ANTITUSSIVE

By ANTHONY DePALMA NYT January 4, 2005

This may be the age of Internet pop-ups and text-message marketing, but lots of businesses - especially small businesses - still do most of their advertising with old-fashioned low-tech signs. And just as the eyes are said to be windows to the soul, these storefront signs - which often come with fractured grammar and mysterious spelling - can be portals on a great city that is regenerating itself with a flood of new immigrants.

The signs are there to lure customers, of course, but they can do much more. Four out of 10 current New Yorkers were born in a foreign country, more than at any other time since the 1920's, and many have gone immediately into business. Their signs can form a style all their own, and style, as E. B. White, a passionate New Yorker at heart, once observed, is sometimes nothing but "sheer luck, like getting across the street."

With such luck, the errors in usage add unintended meaning, like the East Side pizzeria that for a long time listed "1 litter" bottles of soda on its menu. So many one-liter bottles end up as litter that such a change might be appropriate.

Signs, like the one announcing the imminent closing of a dry-cleaning shop on West 42nd Street, can be read as existential meditations on time. "Last Day of Opening December 23," read the sign in the shop's front window. While the wording did not obscure the sign's message, it did bring to mind Churchill's famous formulation about World War II, and the certain way of placing an event in time to truly understand its significance: "Now this is not the closing," a Churchillian shop owner might well have said. "It is not even the beginning of the closing. But it is, perhaps, the end of the opening." To these Asian shop owners, a decade of taking out spots on 42nd Street was just a prolonged opening, and they will start over again on another city street.

Elyse B. Rudolph, executive director of the Literacy Assistance Center, a group that helps newcomers learn English, says that the immigrants flooding into the city today are "ambitious, smart and wonderful" but that many are not literate in either English or their native language. That means they "do not come with an understanding of the structure of a language," she said.

In addition, Ms. Rudolph said, many follow the old immigrant practice of giving their sign business to their own kind. This helps the immigrants get a toehold in New York but the signs suffer, since both the printer and the customer may not know good English from bad.

Such nearsighted oversight was undoubtedly responsible for the sign on the side of a pushcart that was parked for a long time on the corner of 38th Street and Fifth Avenue. The very busy owner ran several grills at once, with a lot of chopping, slapping and swishing. He spoke almost no English beyond the items on the extensive menu printed on the side of his cart. The top section listed Seafood, followed by a category noted as Beef Food and then, logically, another section called Chicken Food.

English words are difficult for foreigners to spell. But part of what seems to be happening in New York City today is an overlapping of ethnic groups that confounds attempts at proper orthography. With Mexicans working in pizzerias and Afghans pushing hot dog carts, even ethnic words get misspelled.

So just about any Italian dish with more than two syllables presents difficulties, and words in which consonants run in pairs, like mozzarella, or run up against unruly vowels, like parmigiana, are never spelled the same way twice. One pizzeria on 41st Street has spaguetti with clam sause, and a lunch cart on Lexington Avenue and 46th Street helps out-of-towners by spelling knish "kanish."

"People tell me it's wrong and I told my brother-in-law, who is the owner, but he doesn't want to change it," said Wael Ahmed, 39, an Egyptian immigrant who works at the stand with kanish and chees steak on the menu. "Sometimes people on the street also tell me it's wrong, but I tell them it doesn't matter because we don't sell knish anymore."

But spelling mistakes are nothing compared to the double-entendres that have found their way onto the streets of the city. And because advanced printing technology makes plastic and canvas printing cheap enough for immigrant shopkeepers to afford, the mysteries endure.

Even when stores change hands, and signs are repainted, some messages live on. So whole generations of New Yorkers will be left to ponder the real meaning of the sign over the entrance to the Park Slope Grocery + Convinient store on Fourth Avenue and 17th Street in Brooklyn. The store's new owners no longer sell beepers (Who does?), but still visible beneath the letters spelling out Smoke Shop is the word Beerpers, an intriguing pentimento that still conjures images of boozy afternoons at the ballpark with the beer man just a beep away.

Technology also makes possible mass-production knockoffs of popular products, like movie DVD's. The Pakistani immigrant hovering over dozens of movies laid out on a Manhattan sidewalk obviously didn't realize that the title of the 1992 Al Pacino film he was selling was "Scent of a Woman," not "Scant of a Woman," though that alternative title might have expressed the loneliness of being thousands of miles from home.

Money, of course, is often the object of obsession, and immigrants recognize the words dollar, dough, buck or moola long before they can string together an English sentence. The dollar becomes their frame of reference in some ways, although at first it may be only in terms of what it means at the foreign exchange booth. How else to explain the sign posted on the front door of a busy Chinese restaurant on 45th Street, just off Avenue of the Americas, that warns coin seekers looking for change without spending a dime: "Sorry! We do not have any quarter for exchange."

The same passion for the dollar may explain why so many bargain stores run by immigrants fix on that magical figure. There are 99-cent stores in every immigrant neighborhood. But each has its own accent. Inspired by its surroundings, one such store near the diamond district in Midtown Manhattan is improbably called 99 cent Dreams. One in a Chinatown basement is called 99 cent or plus. Some critics see the fractured English on these signs as an attack on the very things that hold society together. Others see them as fresh reminders that the city is renewing itself.

But then there are those who see in the signs nothing less than poetry, which itself has had many different meanings, though no one hit closer to the bull's-eye, it could be argued, than the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who believed poetry was simply "the best words in their best order."

And in such order, perhaps, a true reflection of what is important in life. It's hard to come to any other conclusion when looking at the store window on Eighth Avenue and 43rd Street, just a few hundred feet west of the office of one of the city's largest newspapers. There, in bright neon colors, is a stark reminder of priorities, a neon Post-it note to those who work at that newspaper to not take themselves too seriously.

Candy is the first item on the list of four essentials.

Left to right, Soda is next.

Then Beer.

And last, News.

# posted by Resty Odon @ 7:24 AM 0 comments

Updated 09:48am (Mla time) Jan 02, 2005
By Pam Pastor
Inquirer News Service

Editor's Note: Published on page C3 of the January 2, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

PLAZA Miranda was as busy as ever. Vendors were hawking colorful plastic bags and cheap toys and shoppers were rushing to climb into jeepneys, dodging the firecrackers set off by noisy children. Just a few steps away, lining one side of Quiapo church, was a row of fortunetellers. Some were old, some young; some were male, a lot were female, and those who weren't busy reading palms were calling out to passersby, offering a look into their future.

Madam Lita was younger than most of the Quiapo fortunetellers. She smiled as she whipped out her tarot cards.

"It's the Year of the Rooster, we need to work hard and pray because the crisis will continue," she said in the vernacular.

She said prices of commodities would continue to go up.

"There will be a lot of family problems, spouses cheating because of temptations. Judgment day is near, that's why temptations are all around," she added.

Dismal

Madam Lita continued laying down the cards. "There might be a volcanic eruption and an earthquake, but we would recover."

The predictions remained dismal. "There will be chaos. I pity the President, a lot of people will go against her. Members of the NPA will come out, prisoners will also cause trouble."

Madam Lita repeatedly talked about a continuing crisis but kept saying that prayers would help us get through it.

She kept stressing that people would rebel against President Arroyo. She also had negative predictions for Filipinos abroad.

"Some people abroad will be imprisoned," she continued, "and there will be Filipinos who will get hurt in disasters in other countries, in bombings and accidents. But people will remain stubborn. A lot of them will still go abroad."

There will be a shift in male-female roles in 2005, she said. "Women will become the breadwinners instead of men."

Celebrity couples will have a tough time next year, according to her. "Many celebrity couples will split up."

She said she also sees a lot of deaths in the coming year. Madam Lita continued stressing the importance of prayer in facing 2005.

She set all the cards down and leaned back, indicating that she was done. It was time to go back to the present, because Madam Lita, the clairvoyant, sure made the present seem so much brighter than tomorrow.

*** E-mail the author at ppastor@inquirer.com.ph

# posted by Resty Odon @ 7:40 AM 0 comments

Man About Town : The forgiveness of kin Updated 08:43pm (Mla time) Dec 24, 2004 By Chuck Dy Inquirer News Service Editor's Note: Published on page E3 of the December 25, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer Dear Man About Town, I have had a crush on my classmate ever since we were in elementary school together. Now that we are in our first year of college together, he has begun to show signs of being romantically interested in me as well. Needless to say, this is something I am really excited about. But my parents warn me about his family, saying that they have a reputation, having been previously linked to certain criminal activities. I've heard this from some friends as well. Now I am confused because I sincerely like this guy, but I am worried that my association with him may not be a good idea because of his family’s lifestyle. MY FATHER, with his inimitable blend of paternal sagacity and personal tribulation, peppered my formative years with adages he felt I would need to later on tackle the inevitable hurdles of growing up. Or perhaps this was less a mentoring strategy than it was a therapeutic exercise, one that allowed him to express his own frustrations at not having been advised in such a manner when he was younger. Whatever the reason, my memories of the first 25 years are punctuated-punchlined, if you will-by the proverbs taken from the Gospel according to Dad. Most were self-evident and obligatory, such as "don't do drugs" and "don't drink and drive." Many were practical, and I have adopted them as my own. Others seemed to stem from a more personal reservoir, cryptic due to a lack of context, like the surreal dictum, "avoid eggplant." But my all-time favorite remains his marital maxim. "Anak," he would whisper conspiratorially, from one man to another, "if you want to know how the girl you are dating is going to turn out 20 years from now, just look at her mother. It's true." This was accompanied by an accusatory glance toward Heaven. A couple of times he even shook his fist at the angels, I swear. There is nothing unnatural about the very human and not-very-humane tendency of judging people by their family names. Even more so in Philippine culture, where the dynastic histories are relatively young and pronounced, where every skeleton is publicly exhumed from private closets, and families are collectively known by their clan names. The repercussion, of course, of such forced intimacy is that we all become guilty by association for the sins of the father. I am uncertain whether Christianity has anything to do with it, but perhaps this whole business of Original Sin lends weight to our society's penchant for condemning whole bloodlines on the account of one or two bad apples. (Speaking of bad fruit, if Adam and Eve had just stuck to meat diets we wouldn't be in this pickle right now). So does the apple never fall far from the tree? The general theory of relatives Let us stray from our gastronomic metaphors (I'm on a literary diet that only allows me limited food references a day) and dwell in the realm of physics. Imagine your family as a galaxy comprised of paternal planets, maternal moons, brothers and as-sister-oids, cousins of gaseous material, aunts and uncles of alien alloy, and that random lunatic grandparent streaking naked through the cosmos of your living room during astral reunions. We all revolve around the Sun of our shared history, held in place by a force beyond our personal reckoning. In turn, we each exert a pull on our other family members, affecting their inertia, simultaneously allowing them to persuade our own activity. We cannot help it. Propinquity demands influence. Thus is our galaxy assessed, on the combined movement and overlapping orbits of all our galactic elements, orchestrated by the adhesive will of our common Sun, and God's sense of humor. And other galaxies cannot help but notice when a comet turns maverick or a moon comes unhinged in our Solar System, and they note with distaste, "They've always had bad gravity; it's the Milky Way." So on one hand, yes, the parent will always influence the child. Consequently, the moral quality of a parent's actions, especially if the child is somewhat aware, will affect their upbringing. But does this necessarily mean that the child will be like the parent, that a son will emulate his daddy's hectoring and philandering ways, or a daughter her mommy's substance abuse and terrible fashion sense? Of course not! I like to note the reverse argument as evidence: If such were the case, then axiomatically, good parents MUST produce good children. And we all know that's not true. We are all progeny of stigma in one way or the other. Whether it is as distant as an ancestor who smuggled firearms for the wrong side during the Spanish-American War, or as proximate as your favorite uncle who just happens to frequent the streets of Manila dressed as your favorite aunt, we all know a family member whom we just don't discuss at Noche Buena. Unfortunately, it appears to be fair dinner conversation for other families who apparently have little qualms about hurling stones through the windows of their glass houses. I emphasize: while family influences, it does not, with any predictable accuracy, determine the eventual character of a family member. Michael Jackson's kids might be normal With that said, I think you should follow your heart on this one. You've liked this guy for a while, which seems to indicate that he has treated you well for a number of years. The duration alone should provide sufficient indication that he has a good heart. Rather than look at what his parents do, you should focus more on what he does, taken apart from the context of his last name. Too often, we tend to fixate on pedigree and we forget that even Blue Ribbon show dogs can turn rabid. Or, inversely, how the pup can turn out loyal and affectionate even if he is the son of a bitch. Should you be wary of him? Just about as wary as anyone getting into any sort of relationship. And with modern romances the way they are, his family affairs should be the least of your worries. Determine the requisite basics first and prioritize your relationship standards. Is he honest? Is he sensitive? Is he hygienic? Do you have interests in common? Does he share your political and social views? Does the phrase "excessive flatulence" make him laugh? It's tough enough nailing those down without having to ponder the lingering effects of his great-great grandmother's reputation as a brothel member. Everyone deserves a chance. I am certain there's a few Germans or Austrians, with the unfortunate last name of Hitler, running around the world today, desperate for unnecessary absolution from an unforgiving world. And they're probably really decent folk without the least inclination for global domination or genocide. Give the guy a break. If people are condemned for the faults of the father, my kid is NEVER going to get a date to the prom. We owe much to our families; for better or for worse, we are the sums of their parts. But the greatest achievement a parent can ever claim is to have their children grow up as individuals, mindful of their heritage, but fully aware of their independence. My folks christened my identity with a little bit of theirs, supporting me in my adventures, sending me cash and cashmere, and texting to let me know that they love me in spite of my refusal to return home for the holidays. But I am indebted to them most of all because they gave me their name, but taught me to make one for myself as well.

# posted by Resty Odon @ 7:37 AM 0 comments