44 years later — The Return Trip

THE RETURN TRIP — 44 YEARS LATER

September 19, 2012

As I get ready to return for my 40th reunion to Harvard I let my memory slowly rewind  (my mind is a reel to reel memory — there weren’t any computers or cds to record your brain extractions) to that September day in 1968 when I left North Central High School behind, put the savings I had from washing dishes 48 hours a week at the Showboat Restaurant (across the street from the Greyhound Bus Depot on Sprague) $200.00 in savings, made sure I had the receipt for my trunk I had sent ahead to Harvard via Greyhound Bus (it wasn’t full but it did have a desk lamp with a working bulb still in it), a wooden tennis racquet just slightly smaller than a current badminton racquet, three Charles Dickens novels, two Mark Twain novels and three boxes of Cheez-its, a pillow without a case.  I was heading to Bayfield, Wisc. via Duluth, Minnesota to see a high school teacher whose husband  had been assigned a parish there. I was going Student stand-by (half price tickets but you had to wait to see if you got on the plane — the original priceline.com). All I had was a duffel bag full of clothes. There was only one terminal at the Spokane Airport and no one had ever heard of metal detectors, homeland security or Starbuck’s coffee. People could wait at the gate with you until your plane left, sometimes they would even let the friend walk on the plane to make sure you were safe and sound.

PS– Of the 1214 comments I received since the last time I did my job as site janitor I want to thank the person who said when they write they never check spelling or content and that my site made them feel better about their negligence. It is always nice to get some positive feedback. To the adult webmaster who writes to me daily I doubt very much that I will look you up when I visit Alabama so you can take me off your list and thanks for the offer of photos of either cheerleaders or football players from the Alabama football team but I’m really not into “nothing but shoulder pads” photographic essays. Because of the above comments and the half hour it took me delete all of them I suggest those of you who know me can send me comments at my regular email. The likelihood that I would ever read your comments here is almost zero and I certainly wouldn’t post it. This blog is about information and travel and even though in the 2,000 plus comments I’ve gotten I’m sure one or two were legit — I couldn’t find them.  Besides, who wants to be held accountable for what they write and certainly responding with facts would injure the integrity of the reporting.

September 24, 2012

Traveling on airplanes was different in those days. We had transcontinental flights in those days and they took almost a day — many of the airplanes had twin engines on the front and you worried about walking into the meat grinder propellers not about underwear bombers. (Not only had you never heard such a thing, a lot of people didn’t even wear underwear during the make love not war era!) I was carrying a large cloth bag which was both my suitcase and laundry bag. I transferred from Northwest Airlines to North Central Airlines in Minneapolis. I had read about North Central Airlines at the Spokane Public Library which was about the only way to get information. There weren’t any computers to look things up at home. (If there were I doubt we would have had one, we still didn’t have a TV when I left Spokane for Boston). North Central Airlines originated in Wisconsin but had moved to Minneapolis. One of the articles said it was one of best regional airlines; another said there were some doubts about its maintenance record. This was several months before one of their airplanes crashed into a hanger in Chicago killing 27 people on board and one person on the ground plus numerous injuries (the article said there were office pools trying to pick the date one of their planes would crash — a tradition that started with picking when another Allegheny Airlines plane would crash. Both of their companies crashed and are no longer in business.  I think this must have been the precursor of the office fantasy pools.) In 1972 one of North Central’s planes collided with an Air Wisconsin plane killing all five on board (did I mention this was a small commuter airline?), later in 1972 a North Central plane tried to stop a real plane from taking off and ended up with ten more dead (the Delta plane it collided with on the ground sustained damage and a few injuries as well). Note: This was my first and last scheduled trip on North Central airlines. Unfortunately we didn’t get much news of the future in Spokane in those days. In Duluth I got off the plane and my friends weren’t there to meet me. I went outside and looked around. No one in sight. I went to the pay phone (no one had ever heard of a cell phone at this point). I made a collect call to the house but no one answered. I couldn’t leave a message for them because no one had heard of an answering machine at this point. Resigned I looked for a place to sit.  As always I chose a place to sit that was near the telephones, my back to the wall where I could see everything in front of me. In the old days I would say a rosary — by the time I left for college I recited the official forms questions from the police department. “What word would you use to describe the offense?  Was he violent? Did he sexually molest you? If you haven’t had sex how do your know he was molesting you? Did he steal anything from you? More importantly did you take anything from him? Were you in the privacy of his van on a side street? Why did you agree to park on a side street? Why did you go to the farm with him? Are you sure he was a religious brother?  Sometimes I would stop the interview in my mind and start reciting the presidents in order or when the states joined the unionor quote teachers — “i” before “e” except after “c”; to every action there is an opposite and equal reaction I waited about two hours before they arrived. An emergency had come up.  It took us about two hours to drive to their home on Lake Superior. Bayfield was a town of about 600 people and means “New Town” in the local Indian language. The early press tried to lure people there to take advantage of the virtues of Lake Superior (this was the first Great Lake I had visited) and for the lumber industry. There seemed to be a lot of stories about kids going out ice fishing and never coming back — in August!!  Everyone seemed excited about the apple festival and the annual Apostle Island dog sled race. It seemed like either event could take place on the same weekend. I only stayed one evening and Terry told me a story about a young lady college freshman who ended up trying to commit suicide because she was homesick and adopted.

I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean but I never thought about the possibility of being adopted. Perhaps both Denise and I were adopted — that might explain why we turned out differently than our siblings and that we should have been worried all those years about knowing who our birth parents were instead of trying to avoid the cans of mutton we got at the local public assistance warehouse. Terry drove me by a Queen Anne home built in the 1890’s (I’m told it is now a B&B called the Old Rittenhouse Inn — I’m not likely to verify this fact), looked out towards the lighthouse on the Apostle Island (which we couldn’t see because of the fog — not sure how good a lighthouse is if you can’t see it in the fog?) and went to Gruenke’s  where history was made in the 1940’s when Victor Gruenke served his first breaded whitefish livers. I’m sure they were good but the working Wurlitzer, old posters from Norman Rockwell and the soda fountain counter screamed hamburger to me. (I also noticed my guests didn’t order Gruenke’s specialty).  We got up the next morning and drove to Ironwood, Michigan. One conversation I remember from Gruenke’ was a couple who were very excited about Duluth because Duluth was supposed to be getting lights at their airport soon and they said they remembered the days, not that many ago, when the runways weren’t paved. You didn’t hear the same excitement around the Ironwood airport.  The Ironwood airport had one area reserved for pilots who were waiting for passengers, or the weather to change, so they could safely get their passengers home. They slept in the lounge for a days at a time waiting for the weather to break or to hear about the lost hunters they had brought up from the big cities. Gogebic-Iron airport was my departure for Lansing, Michigan. I had to repeat it several times to my cousins in Lansing who had never heard of anyone flying out of there but NO Central was aimed to serve those people who couldn’t get served by anyone else.  William Jennings Bryan made a stop here during his presidential run — I think he needed a better pollster, hard to believe this could have been a swing town. One window seemed to be letting in a lot of wind so I couldn’t hear the pilot make his announcement over the roar of the engine but I think it was something like close your eyes, we are about to take off. Terryl left me at the airport, said she couldn’t bear to watch me take off — I thought she felt bad for me leaving her but I think it had more to do with the fact that her tires were in better shape than the NO COUNT airlines and even if we were able to make it up in the air no one knew what the landing might be like.

We made it. There wasn’t any beverage service other than the flask the pilot brought along for himself. There weren’t any flight attendants and a couple of the seats had tool boxes that were strapped in.  When we circled Lansing it looked like we were coming into the biggest city in the world. We made several hops towards the terminal and came to a half about two hundred yards from the terminal. The pilot shut the plane off and announced that was close enough.

My cousins wondered why I was stopping to see them since we really didn’t know each other. I told them I wanted to see the Detroit Tigers play.  Denny McLain won his 31st game against the Yankees. Gail and her husband, Ron, took me to the game the next day and I got to see my first major league game. After the game they dropped me off at the Detroit airport where I slept on my laundry bag where I took a flight to Boston. I had finished my first transcontinental trip.

This trip is also taking a few side trips before I reach Boston. I started out flying West to go East. In the old days it seemed like you were always plodding forward. Now you fly to some hub where they put you on a plane that is completely booked. You have to pay extra for crackers filled with cheese that don’t need to be refrigerated or salads that turn brown moments after you open the air tight lids. The movies are on small screen, the sound is occasional at best. I see some of the passengers have brought their own noise cancelling Bose ear phones. I tried to use the ones they gave me but it was very difficult to hear what the actors were saying — although with the Three Stooges it wasn’t as important as it was with Prometheus. You were charged by the time you were in the air. The longer the flight, the more the money. It didn’t matter that you couldn’t actually watch two full movies, you were charged as if you might. The food was memorable — hummus in a package that resembled mayonnaise packages from leading hamburger chains, hamburgers that absorbed all of the steam heat (which also came with catsup, mustard and mayonnaise packages that resembled airline hummus).

When I arrived at 11:45 pm in Newark I took the bus into town.  It drops you off at the port authority which is an easy walk to subways in Times Square or you cant take it to Grand Central Station.

September 25, 2012  — Restaurants, Plays & Museums

Queens — Often one of my first trips is to the Astoria-Ditmars area on the subway to have a Mediterranean meal at a restaurant like the Taverna Kyklades and then take a short walk to Martha’s Bakery where I purchase an apple strudel and loaf of bread for the condo.  I like a bakery that is open until 1:00 am on Friday and Saturday; don’t expect to get a seat in the restaurant at that hour, your best chance for a seat is mid afternoon.

So what was the first dessert I ever ate in New York? It was the fabled Hostess Apple Pie with real fruit filling. (This was long before the famous “Twinkie” defense used by Dan White who said he was so hopped on sugar from Twinkies that the depression caused him to murder Harvey Milk in SF)

The “Twinkie defense” — the name for an unlikely legal defense — is coined when Dan White goes on trial for the murders of San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk. His defense is that consumption of Twinkies and other sugary snacks was a symptom of depression that led to the murder.

I worked from midnight to three in the morning when I was in grade school at the local hostess used food outlet. The trucks would come back from their out of town routes and the drivers would give me twenty-five cents to unload the empty boxes and all of the donuts they brought back from the store outlets. Throughout my early years I thought you dunked donuts in your coffee to make them soft enough to swallow. I never thought of it as an enhancement to the pleasure of eating fresh bakery items. Even now I look at every donut I get for mold — it doesn’t discourage me from eating it, I just make sure I cut around it. Most of the drivers had graduated from grade school and the driver I worked for during the week, Skip, encouraged me to do the same. Sometimes Skip would save a cup of coffee in his Stanley thermos for me to have with the donuts. Skip was an expert on the thermos. Skip never was in a big hurry to go home. His wife just didn’t understand the bakery business and how important he was to people all over Idaho that depended on him to deliver cupcakes and twinkies. He would stand at the side of the truck and pour a cup of luke warm coffee into one of the cups he kept under his seat in the truck cab and hand it to me. “William Stanley was the first American genius,” he would start the lecture while I took my first sip. “In 1913 he realized that steel got hotter fast and stayed longer than glass. He revolutionized the world.” At times tears would well up in Skip’s eyes as he continued. “I was in the Air Force during the Big War and we were all tired and never would have made it without the help of William Stanley. I can tell you that he was one of the big reasons we won the war. I was flying a B-17 and our commander gave each of us a Stanley bottle. That coffee kept us awake and no one should ever use another kind of thermos. Stanley helped us defeat Hitler.”  I was impressed as a nine year old kid. It didn’t make the coffee taste any better, or make it any warmer at two in the morning, but it was amazing to talk to someone who was part of history.  In the old days, Skip told me, the thermos was steel but he had one of the new models which was introduced after the Korean War —  the hammertone green thermos.

My first experience at a Deli in New York was The Stage and my second was Carnegie’s Deli, both on 7th Avenue. The Stage started 70 years ago so my trip there in 1968 not quite the halfway point of its existence. Many of its sandwiches are named after local heroes in the sports and entertainment industries. The Russian emigre, Max Asnas, started the restaurant and featured blintzes, salamis, smoked fish and thick loaves of Russian rye bread. I’m not sure what happened to the bread at most New York deli’s but it now seems to be an afterthought, sort of a grainy thong to go with the meat.  Walter Winchell encouraged people to stop by where he stopped every night to eat and people like Joe DiMaggio and Marily Monroe followed his advice as well as Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen. If they are going to name a sandwich after you you might as well eat it.  I went there after Max had retired and sold the deli. It was in a bit of disarray and it wasn’t until 1978 that it started to regain some of its past glory. Now they were naming their food after Wilt Chamberlain, Reggie Jackson, Liza Minnelli, Carol Channing and probably soon you will see things named after some of their current customers like Meryl Streep, Mtthew Broderick  and of course, Bill Clinton, he eats everywhere I do and a lot that I haven’t eaten at yet.

Just up the street is Carnegie’s Deli opened its doors in 1937 just 31 years before I arrived to try one of their pastrami sandwiches. Here you aren’t allowed to split your sandwiches without paying a hefty split charge but you take home some of your $20.00 sandwich home like the Woody Allen which has both corned beef and pastrami on it or perhaps a long john with liverwurst, sliced egg, onion and tomato. Neither of these delis makes you feel like they want you to stay and linger. As long as your fork is making a regular motion from your plate to your mouth you are welcome — when it stops and the noise level goes up you will get waiters hovering around your table picking up everything that isn’t held down by your hand. It’s worth eating here and I spent most of my budget here in 1968 hoping to see one of the celebrities who had sandwiches named after them but I never saw anyone I knew (and still don’t). You do get to see some real bagels, mounds of matzoh balls, bowls of pickles and large slices of cheese cake.

I go to Katz’s Deli for pastrami now on my way to hear some music at the Living Room or another venue in the SoHo area. South of Hous(e)ton. You can still  hear a few moans from Meg Ryan’s scene When Harry met Sally reverberating around the restaurant and don’t forget the small raffle ticket they give you when you enter because if you don’t have it when you leave you lose and have to pay a $50 fee for the lost ticket. There is a lot of comment about this policy on the internet with the majority thinking that the fault lies with the customer. One customer said he refused to pay even after they brought over the large surly security cop so he just threw his money on the counter and left without paying the $50 –nothing they could do.

Hamburgers — You want a comfort lunch and you are afraid someone will take a picture of you going into McDonald’s in Times Square. The answer is to go to one of the acceptable tourist hamburger joints like the Shake Shack.  It is a relatively new phenomenon. It has grown from a hot dog cart in 2002 to a full blown kiosk in Madison park. You can see what’s happening on the Shack Cam.  The menu is simple.  They grind their hormoneless beef fresh daily and cook their burgers medium. You can get Shackburgers, Smokeshack burgers (with bacon), shackstack (with shrooms) or just a plain burger as well as Flat-top dogs (split and grilled). You can get frozen custards or concretes (like the shack attack with chocolate custard, fudge sauce, chocolate truffle cookie dough and a special shake shack blend chocolate topped with chocolate sprinkles) They even have food for the pooch like shackburger dog biscuits or  a bag of bones $7.50. I am not a big fan of the long lines at Madison Park but I have to admit I waited once to have the experience. Last visit I was walking by the shack on W 44th and the line was inside the door so I stopped and had a burger. It still isn’t fast (about 20 minutes wait) but tolerable. The creator of the Shake Shack is Danny Meyer who was better known for his Union Cafe and Gramercy Tavern.

In 1968 New York was a different scene. Gus Poulos was just starting to get notoriety for his Papaya King hogt dog stands and Nathan’s had been around for 50 years serving hot dogs to Al Capone, Cary Grant and Walter Matthau (who asked that they be served at his funeral). FDR served them to the Queen of England and Jackie Kennedy had them on the menu in the White House. I went to Grant’s on 6th Avenue and 42nd where you could get a dog for 15 cents or two for 25 cents. They had a huge crock of mustard with a wooden spoon in it (that wouldn’t work any more either the street people would eat it or the health department would confiscate it) and fries were 12 cents extra.

The Stand4 is a favorite of the Fireman. It is on 12th Street and University (just down the street from one of my favorite bookstores in the world — The Strand).  Some think it is the burger that draws people to this establishment. You get to choose your own bun from a brioche, giant English muffin, whole wheat or just iceberg lettuce as a rapper but they would be wrong; maybe it is the type of burger from beef or turkey to salmon, portobello or veggie, but they would be wrong too; perhaps the burgers with a little kick like the Bourbon St. burger with halapeno and bourbon smoked bbq sauce or the gourmetness like the Kobe beef burger with frisee and truffle mayo, but the would be wrong again.  The sides? sea salt fries, mac & chez, sauteed mushrooms  or maybe the crispy breaded and fried pickles, close but not the real draw. It is the toasted marshmallow shakes. Not only do you toasted marshmallow on top but throughout the shake there are toasted marshmallows.The Iron Chef Simon, in his article on Sugar Rush, says the regular is too small, get the large!

If you want to be a little gourmet you might Burger and Barrel in Soho. Get the bash burger with American cheese, caramelized onions and bacon jam or get one with hot peppers and of course, a large wine list so the yuppies can sip Merlot and eat their burger. If you feel the need to spend money on a burger you can go to DBGB (Daniel Boulod’s idea of how good a $19 burger can be. You might want to try the piggie — a burger topped with pulled pork on a cornbread bun).  You can also get some outrageous sausages here and of course, some spendy micro brews).

Chinese — I still gravitate back to the Nice Green Bo on Bayard Street (fka New Green Bo — I guess after 25 years it was time to drop the New and add Nice?) I always get a bowl of their hot and sour soup and a scallion cake and an order of fried pork dumplings while I think about what to eat.  When I could eat shellfish I would get the crab and pork soup dumplings. This isn’t the place to come if you want Disneyland happy staff — a smile is frowned upon. They might throw you on a table with others who are half way through their meal. Every seat is precious in this small restaurant. All that said it is very reasonably priced and it is across the street from one of the best ice cream shops in New York.  The Shun Lee has always been a consistently good Chinese restaurant with Shanghainese food and if you don’t want to fight the crowds on Canal Street you can head up to the 70’s and go here.  It is not your bargain evening out. They do have incredible dumplings and the beggar’s chicken is amazing. If you want the vegetable stuffed chicken you have to order it a day ahead of time. The crispy sea bass is $21.00, the crispy duck with salted pepper (I like this dish) is $16.00. If you want seafood you might head to Fuleen Seafood in Chinatown. For something different try the seaweed with seabass rolls for an appetizer.

If you want Dim Sum go to Wo Hop or Hop Kee on Mott Street. I prefer Hop Kee because  it was the first restaurant I went to in NY Chinatown. It was a brand new place back in 1968. They were a young brat with spicier dishes back then. The best dishes are in Chinese — bring a translator or point to something on someone’s table if it looks good.

The tourists have probably taken over Hop Kee. So where do we go now? Wo Hop is next door and it opened in 1938. The food is a little more tame here but it is a great place to go for wonton soup. Sit downstairs with the locals, the upstairs is for tourists.  If you just want some roast pork buns I would go to Hop Shing which has been putting out some of the best buns since the late 70’s.   I’m told that Chinatown in Flushing is the new place to go. I haven’t been there but it is on my schedule for my next trip to New York. I go to the Bronx for Italian instead of Little Tourist Italy in Manhattan. It isn’t that you can’t get a good meal in Little Italy but you pay for the real estate when you eat there.

Italian— Over the years I’ve eaten at a lot of different Italian restaurants in the different Burroughs. (I’m told I should go to New Jersey for real Italian food now so that’s on my schedule for an upcoming trip). In 1968 I was sure you had to go to Little Italy in Manhattan or Sardi’s in the Theater district. Sardi’s has been around 90 years and even in 1968 it was the place where the stars met after the plays. I went for the frozen cake with Vanilla & Raspberry ice cream, toasted coconut shavings, zabalione and chocolate sauce. You can still get a pre-theater dinner special like cannelloni au gratin or spaghetti pomodoro but I think this place is more about saying you have been there than being a candidate for the best Italian food in NY. A lot of the buzz now is about celebrity chefs and ambiance. That’s why I head to Mario’s in the Bronx — it’s about big plates of pasta and that’s where Mario Batali goes to eat! (That doesn’t mean if you have an unlimited budget you shouldn’t go to Babbo for some Italian nouvelle cuisine.) I went to Esca for Southern Italian Seafood and the tasting dinner was amazing — not a cheap plate of spaghetti, in fact you could probably get 10 plates of cheap spaghetti for the price of the tasting menu — but an array of seafood staring with grilled octopus risotto. In 1968 I went to Barbetta for dinner. I heard they had food from Piemonte and that sounded good to me. When I arrived I was pretty sure they thought I was applying for the dishwasher job but they said I would have to dress up to get it (or something like that in Italian — I know they were very animated, hands flailing and a lot of motion which basically said go back to the alley you came from.) I later learned it was the first Italian restaurant in America to have truffles (I didn’t even know what truffles were then, I hadn’t seen any of the Hannibal movies yet). Notable for being the first restaurant I was turned away from but I still might go there. It’s been there since 1906 and I want to eat at the restaurant that refused to serve me, the first restaurant to serve risotto in the US, the first to serve polenta and the first espresso machine in a restaurant (all facts on their website). Woody Allen filmed a scene in Alice at Barbettas as well as Scorsese in the Departed and many other films. One thing that I do like is their pride in their truffle hounds. Salute!!

Plays — The first play I attended in NY was in 1969 some 250 years after the first plays were performed in New York. Many of the early plays were Shakespeare plays but once we ousted the British we built our own theater (in 1798) and started producing our own plays. One interesting note — in 1856 twelve New York theaters were taxed to support a boy’s reformatory on the premise that theaters created juvenile delinquents! (Rival theater owners would hire gangs to disrupt other theater performances and openings). In 1849 the police were forced to fire a cannon into a crowd of upper and lower class fans who were watching a performance of Macbeth. After the Civil War theater moved to Midtown and with the industrial revolution it was easier to get to the cheaper real estate in Midtown, more people lived in Manhattan and a whole new group of “consumers” were going out on a regular basis to be entertained. The Great Depression interfered with its growth but after World War II it slowly began to become the place to be again.  They even invented off-Broadway  and off-off Broadway venues.  The Great White Hope starring Dark Vader’s voice (although at the time we knew him as James Earl Jones).  I always wished I had gone to see Hair so I could say my drama education began with Aquarius. (I did see it later and a couple of years ago saw the revival in NY).  1776 was the big musical that year but I didn’t go see it. I even missed the revival in 1998 but all of that got me to thinking that I’ve been around long enough to have seen the original and the revival and who knows, maybe the revival of the revival in thirty years. In the past years I’ve seen Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert (choreography in its most Broadway form),  Jesus Christ Superstar (when the actors were closer to the historical age of Christ instead of the same actors now playing the roles who are closer to Moses age, Newsies (never hurts to get a little old time Union fervor on the stage), Death of a Salesman with Dustin Hoffman once and Brian Dennehy another time, Ragtime, Million Dollar Quartet, Nicol Williamson in Hamlet and Emlyn Williams doing both Dylan Thomas and Charles Dickens, Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain, James Whitmore as Truman or Will Rogers, Peter Falk (before Columbo) and Lee Grant in Prisoner on Second Avenue and Cats, Nine, Les Miserables, Gypsy, My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma, West Side Story, Chorus Line, Sunday in the Park with George (I might have dosed a little during this one), How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (Matthew Broderick first, then Daniel Radcliffe), Urinetown, Ragtime, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum(with Whoopi Goldberg), The Producers, South Pacific, Rent, Man of La Mancha, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, The Drowsy Chaperone, The Full Monty’s (Young David’s first play), Godspell, Blue Man Group in off-off Broadway (Young David’s second play), Long Day’s Journey into Night, Angels in America, Waiting for Godot, Tartuffe, the complete cycle of Shakespeare plays in Ashland, Oregon over 15 years, a couple of visits to the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Sherman Helmsley in Don’t Bother me I Can’t Cope (before he was George Jefferson) and many other performances so it was nice to visit the scene in Times Square once again this year to see a few plays.

Grace — Ed Asner (who will probably always be Lou Grant to my generation) returned to Broadway after 20+ years for a rather complicated tragicomedy with Paul Rudd.

Peter & the Starship by Dave Barry was adapted for Broadway and the result was five Tony awards. Basically Peter before he was Pan and Black “Stache” Moustache the Pirate,  before he was Captain Hook, go on a pirate romp.

Once — was the big Tony musical award winner in 2012 and you could go onstage before and at intermission to have a glass of beer!! Based on a film script the play is set in Dublin and you have to like a play that has a song titled Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy.

So what’s different? It is hard to see a play for less than a $100 these days. You can get tickets for 30 to 50% off at TKTS in Times Square but most of the new hot plays don’t make the billboard. (one tip — if you are going to a drama you don’t have to wait in the long lines, just go to the front and ask the person where the drama window is. I guess words aren’t as popular as music, fancy sets and costumes.) I never thought I would pay ten times the cost of a beer in 1968 (50 cents) for a bottle of water in 2012; There weren’t any warnings about cell phones or beepers (in 1968 if you had a cold you probably stood up in back so you wouldn’t bother anyone). There were a lot of hookers in Times Square but not as many as there are homeland security people now. I went up to Columbia University and listened for rooms with a lot of noise, walked in and asked if I could stay the night. I always found a place, now you can’t even get into the housing areas.

Music was Bleeker Street for me. It was Bob Dylan, the Limelighters, Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger, Tom Rush, Judy Collins. They still talked about the days of the Blackouts on television. Madison Square Garden was for basketball and hockey, not a venue for rapping all night (although the Concert for Bangladesh and Woodstock started changing all of that.) I went down to the Living Room to listen to Tony Scherr & Rob Jost (a college friend’s son). It isn’t a swanky place, just some rickety tables and chairs but the talent level is amazing.

Music, Plays — that’s always been a part of my New York trips but the food section of those trips has been, and always will be, an important and integral part of the trips.

FOOD  — FROM JUST EATING TO SURVIVE TO CELEBRITY CHEFS

September 26, 2012

Red Rooster

Nougatine

September 27, 2012

An evening at Kirkland House

September 28, 2012

Justice Speech & Drew Faust President of Harvard at Sanders Hall

Beer at Harvard Square after tail gate party and football game

The Coop

September 29, 2012

Italian in the North End

September 30, 2012

Coffee on Mass Ave

Mistral in the Combat Zone

October 1, 2012

Oleandro — Turkish Food

October 2, 2012

Craiggie on Main

Eating NY at the W Hotel

Passim — Over the Rhine

October 3, 2012

Lunch in China Town

March 3, 2012

I can’t believe it — 2942 posts since the last time I cleaned up the site and even more slams at my manhood than I usually get in my junk mail each day.  I am not going to do a blog on V…agra nor do I think anyone should construe that my OTR comments on barbecue has anything to do with menopause — if you look at the above picture I think you can tell that I probably haven’t, nor ever will, experience it and Sam is too young. (perhaps it was suppose to be men at pause?) I keep updating and soon we will have the trip to Boston for my 40th reunion at Harvard Square where Charlie’s special used to be a hamburger and two beers for $2.95.  I hope he’s still there.