a man is a sometime thing

We took a guest to a jazz venue in Harlem last night, a recently reopened but historic place on West 118th called Minton's. 

A keen place, good acoustics, clearly here in the present but knowing what it had been.  Culinary black American food of the kind suddenly easy to find in the city.  (There were "okra croutons" on my salad, which would have been perfect if they had been called thick-breaded fried okra, as they were.)  Danny Mixon playing sharp piano, backed by bass and drums, with his matryoshka nesting rhythyms.  A good mix of informed and general guests, well turned out, adorning the long room, with its dark rose walls and oversize photos of performances long past.  And a lit matchbook of a singer, Malou Beauvoir.

Her penultimate song came after a pause to lean over the pianist and talk a bit.  She would improvise.  And then, between the scatting and the winks and acknowledgements to acquaintances in the crowd, she delivered a blunt if appreciative critique of the venue itself.  It stopped the room.  The best and the worst on the menu - called out, with references to line cooks by name.  "Alexander goes and Cecil thinks he can make his biscuits, but they're heavier than these plates.  The ones they're left sitting on!"  The beauty and elegance of the renovation praised - then called out for its as-yet soulless, new-paint character.  "Where's the living on these walls?"  Then the crowd - "You gotta let some barefoot in with these heels. You gotta let some mama in with these dames. Oh Minton's, let some neighbors in!"

We walk out, past the toddler running in barefoot circles on the sidewalk in his ecstatic chase of a toy car, under the careful watch of mother and grandmother, leaning against the low stoop wall, deep in their own conversation of some man.  Whose he was and what he had done, I did not hear.