August Company

Considering what other parts of the country have endured this summer, New York City’s weather has been rather benign with no extended heat waves and only an occasional monsoonal rain. I’m noticing, too, more and more locals wearing masks outside again. Yes, the Delta variant has turned back the clock somewhat. But despite the media’s sky-is-falling hype, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the vaccinated are pretty much good-to-go. Mayor Bill de Blasio, though, recommends that we wear masks indoors when around another person, even if we are both vaccinated. That’s going to encourage people to get a shot.

Oh, and the mayor has announced that we will soon have to show proof of a vaccination for indoor activities like restaurant dining, sitting at a bar, and exercising in a gym. How exactly is that going to play out? Seems to me that it will put unnecessary pressures on embattled small businesses, which is the last thing they need right now.

On Saturday, I patronized a pizzeria on a shadowy side street in the Financial District. The slices were $3.25 each and wouldn't pass muster for a children’s menu. They were served up by a personality-challenged counterman who uttered not a syllable during our transaction. Sadly, the slice of pizza price is finally outpacing the cost of a bus or subway ride, another indicator of the city’s decline. How, I wonder, will Mr. Personality in the pizza parlor enforce the future vaccination order for Wall Streeters and tourists desiring to sit inside with their microscopic slices?

I’d like very much not to think about politicians, let alone write about them, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my governor: the Luv Guv. The mighty have certainly fallen. Andrew Cuomo’s defense after the scathing attorney general’s report on his serial harassing was absurd. He presented a pictorial montage of his affectionate acts in public—hugging and kissing men and women alike. Just another demonstrative Italian guy. I can’t help but think about his father, Mario, right now. While the Tappan Zee Bridge shouldn’t bear his name, he was an honorable man without a whiff of scandal about him. What will Andy Boy do going forward? The knives are sure out, but Cuomo is so shameless, it’s anybody’s guess. De Blasio is absolutely relishing his nemesis’s demise and predicts he will resign and hopes, too, that he faces criminal charges.

A final note: After my recent weight watchers’ pizza lunch, I passed by Federal Hall in lower Manhattan. As always, the grand statue of George Washington proudly stood in front. Unfortunately, though, the historic locale was festooned with woke banners, including one with a “Womxm,” an intersectional term. Ridiculous, I thought, as I continued on my merry way. But then we are living in ridiculous times. I see where some professors at major medical schools apologized for using the terms “male” and “female.” And publishers are refusing to publish fiction writers who create characters outside their race, ethnicity, and gender. Novelists create, no? It’s an artform and the talented therein were—once upon a time—respected for going wherever their muses took them. I can create a narcissistic male politician with a penchant for harassing women character without having been one. Can’t I?

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

That '70s Summer

(Originally published 7/19/20)

It’s extremely hot today. The temperature is expected to near one hundred degrees Fahrenheit—a New York City scorcher in the midst of a bona fide heat wave. Once upon a time in the Bronx, I was undeterred come hell or high water. What now constitutes a long time ago, neighborhood kids went about the business of summer regardless of what the thermometer read or where the relative humidity stood. We played stickball on steamy asphalt without a cooler of bottled water on hand. In fact, there was no such thing as individual plastic bottles of water back then.

The contemporary Big Apple is being compared unfavorably to its 1970s forebear. In the mid-1970s the city was in the throes of a fiscal crisis—with bankruptcy a very real possibility—and rampant crime on top of that. I was a boy in those days and fondly remember that colorful snapshot in time, even if it was on the dirty and unsafe side. It still resembled old New York—the city my paternal grandparents settled in—with its mom-and-pop shops, Garment District, and the last of the automats.

Summer nights brought out stoop sitters en masse, who shared the increasing darkness with copious lightning bugs. I’ve spotted a smattering of those incandescent insects around this year, but nothing like the numbers in their heyday. Even the fortunate folks with air conditioners emerged on the warmest nights to spit the breeze. We youth played a game called “flashlight,” a.k.a. “flashlight tag,” immediately after sunset. No part of our days were wasted. I grew up in an outdoor world absent any uber-technological devices to endlessly stare into. So much was left to our imaginations.

When the heat was on, our local utility—Con Edison—often scaled back the power during the nighttime hours. Lights would flicker and ice cubes would partially melt and then refreeze. A cold drink was sometimes hard to come by and the poor excuses for ice cubes tasted foul. No air conditioning and sub-par ice cubes, though, were par for the course during the dog days. I called home an upstairs apartment. Seven of us lived in it with a solitary bathroom. I’m not complaining because The Brady Bunch had it even worse with nine people sharing one. They never appeared bothered by the heat, so I assume the Brady clan had some form of air conditioning.

As a kid, the heat of the summer was to be expected, endured, and celebrated as a welcome respite from the interminable school years. There were no air conditioners in my classrooms from kindergarten through college. I recall some days—particularly in the month of September—baking like a couch potato while learning my ABCs. But at least that was taught back in the day. There were few things more horrifying than hazy, hot, and humid weather in the fledgling days of a new school year.

My father always said that feeling the heat was in our heads. He wasn’t bothered by the melted, peculiar-tasting ice cubes, which he found no use for in his preferred brew. The old-school Italians grinned and bore it. Dinnertime in the dead of summer was not all that different than dinnertime in the dead of winter. In the hottest of hot weather, some adjustments were made vis-à-vis turning on the oven, but the frying pan continued to fry with the post office motto the wind beneath its wings.

That was then and this is now. I like having an air conditioner on days like today. And I’d rather not cook baked chicken and French fries this evening. Still, I miss the great outdoors in the heat of the night and heat of the day, too. Forty and fifty years ago, there were no safe spaces for us to hide in during the summer months and the recurring brownouts didn’t trigger any meltdowns either. So, please, let’s not compare the 1970s to 2020.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

The Goose Is Flying High

Recently, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred intimated that the COVID-19 changes to the game—seven-inning doubleheader games and the placement of a man on second base in extra-inning games—will not be permanent. That’s a start, I guess, but it’s not about to resurrect professional baseball to its former glory as America’s pastime. Unfortunately, the sport has gone the way of so many things today—down the tubes with no turning back. Played by mega-millionaires in ballparks that double as shopping malls and arcades, the game almost seems secondary. With owners who eagerly embrace partisan politics on top of all that, it’s quite easy to breakaway and never look back. I once believed that my bond with baseball was inviolable—until death do us part. I couldn’t conceive of life without it. That was then and this is now.

The first ballgames that I experienced in the flesh were at the old Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth Built with its wooden seats painted blue and concrete poles holding the place together and, too, obstructing views. I recall intensely feeling the history there with its three monuments out in dead center field—in play approximately 461 feet away from home plate—memorializing the team’s deceased greats: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and diminutive manager of “Murderer’s Row” Miller Huggins. From my little kid’s perspective, Yankee Stadium maintained a downright ghostly feel. During the must-see Old Timer’s games—which don’t exist anymore due to the decreasing attention spans of the fan base—the on-field master of ceremonies introduced the widows of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, which further added to the spectral ambiance.

Shortly after my introduction to baseball at the only game in town in the Bronx, I chose the Mets as my team for better or for worse for a quarter of a century. Although growing up in a sprawling sea of Yankee fans, with a father who lived and died with the Yankees for over seventy years, their cross-town rivals in Queens were a better fit for me. While I loved the game’s storied past—and peculiarly appreciated getting spooked by the widows of Ruth and Gehrig—the Mets were fresh and on TV a whole lot more than the Yankees in those days.

Cheesiness notwithstanding, I considered Shea Stadium a baseball palace. I see the hot dog price at Citi Field, where the Mets now play their crazy game, is $6.75. Parking is $25 and cash is not accepted. Once upon a time, downing two, three, or four hot dogs was par for the course at a ballgame. And the beer sold at the ballpark was exclusively the team’s beer company sponsor’s product. Nowadays, Citi Field has an extensive selection of “Big Apple Brews,” including Goose Island Honker’s Ale, Johnny Appleseed Hard Cider, and Shock Top Lemon Shandy. You can still sample a Budweiser on tap, but also Bud Light Straw-Ber-Rita and Bud Light Platinum. It’ll cost you $9.50 for the watered-down privilege of any of the above. Ballpark peanuts and sunflower seeds, which were not something I ever purchased at games, will set you back $5.00/bag. This can add up to an expensive night out for the family.

Oh, the memories: peanut shells everywhere, spilled beer and soda on the concrete grounds, and the wafting aromas of suds and frankfurters. Not having attended a baseball game in more than twenty years, I can’t say with certainty if the residue of spilled craft beers sticks like the flat Budweiser of my youth did. Ditto: I don’t know if the hot dog bouquets still permeate the stands and runways of contemporary ballparks. There’s just so much food competition there for the pricey wieners, including restaurant rows—something for everyone—on the premises.

So, I say: Play ball—all nine innings. And who’s on second? The guy who earns his way there. Not that it really matters anymore…and that’s profoundly sad.

No Can Do

I just came across a rather sobering statistic concerning America’s former pastime. In baseball’s heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, the World Series commanded a total audience of almost twenty percent of the population. Conversely, the 2020 World Series garnered three percent. For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out...at the old ballgame. Actually, it’s mind boggling that this once mighty sport has fallen so far and so fast—yet the franchises still rake in the big bucks. One hundred and sixty-two regular season games that last on average over three hours a pop is—even with the diminished interest—a major money maker. Today, the average age of the devoted baseball fan is fifty-seven. The Millennials and the previous generation just aren’t interested in the once storied game.

Exhibit A: I see this young kid walking his dog every single day. And every single time—for the whole time—he is staring intently into his phone. I don’t suspect baseball is on his GPS. But, come on, it’s the summer for crying out loud! Check it out! You might like what you see. Or maybe not. It is 2021 after all.

While on the subject of 2021: The New York City mayoral race to succeed Bill de Blasio is finally set in stone. Honestly, if it’s going to take weeks to I declare a winner—as it did in the recent Democratic primary—perhaps ranked-choice voting isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Exactly three years ago, for what it's worth, I received this repeated Facebook message: “Tag Mayor de Blasio in your post so they’ll be more likely to see it.” I didn’t know then why I was seeing that, and I was baffled by they’ll when, I thought, it should have been he’ll. In 2018, ignorant me was blissfully unaware that it was intentional—the jettisoning of he and she so as not to offend who? I Don’t Know…third base!

Anyway, I’ll be happy to see the back of them—Mayor de Blasio—come January. Democratic nominee Eric Adams is likely to be the next mayor. Someone described him as a “bomb thrower.” He was, nevertheless, among my four choices. Alas, if Andrew Yang had done a little homework in preparation for “the second toughest job in America,” he could have made us proud. Or they could have made us proud.

Meanwhile, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee for mayor, is a New York City character and radio talk show personality from way back. Nowadays, not too many New Yorkers sound like the loquacious Sliwa, who is prone to malaprop. It would be the upset of the century if he pulled it off, but I suspect he’ll get a considerably larger share of the vote than the last two Republican candidates who ran against them. I like Curtis. I can’t help but like him despite his somewhat buffoonish, blowhard personality. His Guardian Angels with their trademark red berets and red satin jackets have been around for decades. I remember feeling a little less anxious when riding with Guardian Angels in the same subway car during anxious times, which, by the way, have returned with a vengeance in 2021. In 1992, John Gotti Jr.—son of Gambino crime family boss John Gotti—put a hit out on Sliwa, who was shot at point-blank range and seriously wounded in an attempted kidnapping. And the guy rescues feral cats. That’s an interesting blend of strange New York pedigree. At the end of the day, we will be better off when the 6’5” they man has packed his bags and vacated Gracie Mansion.

So, should I feel optimistic about the future? It’s not so easy to with all the record-breaking temperatures, wildfires, and droughts, Major League Baseball’s meltdown, and diversity trainers preaching—among countless nutty utterances—that the can-do spirit is a white supremacist thing. More madness: Brandeis University cautioning teachers and students to avoid using words and phrases that “link to violence” like “rule of thumb,” “picnic,” “policeman,” and even “trigger warning,” a woke creation. Roy Rogers had a horse named Trigger. And despite it sometimes having a metallic green hue to it, I liked the man's roast beef. They were simpler times for sure when the rule of thumb was to enjoy the great outdoors and employ the can-do spirit in building a go-cart with the wheels of your mother’s—or, should I say, birthing person’s—shopping cart. I certainly was optimistic then and had reason to be—not so much anymore.

The Heat Is On

In the prior reprise—a blast from the past—I recount navigating my way home from high school after a final exam. Perhaps even the final final—a New York State Regents Algebra exam—of my freshman year. I remembered it was a hazy, hot, and humid mid-June afternoon. The air quality was extremely poor and the sky a greenish-yellow overcast. On the last leg of my journey, I spied a flash of heat lightning—no thunder accompaniment  lightning—on the distant horizon beyond the High Pumping Station off Jerome Avenue. As Bronx architecture goes, this building is rather distinct. Built at the turn of the twentieth century—as an appendage of the Jerome Park Reservoir system—it is listed on, of all places, the National Register of Historic Places. With its red bricks and precipitously steep and slate-covered gable roof, which is not too common in the area, the High Pumping Station has always been an eye-catcher. Anyway, that was a memory blip from a June day forty-four years ago. In that momentary snapshot in time the heat lightning served as a welcome beacon, a portent of better things to come—for a couple of months at least.

Fast forward to the present and the heat is on once more. However, I’m not banking on any of Mother Nature’s natural phenomena—signs from the heavens—lighting the way for the coming summer season. Instead, New York City voters, including yours truly, cast ballots in the first consequential election with ranked-choice voting. I had forgotten that we the people said yay to ranked-choice voting by a margin of three-to-one in 2019. Honestly, I don’t think very many of us considered the potential consequences of this new way of electing office holders. While it makes sense in a lot of ways, leave it to the city’s Board of Elections to royally screw things up. With so many men and women on both the left and right believing our elections are corrupted nowadays, this is awfully bad timing. Apparently, the Board of Elections counted 135,000 test ballots in the first round of ranked-choice tabulations, which skewed the results. The bureaucratic tangle of an agency has since announced a do-over.

Riddle me this: If frontrunner Eric Adams, who was up by ten points in the actual tally on election night, somehow loses this substantial lead in the ranked-choice tabulations, will it be accepted as absolutely aboveboard? Adams got a plurality of votes in four of the city’s five boroughs. Only Manhattan demurred, giving “Defund the Police” Maya Wiley the most votes. Her core support was in the more upscale white neighborhoods. From voters who love to talk the woke talk from their door-manned buildings, their vacation homes in the Hamptons, and while consuming lobster gazpacho, chicken tikka basmati rice, and nori seaweed tots in trendy, hipster restaurants. Just sayin’.

While on the subject of just sayin’: There are more cars on the streets than ever before. Traffic time never takes a holiday. It’s not just the rush hours and the Friday evening exoduses anymore. Add to this mayhem countless variations of motor bikes, mopeds, and illegal ATVs. Traversing the highways and byways is a nightmare night and day. Crime is also spiraling out of control and it’s hot as hell on top of that. Looking on the bright side: It’s not as toasty as in the Pacific Northwest with its heat dome plus climate change one-two punch wreaking havoc on the animate and inanimate alike.

So, yes, while the talk the talkers will throw their full support behind things like the Green New Deal—without fretting over the fine print or even reading the fine print—are they willing to make any personal sacrifices, adjustments to their lifestyles? Sitting amidst an all-too-typical traffic jam—with my taxi driver alerting me that his outdoor thermometer reading is one hundred degrees—I think I know the answer to that question.

 

Summer Daze

(Originally published on June 23, 2017)

Once upon a time, I relished summer days and nights. The heat and humidity one-two punch didn’t faze me. No temperature or relative clamminess was too high to prevent a stickball game. In fact, playing on searing asphalt during a scorcher—sans water—was par for the course. There was no such thing as individual bottled water in the 1970s! Sure, the gang could have brought along a cooler, thermos, or canteen to games, but it just wasn’t on our radars. Looking back, we sometimes played doubleheaders in ninety-five-degree heat without liquid pick-me-ups. After game two, we were a parched lot in a mad-dash search for a non-contaminated watering hole—tap water from the kitchen sink or powdered iced tea. What American TV western didn’t feature its protagonists short of water and in a do-or-die hunt for it in super-dry desert climes?

Ah, but summer days just aren’t what they once were to me. It's more like summer daze. This week, the calendar officially said that it was summer with the longest days of the year upon us. As a youth in the third week of June, I was uber-active in the great outdoors until the last sliver of daylight disappeared. Now, I spend well-lit summer evenings inside and do all that I can to circumvent the infamous New York City heat and humidity. Air conditioning certainly has its place. For me, there is no more stoop sitting and chewing the fat with neighbors on poor Air Quality Index (AQI) days and nights. I don't recall whether or not the AQI was calculated in the good old days. However, I can say that the air quality in the 1970s was considerably worse than it is today.

Bad air notwithstanding, the summers of my youth found the Good Humor man turning up every night at around the same time. Good Humor’s cola-flavored Italian ice—a favorite of mine—was a rock-solid frozen block. In attempting to sliver off pieces of the ice with the tongue-depressor spoon supplied, its paper cup would get punctured beyond recognition. Actually, the only cola taste—if you could call it that—of their watery Italian ices was found at the bottom of the paper cups, which by then would be sorry casualties of war. But what did we expect for twenty cents? They were worth every penny.

Summertime also meant a vacation on the seashore of New Jersey or Long Island. It meant day trips to the happening hot spots incessantly advertised on the New York City metropolitan area airwaves, like the Brigantine Castle—a haunted fortress on the Atlantic in Brigantine, New Jersey. A three-hour drive trip from the Bronx to the Brigantine Castle was a memorable summertime adventure. The equivalent for my peers’ kids today—on the satisfaction front, I'd say—would be two weeks in the South of France or Swiss Alps.

A final summertime footnote and memory from forty years ago. It’s the solitary snapshot kind not associated with anything monumental. I had completed a high school final exam during my freshman year. It was an afternoon in mid-June 1977. I was alone and on my way home via mass transit—from the East Bronx to the West Bronx. Standing at a bus stop on Jerome Avenue across the street from two of the ugliest-looking buildings in the borough—Tracey Towers—I patiently waited for the BX1, which would take me on the last leg of my journey home. It was overcast, dreadfully humid, and I remember seeing lightning on the distant horizon—heat lightning, I think. This far-away hot flash nonetheless signified so much to me—school’s end, summer, and a couple of months of incredible bliss.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

A Shore Thing

With this being the first full day of summer, I thought I’d revisit the family vacations of my youth. Many of them were spent on the Jersey Shore as it was and is affectionately known. For countless working-class New York City families in those days gone by, this considerable slice of shoreline was heaven. Initially, my family stayed in small cottages in the town of Manasquan on streets named after fish, like Whiting, Pike, and Trout. In the late-1960s and early-1970s, weekly rentals set the folks back $75 to $100, bargains considering they were a few blocks away from both the Atlantic Ocean and the Manasquan Inlet, a busy boating thoroughfare that provided never-ending entertainment for kids, like me. It was a huge deal walking over to the inlet in the morning, where we would watch the fishing fleet from Point Pleasant—on the opposite shore—head out to sea. They would subsequently return with their catches, sometimes showing them off to land-bound spectators, including spellbound boys and girls. The flocks of seagulls inevitably trailing their crafts were likewise mesmerized.

In that colorful snapshot in time, cottages in a particular part of town were occupied by hard-partying hippies. Ever a source of fascination to little me, there was something so summery about the wafting smell of Mary Jane commingling with the ubiquitous sea breeze. Manasquan, too, had an extensive boardwalk, which was mostly asphalt as I recall. The houses along it were out of my folks’ price range, but I always wished we could stay in one of them. In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy’s destruction in 2012, those very homes’ front porches now have a bird’s-eye view of tall sand dunes, not the mercurial Atlantic.

At some point in the mid-1970s, there were no rentals available in Manasquan for the weeks of my father’s vacation. We ended up venturing a little south to a place called Lavallette, a cozy vacation spot on a barrier island with the ocean to the east and Barnegat Bay to the west. Granted, the Manasquan Inlet was a big loss, but Lavallette’s boardwalk was a boardwalk from beginning to end. There also was this great bakery in town, Kay’s, which supplied us with breakfast donuts galore. Eating four glazed donuts was a piece of cake in those days. Lavallette also had a takeout pizza restaurant, The Oven, which produced a tasty pie. Not too far away was The Pizza Parlor, where the wait for pies at dinnertime was hours. It served superb thin pizza and was worth the wait. On one occasion we had visitors at our summer rental and The Pizza Parlor supplied the fare, including a pie with anchovies—my father’s idea. As expected—by me at least—the plain pies were consumed with alacrity while one too many anchovy slices languished in a box. And I could have eaten another slice or two, I remember. Upon learning this and that I was not a fan of anchovies, a visitor—a burly Italian patriarch—rather curtly told me, “Just take them off!” No can do! Anchovies leave their mark.

In the waning years of vacations on the Jersey Shore, we landed in the town of Ortley Beach, just south of Lavallette, which was totally decimated by Superstorm Sandy, I learned. The house we rented there a couple of times would get flooded during a summer thunderstorm. Ortley Beach also bordered Seaside Heights with its boardwalk of more than just boards. It was a nice place to visit with its amusements, entertainment, and foods, but I wouldn’t want to live there. The one and only time I ever was on a log flume was on the Seaside Heights boardwalk. A relative of mine once sniffed at her time spent on Cape Cod, calling it “boring” compared to the Jersey Shore with its electrifyingly exciting boardwalks. I thought that odd. But maybe not for a person with an Attention Deficit Disorder. Whatever, I remember fondly my time spent on the Jersey Shore with its boardwalks, where no two were the same.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

An ‘80s Thing

I just finished reading Brat: An ‘80s Story (Grand Central Publishing, 2021) by actor Andrew McCarthy. His absorbingly honest, breezily insightful memoir takes one back to a simpler snapshot in time. The book’s titillating title is a riff on the pejorative label “Brat Pack,” coined by a New York magazine writer who spent a night on the town—at the Hard Rock Café in Los Angeles—with three of Andrew McCarthy’s co-stars from the movie St. Elmo’s Fire. Despite not being among said brats—Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, and Judd Nelson—on the infamous night in question, McCarthy was nonetheless considered a member in good standing of the Brat Pack, which—it should be noted—was not quite as prestigious as the previous generation’s Rat Pack.

McCarthy makes a compelling case that the Brat Pack, as it were, never truly existed. For instance, he hasn’t seen Estevez or Nelson since the making of St. Elmo’s Fire, which was released in 1985, and wasn’t pals with any of the pack that included the likes of Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall, whom he’s never even met. In fact, the only mention of McCarthy in the damning New York magazine cover story was an anonymous diss by one of the brats, likely Lowe, who said: “He plays all his roles with too much of the same intensity. I don’t think he’ll make it.” Now, I ask, is that a nice thing to say about a fellow actor in a movie you are promoting? But, then again, brats will be brats.

Aside from a memorable musical score, what I remember most about St. Elmo’s Fire is how unmemorable it was. The characters were, by and large, a disagreeable lot, some more so than others. I recall one reviewer panning the movie and making reference to its “lone conscience,” Mare Winningham’s character Wendy Beamish. But that’s yesterday’s news. The Brat Pack moniker is no longer viewed as a dismissive put-down of an ensemble of indulged, arrogant young actors. Instead, these many years later, it’s a blast from the past with a decidedly nostalgic feel. I saw The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, and About Last Night—movies starring various Brat Packers—in the waning years of the Dale, a local movie theater in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. Shortly thereafter, small neighborhood movie houses, like the Dale, in the outer boroughs of New York City were mere memories. Something lost, nothing gained.

Conscience-deficiency notwithstanding, St. Elmo’s Fire did hit home in one sense. I graduated from college in 1984. The characters in the movie were Georgetown University friends and graduates unceremoniously dumped into pay back student loan time, otherwise known as adulthood. I vividly recollect that moment and the accompanying sinking feeling of what next? Que up the theme from Mahogany, “Do You Know Where You’re Going To”: Do you like the things that life is showin’ you? Where are you going to? Do you know? Hold on, that’s from the 1970s and was played at a slideshow retrospective—get out the handkerchiefs—of my high school years just prior to us parting ways.

And so, with the passage of multiple decades, it’s easy to appreciate why the Brat Pack—even if it wasn’t really a pack at all—is remembered so fondly. If Andrew McCarthy now sees it that way, so can you. Brat is a worthwhile and entertaining read—and a further reminder that time doesn’t stand still.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

 

Hello, Dummy...Goodbye, Dummy

(Originally published 7/16/15)

The year was 1975. The place: Kingsbridge in the Bronx. It was summertime when our Frankenstein monster was born and hit the streets. Actually, it was just a dummy—an old pair of pants and a shirt stuffed with newspapers (the Daily News and New York Post, I suspect). It was all stitched together with multiple safety pins. The dummy’s cranium was a Styrofoam mannequin head. I don’t recall where that came from, but most likely from a neighbor’s or neighboring business’s garbage can.

This Frankenstein dummy was brought to life, specifically, to appear in a five-minute Batman film that a friend, older brother, and I were producing. Our movie camera employed 8-millimeter film sans any sound. The film’s stars were aged sixteen, fifteen, and twelve. I was the twelve-year-old who got to live his dream by playing the Joker in a feature flick. Granted, it was a low-budget independent effort—an indie—that brought in a mere three dollars at the box office. That is, during a screening in one of the star’s basements. Batman, nevertheless, transcended time and place.

The Frankenstein dummy, really, was the true star of this effort. He—if I may humanize it—assumed multiple roles in the film. He played Batman’s stuntman and scaled a three-family brick home in search of the Joker. Ever versatile, he then took on the role of the Joker himself, getting tossed out of an upstairs window. Perhaps more prestigious, he also played the Joker’s kidnapped victim—a man who lived up the street from the cast named Dr. Yellow. This fellow wasn’t a medical doctor, but a Ph. D.—a bona fide egghead, scientist, and university professor—which made him both a celebrity in the neighborhood and someone with whom to have a little fun.

While none of the young, flesh-and-blood thespians went on to bigger and better things in the acting profession, the Frankenstein dummy nonetheless endured. His creators laid him on the sidewalk alongside my family's front stoop, with one of my father’s empty thirty-two-ounce Schaefer Beer bottles beside him. Assuming the Frankenstein dummy was a poor, unfortunate human soul who had entirely too much to drink or, even worse, had drank himself to death, passersby were startled. But nobody said a word until one obviously concerned chap came along. “There’s a man down here. Is he okay?” he asked. We assured him that he was.

The Frankenstein dummy had one last role to perform before calling it quits and riding off into the sunset. He scaled the fence of a man I had previously nicknamed “Mr. Fence,” because of his strange and absolute obsession with his beloved backyard fence. The Fences—Mr. and Mrs.—shrieked wildly at the Frankenstein dummy, telling him in no uncertain terms to get down from there and be on his way, or suffer the consequences. 

Ah, the life and times of this newspaper-filled dummy were grueling and, thus, very short-lived. But he spent his enduring life in the awkwardly creative and genuinely interactive urban world that existed once upon a time in the Bronx and elsewhere. He was a dummy to remember, who will live on in our hearts for as long as there are dummies in this world.

To Wear or Not to Wear, That Is the Question

Thirty-eight years ago, several members of my family and I were invited to a neighbor’s sixty-fifth birthday dinner. It was during the month of February, a day or so after a crippling blizzard. But navigating the slippery spots and mounds of shoveled snow were a piece of cake for all concerned in those days of yore—not the case anymore for those of us still among the living. As I vividly recall, the birthday boy suffered from a bad cold that night and was hacking away while he performed the honors of slicing up the roast beef main course.

Long before the cough-a-thon, I was leery about eating there. You see, the dining room hosting the celebration was in a basement, one notorious for its greasy build-up and a cat who made himself home in every nook and cranny, including the dining room table, the feline’s favorite napping spot. Looking back on that night to remember, the Man of the Hour would have done us all a favor by donning a face mask.

Fast forward to the present: Just moments ago, as a matter of fact. I gazed out my front door and spied a passerby. She was double-masked, which is, of course, her divine right. This sighting on a pleasant spring day nonetheless got me thinking. Thinking about masks and the Shakespearean dilemma of the moment: To wear or not to wear, that is the question.

Yesterday, on the busy streets of Manhattan, I observed for the first time in a long time—since COVID-19 first reared its ugly head—that many people were walking the streets without face coverings. Despite the evidence being evident, if you will, for quite a while now, the greenlighting from the powers-that-be apparently greased the skids. The vaccinated minions had a scientific imprimatur of sorts to stroll about unmasked—with their heads held high—the highways and byways of the big city. One, though, could feel the extremists on both sides of the mask issue digging their heels ever deeper.

While I have no evidence to support this opinion—only a gut feeling—I would hazard a guess that the woman who just passed by my front door believes that those who have shed their masks so freely—in the great outdoors mind you—are irresponsible, selfish, potential grandma killers. On the other hand, she could have some underlying health issues that make double mask-wearing in the bright light of day very understandable.

Riding the subway yesterday—where mask-wearing is rightly still mandatory—most passengers were compliant, but there were a few exceptions. In this corner are the mask-wearing extremists, and in that other one, the no-mask-wearing extremists, even in crowded, closed indoor venues like subway cars. For too many folks to count the mask is now a symbol—ridiculous virtue signaling. Are you one of us or one of them? This is completely asinine. The Age of Reason is a distant memory. We get lectured nowadays on a recurring basis by late-night comedians and cable TV talk show hosts, who clearly know right from wrong better than the rest of us.

A final thought on my Manhattan amble. I encountered a couple of public service announcements along the way concerning the upcoming Democratic primary for mayor. There are nine candidates in the race and we have “ranked choice voting” this year. Voters can rank—in order of preference—up to five candidates. Only four merit any kind of rank in my estimation and I haven’t yet figured out the order. The remaining five, I feel, have platforms better suited for CHAZ than New York City.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Pizza Hut Parable

Forty-four years ago, an older neighbor of mine with both a sense of high adventure and an automobile decided to call on—for the very first time—a Pizza Hut restaurant. Big stuff! It was a newly opened location in the city of New Rochelle, a hop, skip, and a jump from where we called home in the Bronx. For years, we had heard whispers about Pizza Hut and its singular dining experience, but there just wasn’t one in the vicinity—until, that is, the summer of 1977, which was also, coincidentally, the “Summer of Sam.”

So, off we went—a group of four of us—to Pizza Hut. Heartburn notwithstanding, we loved the place and the pan pizza, which was decidedly different from—our bread and butter—traditional New York-style pizza. My paternal grandmother, though, made a uniquely delicious pan pizza, with breadcrumbs sprinkled atop the mozzarella. Yes, the 1970s and 1980s, too, were kind to the Pizza Huts of the world and—I daresay—grandmothers’ home cooking as well. There were chains aplenty back then that were considered must tries, from Beefsteak Charlie’s to Brew Burger to Nedick’s. And while the aforementioned eateries may be in the ash heap of history, Pizza Hut endures.

I patronized Pizza Hut that summer’s eve in 1977 and, if memory serves, one more time, but details of the second visit escape me. The chain—including Pizza Hut Express locations—is still visible in the area. After recently viewing a retrospective Pizza Hut history on You Tube, my curiosity got the best of me. How is it faring all these years later, I wondered? In countless respects, 2021 is the polar opposite of 1977. Pizza Hut, for one, is no longer special. It’s competing with popular chains—with churn-‘em-out pedestrian pizza pie tastes—like Domino’s, Little Caesar’s, and Papa John’s. Once upon a time the charm of Pizza Hut was sit-down dining—the soup-to-nuts restaurant shebang with pizza as the main course. In the 1970s and 1980s, Pizza Hut décor was what one expected—and what one considered an unbeatable ambiance—in that distinctively colorful snapshot in time. Pitchers of soda poured into red pebbled plastic tumblers and pizza served with a smile. It didn’t get any better than that!

Honestly, it came as no surprise to me that Pizza Hut has evolved into a mere shadow of its former itself—if that makes any sense? Nowadays, it emphasizes delivery and pick-up over indoor dining. And from the comments I read on the YouTube video chronicling the chain’s storied history, the quality of the pizza has precipitously declined. So, what else is new? When in Rome do as the Romans do. When waging war against fellow fast-food pizza chains, produce a similarly inferior product. Lamenting the Pizza Hut transformation, one former fan pithily remarked, “2021 sucks!”

Several days ago, I purchased a box of Ellio’s frozen pizza, a brand that I regularly consumed when, in fact, I sampled Pizza Hut for the first time. I liked the pizza back then. It had a defining sauce—that’s Ellio’s—ample cheese, and a doughy crust. Now, it’s three strikes and you’re out—a non-defining sauce, minimal cheese, and a cardboard crust—but it’s still called Ellio’s. For a while there it was known as McCain’s Ellio’s, which marked its transition from memorable to insipid. What more can I say about the 1970s Pizza Hut experience and others just like it? You had to be there to understand.

Down the Up Staircase

Some quick takes on things ranging from the important to the unimportant and a few matters in between. For starters: According to their Grubhub online menu, McDonald’s “Crispy Chicken Sandwich Meal” is unavailable after midnight. Ditto the “Filet O Fish Meal” and several others. Why, pray tell? Yesterday, “40-piece McNuggets” were unavailable after midnight, but “10-piece McNuggets” were available. Today, the “40-piece” can be enjoyed in the wee small hours of the morning. Not that I was planning on ordering anything from McDonald’s during the witching hours—and certainly not a heaping helping of McNuggets—but, still, what gives? Perhaps, though, the larger question is: Why is McDonald’s even open after midnight? Five years ago, a manager on the late-night shift was murdered in a McDonald’s near me.

Full disclosure: I ordered a McRib sandwich when the fast-food icon temporarily brought it back several months ago. It’s gone with the wind again, I see. The chain christened it “famous.” While I thought infamous was a more apt description, the McRib sandwich—considering McDonald’s overall menu—wasn’t half bad. I chose, though, not to dwell on its ingredients, bizarre consistency, and—yes—how it came to be a McRib sandwich.

From Grubhub to DoorDash, another online food delivery service. The available restaurants—who will call on my address—continue to multiply. Clicking on the Chinese food option, for example, supplies me with a mother lode of choices, including AA Chinese Restaurant, Great Wall, Pick Up Six, No. 1 Chinese Kitchen, Ten Ten, Best China House Restaurant, Foo Hing Kitchen, Wonderful Chinese Restaurant, Good Taste, and Hong Kong Sushi. From the everything old is new again file:  New King’s Wok Kitchen, New World Chinese Restaurant, Chen’s New China, and New Golden Fountain.

From fare—fine and otherwise—to the subject of mask-wearing. I just read where two Massachusetts towns, Brookline and Plymouth, are—despite the state’s governor removing them—maintaining their outdoor mask-wearing mandates. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently gave the greenlight to vaccinated folks to take to the streets sans face-coverings, the two towns’ powers-that-be cited “an abundance of caution” for not going with the flow of scientific consensus. Is there an expiration date on “an abundance of caution?”

The science has been pretty clear for a while now that outdoor transmission of COVID-19—unless in close quarters in a crowd—is negligible. Ditto in school classrooms. Oh, by the way, New York City spends $26,588 per pupil. I can say without hesitation that we are not getting a bang for our buck here. In truth, I don’t believe we have a “party of science” from which to choose. Republicans and Democrats pick and choose what science they like and what science they don’t like. Their respective narratives trump science every time.

From science to economics and politics: New York City’s budget for fiscal year 2022 is $98.6 billion. Mayor de Blasio has dubbed it the “Recovery Budget,” which is bigger than the state of Florida’s budget. Florida’s population is some 21 million compared with the Big Apple’s 8.3 million. The Sunshine State, in fact, just gained another House seat at New York’s expense. When I played the Parker Brothers game of Landslide as a kid, New York had forty-one electoral votes, trailing only California’s forty-five. A state’s electoral votes reflect its number of House and Senate seats. Texas has since surpassed New York in population and it looks like Florida—after the 2020 census—will, too.

As you might imagine, Governor Andy Boy is not pleased with this development. And what a difference a year makes. Andrew Cuomo has gone from being a plate of sauteed broccoli rabe served in a five-star restaurant to a weight watcher’s steamed broccoli deli takeout. He is still feuding with Mayor de Blasio, however, having recently thrown cold water on the latter’s announcement of a full reopening of New York City by July 1. The mayor’s press secretary, Bill Neidhardt, responded thusly, “Serial sexual assaulter says what?” It warms my heart to know that I am so well represented.

And now for something completely different. Some staff members at publishing behemoth Simon & Schuster submitted a petition to derail the company’s future publishing of former Vice President Mike Pence’s memoirs. I’m happy to report that CEO Jonathan Karp didn’t cave. His response: “We come to work each day to publish, not cancel, which is the most extreme decision a publisher can make.” Pence’s groveling sycophancy was at times embarrassing, but he no doubt has an interesting story to tell. I recall staff at some other publishing house—many years ago—taking exception to the publishing of another former vice president’s memoir. The man who said: “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.” This dangerous firebrand, Dan Quayle, whose grandmother passed on such profound advice as: “You can be anything you want to be.” I believe—in some critical circles—that would be considered white supremacist counsel now. How I wish I were only joking.

You Can Call Him Al

For every action there is a reaction. In this instance, a contemporary pizza pie review resurrecting a man from my past. Submitted for your approval: Recently, I chanced upon “Barstool Pizza Reviews” on YouTube and began watching several from the prodigious series. Pizza has long been a fare favorite of mine and informally reviewing pizza shops, restaurants, and the frozen varieties, too, came naturally to me. Why, pray tell, did Celentano’s discontinue its frozen pizza, the best of the lot during my youth? Anyway, among his one thousand entertaining and informative pizza reviews, Dave Portnoy called on Johnny’s Pizza in Mount Vernon, New York, which is a veritable stone’s throw away from the North Bronx. He gave it an extremely high score, 9.1, the best that I have seen to-date in the videos viewed. And, yes, I remember sampling Johnny’s Pizza a quarter of a century ago—it’s a family business still, I’m happy to report, in the family. Suffice it to say, Johnny’s Pizza deserved the accolades then as well as now.

This is where Al comes in. Once upon a time I worked in a place called Pet Nosh on Central Avenue in Yonkers, also a veritable stone’s throw away from the North Bronx. A customer of ours, who regularly shopped in the store, purchased a weekly mother lode of pet supplies for his wife. She not only fed stray cats and dogs, but donated food to area animal shelters. Prior to learning his real name, Al, I had nicknamed him “John Gotti,” a moniker never uttered in his presence. Time and again, Al went home with piles of a bargain dog food—kibbled biscuit—called Quaker City, which he cleverly dubbed “the motor oil.” From my perspective and a few others, Al truly resembled mafia titan du jour, John Gotti, only his coiffure was not the genuine article, and he wasn’t quite as dapper as the Dapper Don.

As a friendly gesture, Al would periodically bring us Johnny’s pizza pies with their super-thin, delectably charred, crunchy crust. A younger employee referred to them as “tampon pizzas,” a peculiar choice of adjectives, I thought at the time. Al was a good guy on that little snippet of stage in which we cohabited all those years ago. I don’t know where we got the notion—or, perhaps, the inside scoop—that Al possibly consorted with some unsavory sorts. Maybe he told us, I don’t recall. After all, looking John Gotti-esque didn’t mean he was in the same line of work. My paternal grandfather resembled Marlon Brando as Don Corleone, and the former was an iceman who despised the underworld thugs who tried to shake him down. Al, in fact, once mentioned that he owned a fruit store nearby at some earlier date, but he wasn’t exactly convincing as a bloke who endeavored to live the American dream by selling broccoli, sleeves of garlic, and cantaloupes.

Well, with no forewarning one day, Al’s wife materialized to do the shopping for herself—Mrs. Columbo unmasked—and informed us that her husband had been arrested. On what charge or charges, we never learned. She said he was very upset that he had to remove his rug for a mug shot and couldn’t wear the thing in the slammer.

Eventually, Al got out on bail and was awaiting trial. He never returned to Pet Nosh, though, and Johnnie’s uber-tasty pizzas became memories from a simpler time. Word eventually got to us that Al wouldn’t have to stand trial after all. He died of a heart attack before it began. All I can say—regardless of his alleged transgression or transgressions—is that he was one of the good ones. Rest in peace and pizza, Al.