Raafi Rivero | images and ideas

Spare Parts

When your landlord’s cell phone is disconnected and his land line’s answering machine is constantly full, it doesn’t hurt to pick up a few trade skills: carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and now locksmithing. Yusuke and I mined our parallel ever-growing heaps of non-working tech to find the perfect screw to fix the deadbolt on the front door. It was either that or put on the old “pretend your lock is actually working” performance every day for the benefit of the hallway.

The winning screw came from the PCI card at top right. The computer that formerly housed the card is like a time machine. I might boot it up once every couple years. Mainly it’s there to show me what my desktop looked like back in 2003. The part of me that’s fighting against the pack rat part is only half ashamed of the part that’s proud of fixing the lock. That’s got to be worth a pile of broken cameras. Right?

Hat and Cane Optional

I wouldn’t ordinarily use this as a space for pimping products, but on this rare occasion, I must digress. The CableBox by bluelounge is one of those incredibly simple yet incredibly useful products that absolutely delivers on premise. In this case the premise is simple: “space is gained.”

Their separate product the CableDrop performs admirably as well.

Check out the rest of their offerings if you also suffer from cable strangulation and clutter issues.

Black and Blue

I love how a color can stretch its boundaries when it interacts with factors like age and light. This garage read as black to the eye, but the camera sees the shadows of the garage as blacker than the garage itself. And what about the sign advertising its price? And the black cars inside?

Subway Pros

testifying on the 2 train.

This gentleman was proselytizing on the subway. I have only known Caribbeans and Africans to participate in this sort of unbridled subway testifying, though I’ve seen the odd middle-aged Latina perform a tamer Spanish version, and once an Orthodox Jew.

Mostly folks try to pretend that the person isn’t even there. Which is, of course, impossible. If the person is ridiculous enough, people will crack coy smiles and giggle to themselves, or break the unspoken but assiduously enforced eye contact rule, looking to the person across from them with one of those, “hey, what can you do?” kind of looks. The entire ordeal proceeds by rote — even sometimes on the part of the performer — each life touched not enough to matter, but enough to be annoyed.

But the experience isn’t annoying, really. It is often grating — producing the kind of woe-is-me regret that causes one to consider leaving New York as the person’s voice seamlessly takes on the form of every worst intention and idea lurking below the surface of our noble and usually well-meaning selves. Still, the performance itself is fascinating. Some person, for whatever reason, has left the tracks, gone rogue. Not in the murderous-rapage kind of way, but within a completely socially acceptible form that we have all taken on as part of the cost of doing business with the MTA. And unlike in the case of the homeless, or musicians, these people don’t want your money. They want your soul. Most will settle for your practiced inattention. Then, when the train stops, they step off and take their show to the next car.