Fortunately, this holiday season did not trigger a new search for expandable waist pants. My overeating was sporadic and there was no fatal wound as there was in 2009. That year my “Lost Weekend” lasted two weeks. I ate golden cake with double chocolate icing for dinner, five times. I devoured 13 velvet cupcakes with… Read more »
An early 1980s New Yorker moment “Please! Step on the scale!” A firm male voice directed me. I waited a second; listening hard to make sure she sounded busy three rooms away. When I heard the sink running, I got on and the number came up. “Your weight is 178 pounds. Have a nice day…. Read more »
Nearing the 1964 Christmas break during my fifth grade, thirteen inches of snow blanketed my street late on a Thursday evening. Losing a school day to the elements was a beautiful thing. Friday morning, my friends and I mushed over to Central Park towing our sleds through the middle of the street. Milking the day… Read more »
If you ask this New Yorker what’s his favorite hill in New York City: the bluff in Owl’s Head Park just north of 68th Street and Shore Road in the Bay Ridge neighborhood. The vista from this property has been the subject of art and photography for three centuries. Henry Cruse Murphy who helped found… Read more »
The week after Thanksgiving 1959, my mother left my brother, Rory, off at my grandparents on York Avenue and picked me up at P.S. 77 after kindergarten dismissal. Together we walked over to the 86thStreet cross-town bus just pulling up to the corner. Mom dropped a Mercury dime (I loved coins my grandmother and father… Read more »
The annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Balloon Inflation wasn’t always an event that drew tens of thousands of visitors to the Upper West Side. It used to be something semi-secret that took place in the dark and cold one night each year just around the corner from Central Park West. For decades the night before Thanksgiving on… Read more »
So I walk into the house, I’m 10, and the first thing I see is a pair of bare legs on the inside of a closed window and the rest of the body isn’t in the apartment. I’m praying to God whoever it is doesn’t fall, the soapy glass prevents a clean identification of the… Read more »
Only good part to getting older is how I pop up in the early morning like a Reverse Vampire. Makes it easy to get outside when the light’s right. This past Saturday, I rode my bicycle to Central Park and arrived at Bow Bridge on The Lake at 6:45. The colors in the park slowly… Read more »
News from Long Island has come in that John A. Gotti, son of the more famous Mafia boss and a one-time Mafia boss himself, was stabbed on Long Island. He survived the attack. Gotti told the police he was stabbed while breaking up a fight between two strangers. Police find that about as believable as… 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 »
