"WALKIES"

Waiting for walkies

Manhattan is a charming, charismatic, vibrant, multi-faceted place but does have characteristics in common with a sardine tin - its a bit, no it is very, pushed for space. The wonderful world ranking parks aside, it is a heaving mass of humanity squashed into mainly very small apartments, the vast majority of which do not have of have access to a balcony let alone an outside garden area. Not the spot to keep a dog then?

Autumnal stroll along The Mall in Central Park

You're wrong! Its dogs galore in Manhattan. All shapes, breeds, and sizes rule the roost in this jungle of miniscule living quarters. They are to been seen in profusion wherever you go. In 2003,the New York Department of Health estimated 530,000 dogs of which less than a third were licensed, however, estimate was hotly disputed by anti-dog groups who argued that the number was nearer 1.3 million.

A dog run in Washington Square Park - notice the male owners appreciate the bitch

One can only speculate on the desire to have a dog in Manhattan when there is so much against it. However, the fact remains that dogs are an important feature of many peoples lives in Manhattan and with that comes a cost. Dogs cannot be shut up in inevitably miniscule apartments while the owners are at work, away on business or holiday and so the only alternative available to many owners is to hire professional walkers and sitters from one of the hundreds of agencies that specialise in this service. This doesn't come cheap as a median rate for a 30 minute dog walk, twice a day for 5 days is $150.

"We're nearly there lads."

Give credit where where credit is due, the Manhattan pooch is very well behaved, as is its master and/or walker who are usually considerate in removing its droppings. In England one dog is a crutch sniffer, two dogs fight savagely, and three or more are a marauding bloodbath. In France they are mobile fast-operating, highly effecient spreaders of facies on pavements. It is safer to tiptoe through an Iraqi minefield than to promenade down the Champs Elysee. Full marks to Manhattan then.

"Phew! lost him at last. I didn't want to go for a walk in the first place."

Unlike Europe, dogs are not allowed into the interiors of restaurants, but are allowed into outdoor cafe areas at the discretion of the management.

TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE

The fire appliance hurrying to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory blaze

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire at 29, Washington Place on March 25th, 1911, was the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York, causing the deaths of 146 garment workers who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for safer and better working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry.

crowds surveying the aftermath of the disastrous fire

The fire began on the eighth floor, possibly by a lit match or a cigarette or because of faulty electrical wiring. Most of the workers who were alerted on the tenth and eighth floors were able to evacuate. However, the warning about the fire did not reach the ninth floor in time which only had two doors leading out. One stairwell was already filled with smoke and flames by the time the seamstresses realised the building was on fire, and the other had been locked.

The single exterior fire escape, a flimsy, and poorly-anchored iron structure, soon twisted and collapsed under the weight of people trying to escape. The elevator also stopped working, cutting off that means of escape, partly because the panicked workers tried to save themselves by jumping down the shaft to land on the roof of the elevator.

Sixty-two of the women who died did so when, realising there was no other way to avoid the flames, broke the windows and jumped to the pavement nine floors below; much to the horror of the large crowd of bystanders gathering at street level. The fallen bodies and falling victims made it difficult for the fire department to approach the building.

fallen bodies littered the pavement outside

The company's owner, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, had fled to the building's roof when the fire began and survived. They were later put on trial, but with the help of an adroit attorney won an acquittal. However, they lost a subsequent civil suit in 1913, and the plaintiffs won compensation in the amount of $75 per deceased victim. The insurance company paid Blanck and Harris about $60,000 more than the reported losses, or about $400 per casualty. What they lacked in care for the health and safety of their workers, they sure made up with an ability to line their own pockets.

29, Washington Place today

The building survived the fire and was refurbished and later purchased by property speculator and philanthropist Frederick Brown, who later donated the building to New York University in 1929, where it is now known as the Brown Building of Science. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and named a National Historical Landmark in 1991 and a New York City Landmark in 2003. Two plaques in the front of the building commemorate the women who lost their lives in the fire.

BROOKLYN BRIDGE KALEIDOSCOPE

Narrative, however eloquent, would add absolutely nothing to these breathtaking views from Brookyn Bridge. The walk across the bridge, especially starting the Brooklyn side is undoubtedly one of world's greatest visual experiences and its free.

SEX & STABBING ON PERRY STREET

66, Perry Street

Lets deal first with the 'sex' bit of the title. Sex and the City was a highly successful cable television series with the original run of the show broadcast on HBO from 1998 until 2004, a total of six seasons. Set in NYC, the show focused on four women, three in their mid-thirties and one in her forties. The quirky drama/comedy had multiple continuing story lines and tackled socially relevant issues such as sexually transmitted diseases, safe sex, multiple partners and promiscuity. It specifically examined the lives of big-city women in the late 1990's and how changing roles and expectations for women affected the characters.

The show was primarily filmed at NYC's Silvercup Studios and on location in and around Manhattan with 66, Perry Street being used for the outdoor shots of Carrie Bradshaw's apartment.

Norman Kingsley Mailer (1923 - 2007)

Norman Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director, yet still found time to be married six times, father eight children , adopt one child, and maintain several mistresses. Like many novelists of his generation, Mailer struggled with alcohol and drug abuse throughout his adult life.

Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of narrative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts and politics orientated weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village.

And the 'stabbing' promised at the outset? Whist living at 73, Perry Street in 1960 he stabbed his second wife Adele Morales with a penknife after a party, nearly killing her. He was involuntarily committed to Bellvue Hospital for 17 days; his wife would not press charges and he later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of assault, and was given a suspended sentence. Adele recovered and not surprisingly divorced him.

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

653, Broadway - where Bohemianism originated

Looks like just another Korean deli in an old broken-down 1800's building near the corner of Bleeker and Broadway. But in 1856, this was the site of Pfaff's, the city's first bohemian hangout - a basement bar which attracted writers and actors like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edwin Booth. Other habitues included Walt Whitman, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, George Arnold, and Henry Clapp who became first 'King of Bohemia.'

Walt Whitman socialising in Pfaff's basement beer hall

In 1856, when Charlie Pfaff opened his basement beer hall, a few doors south of the Winter garden, it was modeled on the German Rathskellers that were booming in Europe. His joint was a dim, smoked filled cave, as it were, and a gathering place for a bunch of like minded rebels, who were to become America's first bohemians. It didn't matter to them that Pfaff's was literally underground. Pfaff served the best coffees, the finest beers and cheeses, and the wine cellar was well stocked with fine wines from all over the world.

From a 1933 New York Times article: "Thackeray brought the word 'Bohemianism' into the English language and then as an organised group, with Walt Whitman as kind of an associate member, set up headquarters in Pfaff's beer cellar.

Meet the 19th Century Hipster Queen

That would be Ada Clare, a writer and actress who came to New York in the 1850's as a single mother espousing free love. One of the few female regulars at Pfaff's, she was known citywide as the 'Queen of Bohemia.' As well as acting she also wrote for the Saturday Press, an iconoclastic weekly magazine of the arts.

Clare suffered a dog bite in her theatrical agents office, and died from rabies in 1874.

BEST NOT TO ARGUE EAR

The Bridge Cafe at 279 Water Street

When the Brooklyn Bridge first blocked Water Street from sunlight in 1883, this bar/restaurant had already been serving the local population for almost a century - in more ways than one. An 1860 NYC census lists 279 Water Street as the home of six Irish prostitutes. According to a NY Times article, the Bridge Cafe has been a "drinking establishment" since 1847, thus making it the oldest continually running bar in NYC. Only a few blocks from the South Street Seaport, it is decidedly not a tourist trap, after all, Ed Koch held court here twice a week at his private table during his mayorship

In the early days the customers were dock workers, prostitutes and their 'friends', and assorted low life. Nowadays, the very good food and convivial atmosphere attracts locals, financial types (if there's any left who can afford a meal after the toxic debit farrago), politicians and tourists.

Built in 1794, the Bridge Cafe was a stopping point for pirates, as before land reclamation it fronted the East River, and also had one of the most famous (or should that be infamous) bouncers in New York. Gallus Mag was a 6-foot-tall female bouncer, who figures prominently in NYC folklore. Herbert Asbury's book "The Gangs of New York" describes her thus:-

"It was her custom, after she'd felled an obstreperous customer with her club, to clutch his ear between her teeth and so drag him to the floor, amid the frenzied cheers of the onlookers. If her victim protested she bit his ear off, and having cast the fellow into the street she carefully deposited the detached member in a jar of alcohol behind the bar.......She was one of the most feared denizens on the waterfront and the police of the time shudderingly described her as the most savage female they'd ever encountered."

I'd give the pickled walnuts on sale from jars on the bar a miss if I were you.

GONE TO SING SING

The prison boundary's were Christopher Street to the south, Washington Street to the east, Charles Street to the north, and the Hudson River to the west.

When you were 'sent up the river', you were sent to Newgate Prison. They took you from the courthouse down on Wall Street, put you in a boat and sailed you up the Hudson River to the Christopher Street docks. One block north stood the prison.

Built in 1797, Newgate was the first State Penitentiary in New York. It was considered a model of reform at the time, rehabilitating inmates by teaching them useful trades, and even allowing them to bathe in an indoor pool.

But the Manhattan Island developed much faster than anyone thought possible - as it would continue to do for another century - and within 20 years, the farmland that once surrounded Newgate had been completely developed.

It was no longer possible to march prisoners over to Washington Square to hang them from the Hanging Elm, nor could they be buried there, since the square had become a parade ground.

In 1828, Newgate was closed and prisoners transfered to the new Sing Sing Prison about 40 miles up the river in Ossining, NY. Now the only reminder is a mosaic on the wall of Christopher Street subway station.

WHO WOZ HERE?

Love it or hate it, in New York City you cannot ignore it. Many argue it is today's urban art and encourages an artistic freedom that hitherto has been suppressed or not manifested itself at all. Others insist that the aerosol paint canister is science's contribution to the ancient art of defacement, and the vacant-minded or vicious are taking to it in ever increasing numbers - gleefully spraying their names, initials, class numerals and favorite biological functions over national monuments and natural wonders.

My views are starting to mellow towards this art form. Initially it seemed intimidating, and some is deliberately so, but that genre seems to be on the decline and is being superseded by thoughtful, witty, colorful, well constructed works, many of which blend in with or enhance their surroundings. The dark, dank, inhospitable rubbish bin area (top photo) is made to look much less threatening with the bright witty graffiti added to it.

One thing is certain and that is it 'ain't' going to go away and what the heck, I would miss it - NYC wouldn't be the same.

GAY BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT

Initially, Gay Street wasn't a public thoroughfare, just an alley entrance to the stables behind some charming Federal houses built in 1827 on Christopher Street by Village manufacturer Samuel Whittemore, to provide housing for the area's middle classes. Its 1827 houses faced the stables, their early residents being blacks in service to wealthy families of Washington Square North. Even after the last of its stables were replaced in the 1840's by the present row houses there, the alley retained the scent of undesirability. The rich left the square and Gay Street became an impoverished and dangerous ghetto that lasted longer than its counterparts in the South Village.

Aspiring actress Eileen McKenney

After shedding its ghetto status in the 1920's, Gay Street gained national recognition as the mythical touchstone of Greenwich Village. It happened because two sisters from Ohio rented the basement of 14 Gay Street and lived there while they sought fame and fortune in New York. The younger one hoped to become an actress while her older sister wrote stories in their apartment and submitted them to publishers. Ruth McKenney's "My Sister Eileen" tales became a fixture of the prestigous New Yorker magazine and were published as a book in 1938. They forever fixed an impression of life in Greenwich Village as an impromptu whirl among loony but likable oddballs.

McKenney's deft humor stirred the mix into a myth of great durability. My Sister Eileen became a Broadway comedy starring Shirley Booth, which opened the day after Christmas 1940 and ran 2 years. Rosalind Russell played Ruth in the film version, and again a decade later in a Broadway musical version, "Wonderful Town", with a score by former Villagers Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Leonard Bernstein. CBS televised "Wonderful Town" in 1958, with Russell and several others from the original cast, while Hollywood made a second film of the tale in 1955.

Tragically, Eileen never knew the full extent of her legend. Four days before her comic adventures first appeared on Broadway, she was killed in an auto accident in California that also claimed the life of her new husband, novelist Nathanael West.

IN PASSING - 3 NYC TOILETS

Joey Ramone performed here at the now defunct CBGB Club on the Bowery

"Quick Girls come and check this out!"


The restroom at an Indian Vindaloo Restaurant on the Lower East Side

PROF SEA GULL'S PERCH

Joe Gould, one of the city's great eccentrics, as seen by Al Hirschfeld, one of the city's great caracturists

For forty years Joe Gould was a familiar figure on MacDougal Street, a short, and disheveled panhandler who professed a strong belief in democracy: "I believe everyone has the right to buy me dinner." Many of those dinners were bought at the Minetta Tavern (below), still a popular restaurant at 113 MacDougal Street.

Fifty-one years ago, Joe Gould a frail psychiatric patient, died age 68, in a hospital on Long Island. For three decades, Gould a Harvard graduate from a distinguished New England family, had spent his days and nights wandering the bars and taverns of Greenwich Village, staying in flophouses, living off the generosity of friends and strangers. He became unexpectedly famous as the subject of a celebrated profile by the much acclaimed writer Joseph Mitchell.


The profile, "Professor Sea Gull," published in the New Yorker on December 12, 1942, described a monumental work exceeding 9 million words that Gould was writing, "An Oral History of Our Time," containing snippets and excerpts of conversations Gould had heard, and his essays commenting on those conversations. Later, the New Yorker article was published as a book and titled "Joe Gould's Secret". (See below)

It was all a lie. Joe Gould always carried a scruffy red folder or two and over the years, his "Oral History of the World" grew to many thousand manuscript pages, many of which were dispersed to local landladies in lieu of rent. When his "History" was sold, he would assure them, he'd return to make good on his debt and redeem his pledge: then he would shuffle off to another furnished room to repeat the process. The Village must have seemed like a vast literary pawnshop to him. After his death, however, no literary masterwork emerged; in fact, not even a few scattered pages surfaced, leading some to consider Gould's "History" a hoax designed by him to provide rent-free living.

In 2000, a full length movie was made starring the distinguished academy-nominated British film and stage actor, Ian Holm, and named after the book "Joe Gould's Secret."

Accepting that 'Professor Sea Gull' was an erudite beggar, scrounger, deshabille, confidence trickster, and perhaps a monumental liar, remember that he was also a character of the stature and magnitude that has contributed greatly to establishing the myths and legends of the Greenwich Village reputation as a leading center for innovative arts, literature and associated characters.

OFF-OFF STARTED OFF HERE

There's life after Mario Batali, the original chef/owner of Po Restaurant, 31 Cornelia Street, near 4th Street, as crowds flock for the affordable enticing fare offered by his predecessor's fetish for chili pepper. If you do go, try to score a window table - it always feels like to most romantic spot in town.

There was, however, life before Po Restaurant, and that was Caffe Cino where the beginning of the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement is generally reckoned to have started. In 1958 Joe Cino rented a storefront at 31 Cornelia Street, in the heart of Greenwich Village, in order to open a coffeehouse in which his friends could socialised.

Pioneer of the off-off Broadway Movement

Originally intending only to host folk music concerts, poetry readings, and art exhibits, a little later that it was decided to add a performance mix and from 1959, plays were staged on the coffeehouse's floor (see picture below). Caffe Cino's first theatrical offerings were plays from established playwrights such as Tennessee Williams and Jean Giraudoux and soon Joe Cino organised a weekly schedule for theatrical performances and would introduce acts with the phrase "It's Magic Time!"

When it became impracticable to continue staging shows on the floor, Cino constructed a makeshift 8' X 8' stage from milk cartons and carpet remnants. The limited space dictated a need for small casts and for minimal sets, usually built from scraps found in the streets. Electricity for the stage lighting was stolen from the city grid. However, all of this created an intimacy between performers and audience.

Earliest known published Caffe Cino performance photo, Shirley Stoler in Tennessee Williams' "Camino," 1961

Joe Cino, the son of first generation Sicilian-Americans, came from a working-class family in Buffalo, moving to New York City when he was sixteen, studying performing arts in hopes of becoming a dancer. He became addicted to amphetamines as he struggled to keep the pace that Caffe Cino demanded from him. He began socializing with members from Andy Warhol's Factory, with whom Joe did a lot of drugs.

On March 30, 1967, Cino hacked his arms and stomach with a kitchen knife and died a few days later aged 36 years. Caffe Cino was not prospering at the time of his death, as it was not eligible for government grants which had allowed other experimental theaters to prosper, and Joe had refused to charge an admission or even a minimum. Though friends tried to keep Caffe Cino open, it closed in 1968, finally falling victim to new cabaret laws strictly enforced by the young, ambitious alderman, Ed Koch.

In honor of Joe Cino's courage and innovation the New York Innovative Theater Awards presented the first "Caffe Cino Fellowship Award" in 2005 to be given annually to an extraordinary Off-Off-Broadway theater company. In 2008, the office of the President of the Borough of Manhattan issued a proclamation honoring Joe Chino's achievement in founding Off-Off-Broadway' which "altered the world's conception of drama's possibilities forever." The proclamation was read by the distinguished playwright, John Guare at the unveiling of a bronze plaque attached to the wall at 31 Cornelia Street, the Caffe Cino site.

NYC HUMOUR - JACKIE MASON

Jackie Mason (born Yacov Moshe Masa) is a stand-up comedian who grew up in New York City on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Mason graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the City College of New York and, at the age of 25, was ordained, as his three brothers and father had been, a rabbi. Three years later he resigned to become a comedian saying at the time "Somebody in the family had to make a living."

He began his career in the 1950's and here are some examples of his humour:-

"Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe."

"I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I have to buy something."

"It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like."

"My grandfather always said, "Don't watch your money, watch your health. So one day while I was watching my health, someone stole my money. It was my grandfather."

"I talk to myself because I like dealing with a better class of people."

"I always thought music was more important than sex. Then I thought if I don't hear a concert for a year and a half it doesn't bother me."

In 1992, Mason won an Emmy for his voice-over of Rabbi Hyman Krustofski in The Simpsons episode "Like Father, Like Clown" making him the first guest star to win an Emmy for his role. In a 2005 poll to find the Comedian's Comedian, Mason was voted among the top-50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

During his 50 plus year career (which is still going), in addition to appearing on Broadway and major NYC clubs, he has starred at virtually every important theater in North America and Europe with his one-man shows, made countless television shows and performances, starred in films and written books. Jackie Mason has just completed a full length motion picture "One Angry Man" for release in 2009.

POE BEDDED HERE

Standing on a three-sided plot, fronting Christopher Street and two sides on Waverley Place where it forks off to go in two directions, the Northern Dispensary seems to have been here forever. Built in 1831, it offered health care for Villagers who were too poor to afford visiting physicians. In 1937, it treated Edgar Allen Poe for a cold - male colds were very serious illnesses even then!

The clinic began to offer dental care in 1841, and in recent years limited its services to dentistry. However, the clinic violated the spirit of its charter in 1986 when it refused to provide dental care to AIDS patients, among them Village writer George Whitmore. The city's Human Rights Commission fined the dispensary $47,000 which proved too great a burden for the debt-ridden clinic. In May 1989, the 158 year old institution, the oldest in New York closed its doors forever.

The previous owner, William Gottlieb, drove a beat up station wagon with broken windows, yet after his death in 1999, his collection of properties was valued at $300 million. He was notorious for buying properties and doing nothing with them - his sister Mollie Bender continues the Gottlieb tradition with no apparent plans for the building.

A private deed placed on the property stated that it had to be used to provide medical care to the "worthy poor." However, since the deed is private, it is not clear whether it could be enforced. So its future seems very unclear and in the meanwhile, the building stands eerily empty......

KING AMONG PRINCE'S

At 180 Prince Street, between Sullivan and Thompson Street, is Raoul's, serving french cuisine in authentic left-bank bistro setting. Even after 30 years, Raoul's is very popular and frequented by a well-travelled New York set.

It started in 1975, when two brothers, Guy and Serge Raoul travelled from Alsace to Soho, New York and found a little run down restaurant for sale. They were so poor that they threw nothing out, not even the salt. The booths were already in place and they kept the chairs until they fell apart. Guy turned his Alsatian cooking skills to fine steaks and fish for low prices - even cheaper at the bar.

Serge stood outside on Prince Street, a lonely figure importuning passersby to enter and taste. People began to trickle in from their illegal lofts in the neighborhood. Some came back the next night or the next week and spread the word. More people came....and came back and soon the locals were complaining about the good reviews. The rest, as they say, is New York Bistro history.

Raoul's was a location in the Scorcese film "The Departed".

Raoul's is a seriously good relaxed eatery. Try for a table in the conservatory as it entails being taken through the busy kitchens where you can briefly experience 'the heat in the kitchen'.

Don't miss the sauteed foie gras or the steak au poivre. With the continuing popularity of this establishment, it is advisable to make a reservation.