Batteries Not Included

email to the NY Times #5380 "The Small Screen" I thought I'd throw in here a memory of Jerry Orbach. I was working in archaeology on the lot that coincidentally is where Steven Spielberg filmed "Batteries Not Included" at the time the design for the lot was for the Housing Police Headquarters for everyone below 42nd Street. Anyway, across the street was a community garden, the Latin Kings said to have met in the old school, and the set was gone, though it looked like a building. It was between 9th and 10th streets and 2nd and 3rd Ave I think around the corner from the "Castillo de Jaguar" where we used to lunch. There was a picket line, the City had gone around the unions to begin work on the lot which was also to be half affordable housing, affordable in this case means they hire anyone for whatever. Near Tompkins Square, it had some of that old NYC "charm" especially when the former Mayor announced they were going to trash all the gardens. Bette Middler began by buying some of them and the people w/ $ bought them all I think. The Devine Mrs. M (hope she gets another elephant on her birthday) recently received an award from the LI Parks Commission. Well where I worked on 16th and 3rd they did this "Law and Order" episode in the restaurant, papered all the windows to make it night, a photographer stabbed in the back upstairs where we worked almost. The trailer down on 10th street was where I saw Mr. Orbach, they were using the "candy store" on the corner for a scene. I would like to thank the cast and crew for that special "shot in the arm" their presence and show has always meant to me, from St. Rita's down in the South Bronx originally, where Mr. Sliwa said you had two choices be a cop or a priest. Mr. Orbach showed many of us what that's like as does Mr. Noth, the cop part I mean. On the "Batteries Not Included" site, we found some old Civil War era water control features, that once almost or was the shore just before. In it, were 12 or so chamber pots (or thunder buckets, King George II visage appeared at the bottom of some not these) and an interesting coinage, abolitionist coins, that were circulated among the "small change" of the day, reminding people to abolish slavery. There were also a number of clay marbles, marbles pretty popular in NY I imagine, though with sewers one might be always "loosing them".