The late show

Many of the individual details about Alex Portelli and his Joe N' Dough Cafe in Albany are by themselves interesting.

On the following day, when he had to be at work in the evening for yet another of the 12-plus-hour overnight shifts he does six nights a week, he drove 90 minutes each way to surprise his grandmother.

Portelli says, "Everybody say hi to Dennis!" Murmured greetings arise from among a crowd that includes a trio of scruffy guys eating burgers with bacon, cheese and peanut butter, an old man who has come in almost every night for 15 months and a couple of transgender people, who've been telling Portelli about strip-club adventures and medical procedures during a recent trip to Mexico.

The following day, on Easter afternoon, Portelli has just given free soft ice cream cones to five kids, including two girls in sparkly pink dresses, white stockings and Mary Janes, when a woman backs into the cafe doorway, shrieking emotionally at a man across the street.

When he was 19, a bad crowd, worse decisions and a felonious amount of Ecstasy pills got him nearly three years combined in county jail and state prison before being paroled.

When he announced his bid for mayor in March 2013, he joked on his campaign's Facebook page, Most politicians wait until they get into office to commit their felonies.

Portelli busily engages with Facebook; he posted more than 24 times from Sunday into Monday this week, from photos of folks lured by ice cream to a heartfelt appreciation of his community to a lament about being ripped off by an employee to this random observation: "When I date girls who are taller than me, I notice that they slightly slouch to be at my height. #ShortGuyProblems."

Portelli's life is out there on view, detractors be damned, and if his comments at times seem rash or intemperate or poorly...