My decades-long food colleague and friend Daniel Young, who lives in London and does many things, including posting on substack about past and present hungers, asked me if I knew of an old egg store on East 7th Street between Second and First avenues in the East Village, Manhattan, the same block where another Daniel and I live in a tenement built in 1893. The egg store is in a 1984 film by Paul Mazursky, Moscow on the Hudson, London Daniel emailed. Russian-circus saxophonist Robin Williams, who defected while his troupe negotiated a final, … [Read more...]
Kosher Becomes Croissant
How Jewish is he? Queen, bar mitzvahed in Queens. If I say big deal, certain readers will spit. It was a giant, sweaty deal way back, but evaporated fast. My sceptic father knew that. Still, if you hate Jews, you hate me, truer than true now that I'm 72. So Moishe's Kosher Bake Shop, the around-the-corner bakery that opened in '72, said goodbye late last year with a vague paper sign, the way they all do. How many tears am I supposed to ... yes, the word is shed. Never liked its grim unsweptness, couldn't finish the prune or poppy seed … [Read more...]
The Google Ghost in the Window
Who among you onliners has not Google Mapped your own address? The satellite bird's-eye shots are thrilling enough, especially when you see how your neighbor's yard looks like hay while yours is a plot of emerald. But city folk can make street-level swoops up and down stoops and even jaywalk without being mowed down by taxi or bike. You may guess in what season the image was grabbed by checking trees and clothes, though NYU "boys" in my East Village nabe wear fetching shorts at all times, even in the snow. The other day I typed in my … [Read more...]
Writing: My 9/11 Time Machine
Like many of my colleagues, I am quesy about the full-scale media attack on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Of course, I understand the civic need to weight the event and personal need to recount our losses, but I am less sure about the form any media memorial should take. Still, I'm going to take a risk and post a piece I wrote right after 9/11 for the Philadelphia Inquirer, if only to demonstrate to myself how words can erase a decade. I was then a back-of-the-book arts editor, and though departments dissolved as we all pitched in to … [Read more...]