The Handwriting Is Not on the Wall Anymore

It was only recently that I learned that school kids—many, if not most of them—were no longer being taught how to write in script. The contemporary educators call it cursive script. I must admit to being stunned at the news that penmanship instruction has seemingly gone the way of the beeper, typewriter, and Rolodex. It’s something I assumed was in the “here to eternity” column—infinite like the barber profession, Coca-Cola, and cat litter.

I appreciate, of course, that this is an advanced technological age we live in, where the physical act of writing a letter by hand—to someone or some entity—is quite rare, just as note taking at school or at the office is. But—as I recall from my school days—writing by hand in a penmanship all my own took my writing to a higher level, even when it was less than artistic. I couldn’t conceive of printing out an essay during those years. Printing the individual letters of the alphabet to form words, instead of in script, would have taken a whole lot longer and, too, taken away a fair chunk of my individuality. Sitting down, putting pen to paper, and writing by hand in script stimulates the brain in ways not realized when banging away on a keyboard. I read where students who took notes in their own cursive writing hands, rather than on their laptops, had a much better recall of the materials. Makes perfect sense to me.

Okay, so the handwriting is not on the wall anymore. I understand. Who needs a personal signature when our eyeballs can be scanned? But I just thought of something. I collected all sorts of things as a boy, including autographs. I’d get players at the ballpark to sign my scorecard if possible. And it was all very exciting. Acquiring an obscure journeyman’s signature was even a thrill. Fast-forward a couple of decades from now and the autograph, I guess, will be reduced to something akin to a caveman’s mark.

Anyway, in expressing my surprise at penmanship’s untimely swan song, I was apprised of this college-aged young man who cannot read anything written in script. It's all Greek to him and might as well be hieroglyphics—because he can’t decipher a word of it. And I suppose he is not alone in this affliction. For starters, let’s rule out a career as a historian. Fifty years from now, maybe, he could cut the mustard and research a biography of someone from this Pokemon Go day and age of ours by combing through e-mails, tweets, and Facebook posts, but not now.

So, yes, it’s going, going, gone—the postcard from a friend or family member written in that familiar hand. The grammar and high school tests handwritten by the teacher and mimeographed on top of that. The teacher commentary with that personal touch on the report card—the one that came in a brown envelope where we wrote in script our names and classroom numbers. All I can say is that if John Hancock were alive today he’d be rolling over in his grave. And I’d bet the ranch that most folks who don’t write or read script haven’t a clue who John Hancock was.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Channeling Iron Eyes Cody

I’ve often written about the colorful and simpler 1970s, my all-time favorite decade. For I was boy growing up in the Bronx back then. The fact that New York City suffered through a fiscal crisis during those years—with conspicuous cuts in services like policing, sanitation, and park upkeep—mattered little to me. Sure, that snapshot in time has a well-deserved reputation for being on the scarier and the dirtier side of the ledger. The subways, for one, were an unattractive visual of grime and graffiti, crime infested, and prone to break down. And, while on the subject of visuals, the urban decay in some parts of the city resembled war zones and became photo-op stopovers for grandstanding politicians of all stripes.

I nevertheless remember that my neighborhood and the surrounding ones were a whole lot cleaner and certainly less congested than they are today. There are so many more vehicles on the area roads in 2016—and it’s every man and every woman for him or herself. Crossing the street at a green light is sometimes more dangerous than crossing on red. Pedestrians, it appears, no longer have the right away.

Recently, I’ve been channeling Iron Eyes Cody, aka the “Crying Indian,” from the popular “Keep America Beautiful” public service announcement commercials of the 1970s. Cody is seen in them canoeing through litter-strewn waterways with unsightly, belching smokestacks in the backdrop. He is understandably distraught at what he beholds. Later, on foot, Cody emerges at the edge of a busy highway, where a bag of garbage is hurled out of a passing car’s window. It burst open at his feet. This indignity is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and Cody sheds a famously big tear.

Fast forward forty years and “there’s a lot of litter messing up our land” and those “litterbugs are getting out of hand.” What I know wasn’t the norm in the old neighborhood—fiscal crisis or not—were individuals in parked cars using the great outdoors as a garbage dump. It’s commonplace in these parts to find today’s lunch remains or yesterday’s lottery stubs strewn across the ground at curbside. Apparently, it’s too much for too many people to find a nearby garbage can. They are—I can attest—all over the place. Can’t find a litter receptacle? Take the stuff home and dispose of it there! Is that too much to ask?

It’s all very disheartening and a sign of the times. When I walk around nowadays, I often feel like Iron Eyes Cody, who, by the way, was not a Native American but a second-generation Sicilian actor born Espera Oscar de Corti. Tossed out of non-moving cars, Win 4 lottery stubs seem to be the litter de jour of the oblivious and inconsiderate. All I can say to these Win 4 folks is: Take 5, will you, and consider what you are doing. And, until you learn that littering is a no-no, I hope you don't win and lose over and over and over.

(Photo three from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Midsummer Musings

Since I don't typically do politics in this blog, look upon this as a theatrical review. Yes, it was positively surreal seeing Scott Baio—Chachi Arcola—as a featured speaker at the Republican National Convention this week. Perfectamundo, he wasn’t. If the Democrats are smart they have recruited Donny Most—or Anson Williams if he wasn't available—for their upcoming convention. Donny, who prefers the moniker "Don" now, has still got it, I hear.

Honestly, it’s too bad actor Eddie Albert isn’t around anymore and

doing Ecotrin commercials. The punch line that he delivered with great élan some three decades ago—and what distinguished this safety-coated aspirin product then as well as now—was: “It’s orange!” Were he still among the living, Albert could have effortlessly reprised the pithy phrase in ads for the GOP standard-bearer.

There are certain politicians, I believe, who really should have heeded George Costanza’s power of example. He didn’t learn all that much along life’s highways and byways, but he did appreciate how it was better to “go out on a high note.” Take Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie. Respectively, they were “America’s Mayor” and “America’s Governor.” For one brief shining moment at least—post-9/11 and post-Superstorm Sandy—they seemed to transcend partisan politics and actually lead. But for ambitious politicians of any stripe, going out on a high note is a pretty tall order.

Uber-tough prosecutor Chris Christie, by the way, said Melania Trump’s speech at the convention was at least 93% original. As a writer who has worked with publishers and their plagiarizing check software programs, I can say without hesitation that seven percent of somebody else’s words in a book of mine—without attribution—wouldn’t cut the mustard. It would cut the cheese instead, and I’d be branded for life as a cheat in the business. Oh, and I wouldn’t get paid anything further and have to return my advance on top of that.

A Facebook friend of a friend of a friend recently remarked how he “couldn’t wait until the election was over” so he could “get back” to liking his “friends.” I fear there is a gaping hole in this well-intentioned fellow’s overly optimistic outlook. Let’s call it the Wishful Thinking Department, because this election—regardless of who wins—will never be over. It is a contemporary never-ending story—a Groundhog Day. While “The Nothing” threatened Fantasia in The NeverEnding Story, “The Something” threatens us. But the former was a fantasy and the latter is real—all too real. Wah wah wah.

Lotsa Luck!

I heard the first of summer’s cicada bug’s yesterday—incessantly loud buzzing in the trees of a nearby park. For me at least, their melodious vociferousness has this uncanny knack of underscoring summertime’s one-two punch of heat and hush. It’s actually been pretty hot in New York City the last few days, but I’ve experienced a whole lot worse over the course of my life. Growing up on the top floor of a three-family house in the Bronx, without any air conditioning, wasn’t for the faint-hearted, particularly in the days of recurring summer brownouts that did a number on our ice cubes. My father absolutely believed that feeling the deleterious combination of heat and humidity was psychological, not biological. In other words, it was all in our heads. I must say that the paternal side of my family—the Italian side—left very small carbon footprints in their wake. Nothing was wasted, including electricity to run those totally unnecessary—downright sinister—air conditioners.

If the temperatures were in the nineties and the humidity levels unbearable, it mattered little when I was a kid. My contemporaries and I bore much of the discomfort in the great outdoors. It was summer after all, a once-a-year thing to be relished. I don’t want to beat what has become an annual dead horse, but youths outside in the warm climes have gone the way of the VHS tape. They certainly are not playing the venerable street games that my generation played. And we were the Last of the Mohicans, as it were, who played the games little people had played for generations in urban milieus. Of course, as a fifty-something fellow now, who has grown accustomed to the more-or-less serene summertime streets, I’m kind of happy my windows are not being pelted with spaldeens and Wiffle balls, or my paths being intersected by marauding kids playing Round-up, Ringolevio, and Flashlight by night.

I was a big fan of a sitcom called Lotsa Luck! The show aired for one season (1973-74) only and starred Dom DeLuise. It had a great opening theme song that lamented the passage of time—when one “used to buy a pickle” that “only used to cost a nickel.” It emphasized, too, how things had taken a serious turn for the worse in the mid-1970s with its high inflation, increased traffic, and big-time stress and anxiety wherever one turned. Alas, the good old days “could be forgotten,” the song said, because “the world has gotten rotten.” And the cold hard reality was that “every day is getting tougher and it keeps on getting rougher.” The lyrical punch line and only apparent elixir for a world in such a sorry state were ample doses of luck—lotsa luck in fact! “In order to survive just to keep yourself alive,” one needed a heaping helping of it.

Well, more than forty years have passed and, I daresay, the rottenness of the world has reached new and unimaginable heights, making 1973 and 1974 a "Marshmallow World" by comparison. I hesitate to turn on the TV nowadays for fear of encountering the tragedy du jure. And there’s no light that I can see at the end of this tunnel. What exactly will the world be like in another forty years? I take some solace in the fact that my luck will have run out by then. But in the meantime: Lotsa luck!

I Say the Neon Lights Are Not So Bright on Broadway

They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway. Honestly, I don’t know who they are, but they are definitely painting with a broad brush. Because the part of Broadway I traversed today was virtually neon free. Granted, there may have been a neon sign or two in the shop windows in the vicinity of the first or last stop—depending on which way one is headed—of the Number 1 train. But, really, even the contemporary retail light-up signs appear to be fast and furiously moving away from neon. Cheaper to buy and maintain, I guess.

The dearth of bright neon lights notwithstanding on that renowned thoroughfare, I was nonetheless pleased to patronize a certain pizzeria on Broadway. In the Bronx, yes—but still the same Broadway. One, in fact, that’s been more or less in the same locale since 1969—it moved a couple of doors down after a fire some years back but has since returned to its original address. It's been my alma mater's— Manhattan College—preferred pizza spot since astronaut Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man” and “one giant leap for mankind.” I cannot remember it not being there. In this day and age in New York City, that’s saying an awful lot. But it’s not just that this neighborhood pizza joint endures, and has through dramatically changing times and changing landlords reaching for the jugular. It’s that the very same family still owns and operates the place.

I ate at this establishment every now and then twenty-five and thirty years ago, but not recently because—let’s just say—it’s a wee bit off-the-beaten trail for me in the here and now. What pleasantly surprised me, though, when I walked into the shop late this morning—after all these years—was seeing the father of this father-son business behind the counter. I remembered him in that very guise from my college days in the 1980s, so I figured he’d be up in the years and long retired. But there he was in the flesh—looking a little older, naturally, but pretty much as he did when Ronald Reagan was president.

The slice of pizza was hearty with ample cheese and priced at New York’s current going rate, $2.75, the cost of a subway fare. It was somewhat on the bland side, I’d concede, but nothing that a topping like pepperoni or sausage couldn’t turn into a better-than-average New York slice of pizza. And as a footnote to this Bronx pizza tale: Italian-Americans run the place. That’s very unusual in 2016. Pizza and Italians are mostly a memory around here, even in Italy it seems. Of course, my favorite pizza of all-time was the culinary work of art of a Greek fellow named George, a.k.a. Sam, whose likes are getting harder and harder to come by in this extraordinarily cheesy business and more than extraordinary cheesy times in which we live.

Our Very Own “Cousin Brucie”

Once upon a time the Fourth of July was the noisiest of days. When I was a boy growing up in the Bronx during the undeniably freer, very much more colorful, if not-always-safe 1970s, it was. In fact, firecrackers and their more dangerous and ear-splitting cousins—M-80s and Ash Cans to name a couple—exploded weeks before Independence Day. A handful of locals even established reputations for being “fireworks impresarios” and put on annual shows for their appreciative neighbors.

Bruce was one such fellow—a young guy but not a little kid like me—from a generation that came of age in the late sixties and early seventies, when girls and boys both wore their hair long, smoked things that smelled a wee bit funny, and made a concerted effort to dress not to kill. They dressed to the ones, twos, and maybe the threes—tops.

Bruce sported long, shoulder-length blond hair and was renowned in the neighborhood environs for his roller-skating prowess. In those days of yore, a person could roller skate with reckless abandon up and down the area’s back streets with minimal traffic to ward off—and that’s what our “Cousin Brucie” did. But Brucie, the nimbly adept roller skater, was simultaneously a fireworks “Man of the People,” which is why I invariably think of him on the Fourth of July.

Forty years ago, firecrackers, Bottle Rockets, Roman Candles, Ground Chasers, Cherry Bombs, etc. were all illegal on the streets of New York, but nonetheless readily available—ubiquitous in the hands of men, women, and children alike. “You can get them in Chinatown” was something I remember hearing. The bottom line was that New York’s Finest weren’t overly concerned with confiscating fireworks in the 1970s. They more or less turned a blind eye and let Brucie and company do their Fourth of July things. And why not? They were once-a-year affairs. No harm done. Well, that was then and this is now. I may have heard a stray firecracker or two over this weekend, but for the most part the fireworks I do hear nowadays are the legally sanctioned ones—at the exhibitions in area parks and elsewhere.

In other words, there are no more neighborhood “Cousin Brucies” plying their trades in the big city. They are no longer roller skating up and down the streets—in their distinctive roller-derby crouches—and they are definitely not putting on Independence Day “Night to Remember” extravaganzas for their friends and neighbors. There are no more mornings after the Fourth, either, when the local streets would be awash in spent firecrackers and such, including a smattering that didn’t detonate, which were prized keepsakes for those lucky enough to find them.

Granted, it’s a whole lot safer now on the Fourth of July in these parts, and at my age I appreciate the general quietude compared with yesteryear. Unsolicited firecrackers are very, very annoying. Still, I can’t help but feel that kids today are missing out on something that was at once really fun and something to look forward to every year. Having a “Cousin Brucie” of our own was sort of special, which I guess is why I associate him with the Fourth of July all these years later.

The Eliot Ness Story

He told me that his former co-workers called him “Eliot Ness.” Why? Because his first name was Eliot and last name something like Ness, but not quite. I also learned that Eliot was of Cuban descent and was—once upon a time—a fireman. He referenced, too, an ex-wife and a son. It’s possible Eliot’s been around my neighborhood for a while, but I can’t be certain. I never noticed him before we met for the first time.

I encountered Eliot about a month ago when he very vociferously informed me what a beautiful day it was. And he was right on the money: It was a beautiful day. Eliot then asked me how I was doing and offered me a thunderous parting salvo: “God bless you!” There was something slightly menacing about the man, I thought, even though nothing he said—in actual words—suggested that. But if I may employ a relation’s favorite term for the Eliots of this world: He just didn’t seem “right in the head.”

Not having seen him before this meeting of the minds, I didn’t give Eliot a second thought as he wandered away. But then a couple of weeks later he materialized again in my little corner of the world. This time around he extended his hand to me. I discovered now where Eliot shops for food bargains—a German grocery called Aldi’s—and where he lives, too. Again, Eliot seemed hot-wired—inebriated would have been a good guess. I bumped into the man one more time after that and—as the old saying goes—the third time’s a charm. Any and all doubt that Eliot liked his few were removed. The proof was in the pudding: a bottle of Coors Light in his hand, a spare in his back pocket, and beer breath on top of all that.

Eliot shook my hand—that's twice if you’re counting—and admitted to having had a cold one or two. He began waxing nostalgic—about something his ex-wife once said to him—and got emotional. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go because otherwise I’m going to cry.” It was a poignant moment for sure—sad and all—but I nonetheless heaved a sigh of relief that Eliot went on his merry way with his Coors Light bottles.

There’s obviously a whole lot more to Eliot’s life story than what he relayed to me in our brief tête-à-têtes. After all, everyone’s got a story with some of them—granted—a little more dramatic than others. And so many of these life stories don’t have happy endings—or beginnings and middles for that matter. Suffice it to say, you don’t want to find yourself in middle age with a Coors Light in your hand and one in your back pocket while ambling down a city street. It’s how Eliot arrived in his present predicament—which could happen to just about any of us—that is the most troubling.

The Summers of Our Content

Season’s greetings: It’s summertime again. I know that for sure because I spied a solitary lightning bug the other night—a rare sighting nowadays. These luminescent insects were—once upon a time—ubiquitous in the old neighborhood. But the one-two punch of over-building and excessive lighting has pretty much cast them asunder in these parts.

As a boy growing up in the Bronx, the fledgling days of summer—and the longest days of the year—augured many things, including a “vacation” of some sort in the immediate future. Typically, a week or two spent away from the bright lights of the big city. For many years, my family and I vacationed along the Jersey Shore, in towns like Manasquan, Forked River, and Lavallette.

In Manasquan in the early 1970s, we rented a three-bedroom “railroad-car style” cottage for $75/week. It was a couple of short blocks from the ocean and a couple of short blocks from the Manasquan Inlet. We couldn’t ask for more—and we didn’t. From its enclosed front porch, we could even see a sliver of the inlet and a railroad bridge in the distance. At that point in time there was also a sizable ferryboat in view—a working one in its day, but then permanently docked and operating as a restaurant. Although we never dined there—we couldn’t afford to eat in restaurants back then—it was a compelling visual. The streets in the neighborhood where we stayed were named after fish: Salmon, Trout, Pike, Whiting, and Perch. The $75/week rental with—as I recall—garage-sale furniture, threadbare bedspreads, and sandy floors is now a two-story abode worth a million dollars. Hey, it’s a stone’s throw from the Atlantic.

While a very different experience from Manasquan, Forked River was nevertheless an intriguing place to vacation. We rented a family friend’s cozy little bungalow, which was situated in woodsy terrain that was slowly but surely becoming less so. Lagoons were being dug all around the area and small homes were popping up every day. Courtesy of all the constant building and digging, there were reservoirs of standing water everywhere. Now, the mosquito population knew a paradise when they saw one and were a big-time nuisance for two-legged vacationers. A truck periodically passed by spraying some chemical concoction into the air to do away with those airborne, bloodsucking pests. God only knows what it was, but it probably caused cancer in laboratory rats. The mosquitoes, though, were unbowed through it all and we had to wear rubber bands at the bottoms of our pants to co-exist with them. The sound of electric saws taking down pine trees was commonplace, too, while we vacationed there. But as a kid, such incessant noise and the mother lodes of mosquitoes didn’t detract from the wonderland of wildlife and forest of pine trees that I felt I was in. After all, miniature toads hopped around in the back and front yards. Big box turtles luxuriated in the woods next door. And whip-poor-wills called out in the night. It was like we were camping.

Camping indeed. The water that poured out of the Forked River faucets was brown, smelled foul, and needed to be boiled before cooking with it. Nobody would dare drink it straight. The nearest telephone was at an Elks “clubhouse” several blocks away. Both Barnegat Bay and the Forked River itself were in close proximity. I don’t mind telling you that the combination salty sea-pine needle aroma in the air was intoxicating. If I were placed in a similar environment today—forty years later—it would be like I was a contestant on Survivor. And with my luck, I’d probably catch the Zika virus.

Life, though, is all about moments. And nothing could get in the way of a grand time all those years ago. Not dirty bedspreads, armies of mosquitoes, or rust-colored tap water.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Lost Magic

Exactly thirty-six years ago, something magical happened in my life and in the lives of others who shared an affinity for a certain baseball team. Then New York Mets’ left fielder Steve Henderson—we called him "Hendu"—belted a walk-off three-run home run to beat the San Francisco Giants seven to six at Shea Stadium. My favorite team had been down six-to-one in the game, so it was a bona fide comeback win. Magic is a subjective thing, I know. But the Mets had previously experienced three horrific down years as a miserly, patrician stuffed shirt named M. Donald Grant single-handedly destroyed one of the most profitable and respected franchises in the game.

After the disastrous 1979 season the team was mercifully sold. The new ownership promised a return to past glories. While it took a few years of rebuilding, they kept their word. In 1980, however, the first year of the new regime—with inherited manager Joe Torre still at the helm—the Mets hovered close to the .500 mark on June 14th. It doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but it was an accomplishment for a team that had been down-and-out—and with such low expectations—for what seemed like an eternity.

"The Magic Is Back” was the Mets’ advertising slogan during the 1980 season. “Magic Is Back” posters with Mets’ players—Lee Mazzilli, Doug Flynn, Joel Youngblood, et al—inviting fans to return to the ballpark festooned New York City subway cars. “Magic Is Back” bumper stickers were spotted on cars. Some devotees, like me, proudly wore Sanitation Department orange and blue “Magic Is Back” tees. While vacationing on the Jersey Shore that summer, a pizza parlor counter girl asked me what “The Magic Is Back” meant. As I recall, it wasn't a softball question. While this promotional campaign was understandably ridiculed in some quarters, I nonetheless felt that there was something to it—magic as it were. Change was very definitely in the air—a feeling of liberation from the past three years when Shea Stadium had been christened “Grant’s Tomb.” Just knowing that reasonably intelligent people roamed the front office—men who were willing to spend a few bucks to make the team a contender again—was magic enough for me.

Back to this day in history: June 14, 1980. I was watching the game in my bedroom, while my father had it on in the family living room. He was an inveterate Mets’ hater and I, in turn, loathed with a passion his beloved Yankees. If the Yankees were simultaneously playing a televised game, I had nothing to worry about. He’d be watching his team. If, though, there were no competing game, he’d tune in the Mets and revel in their misfortune. When things weren’t going the Mets’ way, I would be visited by him repeatedly and heckled unmercifully. A father-son baseball rivalry is not a pretty sight.

I distinctly remember on this particular night parrying my father’s inevitable taunts as best as I knew how. When Hendu hit that home run, it was extra sweet because he was watching the game along with me, albeit in a different room. I had the last laugh on this almost-summer evening and returned the favor before venturing outside to sit a spell on the front stoop. In the warm darkness of this June night, I enjoyed a natural high. Stoop sitting in our Bronx neighborhood is what we did back then. It’s where we went to unwind and to celebrate, too, like on June 14, 1980. I’m glad I didn’t have an iPhone to stare at or an app to worry about. Lost magic for sure.

Ivor Meets Ivan

Looking back on my life thus far, something really—really—stands out. I marvel now at the fact that I rarely passed through a hospital door in my first three decades of living. And that was kind of nice—the way life ought to be. I remember as a teenager visiting my grandmother in one after her glaucoma surgery. She spent a whole week in the hospital for that. And since I don't recall being born, that's the long and short of my early hospital memories. The times have certainly changed.

In my last two decades on the planet—in stark contrast with the first three—I’ve logged entirely too many hours in the hospital milieu—as a visitor, patient, and escort, the hat I donned this past week. When all was said and done, I found myself in a waiting room at New York City’s premier cancer hospital. If one needed proof that cancer is an equal opportunity disease, this was the place to be. I’ve long been fascinated at the diversity of mind, body, and soul that I chance upon in this hospital. While family members typically accompany the patients on the scene, there are always some people who go it alone. And this is particularly poignant when these solitary souls are getting up in years. Traipsing around to doctors’ appointments and myriad tests without a shoulder to cry on—or an ear to chew on—is not desirable in the golden years. Unfortunately, it’s just an unavoidable reality for some.

Anyway, this go-round I spied an elderly gentleman—all by himself—in the waiting room. Gingerly pushing his walker around the premises—the kind with a handy seat—a forlorn aura surrounded him. The man was borderline unkempt and had bypassed his morning shave and probably the one before that—a visual snapshot that considerably added to his lonely air. And boy did he ever want to talk—to anyone and everyone in earshot—which, I suppose, is understandable. Still, I was glad he didn’t sit across from me or next to me.

This guy reminded me of someone that I couldn’t quite put my finger on at first. Then it dawned on me. He facially resembled the late great character Ivor Francis. Let's call him Ivor from this point forward. Ivor was very, very interested in the waiting room’s amply-stocked pantry. I watched him in this little alcove carefully considering the various options at his disposal—coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, not to mention the saltine or graham cracker munchie quandary. A burly, grim-looking fellow subsequently joined him in the pantry. He looked like a 1960s sitcom Russian stereotype—picture Stanley Adams as Ila Klarpe in The Addams Family—as he navigated the cramped pantry. Ivor meet Ivan.

Destiny had surely brought these two men together. When Ivor at long last decided what his next move would be, a paper cup was the final piece to the puzzle—to steaming hot bliss and some tasty crackers to nibble on. As fate would have it, Ivan was in close proximity of the coveted paper cups at that very moment. Ivor sheepishly but oh-so-politely asked Ivan if he would hand him one—a simple request if ever there was one. Ivan didn’t think so, however, and glared angrily and suspiciously at Ivor. He then made a grumbling noise and furiously gestured at the stack of cups. Ivan’s message to Ivor was all too clear: Get it yourself!

Ivor meekly muttered a response, “I just asked because you were near the cups.” Well, from the looks of things, the Cold War still raged. If mutual affliction with cancer couldn't thaw things out—what pray tell could? Perhaps Ivan was just having a bad day—he was in a cancer hospital after all—but I still wish he didn’t take it out on lonely and frail Ivor. He could have effortlessly handed him an empty cup and made an old man with cancer happy.

Sticker Price

Last month I cast a ballot in the New York State presidential primary. Actually, I filled in a solitary oval on the thing and fed it into a machine, which promptly alerted me my vote had been counted. Except to say my candidate didn’t emerge victorious, I won’t tell you for whom I voted. Despite the thrill of voting being a relic of the past, I performed my civic duty. I remember casting my very first vote at the age of eighteen and how excited I was just to have the opportunity. It didn’t matter to me that the election outcome was a foregone conclusion. It was the 1981 New York City mayoral race. Ed Koch was running for reelection on both the Democratic and Republican lines. He received nearly 75% of the vote. I selected a third party candidate that year. Coronations were never my cup of tea. I have voted for a surfeit of sure losers—in a lot of different parties—because of this aversion. Unfortunately, coronations are the rule around here.

An oddball from my neighborhood—a misshapen, fifty-something fellow whom I’ve known by sight and reputation since our mutual youths—served as the polling place’s big cheese this go-round. His ample derrière comfortably rested on a chair by the entrance. When I arrived to vote he was too preoccupied with his iPhone to even glance my way. But that was okay by me. I didn’t need his assistance. Upon putting my John Hancock in the voting register, I was handed a small round sticker that I was—ideally—supposed to affix to my person. The thinking being it would encourage others to vote. It would serve, too, as a reminder that I had in fact voted, which would stop me dead in my tracks from repeating the process later in the day.

There was some controversy in New York City on primary day—of voters going to their respective polling places and not finding their names on the voting rolls. Some years ago I recall hearing that if we didn’t vote in two consecutive elections, our names would be purged and we would have to re-register. Draconian—yes. However, I have spotted the names of individuals who have long since moved away and even some who are long dead still on the books. And—given time—the former will eventually become the latter.

I just fear that it’s going to be a long slog between now and when I next call upon my polling place in November. A Facebook friend of mine recently shared a meme underscoring the more genteel time in which both she and I grew up. When—generally speaking—kids respected their parents and their elders, too; when common courtesies were commonplace; and when people agreed to disagree civilly. Her candidate in 2016: Donald Trump.

Bein' Light Green

While walking past my old alma mater, Manhattan College, today, I couldn’t help but notice the school was festooned in springtime. The campus always looked nice, especially at this time of year, with many of its trees sporting healthy-looking, light green small leaves. Hope springs eternal. I spied some students, who were no doubt taking their final exams, walking to and fro. I noticed, too, a “Cash for Textbooks” tent set up across the street from the school’s main entrance.

I graduated from this esteemed institution of higher learning in 1984. It’s now 2016. If my arithmetic is correct—I wasn't a math major—that’s thirty-two years ago. I vividly recall the waning days of my college experience—early May in my final semester—and gazing out the window of Manhattan Hall onto the Quadrangle, which was alive in that aforementioned light green. I was attending a “Great Issues in European History” class taught by a very interesting and extremely affable man—"any questions, comments, observations"—who has since departed this earth. Thirty-two years will do that sometimes. But on this particular day, I well remember the combination of the seasonable air, spring sounds, and pleasing odors and colors. They reminded me that my days were numbered as a college student, and that there would be no more encores. I felt profoundly melancholy as a stared out that window and realized the adult world—ready or not—beckoned.

A few weeks later, I attended my graduation ceremony. New York City Mayor Ed Koch delivered a totally unmemorable commencement address. In fact, I don’t remember a word he said. It's fair to say he didn't quite inspire me to boldly go. Extemporaneously, the man was often entertaining, but delivering a prepared speech invariably negated his New York guy charm. After the proceedings, we graduates had to navigate our way down to the cafeteria in Thomas Hall to secure our diplomas, which were alphabetically aligned in our particular school of studies—mine was the School of Business. It was a somewhat nerve-wracking interim as I recall, because we didn’t know for certain if we had made the grade and passed everything we needed to pass. Happily, I did, but nevertheless didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my diploma or what was next on my agenda as now a certifiable adult. Considering all the money that parents spend—and the debt that contemporary college-aged kids amass—it seems quite a high price to pay for a mother lode of uncertainty four years later. When I began my collegiate journey in 1980, tuition was $1,750 a semester—$3,500 a year. In my final year, it was $5,000. As I recollect, we all thought that was a lot of money—and it was. A student loan of $2,500—the maximum available back then—helped. I had a coupon book to show for my higher education and a $77/month loan repayment for about ten years.

So, that’s what I saw today and that’s what I thought about as I passed by my old school, for which I have mostly fond memories. And that is significant, because I wasn’t sitting around in my last days of high school with anything bordering on melancholy. Being green—light green—has a knack for reminding us of what once was, what could have been, what is, and what may be.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Why Nothing Matters…It Really Does

What follows is an essay written for some online concern. As the author of Seinfeld FAQ, I was asked to delve into the subject of nothing...and I did.

It’s been eighteen years since the last episode of Seinfeld—“The Finale”—aired in prime-time. Since then, the iconic sitcom has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that nothing matters and, too, that nothing lasts forever.

Ironically, Seinfeld’s creators, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, never, ever promoted the notion that their trailblazing sitcom was about nothing—on the contrary as a matter of fact. David and Seinfeld admit to having been absolutely flabbergasted that a joke—a line from the mouth of George Costanza—became a mega-hit with the fan base. The “show about nothing” aside in “The Pitch” assumed a life of its own and became ingrained in the popular culture. It also established a remarkable staying power as the simplest way to describe what Seinfeld and the off-the-wall antics of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer were all about.

While the show was very obviously about something—a whole lot of something—Seinfeld’s distinctive nothing aura is precisely why it has legs. Sure, in the eyes of some, it is hopelessly dated—a ‘90s thing they just can’t get past. After all, Seinfeld was largely of a time before the Internet, smart phones, and GPS technology. It was a pre-Netflix age when individuals actually patronized—in the flesh—brick-and-mortar video stores to rent movies on clumsy VHS tapes. And God help the poor sap who forgot to rewind one before returning it—like the hapless George, who had rented Rochelle, Rochelle in “The Smelly Car.” For the younger generations, videotapes, phone booths, and Rolodexes are the sole province of museums and, of course, nostalgic baby boomers’ Facebook memes.

Time marches on with the inevitable technological advances and changes in everything from sartorial tastes to hairstyles to societal mores. The only constant with the passage of time is nothing. And better than any sitcom before or after it, Seinfeld’s savvy writers understood this. In wading through the daily grind—in engaging in the mundane minutia that is part and parcel of everyday living—human behavior invariably runs true to form and hasn’t really changed all that much over the centuries. Shakespeare is timeless because The Bard of Avon was keenly cognizant of the potent and enduring force of nothingness. He knew that nothing mattered. It really did. Some four centuries later—as a committed observer of the human condition—Jerry Seinfeld followed in the man’s not inconsiderable footsteps.

There were low-talkers and close-talkers in Shakespeare’s day. Neurotic, nihilistic men and women have long been part and parcel of “man’s inhumanity to man.” George once so eloquently described what is undeniably an unenviable task—for anyone, anywhere, and at any point in history. “I hate asking for change,” he said. “They always make a face. It’s like asking them to donate a kidney.” The man who ran the mercantile store in Dodge City, circa 1870, no doubt had a similar reaction when asked to make change. A nothing snapshot in the humdrum moment—perhaps—but something much larger in the grand scheme of things.

Once upon a time in the sixth grade at St. John’s parochial grammar school in the Bronx’s Kingsbridge, classmates and I discoursed on—of all things—the subject of nothing. We were twelve years old and this is what passed for philosophical discussion. We had long been inculcated in our school—and in church—that we came from nothing and would one day return to nothing. So, naturally, some of us couldn’t help but wonder: “What would nothing look like?” Fast forward four decades and I think I know the answer. It would look a lot like Seinfeld because I, for one, think of the show very often as I make my appointed rounds. I experience Seinfeld moments—nothing moments—time and again, so they really must mean something. Nothing matters, I’m certain of that much.

Human to Human

I had a curious close encounter this morning. For one brief shining moment, I thought I was running errands in Dickensian London and not tony Riverdale in the Bronx. My peripheral vision observed an individual approach a Hispanic man, who was sitting alone on a park bench with only his iPhone as company. I heard him say, “Excuse me, Señor, can I have a word with you?” The man told him in imperfect English, but in no uncertain terms, to make like a tree and leave. “I’m not trying to sell you something,” he said to no avail.

Waiting nearby for a light to turn green—and fast—I realized that one man’s courage to kiss off an unwanted intruder was another man’s potential albatross. Mine, I feared, in this instance. Purposely, I hadn’t even glanced over at this person, who was looking for a word. Keeping eye contact to a minimum in the hopes of keeping any contact to a minimum—or better yet, none at all—was what I had in mind.

The best laid plans of mice and men. After getting the brush-off, said individual looked around and saw only one person in taking distance—me. “Mind if I talk to you—human to human?” he asked as he came up alongside me. I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no, which to him meant yes. When I got a fair glimpse at my fellow human, I was surprised to see how young he was. He appeared to be teenager, or maybe a little older than that—but I doubt it. As a formerly young person, I find divining people’s ages increasingly problematic with the passage of time. Some forty year olds look like they’re collecting Social Security; and some seventy year olds could pass for fifty-somethings. But this was a kid...or so it seemed to me.

Anyway, this young fellow, whatever his age, began our human-to-human talk by decrying the state of the economy and how tough it was to find work. I couldn’t argue with him on that score. He then proceeded to tell the tale of his having to buy a new jacket to go on job interviews—the one, in fact, that he was wearing, which cost $65. He told me, too, that he had gotten a haircut, so as to look his best while job hunting. The problem was that he was now broke, and he wondered whether he should return the $65 jacket and go on interviews with his old, ratty coat and, of course, school transcripts showing that he was qualified for a job, despite looking like Oliver Twist.

At one point he said, “Sixty-five dollars may sound like a lot of money to you,” which momentarily confused me. A more effective argument might have been: “Sixty-five dollars may not sound like a lot of money to you…but to me…it is.” Our little chat largely occurred as we crossed a very busy street. My fellow human being never delivered the punch line I thought was coming. Brother can you spare an inflation-adjusted dime. I’ll sell you my $65 jacket for $30—a bargain if ever there was one. He seemed, though, to sincerely want an answer as to whether or not he should return his $65 jacket. I believe that I was spared further discussion with this young man when he found another ear—at a bus stop—in our path. My parting words to him were: “Good luck.” And he replied, “You see: Even you don’t know what to do.”

This parting salvo, in particular, disturbed me on multiple levels. After all, this kid was in a bad way no matter how you slice it. Drugs…possibly. Out of work…definitely. Family…where were they? Of course, I could have been on Candid Camera or Punk’d. Har har hardy har har. That’s really funny: Should I return my $65 jacket—or keep it even though I’m broke—and take my chances with my rags and fair to middling school grades. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. However, I don't know the truth in this case, which is probably for the best.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Good and Evel

Recently, I encountered a ghost from my past festooned in a garish leather jumpsuit. Actually, it was by pure chance that I unearthed the memory of this individual—someone whom I hadn’t thought about in a very long time. And when I was a callow youth back in the colorful 1970s, he was big—really big.

The man’s occupation was daredevil. He liked jumping over things—usually while riding his motorcycle but, occasionally, utilizing other forms of transportation, like a steam-powered rocket. Dean Martin roasted the guy—the ultimate evidence back then that he was a somebody. Robert Knievel, aka Evel Knievel, was his name and he’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for having cumulatively broken more bones than anybody else…and lived to tell. Evel Knievel is no longer among the living, but his iconic status is eternal.

Evel Knievel impacted our lives. I remember this affable kid named Eddie from the old neighborhood, who wasn’t, in retrospect, the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Eddie was coaxed by his  friends, who regularly made sport of him, into performing an Evel Knievel stunt on his old Sting-Ray bicycle—with the banana seat. The agreeable, always-game, and stupidly fearless Eddie rode his bicycle up a wooden plank into the air, which enabled him to hop a short wall. What goes up six feet, though, must come down six feet—it's the law of physics—and down Eddie came. He lost control of his bicycle on the concrete grounds and crashed into a garage.

I witnessed this local Evel Knievel moment, which had been advertised—date and time—by word of mouth. And like Arthur Fonzarelli, aka the “Fonz,” who jumped the shark on Happy Days, it didn’t quite end on a high note. At least the Fonz made it over the man-eating white shark, which was his goal. Eddie’s goal amounted to  just doing it—come what may. Mission accomplished, He hurt himself—just like Evel and the Fonz—but lived to tell and ride another day.

Big Ben: the Bell Tolls for Thee

While growing up in Kingsbridge in the 1970s, independent pharmacies and pharmacists ruled the roost—the Bronx Prescription Center, Stuart’s, and this hole in the wall storefront run by a man named Benjamin Something or the Other. Actually, we called him Benjamin "Decker," which may or may not have been his real name. Probably not but pretty close. I wish I could remember the actual name of the pharmacy, but I don’t.

I do remember Benjamin, however. He was a cadaverous figure—picture William Hickey in Prizzi’s Honor. Old Ben was a bona fide eccentric and more than a bit strange. For some reason, my younger brother and I bought candy from him for a period of time. With so many more traditional alternatives in the area, I think I know why. We were somehow drawn to oddball characters and off-Broadway theater. We were fascinated with this unconventional, peculiar-looking neighborhood pharmacist—the master of his little shop that not only filled prescriptions but sold everything from toiletries to shampoos to hair brushes. I only wish I had snapped a picture of this charismatic geezer—this independent medicine man—from an era when the little guy still counted.

I distinctly remember tins of the sore throat lozenges, Sucrets, on a rack in front of Benjamin’s unusual glass mirror-prism countertop. How long would that last today? But it was the larger than life man himself, festooned in his sky blue pharmacist smock, that made the drug store worth visiting. When the jingling bells attached to his front door sounded, alerting the proprietor he had a potentially paying customer on the premises, Big Ben would emerge from the recesses of his apothecary. He was a certified Notary Public, too. He notarized my $1,500 student loan for Manhattan College—from the Washington Heights Federal Bank just next door to him—which covered about half of my year’s tuition. Notarizing the document with an expired ink stamp, and altering the expiration date with the stroke of a pen, the wizened pharmacist said to me, as I signed the document in his presence, “Singing your life away, eh?”

I truly miss Benjamin Decker—or whatever his real name was—in this age of ever-encroaching big chain pharmacies (and big everything else). Little guy pharmacy businesses, like Big Ben’s on W231st Street in the Bronx, are dinosaurs. I suppose the bitter pill would be easier to swallow if the big pharmacies were actually bigger and better—bargains—but they’re not. Sure, they carry everything—but not really everything—and can pay the exorbitant rents around town, but it's the Decker personal touch that is sorely missed.

In the Windy Old Weather

It was cold and windy in these parts yesterday. And I can honestly say that excessive wind speeds make walking with a prosthetic knee a little dicey. Nevertheless, I needed the exercise and concluded by early afternoon the worst of the winds had come and gone. The furious rainstorm of the night before—featuring thunderclaps and a symphony of overturned garbage cans—was replaced by incredibly bright blue skies and that ultra-sharp sunlight unique to springtime.

So, I hit the road with every intention of turning back if the wind beneath my wings proved more than I could handle. There were occasional gusts of import along the way, but I opted to soldier on and venture to Van Cortlandt Park about a half-mile away. While in the park, I rested for a spell on a bench—one that furnished me with a bird’s eye view of the elevated W242nd Street subway station. This is the first or last stop—depending on which direction you are headed—of the Number 1 “Broadway Local” line. Day and night, the trains come and go—and come and go again—patiently waiting their turns to dock. There’s lots of loud horn blowing and nails-on-a-chalkboard screeching, too, as the trains slow up and switch tracks. What goes around comes around, I guess, because I enjoyed viewing this same spectacle as a boy. But that was then, this is now, and the verb “enjoy” is relative.

Sitting on a park bench with a trusty cane at my side—and concerned that I might get blown down on my return trip—was not, it's fair to say, on my youthful radar. In fact, the exact spot where I sat at the southern tail of the sprawling park was—in my younger days—an asphalt softball field. Like so much of the park and indeed the city at large in the 1970s, it was not properly maintained. The asphalt was a sorry mess with weeds sprouting up from home plate to centerfield; first base to third base. It was not a wise idea to attempt a Ron Swoboda-in-the-1969-World Series diving catch there—let’s put it that way. The combination of cracked asphalt and broken glass beer and soda bottles were a certain ticket to the emergency room.

The Internet is rife with images of New York City in the dirty and dangerous 1970s. The stainless steel subway cars that I cast my eyes upon yesterday were sans graffiti and underground tunnel grime. Emblematic of the city’s precipitous decline, they were covered in the stuff forty years ago, not to mention inefficient and crime laden. I witnessed an armed robbery on the Number 1 train in 1978. And in the old neighborhood, home burglaries and street muggings were more commonplace than today.

It would seem then the logical conclusion to draw is that things are a whole lot better today when compared with the awful 1970s. Yes, I’m happy to ride clean, generally safer, and definitely more efficient subway trains. The park I visited yesterday is without question a visually more appealing place in 2016 than it was in, say, 1976. But what individuals who didn’t grow up in New York in the 1970s can’t possibly understand is that—for all its well-documented problems and assorted blight—it was for the most part a great place to be a teenager. Some neighborhoods were bona fide war zones, but most were alive—believe it or not—with neighbors whom you actually knew. That sense of community is largely lost in this sterile age of gentrification—everything is so damn expensive—and obeisance to devices. I was among the last generation to play the old city street games like box ball and stoop ball. People bought homes in the old neighborhood as foremost places to live—often for their extended families—and only secondly as investments. There are countless absentee owners now who look upon their properties as ATM machines in perpetuity. They rent out apartments to a revolving door of tenants who pay top dollar for the honor and don’t care a whit where they call home. And it shows! The 1970s in New York had character and characters—lots of them—and is sorely missed. Cleaning the city up was a necessity, but apparently we threw out the baby with the bath water.

(Photos two and three from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Death Never Takes a Holiday Anymore

Actress Patty Duke died today; actor James Noble, yesterday, at ninety-four. Courtesy of trending Facebook obits only hours ago, I learned of their respective passings—such is life in 2016. It was indisputably a simpler time when must-see TV for me was Benson (1979-1986), a network sitcom that starred the melodiously named Robert Guillaume as the equally melodiously named Benson DuBois and the aforementioned Noble, who played the dimwitted but unfailingly affable Governor Eugene Xavier Gatling in the series. Happily still among the living, Guillaume is eighty-eight.

What I would really like to know is how so many of the men and women who graced the small screen of my youth grew so old—so really, really old? Joe Garagiola, who died at ninety this past week, was ubiquitous during my younger days—an always-agreeable presence teamed with the likes of the late Curt Gowdy and now eighty-year-old, long-retired Tony Kubek—on NBC’s weekly and postseason Major League Baseball games. But that was hardly the Garagiola be-all and end-all. I recall tuning into an eclectic smorgasbord hosted by the man—everything from a game show called Sale of the Century to the Today show to the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.  

Earl Hamner, Jr. also passed away this week. He was ninety-two. Apparently, you’re nobody if you don’t live to ninety nowadays. I religiously watched his baby, The Waltons, downstairs with my grandmother and aunt in what was, seemingly, the last chapter in the extended family era. For some reason, Hamner’s voice-over narrations at the beginning and ending of each episode never failed to amuse my younger brother and me. In fact, more than forty years later, I can still recall some of the lines that we would parrot in an embellished Hamner-tone, such as: “Those were not the last mistakes Jim-Bob and I were to make, but we were truly ahead of the game. Our parents gave us decent rules to live by…yada...yada...yada.” Our teenage whimsy would sometimes have us refer to Jim-Bob as “Jim Boob.” Being from the Bronx, Hamner’s Virginia accent and singular intonations sounded very, very foreign to us.

Actor Joe Santos died this month, too. He was only eighty-four. The man played Dennis Becker on The Rockford Files, one of my all-time favorite TV shows. Who’s left from the cast? The seventy-six-year-old Stuart Margolin, Angel, that’s who. It’s been a rough month indeed—Frank Sinatra, Jr., Gary Shandling, and Mother Angelica have all breathed their last. Mother Angelica, founder of the EWTN cable channel, falls into the category of: “I thought she already met her maker.” As I encounter a never-ending story of death notices, this phenomenon is happening more and more to me. I guess when I read about some serious illness or major health setback, like a stroke, my brain reasons the afflicted individual is for all intents and purposes dead.

All I can say is that when I was watching Joe Garagiola in his camel trench coat in front of Macy’s more than forty years ago—his breath visible in the Thanksgiving morning chill—I was not remotely into what was trending vis-à-vis folks going on their vacations with God. (An elderly neighbor of mine coined that catchy phrase. She said at the time she was "not yet ready to go on her“vacation with God.” She has since has gone on that permanent  vacation.) I kind of prefer the days when death took a holiday—from my perspective at least. 

Life and the Jar of Peanut Butter

This year marks the thirty-sixth anniversary of my graduation from high school. Putting this number in some larger perspective is kind of weird—even a little bit disturbing—because I turned eighteen the year I graduated. And, lo and behold, I have subsequently lived eighteen more years and then another eighteen years after that. The sum total of my entire existence in 1980, which seemed to have covered a lot of ground at the time, was a mere drop in the bucket.

With the obvious accelerating passage of time, I can’t help but reflect on all that was and how I arrived at the present. I will say that a handful of things in my life have remained pretty constant through the years, like my preferred breakfast: peanut butter on toast with coffee. Growing up in the Bronx with an extended family—three generations under one roof—brought peanut butter and coffee, too, into my life at an early age. If we so desired, coffee was served to us at seven- and eight years old. Maybe it was an Italian thing or just the simpler times—I don’t know. What I do know is that my grandmother—a culinary wizard whose likes I will never see again—always kept a big glass jar of Skippy peanut butter on the premises for her grandsons. She, though, never once sampled the stuff. There was something about “peanuts bud,” as she pronounced it in her thick Italian accent, which absolutely repulsed her.

I remember finding a mini-jar of Skippy peanut butter in my Christmas stocking one year—glass again with an aluminum top. And not one of those jars ever ended up in the trash. They were repurposed time and again in an age before recycling; in an age of peanut butter. My family used to get a circular loaf of Italian bread delivered daily—in the 1960s and 1970s—from a nearby wholesale bakery called Willow Sunny. Imagine having a fresh slice of bakery bread slathered with peanut butter every morning for breakfast. My grandmother cut the bread like she was playing a violin—a true maestro—knife slicing across toward her body.

Fast forward a few years to an earth-shattering discovery of mine. I learned there was more to peanut butter than Skippy. There was Peter Pan, Superman, Smuckers, and the best of them all, I concluded—Jif.  Naturally, I expressed my newfound opinion to all who would listen that Jif tasted a whole lot better than Skippy. A certain family elder—undeviating in her worldview then as well as now—sniffed, “You just want to be different.” Granted, kids want to be recognized as unique individuals and I was no different. There’s that word again. But the fact remains that I did—believe it or not—prefer Jif to Skippy. I still do as a matter of fact. The proof is in the plastic jar of Jif that I pluck out of the cupboard at breakfast time all these years later. I guess I was really different after all.

Bye Bye Bakery

This past Sunday marked the final day of operation for a bakery that had been in business for sixty-one years. It was located in the Bronx neighborhood Riverdale, which is not too far from where I call home. The bakery was something of an institution—a mom-and-pop business that seemed like it would always be there. The reason for the shuttering of its doors: exorbitant rent that was too high for a bakery—even a popular one—to pay and realize a profit. A longstanding area fish store right next-door to the bakery closed earlier this year for the very same reason. Both businesses were dealing with a “fairer,” less greedy landlord—it has been reported—than the notorious conglomerate that owns a wealth of commercial property in this rather upscale neighborhood in New York City.

Having run out many mom-and-pops, that aforementioned notorious landlord’s “Store for Rent” signs are ubiquitous in windows, with many of the storefront’s remaining empty for years. I guess it pays—in some instances—to raise rents beyond what individuals can afford. I guess it pays—in some instances—to keep the spaces unoccupied, too. Now that doesn’t sound like very good public policy to me. And it is certainly a recipe for destroying the heart and soul—the uniqueness and diversity—of neighborhoods. But then that’s why landlords are so civic-minded and contribute in a big way to the politicians who make our laws.

The times are very definitely changing. And it’s not only the ridiculous rents. In the case of a neighborhood bakery, it’s harder to compete now for a whole host of reasons. When I was a kid, supermarkets didn’t have bakeries on the premises. We weren’t traveling to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Other small businesses are competing with the Internet and the likes of Wal-Mart and Target. Ten and twenty years ago, it would have been inconceivable that tony Riverdale would have a Subway, Starbucks, and Dunkin’ Donuts a hop, skip, and a jump from one another. But such is life, I guess—ever evolving and ever devolving.