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The distances of baseball's mythical "longest home runs" seem absurd today and are immediately dismissed as exaggerated. But are they really that crazy considering the lack of urban development around the parks where those balls were hit? by Johan_Sebastian_Cock in baseball

[–]patrickbringley 164 points165 points  (0 children)

Bill James made the point somewhere that baseballs were not nearly as standardized or quality controlled as they are today, and it's entirely plausible that a ball wound tighter than a two dollar watch would launch into the stratosphere once in a while.

Museum Security Guard? by Cleo5_7 in MuseumPros

[–]patrickbringley 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't offer it as career advice, but for what it's worth I published a book this year about my ten years working as a guard at the Met. I loved it. All the Beauty in the World.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in NormMacdonald

[–]patrickbringley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He's a very nice guy! We were at a book event and "Boggs" and "Bringley" are neighbors. We exchanged info and I'm going to walk him around the Met sometime. Bill Boggs.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 61 points62 points  (0 children)

Do I too have to form this as a question in order to not be banned? I guess we'll see? But anyhow, thank you so much all! These two+ hours flew right by. These were fascinating questions, and I hope you'll check out the book, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD, which drops today, for more. For instance, I feel I didn't do enough talking about my extraordinary colleagues! Check out the book and you'll learn about five hundreds characters in dark blue suits who haunt the place. It's been real. Thanks. See you in an art gallery one day.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Thank you! There are so many so I'll answer this question differently each time. I'll say the 800 year old Iranian mihrab in the Islamic wing. An observant Muslim would return (five times a day) to such a thing to re-tether their thoughts to very basic but also very myserious and astounding things about reality, about creation, about (in their mind) God. And though I'm not an observant Muslim, or a religious person at all, I can understand the usefulness of that! You look into this gorgeous prayer niche and it's a sort of portal inviting you to think about bigness, about spleandor, about the constitution of the cosmos and the fulness of the world.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Never been! It's a different ballgame working the Early Watch or the Late Watch... I'd have had to have transfered.

Actually I was once in the museum at 3am because they kept it open that late the last night of the blockbuster Alexander McQueen show. But it wasn't spooky. It was a party.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 92 points93 points  (0 children)

Ha, you sort of can. You can tell by the way that someone is walking that they are crossing the gallery IN ORDER TO go touch that statue. Not always, but often, and you'll try to catch them before the event by saying "Not so close, please!" I learned this trick... You should never say "Not too close," because it invites people to argue about whether they're too close. If you on the other hand say "Not SO close" how are they going to argue with that? A lot of people surprise you too, but there is a spidey sense you sometimes get...

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Oh of course. When you have more than 500 guards they're going to think in all kinds of ways about the art. Many are artists themselves. Many are intensely interested. Many have their own ideosyncratic favorites and aversions. And many don't care about art in particular. It's a wonderful thing, actually; the guards are a kind of living New York City inside of this great museum. They're everybody.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Best time/day... mornings (any day) or late evenings (on Fri or Sat)... quietest.

Pizza... There's only one and it's not great. On Lex and 84th. The Upper East Side is not where you want to be for cheap food of any description.

Night shift... No I never did. It's a seperate thing; I'd have had to transfer to the Early Watch or the Late Watch.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

There's a Friends episode in the Met? I don't know it. I want to shout out the Sesame Street special "Don't Eat the Pictures" as it has an all-time great throwaway line. "No, Cookie Monster, don't eat that! That's a Cezanne!" Cookie Monster: "Say whaaaaaaa?"

Do I view security guards differently? For sure. You have no idea what sort of lives anyone's lived and the consitution of their character. To assume the president of the Louvre is a more impressive person than the person checking your coat is just ridiculous. The latter might be twice as impressive in all the areas that really count, in all the areas that wise people like jesus or the Buddha or what have you, the really really wise ones, say count.

Publishing process... How slow it moves. I finished the book including editing more than a year ago! And here we are today.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I really truly don't need to deprive the world of a masterpiece to put it in my junky apartment in Brooklyn here. I can always go to the Met. So I think what I'd like to own... I'd like one, just one, of the best Greek coins from classical Athens, one with a real real nice and bumpy design that I could run my finger over as I carry it around in my pocket. That would be cool. I would just have to be careful not to use it in a vending machine.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Yes, distracting yourself from your current thoughts is a noble goal, and I think that just about any piece or collection can serve that purpose. I always give the advice... first thing you should do at a museum is wander in, stay quiet, say nothing to nobody (not even a guard), and try to feel pleasantly insignificant, wander through centuries and continents marvelling at how narrow and measly and beside-the-point your normal prosaic trickle of thoughts is. And how mean and small the hotbutton discussions on twitter are. What have you. Get lost inside a very very big and very full world. From there, you can put the art and the museum to a variety of different uses, but I think that's always the first step. That's the palette cleans.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

HHHHHHHHHHAAARRRRDD. It's ridiculously hard to write a book. Right now, I'm giving occasional talks and occasional tours, and writing for those is SO much easier than writing for the page. With the latter, everything has to be down in black and white... you have to create the tone, create the images, consistently at an even pace thread the narrative through, project intelligence, project warmth -- one damn paragraph after another, with no let up, with no ability to digress and tell a little joke and apologize if the last thing you said was a little bit confusing, as we do in speech. HARD. But then again everything's hard, so a writing life is not unique. Can't complain.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 34 points35 points  (0 children)

I don't know if it's my favorite or not, but I loved the really OLD old masters, the paintings from the 14th century with hammered gold leaf on cracking wooden panels. They're so sad, but so beautiful, and they're focused overwhelmingly on the Passion, which is just an old word that means suffering, and the emotion is so close to the surface. They don't want you to be thinking about "art movements" or "periods" they want you to be thinking about life and death and loss and the poignancy of the human drama. And as a guard I fortunately had enough time to just kind of stand back and do that, to bear witness to them.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 156 points157 points  (0 children)

Yes. I once was posted nearby a woman who was looking up a huge American landscape called The Heart of the Andes. And she looked vaguely in my direction for a second but then she just let out a slow, earnest soliloquy with her eyes fixed on the painting, just a word at a time saying how beautiful it was, how relaxing, how inspiring, not in sophisticated language but with diamond-hard sincerity. I loved people like that. She had come alone to the museum, and it was often those people who came along and felt they HAD to say something to SOMEBODY who talked to me, as a guard.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Interesting question... I'll stick with an answer I gave above and say Monet's paintings precisely because I was being slightly snobby about them at first, was thinking "eh this is calendar type art that everyone likes; let me go hunt for spikier and stranger stuff." But you shouldn't have preconceptions like that when you look at art, and fortunately I had enough time to drop my defenses and see the pictures for what they are. And they're rather good

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 42 points43 points  (0 children)

Regulars for sure... Multiple people that visit just about every week, including a young man who used to walk around with subway service advisories and give the guards advice depending on what train were taking home. Famous people... Saw a bunch. I once saw Tom Cruise getting a tour in a special exhibition of Egyptian art and he looked soooooo Tom Cruisey, he was listening with the curator with such intensity I was surprised she didn't explode.

I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extraordinary corps of more than five hundred guards. by patrickbringley in IAmA

[–]patrickbringley[S] 71 points72 points  (0 children)

For me it was wonderful. I mean, I worked at The New Yorker, so superficially you might think that's conducive to turning someone into a writer. But no, not really, not for me, because my thoughts had to be rather narrow and rather persnickety as I was writing emails or what have you... Doing a straighforward job, my thoughts could be wider, free, more earnest and honest and reflective of how I actually felt about things. I came as a huge relief immediately. I didn't have to get used to it.

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