Joseph Samuels
Bio
Stories
Yorkville 1960s–A Neighborhood in Transition
From Yorkville about high-rise, immigrants, Mr. Softee, railroad apartment, stoop, street games, Upper East Side, YorkvillePublished on: 06/06/2021
Although my family moved out of Manhattan when I was 12 the City always drew me back like a magnet. My family's roots run deep in New York. Four of my maternal great-great-grandparents left Ireland in the 1840s to escape the potato famine. They not only found a better life in New York, they found life! My paternal grandparents left Poland in the 1890s and settled in Blackstone Massachusetts, upon their death at an early age, my father and some of his siblings moved to Brooklyn. As the oral story teller of my family I recently started to write them down. I have many more to tell, and hope some may appreciate them as I do.
“Mr. Hamm, this is Detective Scarcella. You’re the guy who only said one nice thing about me–that I’m ‘fit.’ ” “It’s true!” I replied. “You were the big guy in the back, correct?” he said, referring to the Brooklyn courtroom where he testified in mid-May. “You could say that, sure,” I said, taking his jab. […]
It may be ever-present, this sense that we are teetering on the edge of apocalypse, but these days it seems the custodians of volatile and otherwise crazy behavior are on a whole new level. I won’t pretend that when I was in my 30s and running around on weekend nights with my friends that we […]
“So, when you’re not here at Barney Greengrass serving smoked fish, you’re a writer, eh? That’s interesting. Interesting. We should talk. I have a big idea. We’ve got to talk, yeah.” These weren’t the first words Dr. Jonathan Zizmor had ever spoken to me, but they marked a transition in our relationship from my simply […]
site map | about | RSS feed | top of page | all materials © 2022 MrBellersNeighborhood | programming & design by Foliovision