Category Archives: By design

What’s in a name

My latest exploration-I was about to claim it as an encounter, but actually I hadn’t looked closely for some time. I pass by all the time, so I dropped the ball on this great mystery.

They’ve wiped out, cemented over the Alfredo’s. Why?

Now there’s a new mystery to solve.

What was Alfredo’s? I never found out. No one would answer that question.

Was the answer so dire as to deserve a wipe-out response?

Some of my cohort were promised a photo of a building named Alfredo’s. For the past 40 years, I have puzzled over the name plate on top of 1368 York. Wondered but never got satisfaction. Curiosity has carried me to flights of fancy and imaginative conclusions. Like SENECA, the name must have some significance. Mustn’t […]

I am keeping a promise

THE Park

New Yorkers have mostly been protective of the little nature preserve in the midst of their city bustle.

I know I have always loved it, cherished it even. The chance to walk through it is a treasured moment. Over the years, it was a hangout for after school. Central Park was where the family went for a weekend outing, on one occasion having to fish our German shepherd out of the boat pond.

Wet dog is bad company on the car ride back to Queens

Since I became a Manhattanite over 50 years ago, I frolicked in this Park often. It was how I got from Eastside to West.

I introduced Burt to the Park. He ultimately got to know it well, perhaps better than I.

There are some destinations in the Park that are both familiar and hard to find. I usually just happen on them as I did on the Wollman Rink, now CityPickle.

Old Hungary

We are scheduled to meet at 85th and Second. I am early and in need of coffee. The shop next to Budapest where we ultimately go because of its Hungarian bona fides [I wonder which of us needed a connection to our Hungarian roots]; Caroline’s, next door to Budapest has doughnut bona fides, which I don’t try, and very excellent coffee. I sit there to wait. M appears all bustle and hustle but like a calming wind, always gentle.

We take ourselves, my coffee in hand, to sit amidst the beautiful strudel and pastry. We talk. We go to the counter, I ostensibly in search of savory. Spinach strudel feels like a choice from a Greek menu; I am an internationalist. We order a slice of cherry strudel obliquely in honor of my mother. We vow to share but I know I had the lion’s share.

It was a genuinely and deeply lovely lunch, healing, its rhythm that of time spent with a soul mate.

Facing

The left pictures an inset high rise which faces lower lying and older buildings pictured right.

Below Casa Lally on the right faces an array of remodeled – more – and – less brown stones on its opposite side of the street.

The exaggerated bay window is so «in your face. [Left]« Casa Lally has a high styled artificiality, which is attention-grabbing

Teeshirt tourism

It’s an interesting concept, but other people’s messenging can trigger memories.

A Woodstock t-shirt had me reminiscing not so much about the event upstate in the 60s, but.. that I went to camp in the area years before. It had a dual impact for me. Layered over time.

Mind, I wasn’t at Woodstock.  I attended a different outdoor muddy festival one afternoon with a friend. Not much there to trigger, but those were times.

Go ahead, and dismiss it with “whatev, boomer.” Those were definitely times.

We marched. We rallied. We were involved. We were political. We never wore a coat that signaled, “I really don’t care. Do u?” Not that Melania can be said to not be political.  “Can she?”