The Pisk Sisters--JAPs?

[davemarc]

From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
>
> Cf. also the Pisk sisters with "their hair in matching oversize Jewish
> Afros" (196.18-19). Arguable, I realise, but mentioned not so much an
ethnic
> label as the name of the 'do. Note how the phrasing ("hair in",
"matching",
> "oversize") implies that it's the work of a hairdresser rather than
> something which has grown naturally. Don't imagine those "battle fatigues"
> they were "going around in" were cheap either.
>
It's easily imaginable. As I understand it, battle fatigues were typically
obtained cheap at Army surplus stores.

Jewfros--especially those of the "oversize" variety--are typically the
product of avoiding hairdressers as long as one can bear.

As far as Danish being a type of pastry (and therefore a confection of
privileged class), they're as much a type of pastry as donuts. In other
words, they're not at all associated with privilege. They're a common
breakfast pastry--at least they are in New York City.

In the passages under discussion there is no indication that the Pisks
purchased expensive new television sets. Much of the equipment used by the
Pisks is among the assets of the Kollective (p. 197). However, some of their
own tools (paper clips, Scotch tape, their own teeth and nails) are clearly
low-budget.

Also note that the Pisks specifically remember "apartment living" in NYC as
"warm and neighborly." That's different from remembering the whole of NYC
that way, or perceiving it through the eyes of an outsider. It's quite
possible that kids growing up in an apartment building in the 1950s and
1960s would recall their apartment building as being a warm and neighborly
environment and find the less intimate living conditions in California to be
"cold and distant."

The Pisks carp about the West Coast world of cars, pet therapy, I. Magnin,
and the "easy-come easy-go" sex lives of surfers. Between the two of them,
they miss Danish, warmth and neighborliness, a standard of big and bustling
NYC department store set by the middle-class Macy's, and New York City as a
sentimentalized whole: "California's only reality for them was to be found
in the million ways it failed to be New York."

Overall, the Pisks seem rooted in a cherished middle-class (even lower
middle-class) NYC background. Politically committed middle-class sisters
might well have traveled cross-country to a California city that was a
hotbed of radicalism. They wouldn't have had to be privileged to do that.

There was a mention on this listserv that the sisters were from the Bronx.
Is there anything in the text that supports that? Does it specify the
neighborhood?

d.

PS: Regarding pizza and bagels: Any adult Jewish New Yorker in
California--especially prior to 1985--would understandably miss Big Apple
versions of both foods. "Authentic" New York bagels--boiled, with a
rock-hard crust and airpockets unevenly distributed within--were even
becoming something of a rarity in NYC at that time. (Don't get me started
about bialies!) And even today, a New Yorker in California might well miss
the easy availability of Danish to go with that morning coffee. (I just got
a tiny earful about that from a New Yorker who has lately spent chunks of
time in Manhattan, Monterey, and Moscow.)