I didn't bother about it.
One part of the dinner was .... gefilte fish. That. Was. Horrible. It was like someone caught a tilapia out of the Ala Wai Canal, then ground it up fins guts and all, added some flour and stuff, to make a little loaf. It's comically bad. There has got to be a way to make a good-tasting gefilte fish. Traditionally, a housewife would buy a carp, live, and they'd keep it alive until it was time to kill it and cook it, and the end result was probably really delicious.
In the end I had maybe 1/5th of the Jeunesse left and at least half of the Elijah, and I took the bottles and corked 'em up and put them, and my silver cup, in the bike bags and changed my shirt for my jacket and safety vest, and rode to Whole Foods for a couple of odds and ends, then rode for home.
I passed through San Pedro Square and it seemed they were playing live fiddle music in the Irish bar there. I stopped to ask the security guard if it was live music, and he said "Yep, every Tuesday". We talked a bit and I gushed about how that bar, no matter how bad things got, has always been doing well.
We also talked about Trumpet Rabbit Guy, who the guard said certainly ate his rabbits. "He lives in his van" and thus, of course he eats his rabbits. Maybe he does, but it's an odd chain of logic. I told him about my run-in with the bums down there, and he said that "Vice doesn't operate down here any more and the police only care if it's extreme violence" and said the guy I thought was an undercover officer was not. I described how one of the Streets Team guys had stuck around, sweeping the same piece of sidewalk while I played, and maybe the not-an-undercover guy was doing something like that, being protective of me. That's not impossible at all. He agreed. "There are a lot of nice people around here". He knows a lot about the history of the Irish bar and of San Pedro Square. He had to check the IDs of a lot of people so I bugged off.
The ride home was peaceful because the wind was now going my way, and it was cool, not actually cold. I checked the little free libraries and only took a copy of The Atlantic magazine. New Yorkers are good but they seem to be weekly and it's hard to keep up. The Atlantic is better and I can keep up with them. So: a copy of The Atlantic with a red cover.
I got home and put things away and had a better look at the copy of The Atlantic. The red cover is a list of authors, each on a different subject like Journalism, Science, etc. with page numbers. What I hadn't seen when I picked it up was on the other side of the cover it says "If Trump Wins". I wonder if, in Germany in 1932, there were periodicals like this, "If Hitler Wins"?
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