Vic Socotra

26 June 2010

Up and Down

I am tired of fire-bombing Japan, so let’s take a break from serious stuff.

It is the weekend. The International Ornamental Concrete Workers Executive Committee is having the first party of the season, officially opening the patio at Joe’s place to the usual suspects. It is great to be on the ground floor with your own door and no need to ride the elevator.

It is early summer, but there is that pervasive awareness that the solstice is past and the days will shorten on the way to the darkness of fall. Like a Druid, I marked the precise point of the sun’s northern advance, and watch with great interest the minute creep to the south each day.

We have assumed the steady rhythm of regular pool use. There was some tension last weekend when some of the new residents brought guests to use the facility.

The number of Official Rules in play last Saturday were impressive, and I watched with keen interest in how it would play out. The ones that cause trouble are the consumption of food, wearing of cover-ups in public areas, number of non-residents in the party (Maximum 3 per unit), alcohol consumption, children in diapers, Horseplay and Water Toys.

Things got ugly at the end of the last season, what with the Revolt of the Grandmas about their dozens of grandchildren and the Food Fight Festival. Some people were seething all winter in their units high above the pool.

When the husky young men walked in carrying two pizza boxes, I could see the regulars get tense and the temperature drop. The visitors may have sensed it and one actually went over to the posted regulations and the pizza went back outside the gate where we have to smoke now.

There have been some romantic developments, too. Speedo Man has produced a girlfriend, and is not hitting on every girl and woman in the pool enclosure. He even has minimized his ritual self-exposure under the outdoor shower, possibly out of concern about alienating the diminutive Frenchwoman.

I think she is French, anyway. Who knows; there are a lot of nationalities around the pool.

I have not seen the Finns this season. They are getting on and not as visible around the building as they used to be a decade ago. There are some Nigerians who do not come to the pool, but seem to be Royalty of some sort, or at least act like it. There are other people of color, as well, and a few folks of Arabic origin, maybe Lebanese, since one of them looks good in her bikini, and I am sorry about the Rule on cover-ups when I would see her on the elevator.

It is still largely a white population in the building, up and down the floors, but between the Hispanic porters and the newer arrivals, we are looking a lot more like the UN than the Big Pink than Frances Freed would ever have expected when she built the place in 1964. The Buckingham neighborhood around us was still segregated at the time, after all.

Joanna the Polish Life guard has hit her stride. She has a golden tan on her arms and lush figure, though she normally wears a modest cover-up of a large wife-beater shirt and boxer-style trunks. She has the best smile and eyes the color of cornflowers.

She now knows all of the regulars, and certain of the rules have dropped away. It takes a while to chip away at them; I mean, you do not want to be too blatant at the beginning of the season and force the matter in a way that sets precedent.

My issues include the stupid pool passes and the smoking ban, which is still a simmering issue. The non-smokers who signed the petition to the Board in protest didn’t ink the lines because they like smoke. It is the high-handed way the Board passed the prohibition.

That little weasel lawyer that got a stealth appointment last summer when no one else would run was responsible. He brought the matter up as “new business” at the end of the last regular meeting.

I appeared at the last emergency session to present the petition and admonish the board for their capricious parliamentary maneuver that precluded rational and civil debate.

The President took the petition gravely, saddened that a matter of controversy had arisen that he would have to deal with. The weasel lawyer peered at his Blackberry.

I have to quit anyway, but it is entertaining to put the Board through their paces

I will be interested to hear what they are going to do about the elevators. I think it might have been the weasel who pushed the low-bidder for the refurbishment of the aging Otis machines. The company they selected seems to have been diffident at best, and the situation came to a head just as I was walking through the lobby after checking the mail.

Rhonda was almost breathless with excitement. Two of the three were posted as “out of order,” including the service elevator, the only one that goes all the way to the basement and has a backdoor to facilitate moves.

“The County inspector was here today,” she said, her right hand fluttering over her ample bosom. “He looked at the cable and said it was so thin that it might fail. And the service elevator is missing a part they don’t make any more. It is out of commission for the duration.”

“That is terrible,” I said, wondering how I would get the cart with the groceries up from the garage.

“Not as terrible as the old woman from the seventh floor who got trapped in the middle one during the inspection for a half hour.” Rhonda shook her head sadly. "They cut the power and she could not ring the emergency buzzer, poor thing."

I thought about the challenge of the elderly having to walk up and down from the upper floors. I don't mind the hike to the fourth floor, but all the way up to eight would be a pain with the groceries.

I imagine the Board would have taken this all a little more seriously if the President, and the Weasel, lived on the 8th floor and not the first.

This is going to go on for the rest fo the summer, and probably cost us a couple hundred thousand bucks. Oh well. Thank goodness the pool is open.