New Yorker of the Month

I am grateful and proud that Ask a New Yorker named me April’s New Yorker of the Month.

Mid-March, I took a long walk through Yorkville with Kennedy Moore, the founder of Ask a New Yorker and it all came out.  My love for the neighborhood, the city, the people still here and those gone. The rich Yorkville memories block to block, up to the avenues then down to the river.

Our walk started at Lexington Avenue and 86^th Street, the center of Yorkville’s universe. We meandered the lower 80s and went up to the footprint of the old Ruppert Brewery. Stopped at the Isaacs/Holmes Housing Project, then over to Asphalt Green football field. We played in Carl Schurz Park, strolled the Drive and concluded our walkabout in front of 517 East 83^rd Street, my old home, where our journey ended.

I love our city and my warren, Yorkville.  Thank you, Ask a New Yorker.

Our next City Stories: Stoops to Nuts storytelling show is six days away, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at the Cornelia Street Café.

Our sensational line-up: Slash Coleman, Kurt Gertsmann, Dave Lester, Susan Neuffer, Sherryl Marshall and Thomas Pryor.

Admission is $7 and includes a free drink. I guarantee a good time.

Rear wall of the Yorkville Casino ~ 85th St

Heidelberg

Old Timers

Mom in front of 519 E 86th St ~ 1961

East Side Settlement House cornerstone 

1903 drawing of East Side Settlement House

Touchstone Palaces of My Youth

Touchstone palaces of my youth: old Yankee Stadium, the original movie houses up 86^th Street and in distant third place various churches. Something holy happened to me in each of these temples. Churches are still here, but don’t hold my attention anymore. Old Yankee Stadium was buried under the horrible renovation after the 1973 season. The RKO and Loew’s theatres on East 86^th Street were chopped up shortly after the 1960s. 

Yesterday, I took a trip on the PATH train to the classic Loew’s Jersey Theatre at Journal Square. This beauty opened in 1929 same year my Dad was born. It has 3100 seats, same size as the old 86th Street RKO.  Secret, don’t tell anybody: the Yorkville RKO’s Lounge downstairs under the lobby was huge with lots of comfy furniture, a giant black table and several paintings. Matching its size, the urinals in the men’s room were mammoth. Top of one came up to my eight year old head. When we played hide and seek in the RKO after watching the movie twice we’d sometimes hide in the urinals.

The urinals are not over-sized at the Loew’s Jersey but everything else about it made me feel like an explorer breaking through the bush and finding an ancient city.  From outside the theatre you barely get a sense of the majesty beyond the gold doors. All the luxurious decorations inside are there to help suspend your disbelief for a few hours and transport you to another world.  Last night, I went to the land of the “Dude.” The film was “The Big Lebowski.” I felt safe knowing “the Dude abides.”  By the way, before the film we were entertained by an organ that rose from the orchestra pit. This was a blow my mind bonus since the Yorkville theatres had no live music when I was a boy.  You had to go to Radio City for that. Visit the Loew's Jersey if you can, it will not disappoint.

Thank you, Eric Vetter, for turning me on to this treasure, I had a blast last night.

Below are pictures from Loew’s Jersey Theatre and a link to a hundred other photographs.

Deja Vu ~ Feel Like I've Been Here Before

My Uncle Mickey, a true Yorkville son, died last October. Yesterday, I visited  my Aunt Barbara. We spent the afternoon talking, remembering, laughing and crying. Shitty memories are buried under a ton of love.

I believe there is a point and time when your career fate is sealed. Your life's path is chosen. It happened early for me, but took 49 years to figure it out.

I'm a mechanical idiot. My cousin, Jimmy, taught me,"lefty loosey, rightytighty," seven years ago. Before learning this helpful rhyme I stared at screws, helpless, bringing myself to tears not knowing which way to turn the screw driver. I did know, if I went the wrong way, too hard, I'd strip the screw hole and mess everything up.

Here, you see me making a bathroom decision at two years old. Even then, I needed something to read in there. Faced with a choice between the practical "Popular Science," and "True." I chose "True," the man's magazine loaded with high adventure, sports profiles and dramatic conflicts. At two, writing was ready for me, but I'm plodder and I wasn't ready to write. But I was thinking about it.

I wish I occasionally grabbed a "Popular Science." Come Monday, Jimmy, his son, Matt & I are painting my Aunt Barbara's apartment in Elmhurst. I expect to be used as a water boy and everyone is right with this choice. Painting an apartment brings back a complex memory.

In 1967, my parents decided to paint our new Sunnyside, Queens place, they asked me to help. My father gave me a gallon of white paint and told me to do the closet in my room. Somehow, I got the ladder, the paint and me into the small space. It was hard to breath in there.

About an hour into it, I left the closet and asked Dad for more paint. He looked me up and down, went to the closet, shook his head like a horse, turned, shook his head in a downward motion towards me, walked to my mother in another room and said something. Mom came back to the closet, looked in it, looked at the empty gallon of paint, then walked over to her handbag and pulled a bill out, then came back to me and said, "Tommy, throw your clothes away, take a shower, here's ten dollars, go into the city and stay with your grandmother for the weekend."

I fear paint, I fear Monday. May God have mercy on my soul.

Jimmy & Peter Ryan, Tommy & Rory ~ Sparkle Lake ~ 1961

1963 Fire Escape Holiday in Yorkville

"Mom, I don't feel so good."

"What's a matter?"
"My belly hurts."
"How bad?
"Oh, I'm going to be sick."
OK, go back the bed."

I left the kitchen table with my lips sealed. My brother, Rory, rolled his eyes and mouthed, “Fake!” as I passed him. Mom and I had a deal. If I kept my marks up, though not thrilled with the idea, she'd let me play hooky a few times in the last quarter of school. But we couldn't tell Rory.

After Rory left for school, I'd creep into the living room and put the TV on and watch the Sandy Becker Show. When Mom got comfortable with the idea of me being home, I'd loosen up and hang out in the kitchen with her for awhile before bringing all my possessions into the living room and start placing them out the window onto the fire escape.

The fire escape was my terrace; my spauldeens, shoe boxes full of crap, magazines, transistor radio, baseball cards and plastic soldiers all came out with me. I'd stay on the fire escape till lunch then go back out for the rest of the afternoon. I'd sit on the metal stairs and dream that the backyard was a forest and I was viewing all the action from my fire watch station. Late in the day, Mom let me play music on Dad's Victrola pulled right up to the window. We'd trade songs for a few hours. She played Mario Lanza, I chose The Four Seasons. You could hear Frankie Valli’s voice bouncing all around the backyard. Dad would have killed us.

86th Street's Droopy Stoop ~ Now & Then

On the southeast corner of 86th Street and York Avenue is a stoop that caught my interest as a kid. 500 East 86th Street. It was the highest one on the block. I’d wait on top for my father to get off the crosstown bus. Sitting there, I noticed the railing on both sides looked like a really fat elephant sat on it and made it droop. Never knew why. Last month, I had a conversation with my friend, Bill Chefalas, and he told me a story.

Our Stoop – 500 East 86th Street

During the period 1955 to 1958, I, along with other neighborhood friends, used to meet almost daily, and sit at the very top of the stairs, where we could see out over the cars and people on to York Avenue. We would alternate between the stoop and the popular Kronk’s ice cream parlor, a block away on 87th Street--the stoop was more private. On any given day, there were at least 20 to 30 of us who would congregate at these places. Some came from as far as the Bronx to meet there. (I walked every day from 81st Street and 1st). For these were some of the most popular places for us to meet girls and arrange dates. A few of us had cars, but I didn’t. And the ones that did, used to take us on rides to Coney Island and Freedom Land in the Bronx, and long rides around the Belt Parkway.

Our “stoop,” had a very large decorative stone lintel about six feet wide, located at the top of the stairs high above the door, and one day, probably around 1957, the lintel came crashing down on the two railings. If you look today, you can still see the two parallel bends on the railings that were caused by the crashing stone. Luckily, we weren't sitting there at the time. Every time I pass by that building, I look over at the stoop to see if the bent railings are still there, and they still are. Seeing those bends, bring back the memories of those days, and I can still picture me and my friends sitting there.

By Bill Chefalas

400 Block East 85th Street ~ Now & Then

My friend, Nancy Kidney shared two pictures with me of the 400 block of East 85th Street taken in August 1942. It was a service flag dedication and mostly women and children gathered for the pictures. As you can see, the frontage of 424 is nearly the same minus the fences & gates in the now shot. Up the block on the right is P.S. 77, grammar school replaced by the Tri~Faith apartment building in the late 1960s.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Mommy!

Today would be Mom's 81st Birthday. I'm celebrating with a glass of milk and washing it down with a black & white cookie.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Mommy! I never had a boring day with Mom in Yorkville.

Chug, Chug, Chug...

...was all I needed to hear. I’d run from any point in the apartment and jump on. Mom’s washing machine was my rocking bronco. Old and cranky, but it still ran. Burping, coughing, and passing gas, its mechanical parts in constant resistance against one another. The machine would lift itself from its usual corner by the old sink in our tiny kitchen beginning its Ouija board dance of death across the linoleum floor. Sick of having to plug it back in when it pulled itself out of the wall socket; Mom finally gave in adding a long extension cord. This cord was my passport to ride the wide open plain from sink to wall, from wall to door across the rolling kitchen floor.

Only one rule was in play. I couldn’t wear my sneakers when driving. Early rides found me firmly planting my sneakered feet on the papered walls to maximize liftoff. This left indelible marks resistant to all Borax cleaning products. Our compromise, I wore socks. So did Mom. We each wore a pair of Dad’s thick hunting socks. Me to cleanly push off as the stage coach perilously neared the wall. I redirected my pony express out of the sage brush back onto the dirt road. Mom’s socks allowed her to slide across the floor in a fluid polishing motion till she saw her house proud smile reflecting off the burnished linoleum.

The kitchen radio played “Our Day Will Come and We’ll Have Everything” by Ruby and the Romantics, then Mom put Mario Lanza on Dad’s 1955 RCA Victrola record player. We’d sing on the top of our lungs locked in tune. The music, the bouncing machine and me, mom’s linoleum cleaning cha-cha, a chaotic orchestra playing for only us two, and Mario and we singing:

“Drink, Drink, Drink,

To eyes that are bright as stars when they’re shining on me.

Drink! Drink! Drink!
To lips that are red and sweet as the fruit on the tree!
Here's a hope that those bright eyes will shine

Lovingly, longingly soon into mine!
May those lips that are red and sweet,
Tonight with joy my own lips meet!
Drink! Drink! Drink! ”

We knew every word.

Doing the Crime, Well Worth the Time

I spent a lot of time in the halls of St. Stephen's during class. An odd penalty the nuns applied when they had it with you. Sometimes, you went to the hall with no hit, and other times you were banished with a whack to the head on the way out. I was, and remain an excellent ducker.

I liked the hall. It gave me an opportunity to clear my head and plan the rest of my day. Mr. Beller's Neighborhood published a new St. Stephen's story yesterday. What did I do?

The nun caught me, but it was worth it.

Here's the link to the story.

http://mrbellersneighborhood.com/2011/03/stuff-in-stockings

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