Tag Archives: New York City

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Photo of New York City by John Atherton, 1967

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Photo credit: John Atherton, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

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Just gonna leaf this here.

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My artisty-type friends are posting a lot of paintings depicting spring leaves — my mind keeps going to O. Henry’s “The Last Leaf.”  (And of course it takes place in November in New York City.)

You can find it right here at East of the Web, if you’re interested.

And East of the Web, with which I’m only now getting acquainted, seems like a terrific site.

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New York City, 1935

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800px-Newyorkcity1935

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Throwback Thursday: that one time I walked up on the filming of a U2 video.

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Flashback to the middle aughts — I emerged from New York City’s Penn Station with a group of friends to an amazing surprise.  It was none other than U2 being hauled past the transportation hub on the back of a flatbed truck, playing music.

Then, the other day, after maybe 18 years or so, my girlfriend sends me the video for a song she likes — U2’s “All Because of You.”  (It’s from their 2004 album, “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.”)  There’s the flatbed truck with the band performing all over the city.

So that’s what that was all about.  A mystery nearly two decades old at lasts stands revealed.

Of course I scoured every frame of the video hoping that there was a one-in-a-million chance I’d see myself in the background.  No such luck.

Anyway, my four other brushes with famous people are as follows:

  1. Madonna.  (I saw her for two seconds entering a building in Manhattan.)
  2. Linda Ronstadt.  (I gave her a tour at a historic site.)
  3. Marissa Tormei.  (I saw her in a restaurant in Brooklyn.)
  4. Ralph Macchio.  (I checked him out at a video store.)
  5. Henry Kissinger.  (I saw him at a fundraising event and helped his Secret Service detail get situated.  Seriously, you can not make this stuff up.)
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Throwback Thursday: The Roosevelt Island Tramway in the early 1980’s!

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I found a couple of videos online the depict The Roosevelt Island Tramway around 1980.  (The picture below of the tram arriving in Manhattan dates from 2006, as I couldn’t find any vintage public domain photos.)

The first video I am linking to here was posted by Richard Cortell; he completed it as a long ago student project for The New York Institute of Technology.  Parts of the video are quite dark, but it’s still a terrific glimpse in New York City’s past.

The second video is also Cortell’s; this one is dated 1980.  It focuses more on life on Roosevelt Island — the tram is seen only at the beginning and end.

I’ve never been on the tram — or to Roosevelt Island.  But just seeing it brings back memories of my early childhood.  My Dad used to occasionally take me on trips to New York City, and I remember seeing it depart from 60th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.  I was pretty damned awed by it.

But I didn’t ask to ride on it.  My Dad took me to all sorts of places in NYC that were fun for a kid, but the sight of that hanging tram car made me pretty apprehensive.  Hell, I’m not sure I’d want to ride it as an adult.  (There was a malfunction in 2006 that left 80 people trapped up there for around 90 minutes.)

I didn’t know it at the time, but the tram would have actually been relatively new at the time that I saw it (and at about the same time Cortell filmed his videos).  It opened in July of 1976.

Postscript — there is actually a shot of the tram in that old “Million Dollar Movie” intro that everyone loves.  It’s right at the start, five seconds in.

Roosevelt_Island_Tramway_foggy

Photo credit: Kris Arnold from New York, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

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Eric Robert Nolan listed with the Poets & Writers Directory

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I received a really nice honor yesterday, friends  — I am now listed in the Poets & Writers Directory.  This is a registry of over 10,000 published authors, maintained by Poets & Writers — America’s largest nonprofit organization serving creative writers.  You can find it right here.

Poets & Writers was founded in 1970.  Its mission is “to foster the professional development of poets and writers, to promote communication throughout the literary community, and to help create an environment in which literature can be appreciated by the widest possible public.”

I am quite grateful to Assistant Web Editor Francisco Marquez and his colleagues in New York City for assisting me during the application process.

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Aerial photo of New York City, 1932

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United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.

1024px-The_center_of_New_York_1932

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Throwback Thursday: “Charley Chimp!”

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This is takin’ it waaaay back — people were joking about creepy vintage mechanical toys on Twitter, and it totally reminded me of the mechanical monkey I had when I was not much older than a baby.  It was originally manufactured and marketed as “Musical Jolly Chimp” between the 1950’s and the 1970’s by Japanese company Daishin C.K., according to Wikipedia.  But it was resold under various names on the street in New York City.

My guess is that my father picked it up for me after work in the 1970’s.  (He was a municipal bus driver in Manhattan.)

It was loud.  It did scare me — but I also remember loving it too, and it remained in my toybox for years.  (Maybe I had a split personality as a little kid or something.) 

Anyway, you can see the thing in action over at Youtube, courtesy of echelon16.

 

Musical_Jolly_Chimp1

Photo credit: YuMaNuMa, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

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Men of a certain age …

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W. H. Auden called the mid-twentieth century The Age of Anxiety. It was the title of a book-length epic poem that won him a 1948 Pulitzer Prize, and it depicted his perception of the loneliness and isolation of the mid-twentieth century.  (I have not read it.)

Auden set it in a bar in New York City.  (He actually immigrated there in 1939; many casual poetry readers are unaware that he had dual citizenship with Britain and America.)

I wonder what Auden would think of the early 21st Century, here at his adopted home. I t started with the September 11 terror attacks and has arrived at a pandemic that has killed 443,000 Americans (along with nearly 94,000 back in his native Britain).  Evictions and unemployment have predictably risen right along with the deaths.

And America seems the closest now to civil war since … the actual Civil War began in 1861.  (We did, after all, see one side storm the Capitol to attack its democratically elected government.)

I’ll bet our anxiety could give Auden’s a run for its money.

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Check out “August Morning, Upper Broadway,” by Alicia Ostriker

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Well, summer is officially winding down.  (I have friends whose religious devotion to the beach has them counting down the days in August.)  There is one last summer poem I’d accordingly like to pass along.  It was included on a list of 19 summer poems published by BookRiot a couple of weeks ago.

Its title is “August Morning, Upper Broadway,” and it was written by Alicia Ostriker.  It’s a beautiful piece that reminds me of New York City, among other things.  It’s Number 6 on the list above.