EMPATHY or Mykel's July 2026 Blog/Column

Monday, June 01, 2026

EMPATHY or Mykel's July 2026 Blog/Column

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

JULY 2026 Blog/Column
by Mykel Board

EMPATHY

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

– Susan Sarandon

The opposite of anger is not calmness, it’s empathy.

– Mehmet Oz

One of his (Marquis DeSade) greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

– Vernor Vinge

I walk down Broadway from Bleecker Street. Passing the convenience store on the right, I stop in to check my lottery ticket in the machine: I slip it in gently… making sure the testing light bathes every bar of the barcode. NOT A WINNER, flashes the machine. What a surprise! FUCK YOU!

Then, it's on to the bank where I take out $50 in cash from the ATM... using my Disney ATM card given to me by the bank… without choice… and more embarrassing than an open fly.

The cash spits out: a twenty and half a dozen fives… should last the rest of the day.

I leave the bank and head south on Broadway. On the way to Houston Street, I pass a grey-bearded guy sitting on a street-level window ledge, reading one of those free newspaper give-aways.

As I pass, I turn toward him and shout…

FUCK YOU!

He barely glances up at me and returns to his reading. I continue my walk. At least once a day, this same ritual ensues. I pass the guy… shout FUCK YOU! at him… and keep walking. It's losing its effect I fear, but first: some background.

For the last few months, almost every day, I walk past this guy and he's sitting, reading… usually a thick book… never talking to anyone... never asking for money… never implying homelessness… just a mystery. In my mind, I construct a story of how he lives in a shelter and comes out on the street to read whatever he can find. I don't know how or where he pisses, shits, eats, or does any of the stuff people have to do. He's just there… reading.

To myself, I call him Amiri, using the name LeRoi Jones chose after his writing made him famous. James Baldwin is, of course, my favorite black writer, but Amiri is a much cooler name than James.

When I see Amiri reading that free newspaper instead of a book, I figure his favorite books have run out. What a tragedy! The guy loves reading… never bothers anyone… lives for the written word and he runs out of books. I can help.

I try to sell books on Biblio, eBay, even Amazon… but there's some stuff that would never sell and has already been rejected by Mercer Street Books. I'd love to give it to Amiri and express my admiration for another real- paper-and-ink book lover.

I figure I've got to ask him first. He may have a secret stash someplace, or he may want me to bring my donation to someplace else, free from the NY weather. I keep some book names in the back of my mind. Maybe I could give him some Jim Thompson… can’t go wrong with that, can you.

The next day, instead of passing him, I stop and talk to him.

"I see you here every day," I tell him. "I just wanted to ask you…"

"Leave!" he says to me, like a pedestrian might brush off a sniffing dog.

"But I first…" I say, "can I just find out if you…"

"Leave!" Amiri says again… in a louder voice dropping to a vocal exclamation point pitch at the end of the word.

"LEAVE!" He says for the third time, briefly looking me in the eye and then returning to his newspaper.

FUCK YOU!

I shout in all capital letters walking away from him, angry at the response when all I wanted was to do a good deed… to help.

Every day since then, when I pass Amiri, I turn and say FUCK YOU in a loud voice and just continue walking. But for some strange reason, my anger builds.

I know what I'll do. I'll get one of those free books from the library give-away table-- a paperback. I'll walk up to Amiri… stop.. take out the paperback… and start tearing it up. First I'll rip off the cover. Then tear out… page by page… ripping each page in half after I tear it from its binding.

That'll teach him. What could sadden a book-lover more than seeing a book destroyed in front of him? Shirk my gifts? I’ll teach him a lesson.

Bang! I head for the library. I don't know how it works in other cities, but here in New York, libraries have a FREE TABLE. People can bring their unwanted books… sometimes CDs, DVDs, magazines… and leave them on the table. Other people can pick out what they want and take it home… or try to sell it at a used book store. That means what’s left is usually only crappy books, or books in some obscure foreign language.

Ah, here’s The Golden Glove, a "middle reader" That means a children’s book (Junior High) or so.

I take the book, stick it in my BEN 10 backpack and head back to Broadway. On the way, I fantasize the horror that will appear on Amiri's face when I stop right in front of him... pull out the book... tear off the cover... tear out the pages... tear up the pages, and throw pieces in the air... letting the wind blow them into the Broadway traffic. I wonder what the passing people will think of a wildly grinning little man walking uptown… throwing book shards into the street.

Even now I'm getting a wide berth as I walk from the library to Broadway. I must look scary. I feel like whistling. I'm gonna show him! He thinks he can just shrug me off when I want to help him. My grin widens as I picture the pained look on his face. Ah, I'm just about to get to his little window alcove.

He's not here. No Amiri. No books. Nothing. Did he get tired of the daily FUCK OFFs? Did I make such an impression that he couldn't put up with it? Damn!

For the next couple days, I check his spot and it's empty. I've stopped carrying The Golden Glove. I feel cheated.

Suddenly I'm not smiling.

Before I go on, I want to tell you about Calvin, Matthew, and Dylan. Calvin is from South Carolina. He must have heat in the blood, because every year he finds a way to go back and winter with his friends there. During the rest of the year he lives in New York… mostly on a milk crate on the corner of LaGuardia and Bleecker Street.

"How you doin' young man?" he asks when he sees me crossing the street and coming towards him.

"Calvin!" I shout to him. "Howya doin'? When did you get back from Charleston?"

"A couple days ago," he tells me. "Where you been?"

We talk for a while. I have to leave him to reserve a couple tables for Drink Club.

"I'll talk to you soon," I tell Calvin, "but first…" I reach into the watchpocket of my jeans and pull out a crunched dollar bill. I hand it to him with apologies for the creases.

"It's the only way I can fit the bills into my cash-for-street-folks pocket," I tell him.

"Mykel," he says, "I know I can always count on you. Crunched or not."

I laugh and head for the Peculier Pub.

FLASH to Broadway and Houston Street: The shady side of Broadway. Matthew is in his usual wheelchair shaking a plastic cup with some change and a few dollars bills in it.

“Matthew!” I shout to him. “I gotta talk to you.”

“Sure Mykel,” he answers, “but first could you get me a bottle of water from our Egyptian friends.”

I smile, knowing exactly what he wants… a $1.50 plastic bottle of Poland Spring Water, from the food truck on the corner.

“It’s for Matthew,” I tell Mamoud in the truck, fishing out a couple dollars from my wallet.”

“I figured,” comes the reply. “Keep the bills,” he says motioning me to take a bottle from the icebed under the window.

“Ok,” I tell him, “then how ‘bout an everything bagel for me.”

“Butter, no toast,” he replies, knowing in advance what I like.

I nod and watch him slice and butter up a bagel. I hand him three bucks. “Those you keep,” I say.

“Shokran,” he replies.

I put the bagel in my backpack and return to Mathew… handing him the water.

“How’s your other wheelchair friend?” Matthew asks.

“She gets out sometimes,” I say. “She has friends, but I think she spends too much time inside.”

“You told me about those stairs in front of the building, Mykel. Here’s what you should do: tell your friend to go to any hospital and ask to speak to a social worker. A social worker can hook her up with some city agency that could force them to put in a ramp… or find her housing in an accessible building. That’s their job.”

It’s the beginning of a long conversation. I always learn a lot from Matthew… the ins and outs of the NY disability laws… tricks about Access-a-ride… and more. He’s just got this stuff down. I’m the student… and only need to fork over a few dollars a week for tuition.

Then there’s Dylan. He’s the only white guy among my current street-living friends. (Will, from Texas, lived on the subways… but he went back to Texas to be a graphic artist.) Dylan camps out on Broadway, just north of Great Jones Street. He marks his territory with a blue chalk outline on the sidewalk. A mattress lays in the middle of the outlined square, along with a couple plastic cups, a hand-mirror, and – bunched up to one side-- a wool blanket I gave him on an especially blustery day in November.

Sometimes Dylan shows up with a crate of packaged food: “Google Gummy” candy (I didn’t even know it existed.), unfrozen frozen food, packets of raw ground beef or fish. Sometimes, heads of lettuce or bunches of carrots. He “sells” these from his mattress for whatever a passing person (usually an NYU student) is willing to pay.

Yesterday, I spotted a PayDay candy bar among his mysterious groceries. It’s my favorite and still there in his box of sale goodies. I pull a dollar out of my watch pocket.

“I’ll take the PayDay,” I tell him.

“I’m not taking money from you for this stuff,” he says. “I don’t like taking money from my friends.”

I smile… reveling in the status rise from donor to friend. Yes! He thinks of me as a friend. I’m proud.

Then there’s Jim Testa… he’s NOT a street-living guy. He lives in New Jersey, but I see him in NY at least once a month… sometimes more. He’s a regular at the Algonquin Roundtable with me and Dorothy Parker and some other slightly less famous people.

Jim used to work for an insurance company and we often joked that the ARTLESS song, When You’re My Age You’ll Be Selling Insurance, was about him. It wasn’t.

After he quit the insurance biz, He got a job as a “special ed” teacher. These are both “day jobs… like an actor who works as a waiter to make ends meet. See, Jim’s “real job” is a music critic and occasional musician. I’ve known him since the early days of punk… probably for longer than you’ve been alive. My George Foreman Grill, KitchenAid Blender, and innumerable books, records and CDs come from Jim. When I needed to hook up my turntable to the amp, Jim came over on a sweaty summer day and spent hours getting it to work right.

You can probably tell that I think a lot of the guy.

But there was one thing… at the Roundtable. I need to set the scene:

Besides Jim, me, and Dorothy, there’s Max and Bill. Bill used to work in a record store, and is one of those guys that you mention the first three words of any punk song, and he’s got the title and usually the rest of the song. Max is his girlfriend. She’s a super smart female, who is one of the few girls on earth that can whistle…. I don’t mean a happy tune… I mean a stadium kill the umpire whistle. Wow! Other Roundtable participants are Jennifer Blowdryer (you know her), Rufus, who is a professor of pizza making, and random others who join us… or don’t.

During the discussion, I talk about my admiration for colored people because they so quickly go their own way. Clothing styles, fashion, music, they suddenly stop, change, and BANG!! Do something new… different… and the rest of the world catches up... then POW! Something else new… to be copied by white people.

White people spend hours and cash trying to catch up with them. As soon as they get the new haircut… try to make the new music BANG! Negroes create something new… and the melanin-impaired spend more months...or years... trying to copy it.

“Mykel,” says Jim, “How can you say that? You know… you have absolutely no empathy. As long as I’ve known you, I’ve seen that.”

That comment sticks with me a long time after that Roundtable meeting.

“What the fuck?” I think over and over again. “Calvin, Matthew, Dylan… these homeless guys are my friends. I spend several bucks a day out of my watch-pockets for street people who are my friends or who I meet for the first time. I find out their stories... ask them about their lives... sometimes ask them for advice… or just to tell me what their day-to-day is like. And you say I have no empathy? What does saying colored people or Negroes have to do with empathy? And besides, everyone at the Roundtable is white. Who am I lacking empathy with?”

These thoughts go through my mind, building up a defense against an accusation that troubles me more than it should. I am a social guy. I use out-dated vocabulary because I hate to be told how to speak. I hate to have the language rug pulled from under me. The words I use are not pejorative, they’re neutral… and used to be common.

Then, I start thinking about the guy with the books... and it hits me. What if Amiri just wanted to be left alone? What if he collected the books that interested him, and just wanted to read them? What if he wanted a bit of book privacy in the middle of the hectic life that makes Manhattan? What if he thought I was going to bother him… that I was a missionary, a social worker, just an annoying local who wanted to chat when all he wanted to do was sit and read? What if he only wants privacy… to get away from dealing with people? What if my FUCK YOU! is another brick in the backpack of someone already carrying too many bricks? What if he didn’t know I wanted to give him books, but thought I was someone who wanted to chat, disturb his reading, or get him away from it? Why didn’t I think of any of this before?

I walk outside to where Amiri sits… where I’ve shouted FUCK YOU! to him at least once a day… except for the days he wasn’t there. He’s there now. I walk up to him... smile... tip my metaphorical cap… and say “Nice day, isn’t it?” and then keep walking.

See you in hell,
Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er...  DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

SPECIAL THANKS DEPT: I want to thank Jim Testa and Dawn Suvino (who is mentioned, but not by name) for their friendship and life-changing help… and empathy. Thanks! Also a big thanks to Marlene Wicherski, one of the editors of the great DC punkzine, Truly Needy. She has the nasty task of editing this blog.

SPEAKING OF JIM TESTA DEPT: For folks who don’t know, the US has the world’s highest percent of its population in prison. Yes! We’re number one! And it also has the world’s highest rate of medical bankruptcies. Jim Testa could be one of them… but you can help prevent that. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-james-cover-medical-expenses-this-summer

DEAD KOCH DEPT: Today is primary day. I just cast my vote for Brad Lander… who was arrested for blocking ICE kidnapping of people awaiting trial at immigration court. When NYC mayor, Ed Koch died, they named a bridge after him. He was awful. He started the race-based “stop and frisk” laws, heavy enforcement of homeless round-ups, etc. Some people supported him because he was Jewish… and strongly believed to be gay. There was a lefty Democratic organization Village Independent Democrats that refused to support him… And they still exist, but seem to have changed sides. The NY Primaries are now full of fake lefties, including millionaire Dan Goldman for Congress, and pro-censorship Grace Lee for State Senate. These guys are running in Greenwich Village so they have to look liberal. Guess who supports them. Yep… not the socialists, but the “Independents.” Fuck you!

THE GOOD GUYS DEPT: While the fake lefties plaster themselves all over the city… the Democratic Socialists of America have already elected the current NYC Mayor and AOC (who’s facing some challenges from her right). I never thought I’d see the day where self-proclaimed socialists could make it in American politics. I’m glad to be wrong for once. It gives me hope… but we’ll see when the results are in. I expect the worst.

LINKS

I’m happy to present the art of Sarah Thobe… who paints personalities as part of her portraits. Check her out at https://sarathobe.com/.

And it was great to hear from my very long-time friend, Fred Lonberg-Holm. Celloman extraordinaire. You can hear him at https://fredlonberg-holm.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of

Anthony Allen Begnal asked me to mention his Hardcore Conversation You Tube channel, and I’m happy to do so here.

Longtime scene/zinester Robb Roemershauser has restarted the Above Ground Zine Library. The Zine library doesn’t yet have an address at the location but, feel free to donate zines that you no longer want to the Aboveground Zine Library 2100 Sawmill Road Apt. 22-202, New Orleans, LA 70123. The Zine library will be located in the upper 9th ward on a busy street.

My pal Matt Sheahan says: You can link to my website - www.matthewsheahan.com or my Substack - https://politenewyorker.substack.com/ . Matt is a great musician and very funny guy.

My Kenyan pal, Albert Melody shares a facebook adventure in one of those great Kenyan national parks. Guess who he shared the adventure with!!! You can read about it here. Albert also has a blog at: Albertomelody.blogspot.com

Teddy Labato has a “lo-fi noise” link to his band Check it out.

It’s About Time dept: Finally, a book about Hungarian Punk  put out by Puke and Vomit records.   Great scene there and I was glad to have contact with bands like Der Trottel and Tizedesz. Glad to have been a (very small) part of that scene. 

Zine fans can find my list of old stuff that I want to get rid of here.

Here are some other contacts to make:

Teddy Lobato’s band can be found at https://www.facebook.com/THEBASSMANsPSYCHEDELICNOISE

Karl De Winton sent me a link to his bandcamp DJ stuff. https://share.google/5sTnXjgMkFbiWQvzA
NSFW… but that depends on your job. 

Dan Hetrick asked me “How 'bout us punk rawk programmers?” And offers http://merk.chat  Free chat for the people!

I’ve talked about Bob Cutler before. But he has more to offer than DYSTOPEKA
https://chrometuna.com/ https://theklusterfux.com

Riot Division makes its musical offering at: https://www.facebook.com/riotdivision

Barstool Revolution Zine is on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/people/Barstool-Revolution-Zine/61557909822199/

Rina Borei shows off her inflatable Octopus on  Instagram at @oona.frost

Jim Testa, friend, journalist, editor, musician and wordsmith, (he appears in this month's post) has an interesting substack about music and more. You can find it here.

Sid Yiddish sent me this link to all his videos. It’s a great place to start, especially if you don’t know him. 

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it .here It’s a good one. 

Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners, best band name of the year. 

Also on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT SHOPPERS. Featuring pals Seth and possibly the next vice-president of the US

Sid Yiddish has posted a video of a show done for WZRD in Chicago. Great live performances, and if you catch the video around the 20+ minute point you might see a familiar face doing the lyrics to his songs (some unrecorded) as poetry. You’ll find it here.  

And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!

Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover. 

Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should connect to the Zero Point) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you. 

Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA. 

You already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.) Their online version is here.

The Clean Boys from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we recorded as The Bend-over Boys.  Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a 10-incher! 

Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brien asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart. I’m glad they didn’t call it “anti-defense.”

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here. 

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. mykelboard@gmail.com