The other day, someone asked me what I thought a “New Yorker” was. My first response was a New Yorker is not about what was, New Yorkers are about what is often before anyone realizes it. Besides this though, the question seemed impossible to answer. That person could have asked me to count all the… Read more »
In the Upstate Schenectady School district, five-year-old Jeneya Nevins boarded the wrong bus to the wrong school, assimilating herself in a first-grade classroom, a notion completely oblivious to teachers and staff. Apparently the school was expecting a new first-grader, and the kindergartner’s verbal confirmation was credence to the “board of education.” Metonymic, Of course! Teachers… Read more »
Some of us in New York have the unfortunate burden of being Jets fans. The New York Jets were a great team sometime more than 40 years ago. Like the Knicks and Mets, they have made it their modus operandi to find new ways to break their fans’ hearts. They have been described as more… Read more »
He is the most consummate master of vowels and consonants, the greatest poet. As a philosopher and moralist I have no abnormal respect for him. You guessed it folks. Shakespeare! The man, the dude, the master of masters imbedded in the canons of literature, music, performance art and even everyday language. He had coined hundreds… Read more »
I shouldn’t drive down this block. I’m taking a chance. True, it’s just another street in Brighton Beach, where five-story apartment buildings march right up to the ocean. They resemble 1776 Walton Avenue in the Bronx, where I grew up—plain and mundane. But these sit on the Atlantic, right on the cusp of land and… Read more »
March 19th is the Feast of St. Joseph ~ an East Side wide holiday in 1962 in Manhattan. The St. Joseph parish on 87th Street began as an orphanage on York Avenue (then known as Avenue A) and 89th Street in the 1800s. The cornerstone of the present church was blessed in 1894. My mother and… Read more »
After you see Times Square, the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center, there is still so much more to explore and experience in New York City. One slice of New York life that I love sharing with friends and family who visit is a walk through the Upper West Side – one of Manhattan’s most-beloved… Read more »
The great green retardation is upon us once again. St. Patrick’s Day should be a sad day for Irish people. The day has been reduced to an excuse to get drunk. Getting drunk is fine, but drinking to celebrate Irish culture is like smoking crack to celebrate Black History Month. The Irish Americans, for all… Read more »
Circa 2014. Be aware. There will be no intermission but I do have a smoke machine so don’t panic. Today’s ride will be endowed by the mystical power of writing and centered around William Kentridge. In particular his intellectual installation The Refusal of Time in the Met. (This transit is ready to depart mind the… Read more »
I bet I can name every barber I’ve had back to five years old. I only remember nicknames for the first two on York Avenue because I didn’t know their real names. “Herman the German” and “Mickey Mouse” with his wife with Tourette’s syndrome. In a house dress with her wild gray hair, she sat next to you… Read more »
