Supply Chain Issue

A long, long time ago—decades ago actually—I read in the  NYT a piece by one of their reporters, Anthony DePalma on longshoremen.  Woven into the story was his father, a honest, hard-working longshoreman on the Newark docks I think, who liked his job and saw poetry in how sacks and sacks of coffee could look when stacked properly on a palette.

Mr. DePalma's father worked on the docks in the era before containerized cargo, when guys went down into hold of a ship and stacked crates of good onto a palette that was hoisted onto the pier, then loaded onto trucks. This was the era depicted in the movie On the Waterfront, and pilferage was rampant. 

Part of Mr. DePalma's story was something his father told him of the Italian shoe manufacturer who grew so tired of having his cargo shrunken by pilferage he took to shipping only the left shoes. On the next shipment he shipped the right shoes, hopefully to meet their match.

I've always loved that story, and myself wove it into my work when I discussed fraud, when fraud detection was my job. Those huge containers eliminated all the handling that took place below decks, but no doubt just pushed the chicanery into other forms, like maybe a container or two that go missing.

There is a senior reporter for the NYT, Corey Kilgannon, whose eye is as sharp as his writing. His Twitter feed (@coreykilgannon) can be relied to to have photos of New York City scenes that only someone with a keen eye and a ready camera (cell phone camera?) can snap.

I've suggested to Mr. Kilgannon that enough of his photos could be used in a NYC calendar. Recently he posted a photo of three people walking down the street carrying tubas, certainly not something you  often see.

His photos have often inspired some of my postings. Before the tuba players, he posted photos of an abandoned upright piano under the BQE; a subway rider with an upright bass wedged between his legs—bass spreading; a sidewalk Christmas tree employee wearing the sweatshirt with the name of the business, Uptown X-Mas trees on its back.

I don't know how many "views" Mr. Kilgannon gets, but I know there are never many replies. Sometimes it seems I'm the only one. I hope that paucity doesn't discourage him. I'm rather sure it won't

His latest observation from being a flâneur is the above photo. I first came across the word flâneur when I read something about Pete Hamill, another newspaperman, who would walk around the city and get just look. The OED definition of flâneur is: "an idler; the man who drifts around the streets, gazing at everything." Nice work when you can make it pay.

It might be a bit hard to read the sign in the shoe store window, but it goes: Due to shipment issues we have only received right feet for the Jordan 11 "Cherry." We will provide further updates when we receive the left. Thank you for your support.

You have to wonder if the manufacturer only turned out the right ones first, then calibrated the machines for the left foot. But why make two shipments?

Have containers gone missing? Some things never change.

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