Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts: June 2015

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Holiday Walkabout At Twilight

Near sunset on Father's Day, I strolled up 79th Street then walked north on Fifth Avenue. The light was other worldly. I found a puddle in front of the Met Museum doing pointillist tricks with the reflection of the tall buildings on the east side of the avenue.

The quiet street had few people and cars. It was Yorkville walk time.

If you enjoy my stories please check out my memoir, "I Hate the Dallas Cowboys - tales of a scrappy New York boyhood." Available at Logos Book Store or online at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

The book has 108 Amazon five star reviews out of 108 total reviews posted. We're pitching a perfect game. My old world echoes TV's "The Wonder Years" ~ just add taverns, subways and Checker cabs.

You can also purchase my photography portfolio, "River to River - New York Scenes From a Bicycle" on Amazon.

Monday, June 29, 2015

Magical Summer Light

This sign always triggered my thirst

Here are photographs from around Manhattan, summer 2012. Magical summer light.

Cornelia looking toward W 4th

Bleecker & Cornelia

If you enjoy my stories please check out my memoir, "I Hate the Dallas Cowboys - tales of a scrappy New York boyhood." Available at Logos Book Store or online at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

The book has 108 Amazon five star reviews out of 108 total reviews posted. We're pitching a perfect game. My old world echoes TV's "The Wonder Years" ~ just add taverns, subways and Checker cabs. You can also purchase my photography portfolio, "River to River - New York Scenes From a Bicycle" on Amazon.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Down on the Corner ~ 1945

Gene's Tavern 1944

Here are photos of Gene's Tavern on the northeast corner of 84th Street and York Avenue taken in 1945. On the 84th Street wall, right above the lady with white hair crossing the street is a service memorial with the names of the Yorkville men and women who gave their lives in World War II. Look at the stores on both sides of the avenue, the barber pole and the young guys on the bike and sitting on the bumper of the car on York. And the graffiti on the wall to the left of the service memorial in the photo and in my Dad's sketch that reads, "Cameron." Dad earned a smack from his mother when she saw the graffiti and recognized Dad’s art work. If she knew it, others knew it, and the one thing she never tolerated was being embarrassed by anyone related to her by blood, marriage or politics. She gave me a smack for my 83rd Street "Teddy Ryan" graffiti 25 years later in 1969.

Robert Pryor sketch of Gene's Tavern

Gene's Tavern had a two lane bowling alley in the cellar. My father's brother, Tom, was the weekend pin boy for the place. Good tips. When Tom got too old for the job he passed it onto his younger brother, Bob, my Dad. There was a controversy over the changing of the guard on this pin boy position in 1941. They were 16 and 12 at the time, their father had just died that year, their mom worked two jobs, six days a week. Tom and Bob liked to settle things quickly. I'm saving that one for a longer story called, "Pin Boys."

1945

If you enjoy my stories please check out my memoir, "I Hate the Dallas Cowboys - tales of a scrappy New York boyhood." Available at Logos Book Store or online at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

The book has 108 Amazon five star reviews out of 108 total reviews posted. We're pitching a perfect game. My old world echoes TV's "The Wonder Years" ~ just add taverns, subways and Checker cabs. You can also purchase my photography portfolio, "River to River - New York Scenes From a Bicycle" on Amazon.

1943

1945

1946

looking towards s/w corner of 85 St

looking at n/e corner of 84 Street

Friday, June 26, 2015

Happy 60th, Edward, We Miss You, We Love You

Eddie Ekis’s mom worked at the local Five & Ten store on First Avenue. You know, the one with the mechanical jalopies and "Ride "Em Cowboy!" outside the store - a dime did it. On Friday nights, Asst. Manager, Ellie Ekis closed the store at 9pm. This put Mrs. Ekis home at 9:15.

our first album cover, Ed, Buddy, teepee

Sometime in 1969, on one Friday the cocktail lamp was lit at 5pm and the first wave would roll in. There were eight to ten regulars, a poker game always got going, and the music blasted. J Geils, “Looking For a Love,” “Floyd’s Hotel,” Jeff Beck, "Truth," Humble Pie, “Thirty Days In The Hole,” Black Sabbath, “Paranoid,” Black Oak Arkansas, “Jim Dandy,” Jacksons, “Never Can Say Goodbye,” Led Zep, “Everything,” The Who, “Who’s Next,” “Quad,” Beatles, “Rubber Soul & Revolver”, Sly, “Everything, “Billy Preston, “Outer Space,” and every worth while 45 single from 1962 and forward. O

Eddies' older brother Ginter had a doctorate in Entomology, the scientific study of insects. Eddie bought into science and loved exotic animals. Fall 1970, Ginter came home from a research trip to India with a gift for his brother - two Rhesus monkeys. Eddie named them Chiquita and Toto. Eddie caged in the tiny tar roof of the beauty parlor under his second floor apartment. They loved beer and lived in a cage in the kitchen and had a terrace out the window when the weather was nice. A porch for everybody. If the weather was right we’d move two chairs and a bottle of Yago Sangria out there and hang out with the monkeys, but if they didn’t like the music they went cuckoo crazy nuts and pulled our hair. We carefully made our record selections. Toto & Chicata hated Black Oak Arkansas.

At five to nine everyone knew the drill. The brown bags came out and all the empties into the garbage. Ekis ran to the turntable for our “Go out,” last song. We'd march out of the building, on our way to somewhere that was never as much fun as Ekis's house.We sang along:

I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking,

Somebody help me find my baby!

Happy Birthday Eddie, we miss you brother, miss you so much it hurts.