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When I was a boy in 1950’s South Brooklyn, Easter Sunday was a day of celebration for my family. Wearing our newest dress clothes, we went to the 11 AM mass at Saint Michael’s and then to my maternal grandmother’s apartment for a sumptuous dinner. My parents sat with my aunts and uncles at a large kitchen table, while my [...]
The two apartments I rented, one after the other, in Astoria from 2009 to 2011 were on the same block of lower Ditmars Boulevard in modest buildings, under the faded dominion of the Hell Gate Bridge, within sight and smell of the East River, and across the street from the Kodachrome canvas of Astoria Park. In 2009, I shared a [...]
For twenty-one years I walked the same beat on Manhattan’s Upper West Side – from my apt on West 86th Street to my office on West 64th. I have lived in the same apartment for thirty-two years and have worked in the same office for twenty-one. I am a person who likes security and whose roots run deep. Many days [...]
The dark interior smells of leather, glue and shoe polish. It looks as if Jim’s Shoe Repair hasn't had a fresh coat of paint since it opened. In 1932 when Vito “Jim” Rocco walked across the threshold of his shop on East 59th Street between Park and Madison Avenues in Manhattan, it was one of 50,424 throughout the United States. [...]