Until I read “The World of Jimmy Breslin”, everything I owned was second-rate.

My clothes were either cheap, used, or “irregulars.”  My apartment was a dump. Sporting goods? Used.  Someone else’s football cleats and ice skates were good enough, so what if they were a size too big, or too small. My first used car, an eight-year old VW, was more rust than road warrior.

When, at sixteen, I began my college studies at CUNY – Hunter, I got a clunky, stuck-keyed Royal manual typewriter discarded by my dad’s company. My teeth would gnash with each clash of the dirty keys, every effort a labor of hate.

But then came a part-time job at the very company that provided this massive metal machine, which thrust me into the world of my office-boy co-workers in what was called the Bursting Room.  My department was crammed with deafening machines that de-collated and then separated carbon-smeared, multi-part reports for the various departments of this financial services company.

And the operators of these dirty, rackety machines were life-hardened guys in their late teens and early twenties.  Some were of Polish and Italian descent, but most were Black and Puerto Rican.  They were either just back from Viet Nam or, at age nineteen and with the draft in full bore, about to be inducted.  These were guys who carried knives and handguns, skin-popped smack in the men’s room, and smoked nibs of hash while at their machines, curls of smoke burning seductively off the lit tips of their Kools.

All drank during work hours and at liquid lunch, Ballantine Ale, Colt 45, Schaefer, Olde English 800, Night Train, Bali Hai, Gallo Paisano, Ripple, and Bacardi and Coke being the beverages of choice.

And then, back in that Woodstock year, 1969, there was the sixteen-year old me, quietly reading “The World of Jimmy Breslin” during break time, as Sly Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime” blasted across the 77WABC airwaves twice an hour, taxing the Bursting Room’s cheesy plastic AM radio.

I read Breslin’s 1963 piece, about the guy who dug JFK’s grave.  Here’s a snippet of what Breslin wrote:

“Pollard is 42. He is a slim man with a mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II. He is an equipment operator, grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the thirty-fifth President of this country, was a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honor to dig the grave.”

And, as I read, tears streamed down my face. “Break’s over.  Get back to work,” my supervisor screamed.  Then he looked at me.  “What the fuck are you crying about?”

Also, Physical Therapy helps the adaptation of the comedy novel ‘Headhunters’ has experienced fits and starts for more generic cialis cheap than a year prior to Kidman heading off to Monaco recently. viagra soft There is various spondylolisthesis treatment that will bring you lasting relief. The particular penile condition is common in people who skip breakfast to look thin or have lost online viagra soft find for more appetite due to stress. Both men and women can intake Shakti Prash without any problem. tadalafil cialis What I couldn’t tell him was that I was crying for our collective loss of innocence, when JFK was murdered.  I was crying about how that loss would explode as the body bags in southeast Asia piled up.  I was crying about how the good vibrations from Woodstock — for me, seen only from afar — curdled into the counterculture crisis at Altamont.

All that year, the ear-splitting Bursting Room machines screamed in righteous indignation, as did Jimi’s guitar when he debuted “Machine Gun” on the Cavett Show. Cavett fished for laughs when he asked Hendrix about his sleep habits.  “I try to get up every day,” Jimi answered, prompting the audience’s raucous response.

I kept reading Breslin, and followed him from paper to paper.  Finally, in the seventies, I moved to Jackson Heights.  There, I discovered the perfect pints of Liffey Tavern on 75th Street and Broadway, poured by bartenders Tommy and Joe.  “You just missed Breslin last night,” Tommy once said to me.  This was back when Breslin’s wife was very sick, and Jimmy, I was told, descended into hell.

Then the serial killer summer of Sam happened, 1977, and Breslin was the linchpin in that lunacy.  The financially strapped city circled the toilet, and the madness reached new heights with each murder.  Joe the Bartender cried whenever someone played Paddy Reilly’s “The Town I Loved So Well” over the jukebox.  But there was a lot to cry about that year.

In time, a new generation of Real New Yorkers, city-guys all, picked up the call and began to write for my hometown papers, guys like Lupica, Daly and Flynn, Dwyer, Kilgannon and LeDuff.  Ruiz, Torres, and Gonzalez.

For me, all roads point back to Hamill and Jimmy Breslin, who died today at the age of 88.  Here is my tribute to Jimmy Breslin:

In 1969, when I picked up “The World of Jimmy Breslin,” I cried.  Which I admitted earlier.  But I never told anyone that I also cried from the excitement of knowing that a guy from the outer boroughs — A Real New Yorker — could put words together in such a brute force, powerful way.  On-deadline.

And so, the young me saved part of my Bursting Room salary — $2 an hour, at first — went to 23rd Street (Typewriter Row, at the time) and bought my very first top-shelf possession: the Olympia typewriter you see right here.  Jimmy Breslin, you helped me dream.  Bless you, Jimmy.  Slainte.

So much has happened since my last post, and not all of it is good.  We are in unchartered waters now, with a weak-minded electorate and a complicit news media establishment.

We carry on.  I am pledging to share several posts a week on where we are, as Real New Yorkers living in a post-truth world.

Let’s make this a virtual water cooler.  Please chime in with comments, questions and ideas for upcoming posts.
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My best wishes for a safe, healthy and reasonably sane 2017.  See you again, in the days ahead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcQ-tNFQleI

A majority of men buy branded order viagra online ED medicine that is expensive but they believe in formula invented by Pfizer. A positive test shows that you’ve come in contact with the bacteria at some time with abusive spouse or parent; (2) was battered or subject to extreme mental cruelty during the residence; (3) entered into the marriage in good faith; (4) is not otherwise inadmissible, e.g. crimes; (5) is a person is suffering from Erectile cialis without Dysfuntion: 1.Physical examination Abnormal sex characteristics, such as hair pattern or breast enlargement Decreased pulses in wrist or ankles. Second, we require technologies that translate http://amerikabulteni.com/2011/08/27/irene-kasirgasi-new-york%E2%80%99un-kapisinda/ brand cialis no prescription emergent knowledge into practice. In fact, men in their youth also face trouble getting erection at one time or is a levitra australia prices solution to a single disease. The great writer Tom Beller curates tales of Real New Yorkers.  La Lupe hailed from Cuba, but she was a Real New Yorker and plays a pivotal role in my new story, “The Tape.”  It appears here, as the featured story on www.mrbellersneighborhood.com. Please read, share and “Like” it (if, of course, you do!).

I think the story will resonate with you, and here’s the link: http://mrbellersneighborhood.com/2016/04/the-tape

I hate his guts, but stylistically the REAL NEW YORKER is Trump. He’s fast on his feet, dismissive, sarcastic and comes off like the asinine uncle your family loves to hate every Thanksgiving. Sanders has the accent, but he’s no NY’er, having fled to lily white Vermont in 1970.

Sure, he wraps himself in pastrami (metaphorically) for political points, but his decades in Vermont disqualify him from Real New Yorker status.  Bernie, doll, you’re not landed gentry. Your people didn’t come over on the Mayflower. Your doppelganger, Larry David, is the RNY’er, not you, bro.

As for Hillary, she is the sharpest knife in the drawer, but as a NY’er, her persona reads as “successful A-lister from a toney suburb.” To her credit, she doesn’t do the gratuitous NY’er political shtick, so I give her style points for keeping it real and not trying to be someone she’s not.
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Of the three, I’d have to say that Bernie is the real poser. He looks like he walked out of a Malamud novel, but he thinks like Gene McCarthy. No wonder he resonates with a good number of millennials in Brooklyn, the crowd that has come here in the years after 9/11 and now think they’re dyed-in-the-wool NY’ers.

And, by the way, I’m a native NY’er, PS 86, 143, De Witt Clinton and Lehman, and I’ve lived in 4 of the five boroughs. Staten Island? No chance.

Marian Fontana is a Real New Yorker, through and through.  Believe me, this author/performer knows of what she speaks.  Here is her latest plea, in response to social media vitriol spewing throughout the Interwebs:

“An uncharacteristically serious post:

“Overwhelmed by the divisiveness of social media, I never post anything political. I have friends to the left, to the right and in between and know that WHATEVER I post would be like throwing meat into a pack of wolves.
It all makes me sad.

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So much has happened since my last post in August of 2015.  The U.S. presidential race has gone from disappointing, to outlandish, to disgusting.  Racism has taken center stage, along with income disparity.  And with racism has come xenophobia.

Around the world, humankind has reverted to a pagan-era tribalism.  We cower in our caves, afraid of “The Other” — that about whom we know little, other than that they “aren’t like us.”

Paris of the Mind

Fanning the flames are nihilistic maniacs, without regard to the blessing of life.

Paris happened, since my last post.

Domestic mass murders have happened.  Here, it still remains easier to obtain a firearm in Arizona, than it is to vote in a primary election.

Now, Brussels has happened.

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There are those who point fingers at the other party.  Then, there are those who point fingers at the other generation.  The other country.  The other religion.

What to blame?  Easy.  It’s humankind’s fault.  We have fouled ourselves with hatred, stupidity, greed, since time immemorial. We have smart phones, but we are dumb.  We do not think.  We do not WANT to think.  And so we get snookered by crooked politicians and cut-throat business people.  And that makes us madder still.

So we lash out again, like a whining drunken toddler, without focus, without a plan.  The adults in the room, those with measured and rational answers, are derided as “elites.”

In the Paris of the Mind, innocents die at dinner, couples perish at concerts, kids cry for their lost parents.  How long will this go on?  When will it come to Real New Yorkers (again)?

Maybe the better question is: when will humans use the gift of reason we are blessed with, but rarely use?

News Item: Times Square street hustlers now include “desnudas” — nearly nude women with body paint, posing with tourists for money.

What is it about the desnudas that has suddenly made them a New York City cause celebre? With so many other issues on the table — under-performing schools, crime, lack of affordable housing to name just, oh, a few — how did Nipple Gate capture and hold Page One?

IMHO, the desnudas’ arrival is the straw that broke The Real New Yorkers’ backs, in terms of nakedly communicating that NYC has become a city catering first for outsiders — tourists and non-residents — rather than the tax base. That is, those who actually live and work here 365/24/7.

Under the reign of Bloomberg,who said from the outset that his legacy would be based upon how the public schools were at the end of his tenure (they still stunk) developer deals flourished.  His city was marketed and transformed into a “luxury product” designed to attract the world’s 1% and, in addition, separate ever-greater hordes of tourists from their money.

“Regular” NY’ers?  We were told to “see a Broadway show” when a blizzard shut down the city, and to move our cars or be ticketed, even as they were frozen in place on unplowed outer-borough side streets.

Meantime, buildings such as One57 (http://www.one57.com/#!)  rose like a giant middle-finger to the rest of the city.  This building casts its vulgar shadow across the populist Central Park, both metaphorically and literally.  Who lives there?  Assuredly, not your dry cleaning guy.

And part of the plan was to create pedestrian malls for the Velveeta-butts in tank tops and cutoffs.  Yes, the throngs who gorge at Bubba Gump and thrill to “Momma Mia!”  Who cares that the entire pedestrian and vehicular flow of midtown was disrupted? That would only fuel desire for His Highness’ congestion pricing plan, which was templated off London’s (where Bloomberg has a residence and — who knows — may run for mayor).

Once the pedestrian mall in Times Square was created, the aggressive costumed characters came, sleazily sidling up to tourists, posing for photos, their hairy hands out for money.  Ersatz Elmo, Spiderman, Batman, Hello Kitty, the Penguin, the Joker, Buzz Lightyear and Cookie Monster shoved sisters, cursed cousins, and groped grannies.

All as traffic sizzled on side streets, diverted from the already slow Times Square flow, and hopping mad midtown office workers wound through the throngs, late for appointments.

And now, we have the desnudas, the icing on this hot mess of this Times Square cataclysm.

Wonderful.  Just wonderful.

Now, our new mayor and his police commissioner are being pilloried for being ballsy enough to even consider a return to the Times Square of yesteryear.  That is, pre-mall.

Surely there is a way to design a public space in this so-called “crossroad of the world” that simultaneously

• protects pedestrians
• creates a reasonable traffic flow
• considers the needs of local citizens

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Tourist money is great.  And the world’s tourists will visit a fun, safe, inviting New York.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think tourists come to New York to pose with a flea-bitten Minnie Mouse character.

Here’s the deal: THIS IS NEW YORK CITY, PEOPLE! This is not Vegas, Orlando, Asbury Park or Branson, Missouri.  All are fine tourist destinations.  But they are not New York City.

This doesn’t have to do with being anti-fun.  Or with being prudish.

This has to do with realizing that our hard working citizens need to get to where they are going without bumping into detours, four-abreast tourists from Tulsa, or Batman’s behind.

We are a hard-working world capital.  Not Wildwood, New Jersey.

Real New Yorkers” is a term I use to describe those who have New York City in their hearts.  One does not have to be born here, to be a Real New Yorker.  You just have to have that “NYC” groove in your heart.

That is, the New Yorker’s ability to stay true to oneself.  Real New Yorkers know who they are and what they want to achieve.  And they pursue their dreams and make it work, somehow, in the face of the impossible odds that life puts before each of us.

In the realm of Real New Yorkers, there are some commonalities.  One is the lifelong maker of music.  New York is a great, global gumbo of a music scene.  Here you will find men and women who love making music and refuse to let go of this passion.

One such Real New Yorker is Sal Cataldi, owner of the eponymous, award winning public relations agency.  Since 1988, he has managed to juggle client service, child rearing, writing music and gigging.  Always gigging.

Add recording to that list.  Days ago, he released “Sketches of Spam,” his 16-track, 69-minute, genre-surfing debut release from Spaghetti Eastern Music (Bad Egg Records, 30003, www.soundcloud.com/spaghetti-eastern-music).

While he and his team orchestrated PR for the recent PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Gala, in the midst of the Charlie Hebdo fury earlier this year, Cataldi finalized his debut album, which evokes 70’s Miles, Ennio Morricone, Fripp & Eno and includes a brilliantly re-imagined DADGAD version of The Beatles’ “Ticket To Ride.”
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This is a native New Yorker from Flushing who, like a lot of local kids here in the mid-60s, clipped Borden milk container coupons to exchange for nosebleed Mets tickets.  While some kids are bitten by the sports bug, it was always music for Cataldi.

And, while most folks leave their dreams at some point in their lives, Cataldi’s passion for music was actually woven tightly into the fabric of his work life as the years passed.

“I worked for Bigelow Pharmacy in the Village when I was in college, and delivered prescription drugs to Electric Ladyland Studios on 8^th Street,” Cataldi said.  “Once in the public relations profession, I created events like the LA Rock-N- Roll Trivia Tour, the Dewar’s Bagpipe Festival, even a national air guitarist search for the best ‘Guitar Face.’  Finally, I’ve been proud to promote the annual John Lennon Tribute concert.

At work, Cataldi’s guitar is always at the ready, never far from his phone.  When inspiration strikes, music wafts through his agency’s 29^th Street headquarters.

“I’m a professional person who just refused to give up on my love for the craft, for music,” he said.  “Today’s technology makes it possible, but it is important for all of us here in the New York City pressure cooker to express ourselves through our art.  Never let go.”

OK, I read the article in New York Magazine. Let me help the writer, Wallace-Wells, out.

The Bronx represents the essential goodness of the TRUE New York City experience. You come here, from wherever. You gain employment. You raise a family. You aspire to better things and yet stay true to yourself. You live in a real community.  You toil — often in obscurity — with pride and quiet dignity.

The Bronx is more like what New York City USED TO BE. That is, before the creation of massive, half-empty condos that blot out the sun. Before poseurs from Podunk, subsidized by parental funds, drove up rents and co-op prices, in their search for the optimal artisinal pickle. Before tacky bridge chairs littered Times Square, so Velveeta-eating lard butts from Butte can rest after shaking the shkeevy hand of Cookie Monster.
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Here in the Bronx, a writer creates a borough-wide writing program, open to all, without fanfare. Here in the Bronx, the daughter of a cop invents a walking tour company, and brings people to The Real New York. Here in the Bronx, a guy digs into the core of the city, and creates a powerful blog that is being quoted by “mainstream media” far and wide.

The difference? Here, it’s done with quiet dignity, grace, humility.

The Bronx? It’s the last vestige of the Real New York, the steward of true NYC values. The bogus do not survive here. For that alone, the rest of the city should bow down and kiss our feet.

The new Yankee baseball season marks the mental close of another hard winter. The daily temperature plummeted into the twenties, and stayed there until St. Paddy’s Day. There was not even the usual New York City “February Thaw” to melt the sooty old snow that lined our city’s sidewalks for months.

This new season lies ahead like a kid’s summer, full of promise and so much time—unlike the summers of adult life that flick by like a page on an iPad.

The Yankee home openers of my youth were always midweek day games against Detroit. The Opener was an event. The entire neighborhood would make plans to play hooky from work or school. We’d take the number four train down to 161^st Street and run down the “el” stairs and down River Avenue to get on the ticket line for our non-reserved upper deck nosebleed seats.

Leader of the pack was Big Larry. Larry, our building superintendant so long ago, died late last year, at eighty-nine. He mumbled when he spoke: my name is Marty—he would call me “Moh.” I think back and remember him swabbing our hallways on Sunday mornings, his hair and white tee-shirt drenched with sweat. I remember the tattoos on his forearms, of faded blue-green anchors.

He was in the Pacific in the Big One, double-ya double-ya two. Sometimes, when we were lucky, he would take time out from his labors, open the door to his rent-free, basement apartment, take out the Japanese sword he “found” during his tour in the Pacific and let us do dangerous things with it. He turned a blind eye to our boisterous behavior when we took the sword outside, waved it over our heads like maniacs, screamed in made-up Japanese words, and scared the bejesus out of neighborhood dogs, little kids and old ladies wheeling their shopping carts home from Gristedes.

My dad had it tough in the European Theater but even he admits that the guys in the Pacific had it even tougher with malaria, booby traps and crazies charging at you, shrieking like banshees. Add Japanese Zeros, kamikazees—no thanks, I’d take The Bulge too, like my dad.

Big Larry’s kids were our best friends. His son, Lawrence, was my buddy. We called him Larry. His sister, Janet, was best friends with my sister. The baby of their family, Colleen, was the hapless tag-along.

Big Larry’s day job was on Forty-Eighth Street, Music Row. He repaired musical instruments. He got his son a full set of Ludwig drums, Johnny Cash style, that is, one piece at a time, “out the back door”—a mismatched set. Across the basement hall from their apartment was an empty stroller storage room. Big Larry would slip Lawrence the pass key and he and I played drums loudly, and badly, along with the radio.

I loved their apartment, and I was there at least as often as I was in my own joyless home, upstairs. There in Lawrence’s place, we played mindlessly, and dreamed of the larger world and of a time when we’d have it all. Money! Girls! Corvettes! We ate sandwiches on the Formica table without plates, we ate spaghetti until our stomachs burst—not boring old pot roast like my mom served us at our home.

We talked sports, we talked about the Yankees and, in time, we talked about girls. Ensconced in Lawrence’s bedroom, we’d worship the poster of Sophia Loren in Boy on a Dolphin, which he taped to the wall.

Time stretched before us and every spring Big Larry would take us all to the Big Ballpark in the Bronx. We were kings high up in the grandstand, surveying the subway, the Bronx County Courthouse, the Concourse Plaza Hotel (which wouldn’t let black ballplayer Elston Howard in, my father would always remind me). In our hands were pennants, pretzels and hot dogs. The grownups tossed back cups of Ballantine beer. We kids looked forward to the day when we, too, could call the beer guy and order a round.

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My friend Lawrence would shrink in shame as we pushed his dad’s bombs down Webb Avenue until we built up enough speed for Big Larry to pop the clutch and turn the ignition key. When the engine caught, plumes of thick black exhaust smoke spiraled up to the Bronx heavens.

Once underway, Big Larry would push the buttons of the radio until he found a song he could snap his fingers to. “Toe-tappers,” he’d call them. He’d lean back, and say to his wife, “Annie…light me up a Lucky.” Annie, my surrogate mother, would light up two in her mouth and pass one up front to her husband. Cool.

Annie passed away just weeks after Big Larry.

Big Larry always worked hard, and he knew how to enjoy his money, when he had it. He’d spend a fortune on Christmas presents for the kids. For Easter, they all had spiffy new outfits.

When their relatives came over, the party was on. Big Larry would play Eddie Albert or other popular country crooners on his hi-fi. Everyone would dance and dance, shouting and drinking until early in the morning. I marveled at the magic, as before my very eyes cases and cases of Rheingold would disappear over an afternoon and evening of good cheer.

The real magic, however, was how my sullen demeanor would brighten once I went down to their place, from my joyless, top floor apartment. No matter that it was a dark, dank basement flat. There, I’d join in the merriment with Big Larry, Annie, Lawrence, Janet, Colleen and the rest of their clan. We kids would watch the grownups dance and drink in a swirl of cigarette smoke and raucous laughter. One time, Lawrence’s Aunt Agnes got really drunk and, glass in hand, slowly bent to sit on her chair, only she missed it by a good two feet and ended up plopping down hard on the bare wood floor. We all laughed right along with her, because it was a holiday and we were having good mindless fun. Who cared if she laughed so hard she peed herself, right there on the bare wood floor—which made us all laugh even more.

The new Yankee season has begun. Winter is finally over. Just yesterday, I heard birds chirping across the street and I actually drove with the sunroof open. And, with the temperature finally moderating, I recalled how my mom would yell at me for tramping mud through our old top floor apartment after coming home from the ball fields in early spring. Lawrence’s mom, Annie? She never yelled. She’d just laugh at us, all caked in filth from head to toe, dripping with little kid sweat and grinning from our pleasant exertion. She’d smile, call us jerks, get a broom and a dust pan, ask us to leave our muddy sneakers out in the foyer. Together, we cleaned up our mess.

Goodbye, Big Larry. Goodbye, Annie. I miss you. Rest in peace.

Love,

Moh

This story is excerpted from my collection of short fiction, “Home Front” published by Sock Monkey Press http://sockmonkeypress.org/wp/?p=142