This is a story that was in the NY Times by an Oakland kid who is weathering the recession as a gondolier in Central Park. Thankfully he spent his childhood manning a gondola on The Town's crown jewel, Lake Merritt.
I did not always see myself becoming a Central Park gondolier. But like many Americans, I also did not anticipate being cast into a purgatorial state of quasi-employment.
I graduated from a fancy East Coast university (Brown) a year ago and lost an internship at a prestigious publication (The New Yorker) because of budget cuts. From last June to this June, I tried my hand at nine different jobs — including dog-sitting, coffee-shop-cleaning, script-reviewing, inventory-counting and actually writing. Some were temporary by nature, others by will. Eventually, I returned to one of the odder entries on my résumé: rowing a 37-foot-long Venetian boat while singing “O Sole Mio.”
I come from what may be the premier Irish-American gondolier family in the world. I am the youngest of four brothers, and three of us have rowed gondolas on Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland, Calif., on and off for about 10 years. The outfit there, led by a man named Angelino who insisted on drinking wine while training, is superauthentic and super-romantic. Yet little could have prepared me for the immensity and bizarreness of love, New York style.... Click HERE for the full article.
Posts
