Pedestrian Pile-up
According to the statement from Kurt Sutton, the spokesman for ARF, Accident Reconstruction Forensics, who was part of the panel of law enforcement officials, first responders, local politicians and experts to address reporters at today’s press conference:
“After an initial review of surveillance footage from dozens of cameras, interviews, eyewitness accounts, and a review of the mobile device information available from those involved in today’s unprecedented pedestrian pile-up at the corner of 23rd Street and 7th Avenue; at 9:04 AM, Kyle Dylan McShay, a 22 year old self-described aspiring tattoo artist and hemp chapeau designer, was watching a Ferlin Husky clip on his iPhone 11, when, without looking up ahead of him, ran straight into Ira “Izzy” Itzkowitz, a 63 year old semi-retired accountant from Hartsdale. Ira was following his Google Map App on the Samsung Galaxy, his son Joshua and daughter-in-law Sadie bought him on his 62nd birthday.
Initial analysis indicates Ira, who was trying to locate the Pearl Vision center on 3rd Avenue where he bought his last pair of black horn rimmed glasses in 2008, or 2009, had inadvertently changed the language of the app to Mandarin. Not being fluent in Mandarin Ira let his tendency to get excited take over and stopped suddenly to argue with the digital voice providing direction.
LaShawn Arnold, 42, an MTA transit worker who had just gotten off his weekend shift, was using his Motorola Moto listening to a Ted Talk on happiness when, by luck, at the last minute, he looked up and avoided colliding with Mr. McShay and Mr Itzkowitz. Mr. Arnold who provided his height as 6’5 and his weight as 265 could have inflicted a great deal more damage had he not pivoted to the left.
However well intentioned his dodge was, it resulted in side bumping Bonnie Rizzaro from Bensonhurst. Ms. Rizzaro the office manager of a Flatiron law office, was on her way to TD Bank to make a deposit for the firm while FaceTiming with her cousin Carmella.
According to interviews with both women, they were chatting about how rude Carmella's ex husband Louie was to bring his new girlfriend to their daughter Tiffany’s 21st birthday.
Apparently Carmella feels even though it’s been 12 years since their divorce, she has unresolved feelings and Louie should at least acknowledge that.
Video footage from the nearby Sephora captures an animated Bonnie desperately trying to calm down Carmella. It may be that with her attention so focused on consoling Carmella, she didn’t catch LaShawn in her peripheral vision.
The side bump propelled Bonnie into Sun Young Kim, 38, the owner of the nearby Chelsea Buffet. Ms. Kim was on her HTC Wildfire engaged in an argument with Sofia Reyes the Realtor she’s been working with for the lease on a new 17th Street location she’s looking to lock-in.
Ms. Kim, petite and wearing high heeled Jimmy Choo’s was tipped off balance and according to Ahmed Mustafa, the owner of Haddad’s 24 Hour News and Grocery, who witnessed the mayhem, Ms Kim dropped her Wildfire just before falling forward, directly into the path of Jonathan Black, the entertainment attorney and film producer. Jonathan was texting on his brand new blackberry trying to bulk message all 2743 people on his party invite list after being spontaneously inspired to celebrate the historical significance that this upcoming Saturday, December 7th, is in history, the fortieth anniversary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture release with a soirée at the loft offices..
Though reportedly agile, Jonathan was unable to compensate for the sudden fall of Ms. Kim, and as quickly as he tumbled into the pile, he was followed by Ari Flieshmann who had been talking with his mother in Monsey on his iPhone 6+ when he, along with Ravi Shah and Caitlin Lennon both engaged in conversations with their respective romantic partners, ironically on identical black LG G8’s, skidded and slammed directly into the growing heap.
Ultimately, this became the catalyst for an even larger domino and snowball effect.
First Responders say keeping order became a concern as the chaos was exacerbated by the cords, headphones and ear buds spread out and spilled on the pavement.
There was mass confusion as the victims became argumentative while first responders tried to disentangle everyone and match them up with their accessories.”
Mr Sutton concluded his statement saying he expected to have additional causal information available on this unprecedented pedestrian pile-up at this evenings press conference.
A Joel Hunter Borrelli Snippet 12/1/19
Crippled by Technology
A Snippet from Joel Hunter Borrelli
She understood immediately. As soon as he walked through the door. She recognized the expression. It happened so often it was now common. She was already anticipating the question.
He couldn’t seem to get the words out fast enough.
They came in all the time. The hollow cheeks. The confusion. The panic. You could see it in their eyes. The desperate look of somebody whose mobile device has lost battery life.
It almost came out as a cry. “Do you have a plug?” he asked.
Crippled by Technology.
Joel Hunter Borrelli 5/18/18
Inspired by actual events and semi-autobiographical
Freddy “The Flame”
Freddy “The Flame” Federico had a reputation, as you might imagine from his moniker.
You had to go back a long way to even know he had a last name.
There was an all night donut shop in town where most times you could find Freddy “The Flame” sitting on one of their low counter stools, sipping coffee with a cruller and chain smoking cigarettes. This was in the day you could do that.
The cigarettes are not how he got his nickname. No, Freddy “The Flame” was fire for hire.
Even though most of the conversations Freddy was known to have were with himself and aloud, he had a specific genius for arson for which he was proud.
It’s rumored but not known, when luxury boat owners were in over their heads with their loans, their vessels suffered the same combustion syndrome.
The marinas who wanted to collect on their debt were a source of referral.
The Fannelli brothers old junk store was an eye sore. It was hurting the sales of the new condos on Main Street with soon to be more. So it’s with Freddy “The Flame” a representative for the developers was told to meet.
The village and town cops circled through the coffee shop with every shift exchanging polite greetings with Freddie using his nickname when they stopped.
From time to time they brought him in to question, he always had an alibi, they didn’t get a confession.
They never could prove it was so, they had no choice but to let him go.
Over time Freddie aged out of his profession.
Freddie “The Flame” might have been insane but he had a funny bone.
He passed recently and this was the epitaph on his stone:
Here lies Freddy “The Flame” whose complicity and collusion in criminal acts could never be proven.
A Joel Hunter Borrelli Snippet
03/31/19
L’Oréal #315 True Red.
Lynn Ann’s shade of lipstick defined as much about her as anything else. The color fit her lips complimenting her perfect teeth.
We’d known each other only a short while before she was eager to demonstrate the degree to which she maintained her fitness by offering her bicep for examination.
She was unwilling to provide her stomach for the same scrutiny so soon.
I respected that.
We’d met as suddenly as New Yorkers often do, on street corners where eyes catch and conversation follows.
I’d spent the previous 3 hours at an event trying to meet someone I didn’t know or perhaps see someone who’d piqued my interest before.
My quest didn’t initially spark anything and continued without ignition.
Confident in my awkwardness I persisted until I felt I exhausted my options just short of embarrassing myself.
As I exited I was thinking how much more I found myself attracted to the maturity of women lately and as if my mere thoughts were the catalyst for reality, Lynn Ann appeared before me.
It wasn’t 15 minutes after the spark of conversation before we found ourselves in Molly’s on 3rd Avenue.
By the time we got there I knew how many siblings she had, that she grew up in Manhattan practicality in the same neighborhood she currently lived, where we were now as well as the history of her family dynamic.
I always embraced being both inquisitor and audience. She appeared to embrace the role of subject. Lynn Ann didn’t need to be prompted to tell her story.
It gushed from her.
I’d like to think it was something in me that drew her confidence but I was more confident that her intimacies weren’t any more guarded with other strangers .
I’m always skeptical because I’m a magnet for crazy. It’s my superpower and tonight I was wearing my cape.
She dictated her biography quickly and it painted a picture that matched her appearance. You see, sometimes, you can tell a book by its cover.
What’s funny is I was in my wheelhouse, and at my comfort level.
It was like the moment I picked up on a woman’s pheromones of vulnerability my inate male monkey brain strained to offer support.
It must come from some need for validation based on my search for the value of my life.
It wasn’t just that I was a match for misfits it was that I found the only way I could heal my own wounds was to inject myself with other peoples pain.
Tonight was no different than others but more rewarding than most. By the time we parted we’d shared enough that our time together, the collision of two trajectories was proof of our participation in a bigger universe.
We both spent time living in the dream that is the present talking about the movie that’s been each our past trying to write the roles of the future.
It was but another night in the real life theatre that’s acted out on the stages of New York City streets.
Joel Hunter Borrelli 10/27/19
The Complexity of D.
It was late in the afternoon on Passover when we glided onto the FDR in her Tesla headed to one of the orthodox communities in the suburbs to share dinner with her relatives.
As an Agnostic I had anxiety attending a religious tradition of a faith that I didn’t share with a family that I wasn’t a part of.
Over the years I’d heard about her tremendously successful cousin, but I’d only met him recently and it quickly turned into a business relationship. Now I was about to be his guest by extension of her invitation.
I was copied on a few emails regarding the guest list and time to arrive by an assistant with the title Estate Manager. I figured that was an indication as to what lie in store.
We weren’t on the road long when she began to tell me that she was worried because her friend, Tommy Carnavalle, had gone missing.
The early reports didn’t seem promising. Danny, his sometimes driver, dropped by to check on him after he was unable to reach him by phone. His keys, his wallet and his Life Alert were on the counter but no one knew were he was.
For most people it might not have been as alarming to disappear for a few hours. Tommy wasn’t most people.
For starters he had just spent the past three decades in prison. Almost half his life. He had a reputation on the outside before he went in and one on the inside before he returned.
One of the first things Tommy had done after he was released was to reach out to her. He wanted to pay his condolences on the loss of her father years earlier.
Her father had a reputation too. His was bigger. He was considered the last of the real men of the mob, part of the old guard. And, well, Tommy was part of the guard of the old guard prior to the time he had done.
She remembered the handsome young man he was in their youth. She remembered how loyal he was to her father. Loyalty remained part of her DNA in the best and most beautiful ways.
It was always difficult to reconcile who she was with where she came from. She transcended any type of label. You couldn’t pigeonhole her.
She had become a successful woman in her own right. At the height of the publicity, when her father was on trial, the papers did stories about her and her successful business, trying to tie the two together. She was quoted saying she’d built her business not due to her father, but despite who her father was.
Honestly, that only encouraged people to want to meet with her. Her success and her fathers reputation intrigued people.
The funny thing was, once you met her, you were hooked. She spoke off her cuff, honestly and bravely, without a filter. She was smart, attractive and endearing. She won EVERYONE over.
Though you wouldn’t want to make the mistake of misjudging her kindness for timidness. If you challenged her without merit, or, God forbid stupid enough to threaten her, you’d find yourself on the receiving end of an intimidating dispatch. A unique mixture of Bensonhurst vulgarity and Wharton intelligence.
Or, these days, possibly the recipient of a phone call or a visit from me.
I was smart enough to know she didn’t need my help and close enough to her to know she appreciated that she could count on me if she needed too.
I offered my intervention much more often than she ever accepted it.
Her life was a classic, only in New York City, only in Brooklyn, story. Her mother and her father had come from different worlds and different religions. Her mother from a Jewish family and her fathers, Roman Catholic, from Italy.
Despite the differences in families, It grew to become both more familiar, more comfortable and more complicated for them as her fathers reputation grew and he climbed the ladder of his chosen career path.
Her ability to transcend labels probably started there.
She began to tell the Tesla to start calling people to get updates on where Tommy was and what people heard.
As the passenger I just kept silent and indicated my understanding and feelings with minimal hand gestures while she talked.
When she had Danny on the phone, saying she hoped it wasn’t a “Street” thing, I couldn’t help but laugh at his response.
In the gravely voice of a Staten Island tough guy, Danny said “Do you know how hard it would be to get Tommy into a car? It would be easier to have dropped him right there”
It seems that though Tommy retained the handsome features of his youth, his weight had ballooned while doing time. He had trouble breathing thus the Life Alert that was now left on the counter and causing concern
Danny wasn’t kidding. He was making a serious assessment and she agreed.
She reached out to a known attorney from the neighborhood to see what he had heard. She talked to friends of Tommy’s to see who knew what.
It wasn’t going to be easy getting facts between the rumors and the reputations.
After awhile we pulled into the gated entrance and through the porte-cochere that connected the main house and the guesthouse of our destination.
The initial anxiety dissipated quickly with the hospitality and in the warm company that made up her family.
I didn’t get a chance to tell the story of how I didn’t know I wasn’t Jewish until I was seven or how I ended up with a globally sourced yarmulke collection as someone born Italian and Roman Catholic.
Perhaps there’d be another occasion I could regale them with my tale of confusion.
I always appreciated the spirituality of tradition no matter what religion. However, participating in the significance of an observance that went back more than three thousand years resonated.
Towards the end of the evening when the subject turned to how she came to know and befriend a prominent psychotic suspected serial killer, I had to tell the story of how, when I was deciding to move to Manhattan, she suggested maybe I should consider living with “Fred” because he was probably lonely.
I’ll never forget where we were at the time. I was driving and I turned to her and asked “Didn’t he decapitate and dismember his neighbor?”
She shrugged in a “we all have skeletons in our closet” manner.
In as much as I was eager to move out of the suburbs and into the city I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to consider her recommendation.
Following our good-byes we began our return to the city and she continued calling around to determine what side of the surface Tommy was on.
It was a routine day with D.
A Joel Hunter Borrelli Snippet
04/21/19
Adapting the Latest Technology
Frustration losing power with my mini iPad and my iPhone finally pushed me to have some elective surgery. I just had a microscopic "paddlewheel" implanted in my femoral artery.
It's calibrated to multiply the velocity of normal blood flow enough to power modern mobile devices.
You can place the USB port almost anywhere on the body that's comfortable. You can place it somewhere discreet or, in my case, I placed it strategically so I can have a creative tattoo around it. I want it to be a little "shocking".
For the minor inconvenience of outpatient surgery and being early in this unconventional approach to powering mobile devices, I won't have to worry about charging my iPad or my iPhone again (as long as my heart holds out).
Joel Hunter Borrelli
12/5/17
Breaking News!!!! Sewer main rupture floods D.C. swamp!!
Goldman Sachs and a Brazilian Wax.
I was known to give advice, to those who sought it, on a number of topics from financial markets to philosophy. Most knew the topic I never gave advice on was relationships.
Even though lately I barely had the patience for myself, I found myself thinking I wanted to test the relationship waters. I already expected to be proverbially stung by a jellyfish, the cure for which they say is to pee on yourself, or depending on the location, be forced to ask someone else to pee on you. Given the current political climate the analogy alone is going down a rabbit hole.
I was a 51 year old single man, except for the marriage. I wasn’t bad looking and I wasn’t particularly good looking but enough woman swept right on Tinder; I felt there was potential.
I began to think I needed a strategy. I had years of prospecting, marketing and sales experience, how could I put it to use? I was schooled in isolating the right audience, reaching the right target market for products and services. I considered where I was in life, what I wanted, what I liked and what type of woman I needed.
So that’s how I found myself at the wine bar next to the Broad Street Bikini and Brazilian Wax Boutique across from the offices of Goldman Sachs.
A Snippet by Joel Hunter Borrelli 6/26/18
Development Opportunity
***please note updated amenities.
Development Opportunity. Looking for partners with liquid capital ($$$) to make a purchase offer:
Cleared open parcel of land bordering FDR Drive - East River and 1st Ave. Next to the United Nations. Looking to develop 8-10 modular double-wides with partially covered entryway mini-decks and foundational pressure treated lattice work.
Amenity plans include 4 wheeler, jet ski and small boat parking for each unit as well as community clubhouse with craft lite beer keg on tap, artisanal burrito bar and above ground pool w/ stained and treated deck.
Just added: Steel outbuilding storage available to all homeowners for any of their non-working “vintage” vehicles, motorcycles and other recreational toys in need of repair as well as spare tires, used tires and extra motor parts.
Private resident and guest(s) patio with picnic tables and oversized umbrellas, fire pit and regulation horseshoe pitch and...New York City’s largest bouncy house(!!!) for parties, meetings and events.