Cabaret

Funny how we all believed that Stanton & Ludlow was the center of the world.

We were all deeply embedded in the idea of the glory of backstage. Some of us were beautiful and wanted the spotlight, some of us were shy and could pass for cute.

Everything was a Caberet, and since we couldn't afford to buy things and enjoy them sitting at the bar, we worked on the other side and embezzled whenever we could.

It was history not repeating itself, but rythming. A beautiful group of young kids, like in Berlin 1931. 

We were there in the late 90's.

Before the turn of the century.

Before 9/11.

Yard Sales & Imagining NYC

Albums:

And then the New Yorker & NYTimes, to be read in an urbane manner.

In a rich apartment, overlooking the river.

Thoreau in NYC

"It's a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit there"

He was on Staten Island, living with Emerson's Brother & tutoring his kid (story there!!)

You can always see home more clearly when you are away from it.

And the city is too hectic to visit, just for a day.

Vaudeville is Alive & Well on Orchard St!!

Trav SD has done it again!!

At a fundraiser for I'll Say She Is!! The Marx Bros musical, he offered several different acts!

A ventriloquist, a stripper, a vocal acrobat, a prestidigitator and the Marx Bros all walk into the Slipper Room.

The real frights were outside, the block along Houston St which is GONE.

RIP Bereket & the pizza parlor with the wax cups stacked until they sagged in a half circle above the servers.

The Flapper's Guide to the Lower East Side

What if a girl came to NYC, only having seen "Thoroughly Modern Millie"?

And "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"?

And "Breakfast at Tiffany's"?

Would she be a time traveler if she lived in the modern world, but didn't have a digital life?

Could she put on everyone around her?

Like a Kimmy Schmidt, but with no references to the internet?

Dr Sanderson?? Help, please.

Do you stay or do you go?

Is it great to be living in the city, even when it hits the depths of your loneliness?

When all your friends are selfish?  And you are sick of sleeping on the floor?
Or is it your first and best taste of independance??

What a choice.

Katz's Deli as an Ad for Samsung Pay

I remember it as an ancient business on the Jewish Lower East Side.  I was doing a project in college, investigating a neighborhood in the big city, trying to figure out history.

(Things would have been different if I had gone to NYU, when each of the streets was part of the campus)

And then, during Fringe, it was the "anchor" business of the neighborhood, like the largest store in a near empty mall.  On Ludlow street, there was "The Piano Store", with one baby grand still in the window, and then we tore things down to the beams.  I walked into a rehearsal room that was all plywood.

There was a hpster bar called Standard Notions, and Amy's Hat Store, kittykorner across from El Sombrero.  (Really).

There were fireplugs that were painted pschedelic colors, and nobody had any cash in their pockets because they were all poor college students, some of which escaped from Barnard without a college degree (or someone like me, who graduated from a lesser school-having already had my nervous breakdown in high school)