At 16, my dream job was working behind the deli counter at Daitch Shopwell. As a stock boy this would be a coup. Watching Milton or Marty cut thin slices of rare roast beef and Jarlsberg Swiss, I cried with pain. Pain that some son of a bitch was going to eat that tasty mound of meat… Read more »
Got into a sparkling new cab this morning. The seats, dashboard and windows shined. Riding my finger along the metal detail on the passenger door, I thought, the only time my brother Rory and I were ever this clean was for one lone hour at a photography studio on Third Avenue in spring 1960. I repel wool…. 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 »
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 »
This month marks my 60th year as a New Yorker, and I still find new and interesting things everywhere I go in all five boroughs. To celebrate the city, to thank my friends, this month my storytelling show is free on me. I’m giving away stuff, too. “City Stories: Stoops to Nuts,” Tuesday, March 11… Read more »
I used to ride in my father’s rumble seat,” Dad told me while we sat at the bar in Loftus Tavern. As Dad drank a short beer and I sipped a coke, I wondered what’s a rumble seat? I asked. He said, “It was a seat that hinged out of the back of the car, it felt like you… Read more »
As a boy in the early 1960s, I’d go up my grandparents’ second floor apartment on York Avenue several times a week. Their hallway was lit by one low watt exposed bulb. The dark hall frightened me. Sometimes my fear was compounded when I’d hear fuzzy radio sounds coming from the usually locked basement. I… Read more »
Last weekend, I wrote and worked on a park bench near Sailboat Lake. I saw a few trees that looked familiar and thought back. As a boy, I’d climb trees all over Central Park, never looking down, go up as far as I could, then I’d look down. My heart would relocate to the outside… Read more »
