Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

FALL GUY

by Bert Stratton

 
I was putting away my tenor sax. I was seated. The wooden chair leg snapped and I fell into a bunch of flower bouquets stage-side. Wet flowers. Luckily I had on a heavy tux jacket. I landed on my shoulder. I wore the heavy tux because it was cold out; the wedding gig was in a tent with no heat. Good news. I didn’t injured anything.

When an old person tumbles, it’s newsworthy, at least to the tumbler. I see falls occasionally on gigs – old people doing the hora and tripping. Once a young woman tripped and broke her ankle. She was scheduled to run a marathon. It’s all about the shoes.

Seven steps in Michigan. (Camp Michigania)

Seven steps in Michigan . . . I was walking down some steps in Michigan last month. The stairs were outside, it was dark and everybody was saying “Look at the blue moon — the super moon!” I did, and I went flying. I had just seen the Olympics on TV; maybe that’s why, in mid-air, I decided to “plant” like a gymnast and then roll on my right shoulder. I had on a polar fleece jacket. Again, nothing happened.

A friend sprained her ankle hiking in Colorado on vacation. An acquaintance broke her hip in Cuba on a trip (literally); she wound up staying down there a couple extra weeks. In Mexico I fell off a mountain bike and injured my ribs. That was four years ago. I’d like to blank that out. I bruised my ribs. Not broken, not fractured, just bruised. At least I think I was just bruised; I never got an X-ray to find out. I could breathe. It was a little difficult to play the clarinet but I could.

Roll with it. Hope my luck holds.

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Speaking of falls, Yiddishe Cup plays the University Heights Fall Fest 12-1 pm this Sunday (Aug. 29) at Walter Stinson Park, 2301 Fenwick Rd, University Heights, Ohio. The event is free.

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1 comment

1 Mark Schilling { 09.25.24 at 9:37 am }

My seven years of practicing Aikido had one benefit — I learned how to fall. When you know you’re on the way to the ground, go with it and roll, don’t resist. The one time that method failed when I deboarded my bike on GOBA and hit a concrete abutment with my ribs and head. Result: three broken ribs (as I learned after an ER x-ray) and a broken helmet, with a triangular gash in the temple area. But that was more of a collision than a fall. And I rode a century three days later.

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