It is lunchtime recess at P.S. 50 in Harlem. A kid in a blue sweatshirt practices his karate kicks on anyone who comes close. Kids throw basketballs at each other and occasionally at the hoop. A boy sends a large rubber ball flying, almost hitting Keith Jones in the head.

“Yo, my dude, you just kick that ball?” Jones, 23, asked the boy. “You know my name? It’s Mr. K. You going to apologize?”

The boy nodded and mumbled he was sorry.

Keith Jones, or Mr. K., is a recess specialist for the Recess Enhancement Program at Asphalt Green, a non-profit organization that works with 23 New York City public schools to make recess active, safe and fun. “They are here eight hours everyday. They get an hour of break. We should use this time to teach them,” Jones said, as he walked across the noisy playground.

Jones visits five schools in Harlem and the South Bronx twice a week during recess, where he works with a group of about 15 third through fifth graders. Recess is spent teaching games like Wizards, Giants, and Elves, an elaborate version of tag. The group is then expected to teach it to others on the playground. As kids learn the games, recess becomes more orderly and inclusive.

The school normally selects the students based on their leadership skills. But sometimes Jones gets to choose. “I look out for the quiet girl on the playground. The loudmouth, the kid who thinks he’s tough but actually isn’t,” he said.

Jones stops in front of 11 fifth graders lined up in two rows from tallest to shortest. They stare up at him, smiling. “Mr. K can we play football today?” one said.

“Can the game involve running?” said another.

Jones looms over the kids. His baggy sweat pants and leather jacket make him look even larger. “I’m happy to see you guys,” he said as he took a head count. “Where’s Bubblegum? Is he in trouble?”

“I think he’s at the nurse,” someone answered.

Jones raises his voice when appropriate. He shows anger and sympathy when he sees fit. “To do this job you got to take on many personalities. One day I might approach these kids acting like a joker. They might not relate to that. So the next day I will try a different tactic,” he said.

The next day at P.S. 385 in the South Bronx, a girl rushes into the gym crying because a teacher told her she didn’t have the leadership qualities to participate in Jones’ recess group. Jones walks past four runaway hula-hoops to the girl who is being consoled by her best friend. He leans down, and says, “Listen to me. Of course you are a leader, you both are. You help each other out when you need it, right?”

The girl calms down a little bit.

“You can’t mouth off at your teachers though,” he said. “If she doesn’t want you participating I can’t do anything about that.”

The girl stands against the wall and watches the game. Soon, the other kids offer to teach her the rules of Wizards, Giants, and Elves. In that small corner of that loud and chaotic gym, the game continued successfully throughout recess.

Cindy Guilarte, the dean at P.S. 385, said her students have shown some change during the recess hour. “The students relate well to Keith. He does a nice job of setting high standards for them to follow if they desire to remain in the program,” Guilarte said in an email.

Mona Silfen, the assistant principal at P.S. 146, has also seen a positive outcome. “He understands the children in the program and relates to them. Keith is nurturing but firm with the children,” Silfen said.

Jones describes himself as a reformed bad kid. He was the clever kid, the one with the best jokes, the one teachers said had so much potential.  He settled down once he moved to Rockland County during middle school. “My basketball coach, he was sort of my mentor at the time, told me I had to make something of my life,” Jones said.

Back at P.S. 50, Jones’ group of recess leaders are tired from playing Touchdown, a freeze tag version of football. Bubblegum, a skinny kid with a perfectly round head, has emerged from the nurse’s office healthy enough to outrun all the others to reach the fence first.

Jones called the kids to gather around him. “I have a real problem with you people calling each other names,” Jones told them.

Instead of responding to him, they begin talking to each other. “I’m sorry about that, Jasmine,” one of the boys said.

“Now that’s what I want to hear,” Jones noted.

“Yeah I’m sorry about that, man,” said another boy.

“It’s okay,” another answered.

Amends made, all hands go in a circle as they shouted in unison, “ One, two, three, R E P!”

“Bye Mr. K., we’ll see you Friday!” they tell him.

As he walked towards his bus stop, Jones talked about all the jobs he has had in his lifetime. A stint at the Red Lobster, a few months at Staples, and a job at a movie theater, to name a few.

A summer job as a camp counselor when he was a freshman in college made Jones consider working with kids as a lifetime option. He has worked for Asphalt Green for the past three years as a football coach, a counselor at their summer camp, a teacher at their afterschool program and as a recess specialist.

“I realized I loved working with people and, hey, kids are people,” he said. “My job is to teach games, what’s better than that?”

“Hey, slow down,” said Bozak, pulling on 4-year-old Brinks’ collar.  “Hey, sit!” he said as he snapped his fingers.  The hyper white pit bull sat, and then they continued their walk.

What the public doesn’t know when they see Bozak is that he has owned and trained pit bulls for 20 years and written a children’s story to remind his readers that these dogs don’t necessarily deserve the bad rap they have acquired over the years.

“I understand why the basic John Doe hates them,” he said. “Why would you want something you picture as dangerous on the street?  They are bred to fight, it’s part of their genetic makeup.”
His 14-year-old dog, Demo, the model for the hero in his book, certainly doesn’t appear dangerous as he dawdled down the street with his salt-and-pepper coat and one good eye, the other lost to a mysterious illness a few years ago.  He more resembled an old man on all fours than a vicious killer, although several people on the street didn’t seem so sure.

Parents of a curious young girl with long black braids quickly pulled her past. A father whisked away a small, smiling boy in a puffy green jacket before he could reach out and pet the dogs.  A woman held her little Dachshund close as she anxiously passed.

“It’s not about judging something on how it looks,” said Bozak.  “Your dog is not going to cause problems unless you let him.”

Pit bulls, like any dog, can be violent.  For this reason people like Bozak and other experts suggest keeping them on a leash, being cautious in dog parks, and basically just learning to know your dog and its personality.  That’s a point Bozak and several dog breeders and handlers made repeatedly about the pit bull – it’s much more about their training then the traits they were born with.

“A pit bull can be incredibly gentle, almost child-like,” said Bob Marino, from NYCdog, an organization that represents dog runs and off-leash hours for public parks. The problem, Marino said, is that teenagers and young men acquire pit bulls but don’t know how to take care of them – or, worse, don’t want to.

“What we have now are miscreants that use the dogs as an extension of their anger and power,” he continued.  “It’s juvenile delinquency through the dog.”

The occurrences of pit bull attacks are higher than other breeds but still occur rarely – a fact largely ignored in media accounts. The last study on human deaths from breed-related bites by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported approximately 118 cases of pit bull attacks from 1979 to 1998, or about 6 incidents a year. Rottweilers (67), German Shepherds (41), Husky-types (21) and even one cocker spaniel all made the list.

In the glossy pages of “Demo: The Story of a Junkyard Dog,” Bozak’s self published children’s book, the hero breaks the mold of what the people in the fictional town of Newton expect.  After being kicked out of the junkyard for being too friendly, Demo must go out into the town and find a new home.   While Demo wanders the streets, the people of Newton run away, scared because he looks tough.  Finally, Demo finds a boy named Randy who doesn’t judge him and the two become quick best friends.  When a real threat comes to Newton, it’s up to Demo to show the people what he really is like.

“The crux of the story is that people can look at anything but don’t take the time to look at the whole picture,” said Bozak.

“I just wanted to put a book out there that would plant the seed,” he continued.  “Then maybe the kids would remember the story and not jump to such a negative image of the dog.”

Disclosure is the term for someone publicly declaring they have HIV. Porricolo and the sisters-to-be practiced with role-playing exercises about how to help their patients through such a monumental step in an area stricken by the AIDs virus.

“The word, everybody struggles with it, even here,” said Porricolo, rapping her fingers on her desk as she spoke.

Porricolo, 45, the assistant director of nursing in children’s health at Jacobi Hospital in New York, recently returned from South Africa, where she took part in a mentoring program put on by Georgetown University to educate nurses in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland on how to better combat HIV/AIDS.

“It was very inspiring work, the ability to share my expertise in something that I’ve lived through and really believe in, and then to go to a place where they haven’t experienced it and haven’t had a chance to believe in it—it’s cool,” Porricolo said.

Porricolo became a specialist in perinatal, or mother-to-child, HIV transmission care at her previous job. She was a pediatric nurse practitioner at North Bronx Healthcare Network’s HIV program, where she combated the disease from its onset in New York City during the 1980s.

Porricolo recalled visiting Bellevue Hospital during the epidemic’s first days. She went to see and hold the “border babies,” infants without parents healthy enough to be caregivers, usually a result of the city’s rampant crack problem.

These infants were some of the first children born with HIV.

Despite the many unknowns surrounding the virus, Porricolo said that she had no fear when providing care for the newborns—something she can’t explain now.

“We were never scared,” she said. “I had held those babies, and hugged them and fed them so many hours it was like, ‘well it’s too late now, don’t worry, if I’m doomed I’m doomed.’”

“She’s very creative, not easily intimidated,” said Joanna Dobroszycki, 48, who started working with Porricolo at the HIV treatment program in 1991.

Porricolo recalled at least a couple infant deaths a month in the early years of the HIV program. At that time, with no successful ways to combat the transfer, the perinatal transmission rate was 25 percent.

Over the years, with the advancement and implementation of AIDs medication, Porricolo has witnessed the transmission rate fall. Now, with the use of combination treatments specialized for the individual mother, the rate has dropped all the way to 2 percent.

The transmission rate’s decrease has changed the program’s patient demographic: most patients Porricolo sees are now teenagers and young adults. They are the success stories, babies who have grown up with the virus in the care of the NBHN treatment team. At its largest, Porricolo estimated the program served more than 250 patients. Of those, she approximates nine had pregnancies of their own.

Thanks to the care of the HIV program, none of them passed the virus along to their own babies, Porricolo said.

Those results are not isolated to the patients at NBHN. Only five babies were born with HIV in all of New York state last year, she said.

“How many nurses and doctors do you think you need to take care of that?” Porricolo said.
Porricolo said she knew that as a pediatric nurse practitioner with a heavy focus on perinatal transmission, her department would be one of the first to experience cuts. She is not one to wait for bad news.

So last July, Porricolo took her new position as assistant director of nursing. She called it leaving proactively, a move she made because she didn’t want to harbor ill feelings.

Porricolo still stops in once a week to provide continued care for her own patients, but the nurse practitioner staff at the HIV program has been reduced to just one full-time staff member from the five it used to carry.

Finding themselves lacking an outlet, the displaced nurse practitioners were left searching for a way to use the knowledge they had amassed.

“We sat around thinking, ‘What could we do? Should we make a manual? What could we do?’” Porricolo said.

Rather than wait for an opportunity, Porricolo followed her own credo: she created one. She started looking for international opportunities to utilize her skills and soon found Nurses SOAR!, the three-week program that provided her the chance to mentor nurses in southern Africa.

South Africa has been drastically affected by the AIDs epidemic. A 2007 World Health Organization survey found that one in five adults and children (ages 15-49) lived with HIV, nearly six million people.

Although Porricolo said she felt more of a challenge when HIV hit in New York City, Porricolo had never encountered the sheer volume of people she witnessed in South Africa.

Patients traveled for hours to reach the clinic at St. Mary, the area’s largest hospital, either for lack of care in their community or to preserve their anonymity.

“Intellectually, I had prepared myself for what I saw, but to actually see it—I was exhausted by the first day,” said Porricolo.

Daily, more than 1,000 people waited for treatment in lines so long they seemed never-ending. Some died waiting in those lines.

Many of the deaths were children.

“Of course we experienced deaths here in this country early in the epidemic when I started, but never that many in a week’s time,” she said.

The number was high enough that Porricolo tried her best not to notice.

“And after a while, you stop looking. Because, you know, there’s only so much you can do,” she said.

Porricolo spent her first week in Africa working closely with three sisters in the maternal child health department at St. Mary’s where she focused on learning the system.

She spent the next two weeks at Hlengisizwe Community Health Centre, an outlying clinic in nearby Hammersdale. Porricolo mentored 10 sisters, teaching them better ways to provide treatment and how to set up a system like the one at St. Mary’s.

Porricolo also gave speeches to students in their early twenties at St. Mary’s College of Nursing, covering topics like changing the HIV/AIDs stigma and the practice of disclosure.

Porricolo said the enthusiasm of the students left her with a sense of hope for South Africa’s AIDs epidemic.

“It makes my job here feel so boring,” said Porricolo, who keeps herself busy studying for her doctorate at Drexel University.

“I’m certainly empowered to create another unique job,” said Porricolo.

Just as he had all summer, Ziering arrived alone, his wife, and old partner Robbin, has stayed home sick, again. But as he made his appearance at 5:30, he showed no sign of missing her and eagerly made his way to the rink.

The slight, 75-year-old Ziering laced up his hand-dyed purple classic quad skates, and joined the action of the circle, shaking hands and shouting hellos. As the music played, Ziering’s torso twisted and turned only slightly stiffer then his younger counterparts in the rink, some whom he had taught to roller skate years ago.

Dressed in his token purple Skate Association sweatshirt and long khaki pants, Ziering sported a purple cap over his gray-white hair, cut short save for a thin braid off to the side. Hanging from his neck, wrists and ears, he displayed an array of gold and silver roller jewelry, some of it themed like the tiny roller skate dangling from his left lobe.

As Ziering faced the crowd who were watching the skaters in the park, he energized himself by showing off a fancy, double toe-stop before spinning in a circle.  He gave a sleepy eyed smile, which almost looked like a grimace, before he tucked his arms in a crescent and spun again.

Anyone in the crowd surrounding the skate circle could guess Ziering’s age.  His skin hung loose on his lean body and without a hat on, the crown of his head shone smooth in the sun.  Yet, despite his appearance, he gave the impression of perfect health, which was mostly true.  The only thing he really couldn’t do was lift his left arm by himself because of a damaged rotator cuff, which happened a few years ago.

While Ziering shrugged it off, the injury had affected his skating and dancing.  He can’t properly lead his partners anymore.  The people he skates with regularly know to pick up his arm when he squeezes their hand.   From the outside, it doesn’t seem to bother him much; he still skated with vigor to the DJ’s disco beats.

The skate circle hopped with Ziering’s close friends, save for Robbin.  While Ziering’s injuries hadn’t kept him down, his wife’s kept her out of the scene.  Robbin had suffered a back injury few years ago in 2005, and had never fully recovered.

The night happened to be Robbin’s birthday, October 9, and the couple was celebrating at the Roxy nightclub.  As they skate danced, Robbin’s wheels locked with Ziering’s.  She fell straight down and landed flat on her tailbone, causing trauma to the vertebra.  Despite the pain, Robbin wanted to enjoy her special day and continued to skate the night away.  She knew something was wrong, but ignored it.  Later on, she went to the doctor and found out the fall had broken her back.

At first, the pain didn’t stop her from going out skating with Ziering.  But whenever she fell, the old injury flared up, and each time it was a little worse.  The pain led to depression and eventually she gave up roller skating.  Robbin also gave up her place as Ziering’s partner in the rink, which only added to the emotional turmoil she felt.

Ziering obviously felt bad for her.  The svelte woman he married gained over 30 pounds and just sat in bed all day, crippled by depression and physical pain while her husband flourished in his day-to-day routine.

What could he do, Ziering thought.  Roller skating had been his love long before Robbin had entered his life.  Her listless attitude both angered and saddened him, and he missed the times when they could skate together.

But alone in the Central Park skate circle, Ziering’s spirits remained high.  He skated over to DJ RC La Rock’s booth with ease to take the microphone.

“Everybody that can hear my voice, put your hands together,” Ziering, said.  “Welcome to the Central Park Dance Skate Association.  This is a beautiful day.  Now, some rules…”
Ziering finally finished and gave the spotlight back to Tyron, another member of the Skate Association.  He wandered over to the sideline, taking in the dozens of people gathered to watch the dancers.  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a woman whose skating made him nostalgic.

He watched as a slender, 30-something woman with long wavy brown hair skated by, dressed in fitted black clothes.  Her face appeared relaxed and had the look of absolute bliss, not unlike his wife’s face when she started roller skating.

“That,” Ziering thought, “is the face of joy.”

Ziering reminisced about the time when Robbin was like the woman in the skate circle.  She loved the activity so much that in 1997, when they got married, it was on skates at the Roxy, the Mecca of roller skating at the time.  On their wedding day, the couple was escorted to the doors of the club by a horde of motorcycles led by Robbin’s brother.
Robbin, in her mid-40s at the time, wore a flowing lavender dress that accentuated her slender figure.  She also had on a dark purple cast, but the memory of how she broke her arm got lost among the excitement of the wedding.   Then 65, Ziering had on a white suit with a deep purple cummerbund and tie, and a gray hairpiece–something he wore until Robbin convinced him he looked better without it.  They stood hand in hand, her blonde head taller than his silver one by a few inches.

The most traditional moment of the Jewish ceremony was the symbolic breaking of the glass.  Ziering managed to smash it on the third try by using his purple skate.  Glass shattered, the couple kissed with a desperate fever, and the large crowd made up of family and roller skating friends erupted in hoots and hollers.

Ziering then led Robbin on to the vast wooden floor for their first dance as husband and wife.  They gazed into each other’s eyes and started moving as Gato Barbieri’s Europa played.  Clutched tight, they glided effortlessly around the floor.

Robbin stepped out for the second song, nervous her skating might not be good enough for a more complex performance.  Her new husband opted to dance with one of his previous partners instead.  Ziering and Bunny delighted the crowd as they skated in a swing dance style routine.

The third dance was the last one Ziering and Robbin did together.  After that, the floor opened up to the guests.  Everyone joined in, even people who weren’t part of the skate community, like Ziering’s one and only son, Stephon, who was from his first marriage.

Between performances by star skaters and Ziering himself, Robbin and Lezly’s wedding was one of the top skating events of the year.  Not only was everyone happy at the union of the Zierings, but also they had the Roxy, among other skating spots in the city.  The skating life was good back then.

And, for Ziering, it still is.  Though he is well past his teenage years, he thinks of himself as a responsible adolescent.  The energy he displayed in the park proved it as he neared the end of an entire day on skates.  Earlier that October 4th morning, and most Saturdays, Ziering had taught one of his many roller skating classes.  But he was still going strong at sunset, despite all the exertion and rainy weather.
*    *    *
The weather was one reason fall became tricky for skating.  Gray clouds hung heavy in the sky threatening more then a sprinkle, and, on the wet 52-degree October morning, the idea of roller skating outdoors was not appealing.   In a small park in Greenwich Village, students waited for Ziering to make his debut.

“Do you think class will be canceled?” a tall, pretty brunette asked her fellow classmates.

Lorraine Espinosa settled down on to the wooden bench.  Its peeling green paint revealed how long it, along with all the others, had weathered the seasons.  Two more people joined her, but at five past 11, Ziering hadn’t.

Ten minutes later he pulled up on his purple bicycle dragging along a large bag stuffed with neatly folded black kneepads and wrist guards, and brown quad skates, remnants of the Roxy, which had closed its doors for good in spring of 2007.

“Stay,” Ziering commanded the bike as he leaned it against the fence.  Unlocking his black leather fanny pack, Ziering made his way over to the new students.

“Hi,” he said.  “If it doesn’t rain anymore, I think we can have class.”

Even on skates Ziering was small, around five-foot, four-inches, almost four inches shorter then he had been before numerous knee and hip surgeries and age shrunk him.  This time, like all the times before, the crowd’s eyes were on Ziering as he began lesson one.

For over 30 years Ziering’s lessons stayed the same, just the place changed.  When Ziering met Robbin 13 years ago, he was running his own roller skating school.  She wanted to learn to skate and he became attracted to her perky, eager-to-learn nature.

Suddenly, Robbin was everywhere he was—at the Roxy, in the park, and going to all the events.  Eventually, their friendship escalated beyond dinner and a chat.  Robbin became another one of Ziering’s lovers.

But Robbin was different from the other students he had dated.  Not only was she 20 years his junior, but she was also one of the oldest people in the country to have cystic fibrosis; an inherited disease that clogs the lungs and leads to respiratory infections.

It was one of the times she was hospitalized that led Ziering to discover how he really felt about her.  In 1996, he was leaving the county to perform at a New Year’s party in Morocco.  Robbin was in the hospital, terribly ill, and tubes stuck out from her in all directions.

Before he was about to leave, Ziering visited Robbin.  She looked at him with tears in her blue eyes and he held her hand, trying to comfort her gentle sobs.  She thought that was it.  He would go to Morocco and leave her for another woman.  Her suspicions weren’t actually that far off.

Ziering was planning on meeting up with Tammy, a Japanese girl who had also been a student of his and was now his lover.  The two had planned on sharing a room in Morocco for a few months.

But when he got there  he couldn’t get Robbin’s parting words out of his mind.

As he was leaving the hospital, she said, “Why can’t I have ever have somebody to love.”  And Ziering’s heart broke.

When he got to Morocco he told Tammy that he had someone else who he had great feeling for and planned to be with.  Completely shocked, Tammy ended their love affair right then and there.  But

Ziering didn’t care.  He called Robbin right away and said he was taking her to his house to live once he got back to New York.

Sobbing on the phone, she said, “This is the best New Year’s eve of my life.”

*    *    *

Robbin and Ziering lasted longer then the skate studio they met in.  After it closed Ziering flitted around to various spots before settling on Mercer Park, which was a few blocks from his house.

It was at the park where Ziering continued to teach on October 4th.

“Now, push your knee in toward the left when you turn, yes, good job,” he told the students.  “Ok, don’t skate too fast, little and longer strokes.  Here, watch me.”

Ziering had been seriously skating for 29 years.  The first time he really got into it was when his second wife, Sandy, brought him to Village Skating, now a pub near his apartment.  A professional dancer, Ziering actually balked at the idea of putting on skates.  He felt nervous that he might hurt himself on the rink and didn’t want to take the chance of ruining his career.

As he observed the crowd spinning and dancing on their skates, a light went on in his head. “This is for me!” he thought.

The next day Ziering went out, bought roller skates, a book on skating and practiced in his studio.  Within five days, he had completed all 20 lessons in the book and was completely hooked on the sport.  Now, he took responsibility for training numerous skating stars and has earned the reputation as the go-to skate guy, and one of the best teachers.

Getting used to skating can be hard.  While the new skaters’ bodies ached from trying out fresh muscles, Ziering went on tirelessly.  It was only at the end of the lesson that he had his first awkward moment.

Ziering struggled to reach a small piece of wood lying in his path.  Finally, after a couple of tries, and bending as much as he could, Ziering clutched the stick between two of his finger tips.  He then turned to the class with a wry smile on his face.
“Hey, after two knee and a hip replacements I can’t bend over like I used too,” he said, and chuckled before tossing the twig away.
*    *    *
That same week, Ziering rested in his apartment with Robbin.  They sat in the purple and red themed living room.  Roller skates lined the floor under the book shelves.  Framed photos covered many of the surfaces and the purple leather couch was adorned by one of their four cats.

Robbin now spent most of her time at home, in slippers, not skates.  She also spent a lot of time at the hospital.  Robbin used to be a nurse and knows a lot about medicine and diagnostics.   But her knowledge isn’t apparent in the way she takes care of herself.   She spends much of her day in bed sleeping and her eating habits consist of yogurt, sugar and lots of carbs.   Because of these two factors, her once slender frame now resembles a barrel and she has to wear Ziering’s T-shirts and baggy jeans or sweatpants.

“I won’t go to a vegetarian restaurant,” she said to Ziering, making a point about his diet choices.  As she got ready to go the doctor she continued,  “I think it smells like someone who hasn’t taken a shower in 10 days.”

“Oh boy,” replied her husband, rolling his eyes.

Ziering is a complete health nut and no longer eats meat.  He didn’t start to understand the importance of diet until the early 90s when he almost died from double pneumonia.
In the hospital, Ziering’s friend Joe brought him basic brown rice and veggies.  It was then he had an epiphany–if he ate better, he would feel better.   And, except for some mechanical problems, he has been feeling fine ever since.

But that doesn’t keep Ziering from the doctor’s office.   He brings his wife to the doctor at least once a month.

Ziering takes care of her at home too. Robbin’s illness has made her depressed and lethargic.   So he wakes her up and makes sure she is supplied with her favorite food, Yoplait yogurt.  She eats over half a dozen containers a day.

Robbin does help where she can, mostly with the health of the four cats.  On this Thursday afternoon, she was taking care of Tigger, their three-legged tabby who had been sneezing for a few days.

As Robbin went to get the antibiotics, Ziering bent down to pet Rainbow, one of the other cats.

“Hee hee, she’s a sweet baby,” he said to the cat.  “Yes you are, with your little white paws.”

A picture of Rainbow sitting on Ziering’s head when she was a kitten has a place next to photos of Robbin and Ziering in the Central Park skate circle 10 years ago.  Ziering struck a dashing pose in one.  He had a gray handlebar mustache that almost concealed his wide grin, and a silvery toupee covered his scalp.  Robbin, smiled coyly in another photo and her blonde hair was cropped short.

Today, her hair is still cut the same way, but her face in the picture showed how much less she weighed then.

It wasn’t that long ago when Robbin worked as a visiting nurse in Harlem for kids with AIDS.  She stayed there for years before they had to let her go.

“You know Robbin, you are out sick as much as you are in,” said one of her supervisors on that fateful day.  “But we want to do something for you so you can get your social security disability.”

Now she lives off social security money, and what her husband makes teaching skating and selling custom roller skates.

“Lezly!” Robbin called from the kitchen.  “I have to give Tigger his medicine.”

Ziering walked into the small room, “He wouldn’t take any of his moist food at all today,” he said.  “And he barely had any of his dry food.”

“Really?” Robbin asked, her voice more worried then it was when she talked about her own sickness.

She turned to the cat. “My baby, my baby! Come here.”

As Robbin held Tigger down on the multi-tiered cat tower, Ziering admired her ability to “pill the cat.”  It was something he couldn’t do.  Robbin, who used to give pills to sick babies as a nurse, didn’t think twice about it.

*    *    *

Ziering’s usual day started at 10 or 11 a.m. and he ended it around four in the morning.  When he didn’t have to take care of Robbin, he liked to stay up late working on organizing the Skate Association  and Crazy Legs, his latest venture, and an important one for the skating community.
Empire skate rink closed down April 2007, and the Roxy shut its doors in the beginning of March the same year—both places couldn’t afford to have roller skating there anymore.  The Roxy reopened as a night club, but not somewhere to skate in again.  Because of the loss of space, Ziering has spent much of his time since then looking for a permanent indoor rink for skaters.

“Happy birthday to me,” Ziering thought sadly when he received a phone call at the beginning of March 2007 that informed him Roxy’s demise was finalized.  The skaters had recently moved back there after it’s first closing months before.  The reunion only lasted a month before the venue shut down for good.

After it closed, the skaters had to move from rink to rink.  They often traveled to Staten Island, New Jersey, and Long Island.  These places proved difficult to reach without a car and Robbin rarely came along.

Ziering remembered the early September day this year when all that changed after a West Indian man named Wilfred Samuel came to his apartment looking for custom roller skates.  Ziering measured Samuel’s foot for the leather casing and had him pick a style of body, which Ziering would then order parts and construct the skates in his home.

When Ziering brought out the wheel choices Samuel told him he would be skating in the gym of a Salvation Army building he ran in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.  Ziering’s ears perked up immediately and he jumped on the chance of starting a skate night there.

They made a deal and that night Ziering emailed everyone on his skaters list to tell them the good news – Crazy Legs was born, they could stop looking.

On Wednesday night, October 8, Crazy Legs had been open for three weeks and had made its name known in the New York roller skate scene as a hot spot.  The music could be heard a block away as people approached an open door, which revealed the glittering of Christmas lights and shadows of people quickly going by. There was no sign it would stop.

After almost a month in the space, Ziering felt in his element. Wearing purple leather skates and a royal purple mesh shirt, he greeted people as they arrived.  At 9 p.m., the gym had about 40 to 50 men and women from ages 20 to 75.  In the center, people dance-skated in formation while others circled them counterclockwise.  As DJ Rikky Rivera spun classic R&B and dance tunes, the volume of the music throbbed through the skaters’ bodies.

Around the floor, metal fold out chairs allowed people to change out of their shoes or take a break.  Robbin perched on one wearing wrist braces, but no skates.

“I am turning in my skates for the night,” she said to the person next to her.  Robbin explained that she had taken a bad fall and couldn’t continue.

Tonight was the first time in a while that she tried the sport again.  She wanted desperately to get back in the rink.  But, after the accident tonight, she didn’t feel confident enough to get on the floor again.  Ziering kept coming over and checking on her.

“How are you doing?” he asked, concerned for her comfort.  “Are you okay?”

She finally told him she wanted to stay and relief washed over him as he skated back into the crowd.  A few moments later, he checked back again, this time with a small wrench in his hand.

“I gotta fix someone’s skate,” he said.  “I will be right back.”

“He is always sacrificing his fun to help other people,” said Robbin wistfully.  “He always takes care of me.”

That wasn’t his original plan.  Ziering had been a steadfast bachelor and never really looked for a relationship.

“He said, ‘You know Robbin, I am going to be a bachelor forever,’ and I was ready to accept that,” Robbin said to the person seated next to her.

As Robbin chatted about her and Ziering’s relationship, numerous skaters came over to give her hugs and see how she felt.

“I skated today! But I fell down,” she said, her wrist-braced hands tucked docile in her lap.  Cystic fibrosis had made her look almost the same age as her husband and had slowed her down considerably.  At the same time, Ziering zipped around like he was 50 years younger.  Robbin shuffled and appeared to be in constant pain.  Her eyes shined with moisture, as if she was about to cry.

While Robbin watched the skaters, Ziering held court in the cafeteria room. His purple clad figure was silhouetted against a poorly painted mural of Martin Luther King.  Gripping a white roller skate between his legs, Ziering attempted to fix the second skate of the evening.

“I can’t believe I am fixing it with this,” he said, holding up a tiny wrench.  “I would never use a tool like this.”

“You are my skating hero,” said Lisa, the girl whose skate he worked on.

“He is known as the skate guru,” her friend Polly said, and went over to Ziering.  “Do you think she can remove her toe stops?” she asked, gesturing to the bright red rubber stump at the toe of the skate.

“But how do I stop without it?” asked Lisa.

Polly’s blue eyes met Ziering’s and both lit up with mutual understanding.

“She’s not ready if she is asking!” he said out loud.  Polly nodded as her blond tresses fell over her bare shoulders.

Polly, who learned to skate from Ziering in 1998 at the Roxy, demonstrated how she nimbly stopped without the classic roller skate breaks.  Ziering joined her, both of them sliding toward Lisa.

“This is a hockey stop, and this is a T-stop,” he said, crossing one foot in front of the other.  “But this is why it’s good to have toe stops,” said Ziering, laughing before ending on point like a ballet dancer.

Ziering’s professional dance career started when he was 12.  He studied at the Paris Opera Ballet School in France.  In 1958, Ziering danced in the film Margerie Morningstar, where he got to partner with Natalie Wood.

In his bedroom at home, Ziering relished the relics of his past.  A large white piece of poster board sported suave photos of him in his much younger days in various yoga-like dance positions.

Back in the gym Ziering began to skate again.  Robbin lamented to her friend that she was unable to roller dance to the slow songs.  Ziering came back, checked on his wife, and then met up with Beth, one of his skating partners for the past 20 years.

They took to the floor, arm in arm. Picking up speed, Ziering guided her as she skated backwards.  He led her in a twirl as he shuffled his feet effortlessly on the smooth surface.  Robbin watched from the side.

“I hope to be his partner again,” Robbin said, nasal East Coast accent breaking through the bass from the speakers. “Next time I will be in skates.”

*    *    *

On October 18, a freezing cold Saturday, Ziering found himself traveling alone to see one of his past students perform at the Spiegletent in Lower Manhattan’s South Street Seaport.  He was tired, and didn’t know if he would make it.

It was hard for Ziering to enjoy himself while his wife sat on the sidelines.  He knew Robbin was getting sicker and sicker, but he often told people she was doing better.  Even when she was in the hospital, he tried to stay upbeat.

“Robbin sees the glass half empty while I see it half full,” Ziering rationalized to himself about their relationship.

He wanted her be with him more, but he had a difficult time getting his wife stay positive or even join him for most events.  But, he pushed himself to leave alone and when he arrived where he stirred up so much excitement that it appeared he was the performer.

“Hey!” one man called out, “Lezly is here!”

The group at the table smiled in unison as one after the other stood to hug or shake Ziering’s hand.  When the greetings were finished, Ziering scanned the room for a chair and sat down near the front.

The wind whipped through the antique tent, shaking the velvet curtains and causing the mirrored disco ball to sway.  The air was chilly, warmed only by the few dozen bodies that surrounded the small wooden stage.  Ziering situated himself and wrapped his purple leather jacket tightly around his torso.  He turned toward the front as Amy G., aka Amy Gordon, took the stand.

Tall and lanky, G wore a long, form fitting black dress, a white feather boa, and a hat with a cherry tree branch protruding from the top.  Slung across her shoulder was a ukulele and on her feet, she had well worn black roller skates.

“That’s my Amy,” Ziering said under his breath when he saw the young, attractive woman.  Ziering had taught G to skate dance a few years ago and he went to see her when he could.

“Thank you all for coming.  It was quick, but I came too,” G said, as the crowd erupted in laughter.

Ziering made a low chuckle and then put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

It’s easy to see why Ziering liked watching G so much.  She is cute, talented and flirty–three of his favorite personality traits.

“I see this side of the bus and in big, bubbly, chocolate letters it says, ‘Find the perfect man,’” she said.  “In this room I see several options.”  She looked at Ziering again before going into a roller skating tap routine.

G isn’t the only roller skating diva that Ziering has taught.  From over one third of the Gotham Girls roller derby team to the cast of Xanadu and Starlight Express, who gave him a standing ovation after their first production, Ziering has long been New York’s “Skate Guru.”

While watching G’s last skit, Ziering didn’t dwell on his career.  He was totally caught up in G’s bawdy act.

“Oh, this is great!” he said, lips stretching into a tight smile.  “I love this part.”

G faced the audience and lowered the microphone down to her crotch.  She then proceeded to wiggle out of three pairs of underpants, which she left dangling around her ankles.  With a sly smile, she reached into her purse and elegantly pulled out a sparkly gold and silver kazoo.

Theatrically she lubricated the instrument with her mouth before placing it under her skirt.  Her face looked concentrated, then surprised, and then extremely relaxed, euphoric actually.  Ziering laughed and stomped on the ground as G proceeded to play “America the Beautiful” with the strategically placed kazoo.

After it was over, Ziering made his way to her.  “That was great honey, a little slow in the beginning, but great.”

G, who reached about 6 feet tall on skates, bent over and hugged him.  Ziering didn’t stay long, he was freezing and tired from a long day of skating.

*    *    *

The last Sunday in October celebrated a successful season of roller skating. This year the day was perfect for a farewell get together, and their yearly Halloween party.  Over a hundred people gathered in Central Park for the festivities, but as the day dwindled, Ziering still hadn’t arrived.  He was missing his own event.

Ziering had planned on coming, he wanted to come, but things were bringing him down.  Ziering was tired of doctors and problems. He was also tired of fighting with Robbin, which was the reason he had come to the skate circle so late.

At about 5 p.m., Ziering showed up on his bicycle, alone.  He entered the DJ square in the middle of the action and folded up his bike.

People skated over to say hi.   As soon as he took off his black jacket, revealing a red spandex suit, a Halloween costume for Ziering who was without a drop of his token purple.   In the cool fall air observers watched as the Hulk, Spiderman, and Batman joined a princess, a couple of fairies, and a creepy clown in the rink.

Eager to join them, Ziering laced up his skates and covered them with American flag casings so no purple remained.  Almost as soon as he got them on, his wife showed up, teetering delicately to a chair.

Her presence made an even greater stir in the crowd.

“Hi Robbin! How you doing?” one masked man said.

“Hi honey, how you feeling?”

“Hey guys! It’s Robbin!”

Robbin sheepishly said hello to people, but it didn’t look like she really wanted to be there.  She hadn’t worn a costume and her gray sweatshirt and blue jeans were in stark contrast to Ziering’s fiery red body suit.   Bending over, she pulled out her black skates and proceeded to tie them on.

This was the first time she had been to the park all season.  Ziering went over to her, speaking low into her ear.  She waved him off and he skated away to mingle.
Robbin struggled with the laces until she finally tied them.  She then put her wrist braces on and stood unsteadily.  In a way, Robbin looked like a beginning skater.  She appeared unsure of her wheeled feet and her face expressed worry as one of her friends came over and embraced her.

Robbin slowly made her way to the rink, stopping every few feet to chat.  Batman finally took her hand and led her around.

Where Robbin was nervous, Ziering zipped around gracefully.  He loved being here.  The Skate Association  was his family, his friends, and part of what kept him going.  After the Halloween party, the group would be smaller.  Only the die-hards would come out in the snow to shovel a spot to skate in.

Robbin eventually found her husband and he ushered her to a quieter side of the rink.  There he helped here with her steps.  After Robbin’s break through four days prior at Crazy Legs, Ziering had high hopes for today.

That Wednesday, a moment of clarity hit Robbin.  Suddenly, skating had come back to her and for a brief period she moved like she wasn’t sick or injured.

As they danced on the floor, Ziering was blown away by his wife’s progress, and so was she.  Just that day she declared she would never roller skate again, but there she was, picking up her feet, doing cross-overs and skating backwards.

Robbin looked at Ziering, tears of joy pouring from her eyes as she finally danced with her husband.  He felt like crying too, not only was she skating again, but this could mean she was getting better.

But in Central Park, it looked like she might cry again, though not with the same emotion.  These were more tears of frustration because her legs wouldn’t do what they were supposed to do.  Ziering circled around her to make it look like she was turning, trying to hide his disappointment.

As they slowly danced, Beth zipped over to the couple.  She had dressed like a wood nymph, clothed in a brown dress and with leaves strewn in her hair.  She greeted Robbin cheerily before gesturing to Ziering and the rink.  He declined her invitation and watched as she skated back into the pulsating crowd.  Ziering stayed with his wife, their arms entwined and awkwardly working at the moves.

This wasn’t fun for him.  He came out to the park for entertainment and having to lead someone who couldn’t skate aggravated him.   Ziering practiced with her until someone called him over to the DJ booth to make an announcement.

Taking the microphone, Ziering thanked the crowd for being there for the last day of the season and reminded them about Crazy Legs, the indoor winter spot for skating.

Robbin lingered behind him while Ziering finished up.  He turned around to say more hellos, confirm he was doing fine, and that Crazy Legs was off the hook.

By 6 p.m., it was almost twilight, and much cooler then the hour before.  The dancers continued until the last possible second, enjoying the most they could before the winter came.
In the end, Ziering led Robbin, arm in arm, on to the rink.  His red spandex suit glowed in the low light while his small, fragile body supported his wife.

A week later, despite all the progress Robbin had been showing, she was back in the hospital.  Her body and mind were suffering from her disease.  Ziering didn’t know if she would ever get better, and part of him just wanted to end the relationship for good.  Especially when she came between him and roller skating.

During his years at the London College of Printing, McIntyre would spend hours in the gray, utilitarian library. Standing in the aisle before the art and photography section, he pored through copies of French Vogue and books of Picasso and Guy Bordin, filling himself with their history, their pictures—with all the things he hadn’t learned at school growing up in Scotland. It was in these explorations that, McIntyre, now 48, came across the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, a photographer best known for the term “the decisive moment.”

The decisive moment: the fleeting instant when, as Cartier-Bresson said, there is a “composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.”

“I assumed he was just walking around with his eyes sharp and alert, looking for that picture,” McIntyre said in his soft burr. “And when it happened, he had somehow anticipated it, got his camera up, took the picture.”

With thumb and pointer finger, McIntyre picks quarter-sized pieces from a muffin as he speaks, leaning forward over the hunter-green topped table at the Cupcake Café in Midtown Manhattan. The café, McIntyre’s choosing, could double as an abandoned set. It is filled with furniture painted different colors, made of different materials, designed in different styles. Three ceiling fans rotate slowly in the first room, milk for the coffee is kept in a refrigerator disguised as a cabinet and there is no music.

McIntyre is the co-founder and publisher of ZooZoom, an award winning online fashion magazine, and a free-lance photographer. Today, he wears a faded gray hoodie, half zipped, over a t-shirt of the same color. He has stubble on his face and receding hair of the same length. Hard lines around his mouth and brow, and deep set eyes, make him appear stoic, but his soft eyes give him away. Those eyes focus on something distant as he speaks about Cartier-Bresson.

McIntyre was 18 when he found Cartier-Bresson’s work in that library. He was fresh to England and, artistically, in his “formative years.” He wandered the streets of London with his camera, attempting to emulate Cartier-Bresson’s style of street photography, seeking to capture those ephemeral instances where both character and composition of the scene fell into perfect alignment. He trained himself to see the shots developing in front of him and to shoot quickly.

Just two years ago, in an online article, McIntyre learned that searching for decisive moments was not, in fact, the process practiced by Cartier-Bresson.

“I found out that he’d find a place where the buildings, the streets, whatever, were graphically pleasing, and he’d maybe stand there for four or five hours, photographing different people walking through his set, as it were, until he got one that he thought was perfect. So I realized he’d brought patience to it,” McIntyre said.

It was like finding out he had been adopted.

“It was a shock to me,” he said.

Those years in college had shaped him as an artist. In practicing what he thought was Cartier-Bresson’s style, McIntyre learned to seek out moments rather than wait for them.

“My misunderstanding of this process actually brought me something much more valuable, which was, the sense that having a camera is being in the moment,” McIntyre said. “Whenever I’m walking around with a camera I’m totally not worried about stuff—I’m looking for pictures.”

This technique led McIntyre to fashion photography, a field that requires the intuition of when to capture the look or gesture that defines a style. He thrived, and his work took him all over the world, from Paris to Milan to Germany. His learned lesson of foresight, however, wasn’t constrained to just taking pictures.

In 1999, shortly after he moved to New York City with his pregnant wife, Kelly, the pair launched ZooZoom. It was the first of its kind: an online fashion magazine filled with stunning images at a time when the Internet was made up of basic, visually unappealing sites.

ZooZoom was precedent setting. Since its birth, the site has won two Webbys (the Oscars of the Internet), been nominated for two others, and been recognized in Time magazine’s yearly “50 Coolest Websites” list.

Despite all its apparent success, ZooZoom may have been progressive to a fault.

“Ten years ago was just too ridiculously far ahead,” McIntyre said. “It would be much nicer now to be starting with the enthusiasm of something new at a time when the market in the world is much more ready for it.”

It’s only now, a decade later, with print journalism being shaken at its foundation, that many magazines are transitioning to the web. McIntyre knew back then he may have been early to the conversion, but he was sure a shift would eventually occur. He wanted to be ready when it did.

“It’s a trifle egocentric—but the one thing I seem to have been able to do consistently is be slightly too far ahead of things,” McIntyre said.

He is no braggart. For McIntyre, art, like music and politics, reflects a collective consciousness. There are major events in the world that affect all of our opinions, and those who look forward from the reaction to these, he believes, will eventually come upon the same ideas.

Mike Hartley, a web designer for ZooZoom since 2004, says McIntyre is an artist with some futurism mixed in. Hartley thinks McIntyre’s unique ability stems from what he allows himself to see.

“His process seems to be about keeping his mind open and receiving,” Hartley said. “He sees things most people filter out.”

Futurism isn’t necessarily lucrative, though. At times, it has been difficult for McIntyre to sell his innovative work, only to see that style become a commercial norm just years later. McIntyre views our time as one of brand identity, where you find a style that brings you success and repeat it endlessly.

“But my level of boredom’s always been way too low for that kind of persistence,” he said.

Five years ago, he began photographing models on set, then building strikingly photo-realistic digital backgrounds on his computer for those shots. Looking back on the work, he calls it intensive (a month’s work for a day’s wage), beautiful and, again, ahead of its time. But now he’s noticing a similar style in some car advertisements, and suspects it will probably be, in a couple year’s time, the trend.

At that point, McIntyre will have moved on, seeking life’s next decisive moment. Already he is dabbling in video, developing ways to bring rich, stunning fashion movies to the web. It’s something he’s been planning since ZooZoom’s inception ten years ago, but the lack of bandwidth kept him from doing.

“I’ve never stopped fiddling, thinking, making stuff, watching, learning,” McIntyre said. “You know the kid who breaks the radio down? I’m still kind of doing that, deconstructing and trying to build up.”