This week brings the guide community some sad news. One of our best has died.
Stan Tomashow had gone to City College, up atop the hill north of Columbia U, atop Harlem Valley, in the 1960s, a time of political involvement among the colleges and universities of the USA. Though he had never mentioned any personal political involvement to me, he had very strong opinions on politics and on the USA's place in the world (i.e. that we shouldn't flatter ourselves into thinking we belong at the top of it). He showed character in an era of P.S. blandness.
Stan went to work in the pressure cooker of Wall Street's financial market sales, having taken a degree in accounting, and then passing tests for what I think was "series 37" or some "series," which allowed him to work on certain specific money markets. He worked at that business until he couldn't take the pressure anymore, snapped at someone, and was asked to leave the firm. I sympathized with him, as things went similarly for me about 15 years later.
Stan O'Connor and Stan Tomashow, roughly fifteen years apart, followed similar habits into similar careers: we were each struck by the beauty of the city, and by its historical significance. We walked the city streets, fell in love with New York, and became guides to the greatest city in the world.
Stan had worked on Wall & Broad. Imagine sitting down at lunch each day on the steps of a federal building from 1842, with the reaching black hand of George Washington's statue right overhead! That alone would be inspiring enough. And the Sub-Treasury Building, those steps, would be where ship captains and merchants would bring their taxes all through the 19th century. Literally, in a handbag, up the hill from the docks, then up these very steps. This at a time when the United States kept a military force capable of defending our shores, but not capable of dominating worldwide events or keeping bases in a score of other nations. That is to say, the citizens of the USA were not then required to give up 30 percent of their earnings in order to keep a vast worldwide military going. Only shipping and merchants were taxed. Those who did business at the port of New York City would walk up these Treasury steps to hand their taxes over. In cash: a heavy bag lugged up a long marble staircase.
A lover of history, Stan would keep in mind that, a generation earlier in April of 1789, George Washington was inaugurated President, mere feet away from where he sat.
The Sub-Treasury Building also was on an extremely important parcel of land. Its predecessor on that plot of land had been New York City Hall. On its steps, the evening of July nine, seventeen-seventy-six, one of the Sons of Liberty stood on the top step and read loudly down to a torchlit mob, a document that had been smuggled into the restless city that day, over from Philly. The new document was called A Declaration of Independence. "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary..." Then the crowd strode a block west to Bowling Green, got out hacksaws and ropes, sawed off the hated leaden British-crown fence posts, and the gold-painted leaden statue of George III. These were melted down into much needed musket balls and cannonballs for the coming war.
Seven weeks later, the British took Manhattan, and City Hall was held as their HQ until the end of the War. Post war, some rooms in City Hall were set aside as government offices of something totally new: The United States of America. City Hall bustled; so overcrowded with City and National offices that Henry Knox and Alexander Hamilton had to run the departments of War and Treasury three blocks down the hill, at Fraunces Tavern.
And Tomashow would walk those streets and envision it all:
The states-rights-loving Thomas Jefferson and the pragmatic federalist Hamilton, meeting by chance on Broadway and there working out a deal to create a new capital while paying off NYS' war debts.
The chef at Delmonico's inventing Lobster Newburgh.
Charles Dickens speaking at a dinner in his honor, on a trip to America.
Washington praying at Saint Paul's Chapel.
Mary & Abe Lincoln staying across the street at Astor House because it had indoor plumbing.
The Brooklyn Bridge opening in 1883.
And South Street Seaport opening in 1984.
Stan Tomashow liked meeting people, giving details of oft-hidden history, and exchanging points of view. Naturally he became a New York City sightseeing guide because it's the finest job for those of us who love such a life.
Double-decker guides used to have a professional-courtesy practice of letting other guides hitch rides on the buses. (Management later clamped down on such acts of kindness.) One time I hopped on Stan's bus on Third Avenue just before the 49th Street crossing. Some guy was leaning into the wide-open door of his sports car, oblivious to traffic around him. The bus tore along at a good clip, and Stan had the people looking at the Waldorf. "Franklin Roosevelt was crippled and couldn't walk, so the New York Central made him a railroad spur that took his touring car right into the hotel's basement --and I'll tell you how, as soon as we take this Corvette's door off!"
I found him to be lovable, though uncompromising and irascible, passing Saint Patrick's Cathedral and talking about the "cult known as Christianity", which he considered to be a cult that got out of hand, and would say so, right to the tourists' faces. Stan could start an argument over someone's stated opinion and have the brainpower to see that argument through and end it with the other person, if not in agreement, chastened to the point of no longer giving their side. I was so chastened on occasion.
Tomashow was uncompromising about working for the needs of others. He gave of himself if people needed his help. He was nonreligious and Jewish. But he hung out at, and volunteered for, a Methodist church because he appreciated the work that the minister there was doing. I liked and respected him in that he saw no problem in crossing religious lines in order to help others.
Stan trained me when I became a guide. He was great on the fly, and never shrank from doing overtime work. He loved overtime. In the record-tourism year of 1999, he said he made $60,000 on the double-deckers, two-thirds of it on overtime. ...Not counting tips.
About that time, Stan got "noticed" by the management of the company because, as he said, he felt more comfortable in women's clothing than in men's. He had started his transformation by wearing low-heel pumps. Later came the painted nails and lipstick. His rough voice and heavy Brooklyn accent let no one mistake him for an effeminate person. Then, if I recall correctly, some wag upstairs sent out a memo on a customer's complaint that they had noticed bra lines under his mandatory white 50-50 polo shirt. So they apparently went out to get him, and he was called in for one hearing after another, on any tiny discrepancy on his tours, resulting in his firing. The company lost a top guide because, it would seem, they didn't like the way he dressed! This at a time when its buses were wrapped in ads for Hooters. Stan despised such hypocrisy.
Stan and I got to know each other while sitting in the bullpen at the double-decker company, waiting to be called for our tours. He was whip smart! Andy Sydor had brought the New York City edition of Trivial Pursuits, which we would hop into and out of, playing for hours and hours, like professional gamblers who get in on a standing poker game in Atlantic City for an hour or so, then leave. Stan not only got most of the questions right; he once argued his way through a his wrong answer of a question on one of the cards. The next day, Stan brought in a reference book which corroborated his point, just to prove he'd been right. Thereafter, that card was taken out of play.
Both Stan and I were members of the Guide Association. We teamed up for some two-bus student tours in '04 and '05. While walking Central Park with the kids, we were roughly equal in pointing out different aspects of the park. But when we got to Wall Street, Stan outshone me by far. He knew stuff not only in New York's and America's early history. Furthermore, he told the kids about the crash of 1987 and how the value of stocks, though diminished for the time being, went up afterward and soared past their old records just a few years later. This was a valuable lesson for teenagers, who have so little personal timeline that they can't see what will happen in five or six years; that not all is lost because the markets are losing money right now. That things will get better. That there's hope for the future, a future we should all look forward to.
I am bummed today. I had a little elective surgery yesterday, so I am sitting here recuperating, writing this, rather than sitting Shiva for my friend Stan Tomashow.
Labels: Tomashow tourguide New York NYC history character
