The City

Someone who knows that I've quoted Pete Hamill on several occasions Tweeted me that Mr. Hamill has a piece in the December issue of National Geographic. The essay, 'New New York' is accompanied by a series of absolutely stunning photographs by George Steinmetz, that as good as Pete's prose is, actually upstage the words. I think Pete would agree. Or, maybe not.

There are three Pete Hamill moments I like to recount. One has to do with his quote from a forward on a collection of obituaries, that "life is the leading cause of death."

Another has to do with his reminiscence of when he was at the now closed Lion's Head Pub and someone dropped dead of a heart attack at a table near him and someone else immediately asked the waitress, "what did he have?"

The third is not in print, but when Pete appeared on the stage at the Warren Street Barnes and Noble in April 2011 with other writers as part of a promotion for an anthology of boxing stories, "At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing" he commented on his dislike for mixed martial arts competition. He said he's seen better fights at a Puerto Rican/Italian wedding. Only an authentic New Yorker could boast of having been invited to one of those. (Considering the shellacking Ronda Rousey took in losing her MMA championship in the second round to Holly Holm recently, Mr. Hamill must have seen some real donnybrooks at the catering hall.)

Viewing the National Geographic piece online, which is where I first dove into it, the photographs are incredible on a large desktop computer screen.  I remember someone once commenting about the photos in National Geographic that they are so clear and detailed that they could make a photo essay on water pollution seem like water you'd want to drink.

But, valuing tangibility over suspect cyberspace online permanence, I had to go out and buy a copy of the issue. Luckily, I found it today at the local supermarket. In the suburban hamlet I live in, the corner "candy store" makes a total living selling lottery tickets and tobacco products. They don't even carry magazines, but do carry newspapers.

This won't be the first time Mr. Hamill's prose has inspired me to add my own. Two of the worst days of my life, and also the luckiest, occurred in Manhattan at my place of work. The first was being in Tower One when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The lucky part, was getting out only slightly damp with a small layer of dust after getting down from the 29th floor.

The second was the more dramatic, if you can imagine that. Being there when my Vice President executed my two co-workers on September 16, 2002 at Empire BlueCross BlueShield at what was our temporary workplace at 1440 Broadway. He immediately took his own life, leaving three very bloody bodies in the office on the other side of where I sat. The lucky part, was of course not being chosen by John Harrison to be one of his victims.

It was after those shootings that I ached to write something. And I did. Approximately a 9,000 word narrative that I attached to a cover letter to Mr. Hamill at the address of his most recent publisher, Little, Brown & Co.. I had been reading Mr. Hamill's 'Downtown: My Manhattan' and he seemed an appropriate person to send such a narrative to.

I never heard from Mr. Hamill, but of course I don't know if that's because he didn't want to answer, or just plain didn't get mail sent to his publisher. He wasn't the first author who never answered me. Nor the last. In fact, the person who did respond is the same person who has now told me about the National Geographic piece. It is a connected world.

I'm not sure, but my suspicions are that person may have anticipated I'd write something of my own after reading Mr. Hamill's latest. After all, Mr. Hamill and I are both what I would call authentic New Yorkers. We were both born in New York City of parents who worked there, were educated in either public or Catholic schools, worked in Manhattan for decades, and remember nearly the same mayors and police commissioners.

Mr. Hamill does recognize that his musings might be perceived as just another lament from "another old guy fighting off a longing for a lost past." How could they not be? But at least he doesn't dwell on it and drag his heels. Eventually, current times are somebody else's long ago memories.

I just had two photos digitally restored. One is from a slide I took in 1975 of the Greek Church on Cedar Street with the towers of the World Trade Center in the background. I distinctly remember that when I took the picture I would be back taking more. I never did, and now of course I can't. I had an extra copy made and plan to give it to a Greek priest at the new church that is being built near the old site.

The other picture is one I took from the mezzanine level of the Blarney Stone at 162 Madison Avenue after a lunch hour in 1975. I had just gotten a 35mm SLR camera and was very excited about taking pictures.

A few years after taking the photo I realized that the fellow who appears in almost Alfred Hitchcock shadow in the upper left, by the door, is someone my wife and I became very good friends with, who became the Godfather for our second daughter. The friendship of course evolved after the many rounds of Budweiser and elbow bending that we did in those days. He passed away in 2011, but we were friends with he and his wife to the end. I still stay in touch with his now adult children and will be sharing extra copies I made of the prescient photo.

Mr. Hamill talks of being a walker, a flaneur of the city, and that he never learned to drive until he was 36. I still haven't learned to drive, and at this point purposely won't. I too see what was there if it isn't still there.

I still see that Blarney Stone, although it was long ago replaced by 'Twin Jays' Korean deli/fruit stand, and now with the entire half block replaced by one of the slender high rises that Mr. Hamill talks about. Thus, I go back two iterations.

I still see the Twin Towers. I see where the family flower shops were: for over 50 years no more than a block separated the three locations. I see the other florists who we dealt with. All gone. I see where I first worked full-time in Manhattan, 2 Park Avenue. It's still there, and I get a haircut just west of the building on 32nd Street. I was there on Wednesday, and still get into the city when dental and other needs require.

My favorite time of the year for sidewalk gazing has always been after the clocks go back and it's dark at around 4:30, 4;50 in the afternoon and people around Gramercy Park still haven't closed their blinds or shades, and you can see in quite easily at their domestic life and furnishings.

I still look up and see the stenciled, faded signs that advertised handbag emporiums. But of course the skyline has changed. Has it ever. The National Geographic piece has a great pullout insert that shows the city to be a great long key, with mostly high, and some low cuts in its profile. Whenever I take the LIRR into the city I always look up just before the train heads into the East River tunnel and my ears still pop, and I marvel at how much it has changed, and at how much it really does look like an enormous bar graph with thin bars of various heights along an x-axis.

I remember the start of Mr. Hamill's 'Downtown' when a trip to the City (Manhattan is always the City) is described as going to Oz and the Emerald City. Flushing, Queens, where I grew up, now has a skyline of its own.

Mr. Hamill correctly points out that the current spate of building are engineering marvels more than architectural marvels. This is true. My thought is that someday someone will make one of those slender towers rotate floor by floor, leaving the place a bit chock-a-block like some unsolved Rubik's Cube.

This will set off titanic New York-style real estate lawsuits over who gets to face the fireworks on those floors where someone doesn't occupy the whole floor. The height of these building is necessitated by first being able to be that high, and most importantly, to be that high to shoulder out the view of anyone else.

He may be wrong though that these new buildings will not give New York PTA members or school board appointees. I remember getting physical therapy at a place on 23rd Street in the back of a New York Sports Club gym where local people were also having their kinks worked out. I heard plenty of public school, children talk from patients, as well as the owner, who lived in the Waterside complex of buildings on the East River by Bellevue. Of course, these are the more residential dwellings of people rather than the status symbol dwellings of the occupants of the towering towers, who probably aren't moving in with a complete set of Legos, back packs and kids with runny noses.

But just recently the mothers of the area probably near where Mr. Hamill now calls home (a loft in Tribeca. Not bad Pete.) protested for more crossing guards for their kids. These aren't people living on the 88th floor, but they're not in five story walkups either.  But they do have kids, and are worried about their safety.

As estranged as my father and I were, I can rarely stop thinking of him whenever I think about New York. He was born in 1915, 100 years ago, at a walkup on 2nd Avenue and 33rd street. He finished his life out in Washington, D.C., being made to move there after the Brooklyn Navy Yard closed in 1964.

Despite his near religious adherence to weekly visits back on weekends, I always think he should have never left New York. But the job and the pension took him away. I was in high school, and I chose not to follow him, opting for the cot at my grandmother's, four blocks from Stuyvesant High School. A cot on 19th Street was better than a view of the Capitol.

It wasn't that long ago that I read that Mr. Hamill was living in Mexico. He mentions residence there, but doesn't say when.

At eighty, he's certainly returned for a victory lap.

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