“I used to ride in my father’s rumble seat,” Dad told me once 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… Read more »
I’ve been overseas for the past few weeks, and the weather in Paris, Brittany, and Normandy went like this: rainy, cold and humid, windy, drizzly, a sun tease, rainy again followed by rapidly moving clouds, then a sudden dark sky, then a downpour. The “put a bullet in my head” weather, however, did not stop… Read more »
In 1969, desperate to escape my crappy job at a Daitch Shopwell supermarket, I secured a better crappy job in my Yorkville neighborhood. Ben’s Meat O’Mat was a mom and pop butcher/grocery store, except there was no Mom and no Pop, just two oafs named Pete and Harry. They weren’t twins, but they could have… Read more »
Dad used to hunt. He didn’t golf, so hunting was his made-up reason for getting out of the house. He never struck me as the hunting type, but once or twice a year he’d take off for upstate for a long weekend. It was a Yorkville sort of man-thing in the 1950s and 60s. One… Read more »
I’m excited to announce that next Friday, April 13th, The Del-Satins are performing at St. Stephen of Hungary on 82nd Street. Original members Stan Zizka, Les Cauchi, and Tommy Ferrara and featured member Edie Van Buren will perform all their hits. Sadly, Fred Ferrara, one of the original Del-Satins, passed away last year but will be there… Read more »
On my 12th birthday in March 1966, Dad gave me a basketball. This was an odd present for two reasons: (1) Dad gifts to me reflected his interests and he hated basketball. (2) I was terrible at basketball. Right after Christmas 1965, I made up my mind I was going to change that. I would learn to… 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 Rory and I were ever this clean was for one lone hour at a photography studio on 3rd Avenue in spring 1960. I repel wool…. Read more »
Just past noon, Buddy McMahon and I jumped into the parade at 61st Street joining our classmates and teachers from LaSalle Academy marching up Fifth Avenue. This was non-regulation—starting the parade late and dressed as clowns (we paid the piper with a “knuck off the head” from Brother Brendan the next day at school). We broke off at the Met Museum to run east to… Read more »
AANY contributor Thomas Pryor runs his very own storytelling salon! Join him the second Tuesday of every month at the lovely Cornelia Street Café… Who: Thomas Pryor, with special guests Claudia Chopek, Joe McGinty, John Newell, Rick Patrick, Rivka Widerman, & Ward White. What: City Stories: Stoops to Nuts storytelling show Where: Downstairs at The Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street, between Bleecker and West 4th. When: The second Tuesday… Read more »
I remember the Friday after Thanksgiving when I was in kindergarten in 1959. My mother dropped Rory off at my grandparents’ place on 85th Street right after breakfast and took me with her on the 86th Street crosstown bus. She got a transfer for Fifth Avenue. I didn’t need one. I was still “little enough to ride for free, little enough to… Read more »
