Asbury Park Press du lieu suivant : Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 150

D2 Asbury Park PressSunday, April 22, 1990 Can New Yorkers be polite? NahhH White Californians wearing dreadlocks ft way to twist, coat, mat and otherwise transmogrify relatively fine hair into the style that's a Caribbean classic. White dudes in dreads began surfacing in the early '80s, say those who first adapted the look. These pioneers typically came from the ranks of radical surfers and skateboarders. For instance, Gator Mark Anthony, the famed Carlsbad, Calif. -based skateboarder who is ranked among the top five vertical skaters in the world, recalls wearing dreadlocks in 1982 and '83, along with a few other white teen-agers.

But Anthony, now 23, says he dropped the style as it became more widespread and acceptable in the mid-1980s. The skater, who models for Vision Street Wear and skates for the Vision team, now favors clean-cut short hair. But he notes that dreadlocks continue to increase in. popularity among young white men and are catching on even outside the skate-surf-snow-skimboard culture. "Dreadlocks have become more acceptable just as spike hairdos and rockabilly hairdos and extravagantly long bangs did.

Dreadlocks are just a way of taking things a step further." You residents of rustic, tractor-intensive regions such as Ohio will be pleased to hear that New York City has decided to become polite. Really. There's a new outfit called New York Pride, which is attempting to get New Yorkers to at least pretend that they don't hate everybody. This program resulted from a survey in which researchers asked tourists how come they didn't want to come back to New York, and the tourists said it was because there was so much mean-spiritedness. So the researchers spat on them.

No, seriously, I think New York is very sincere about this. I was in the city recently, and right off the bat I noted that the Teen-age Mutant Ninja Taxi Driver who took me to the hotel was very thoughtfully allowing pedestrians as much as .3 nanoseconds to get out of his way, which many of them graciously did even though a taxi does not, technically, have the right-of-way on the sidewalk. The driver was also careful to observe the strict New York City Vehicle Horn Code, under which it is illegal to honk your horn except to communicate one of the following emergency messages: 1. The light is green. 2.

The light is red. 3. 1 hate you. 4. This vehicle is equipped with a horn.

finish high school and get her teaching certificate. Although she had a young child to take care of and needed to earn tuition by clerking in a grocery store and baby sitting, Mrs. Florio reached her goal in just six years. For several years, she worked at the Gloucester County College child care center in early childhood education, and in 1980 she began teaching at the John Glenn Elementary School in Pine Hill. Teachers there remember her working from early in the morning until long after the last bell rang.

She tutored after school and ate her lunch while she worked with pupils, they say. She was famous for thinking up unusual, hands-on projects from producing a Mardi Gras Day complete with floats and trinkets to starting a sing-along math club and she was always quick to help a fellow teacher. "In the year she's been away, there's been no one there to bounce ideas off," said Jeffrey E. Pollack, who was her third grade teaching partner. "It's like a heartbreak." Because of the long hours she kept and the unreliability of an old car, Mrs.

Florio made a fateful decision to move to an apartment complex in Pine Hill By BETH ANN KRIER Los Angeles Times Comedian Whoopi Goldberg made it her trademark. Musicians Tracy Chapman, Ziggy Marley and his father, the late Bob Marley, have also worn the style that is the symbol of the Rastafarian faith. Jean-Michel Basquiat, the late New York-born art superstar of Haitian heritage, was similarly well-known for the long, twisted, uncombed hairstyle called dreadlocks. But white people with comparatively skinny hair? Wearing dreadlocks? The style that gained popularity as a signature of black reggae singers would seem to be a physical impossibility for those whose hair has about as much texture as corn silk. But not for the body jugglers who make up Southern California's surfboard-skateboard-snowboard-skim-board culture a culture that is predominantly white, young, male and relentlessly experimental.

Just as they have developed astounding new ways to defy gravity and twist their bodies through gnarly contortions, these guys have found a Mrs. Florio From page Dl Klotz, of Hawthorne, a high school friend. "Although she didn't go on to leadership roles, we knew we were able to do that because she supported us so well." Mrs. Florio was also devoted to the Seventh Day Adventist church, where she became involved in activities and was drawn to the idea of becoming a missionary. "I was a very serious teen-ager," she said.

"I always had to have a purpose in life." During her junior year she transferred to the church's Garden State Academy in Tranquility, a section of Green Township, Sussex County, to hone herself for that life's purpose a career in teaching or missionary work. But instead of finishing school, she got married. Dropping out of high school is a decision for which she does not forgive herself. "I look back now and say I did it for Dave BARRY Even very late at night, when there were probably only a few dozen vehicles still operating in the entire city, they'd all gather under my hotel window every few minutes to exchange these vital communications. Another example of politeness I noticed was that nobody ridiculed my clothes.

Everybody in New York, including police horses, dresses fashionably, and whenever I'm there, even in my sharpest funeral-quality suit with no visible ketchup stains, I feel as though I'm wearing a Hefty trash bag. And it's LAST YEAR'S Hefty trash bag. On this trip I also became paranoid about my haircut. After 20 years of having the same haircut, I recently got a more modernistic style that's a little longer in the back, and I was feeling like one hep "dude" until 1 got to New York, where the fashionable guys all had haircuts in which the hair is real long on top, but abruptly stops halfway down the head, forming a dramatic Ledge of Hair that depressed lice could commit suicide by jumping from. Nobody has near the end of 1984.

She soon found out Congressman Jim Florio lived in the unit below her. For a couple of years, they politely nodded at each other and made small talk when they met by the trash bin. But one day, as she was stopped at a light, her eyes locked with Jim Florio's as he drove into the complex. "He smiled at me, and I smiled back, and you know how your eyes linger those 30 seconds?" she recalled. "I decided then I was going to invite him over to dinner." He took a rain check for the first invitation but left a note several days later, which Mrs.

Florio has virtually memorized, asking for her telephone number so they could set up another day for dinner. When that day came, however, his commitments ran too late for him to make it to dinner, so she put out some crackers and cheese, and he brought a bottle of white wine. "A Chardonnay, I remember," she said. That first evening they talked and found they shared common experiences Florio was the son of a had my haircut in New York since 1978. Pigeons were coming from as far away as Staten Island to void themselves on it.

But the New Yorkers themselves politely said nothing. Aside from this courtesy epidemic, the other big story in New York is that get ready for a Flash Bulletin the United Nations STILL EXISTS. Yes! Like you, I thought that the UN had been converted to luxury condominiums years ago, but in fact it's still there, performing the vital function that it was established to perform in this troubled, turmoil-filled world, namely, hold receptions. In fact, using the advanced journalism technique of having a friend give me his invitation, I was able to get into a reception hosted by the U.S. ambassador, who is, in my candid assessment, a tall man named "Tom" with a lot of armed guards.

After shaking hands with Tom, I proceeded into the reception area, which was filled with representatives of nations large and small, rich and poor, from all over the world; and although I sometimes tend to be cynical, I could not help but be deeply moved, as a journalist and a human being, by the fact that some of these people had haircuts EVEN WORSE THAN MINE. This was particularly true of the Eastern Bloc men, who looked as if they received their haircuts from the Motherland via fax machine. But the important thing was, every shipyard worker, dropped out of school and divorced after a long marriage but the romance was not instantaneous, Mrs. Florio said. They were both wary about getting involved and skeptical about marriage.

"I was very happy the way I was," she said. "Finally after all those years, I was on my own. I liked taking care of myself, being in charge, not answering to anyone. "I always thought if I were to get interested in anyone, it would be much later in life, and he probably felt the same way. "We really needed to work that out and it was rough.

"Finally, there came a point when I knew I cared for him a great deal and no one was going to 'care for him more than me. Whatever that meant I had to do, whatever changes that brought, I would do it." The dramatic switch from an anonymous schoolteacher to statewide celebrity has brought plenty of changes, most in the form of challenges, to Mrs. Florio. Soft of voice and admittedly shy, she has overcome a dread of public speaking; sorely missing her classroom, she has kept a hand in teaching by becoming a literacy volun CD one had a good time. People would arrive filled with international tension, but after several drinks and a couple of pounds of shrimp, they'd mellow right out, ready to continue the vital UN work of going to the next reception.

I decided that, since I was there, .1 might as well use proven journaljsrp techniques to find out if any World Events were going on. So I conducted the following interview with a person standing next to me: ME: So! Who are you? PERSON: I'm a (something about economics) from (some country that sounded like ME: Ah! And how are things there? PERSON: Better. ME: Ah! (Pause.) What continent is that in, again? Unfortunately at that point the person had to edge away, but nevertheless I had' what we journalists call the "main' thrust" of the story, namely: Things better in Insomnia. It was load off my mind, and as I walked out into the brisk New York evening, experienced a sense of renewed hopij which was diminished only slightly' by the knowledge that taxis had been sighted in the area, and I would never make it back to the hotel alive. Dave Barry is a Miami Herald columnist and best-selling humorrs? whose syndicated column appears oi, Sundays.

m' teer. Anxious to put to use the influence' of her position, Mrs. Florio has com mitted to a schedule that takes her-from universities to state policy meetr" ings and on an unending round of appearances at day care center, schools, hospitals and arts programs? She has recorded a public servic announcement1' about literacy Barbara Bush that began airing this, month. Mrs. Florio is working with the Drumthwacket foundation to refurb-' ish the mansion's dilapidated gardens and threadbare lawns in order to estate for public events, such as the Easter egg hunt earlier this month a Mother's Day open house for next month.

She also said she hopes to encourage New Jcrseyans to appreciate and better advantage of their historic sites' and buildings. Although literacy, early childhood education and enhancing New Jersey's" pride in its history are atop her agenda, Mrs. Florio said she sees these 12,, months as a year to adjust, focus and learn. Next year will be one of attain-ing goals, she said. "Yeah," she said, with a quick smile.1"1 "There're things to do." (WUlt by BEZDUDA mm all the wrong reasons," she said, her voice hardening with irritation.

"I never, never should have made that decision in high school. For me, there was something that was lost, that I can never make up there is a gap there that you can never fill." Mrs. Florio declines to talk about her first husband, whom she divorced in 1984 after a long separation. "I don't think it's right to talk about someone who is not in the picture he has another life now, she said. But she does talk in general terms about life married to a construction worker who moved every three to six months.

The young couple's only child, Mark Rowe, was born 11 months after the wedding, and for the next four years, Mrs. Florio's concentration was fully focused oil motherhood and homemaking. But when their son neared school age, the couple settled down and bought a house in Barnesboro, Mantua Township, and Mrs. Florio redirected her energy. "That's when I started thinking there were things I'd left undone that I had to take care of," she said.

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