"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill.
Jem and I stopped in our tracks.
"Yes sir, a clown," he said. "There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off."
"You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them."

Harper Lee in To Kill A Mocking Bird

Just received a lovely if somewhat unexpected email from a man who called himself Suleiman. Funnily enough, I don't even think joining ISIS would be the worst of my options right now. 

Porto, a city of soft charms.

Two old Americans were standing at the edge of an empty platform close to my house here in Lisbon. As they complained of hurting knees and swollen feet and stared a thousand yards into the darkness of the underground, they said:

“Porto is fascinating.”
“It's an older city.”
“You could feel it.”
“This is more a metropolis.”
“It’s all spread out.”
“Less charming.”
“Sure glad this is the end of the trip, though!”

I may be somewhat biased here, but I don’t think they were entirely wrong.

Porto is the kind of city you can hold on the palm of your hand. It all seems to fit into a mental postcard. You’ll never forget that one view from the top of the mossy hill, looking down on a jigsaw of dirty roofs and odd skylights, broken by all the churches and chapels, split by the golden green river and all its arching bridges.

There is all that dramatic impact of being on a city at the edge of the water, built onto the sides of the valley itself. And unless it's a foggy day, the river isn’t so big that the other margin is lost to the eye. You can see the shapes of the buildings on the other side, warehouses, tin roofs and the monumental Hollywood-like signs spelling foreign names. The other margin is so close, you'd think you could swim across it. I’ve seen a Czech student try this at three o’clock of a Monday morning. It did not end well.

You’ll see it in print on all the newspapers, from the Guardian to the New York Times and hear about it in travelling blogs. 10 reasons to visit Porto, 36 hours in Oporto, why Porto is the great weekend destination of the year…

None of them really manage to explain what makes Porto so special. I mean, yes, it is cheap. The food is great. The locals are honest and hardworking and welcoming. It has the beach nearby, great places to stay in, groundbreaking museums, world-class music festivals, Port, cold beer, the francesinha.

This is all great. It’s brilliant. But it doesn’t really explain what makes Porto so special. You could say most of this about Lisbon - except for the francescinha, or the bit about the locals. I guess, to go back to our lovely old American tourists, it’s that Lisbon sort of shoots in all directions. Porto has a special grace, soft charms, or - as they put it:

“Porto is fascinating.”
“It's an older city.”

You can feel it.

Socrates, Plato & the Poets

"And so, again, I soon came to a realization about the poets, that it wasn’t through wisdom that they wrote what they did, but through some natural faculty, and that they were divinely inspired, just as prophets and oracles are; for they say many beautiful things, but have no idea what they’re talking about."

(Socrates' Apology)

Forgives / encourages, tomato / tomato

He was Spanish and married and looked a little bit like Mark Ruffalo. She was tall and blonde, Brazilian and married. They talked about each others' spouses for a while and when she paid for his drinking they made out on the bar. 

New York is a city that forgives that kind of thing. And how does the song go?

Distance kills the best of intentions... 

Frank's No More: The Barbershop Quartet

I went to a barbershop today and would have given good money if you could have seen it. It was a perfect example of old-school barber's: the glass window on the front, checkered tiling on the floor and classic leather chairs lined up facing an endless speckless mirror.

The place used to be known as Frank's but Sal and Joe, who had always worked there, bought Frank out and are now their own bosses. They don't call it anything for now. It just is.

Sal (short for Salvatore) and Joe (a bastardisation of his name, Giuseppe) were talking about it with an old customer as I came in. Yes, Sal and Joe really dida speak lika this. Although, to be fair, it was mostly Joe who talked. Sal was busy with hot towels and soapy lather and this scarred face of mine.

Back in the good old days: Sal (front) and Frank (back), by http://belmontonian.com/

"Doesn't the wife mind you, Joe? Working six days a week?"
"Minda? Of course she mind." He had a thick raspy voice, like all the Italian guys do in all the old gangster movies. "But what, she needs me to go a shopping with her? She can not shop on her own?"

"And the grandkids?"
"The grandkids I see at night. They stay over the weekenda."

"But it's good for business? I guess if it's good for business, then it's alright. Gotta make sacrifices, right?"
"Good? It's a great. I make more money in two years than I made working for Frank. My whole lifa."

"Nice, Joe, nice!" Americans in general, and New Yorkers in particular, get really excited about money. This guy nearly jumped out of his chair. "How big is your turkey going to be this year? Huge, huh?"
"Bigga." Joe said and then punched the air and twisted his fist around, grumbling something in Italian beneath his long moustache. I didn't understand what he said, but thankfully, neither did the other guy.

"What's that, Joe?" He asked. At which point, Sal wiped the foam off the blade on a towel, leaned over me and translated:
"He's a going to stuff the turkey witha money."

One last stand on the stage

Dylan, photographed by John Cohen

"So I find it very strange that you had such contact with Bob Dylan but never played together, did you? Did you two ever get together to play?"

"There was one time," John Cohen started. "It was 1962 - the Cuban missile crisis."

"It took the Cuban missile crisis for you two to play together?" Nora Guthrie (Woody's daughter, Arlo's sister) said.

 "Literally did. I got home, saw what was happening on TV, and thought this is the end of the world. The thing was, I didn't want to die there all on my own. So I headed over to the Gaslight and Dylan was up on stage. I said, "hey lets play some songs," and he said "sure what you want to play?" I said "You're going to miss me when I'm gone." You see? It was ironic, there was going to be no one to miss us."