Tag Archives: manhattan

Validating a Memory: The Neptune Raincoat Company

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

  I was thinking about my father: he was a laborer. That’s what my mother said. I never knew what the words meant until later in my childhood, but I understood the memory of an image at a young age. I knew, for years, that my father worked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, south of where we lived, on East Broadway and Canal Street. Somewhere, down there. I knew that he worked for The Neptune Raincoat Company. I remembered that in my early teens, while I was in Junior High School 104, that my father traveled to Elizabeth, … Continue reading →

The Green Coat

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

  Shopping in 1939, before my time: Union Square, Manhattan. S. Klein’s On The Square   I mentioned in another post that I grew up on East 14th Street in Manhattan and that I am admin for a group of over 1200 nostalgic former Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village kids who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. This blog post on shopping and the stores in our neighborhood reflects a post series I began on this area: The Automat, Union Square (restaurants and stores). S. Klein article [ And, I just realized, that the author of the article was … Continue reading →

How One Store Can Bring Back Your Childhood

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

  I am the admin for a 1200+ member group on Facebook; we are a group of reminiscers of the place where we grew up. Stuyvesant Town. A development, a community, built by The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in the late 1940s, built for the WWII veterans who came home to a housing shortage. So, I am one of 1200+ kids who were lucky enough to have grown up there, despite its faults, and I could name a few, (you might just have to read my book), but for now  I will only share the magic of remembrance, the goodness … Continue reading →

Nostalgia: On Baby Ducklings and Rye Bread

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

Near the corner of East 14th Street and Avenue B there was an entrance to a store that was recessed from the building line and had two pillars; the façade was covered in red and mirror mosaics, making the entrance a bit hidden from the rest of the store doorways, but it beckoned in its exoticism.   When I pulled the door open I was hit by the odor of sugar and bread. Bakery products were made in the store, not in some central commissary; the smell was magic and this was my version of a Proustian madeleine, evoking my … Continue reading →

NYC Photo Journal: New York Stories: Seeing My City As A Traveler (travel module)

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

Seeing what is familiar with a foreign eye iPhone Photography Academy Travel Module All photos taken with iPhone 6s and edited on iPhone or iPad The Annual Strawberry Festival at the Zion Episcopal Church, Douglaston, NY   2. The Day of the Puerto Rico Day Parade     3.  From the 14th Floor of The Hilton Garden Inn, Times Square, 8th Avenue   4. When store windows cross the line     5. Dodging construction, garbage and traffic   6. To the Javits Center, World Stamp Show   7. Theater District   8. Men and Women in Black   9. … Continue reading →

NYC Photo Journal: Street Photography Module

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

7th and 57th Basically anything “out there” is street photography. Always my favorite. I have achieved the ability to “shoot from the hip” (without looking), shooting with my phone looking totally innocuous. Try me. The subway, NYC Nassau County, Long Island     The Neue Gallerie, 5th Avenue at 86th Street     Upper East Side, Manhattan editing process: the front of my car is removed, the items removed from subject’s hand, umbrella handle extended down, street cleaned, filters added. 59th Street Bridge (Ed Koch Bridge) into Manhattan   Buildings, Reflections, More   Driving by a busy street in Manhattan, … Continue reading →

NYC Photo Journal: Back to The High Line For The Extension

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

  Please refer to this post, written in 2009 when the Highline first opened, for the back-story and photographs: click>>>NYC Photo Journal: The High Line: abandoned rail in the sky becomes a park Click>>>Link to updated map and info The Highline has been lengthened to The Javits Center at 11th Avenue and 34th Street. At 2oth Street there is now an entrance. Once the hike upstairs is made, there are views on both sides: the Hudson River, and the Meatpacking District. (The lower west side of Manhattan) On the weekend it was packed with tourists, but the lovely wild flower … Continue reading →

NYC Photo Journal: 4. April, and It’s Still Cold…Except For The Jazz

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

Will Winter never end? Three cultural events in four days: Twice at Carnegie Hall and an evening of jazz at Flushing Town Hall. More; an afternoon at The Museum of the Moving Image, a viewing of “The Woman in Gold.” (highly recommended as well as a trip to The Neue Galerie to see the original Klimt portrait.)   Flushing Town Hall, NEA Jazz Masters, Jimmy Heath and orchestra        

Continue reading →

NYC Photo Journal: Sabarsky to Shiele and The Wurst That Can Happen

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

    One of my favorite New York City museums is the lovely gem: The Neue Gallerie/Museum for German and Austrian Art. The museum is in a former townhouse; the museum is located at the Southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and East 86th Street, across from Central Park. But in order to look at and appreciate fine art, one must fill one’s stomach, so on the line one goes for about thirty minutes to get a table at Café Sabarsky on the first floor (my preference) or Café Fledermaus in the basement, where one can soak up the Austrian atmosphere … Continue reading →

Scenes From A Marriage, in Triplicate

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

In 1974, Roger Ebert called  Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from A Marriage  “one of the truest, most luminous love stories ever made.” It makes us re-examine the nomenclature of love. “His married couple are Swedish upper-middle-class. He is a professor, she is a lawyer specializing in family problems (for which, read divorce). They have two daughters, who remain off screen. They are intelligent, independent. She truly believes their marriage is a happy one (although she doesn’t much enjoy sex). One evening, he comes to their summer cottage and confesses that he has gone and fallen in love with someone else. There is … Continue reading →

NYC Photo Journal: Food Before Thought on The Lowa East Side

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

  A pre-theater dinner on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, not far where I grew up and where I went to High School. This is where poor immigrants once lived and climbed five flights of stairs. The Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Germans, Italians. Now the cool and trendy are live where the poor once lived,  at magnificent, unaffordable rents. The old store fronts now house trendy restaurants, shops and theaters. The old Yiddish theaters have long-been taken over by the present. This area has joined the other gentrified, high-rent Manhattan neighborhoods. Dinner at Ballaro 77 2nd Avenue between 4th and … Continue reading →

293. NYC: From Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan: A visual essay and a prelude…

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

Red Hook, Brooklyn. Labor Day, 2008. This area had been neglected, was run down, seedy, and not very visitable. It’s main landmark was a city housing project. And then something wonderful happened. The Swedish home furnishings company know as IKEA, stepped in and did wonders. In return for its waterfront property it created Erie Basin Park, a free water taxi service to lower Manhattan (to lure over Manhattan-ites). The great thing is, anyone can use the taxi service, and they do, to go to work or to get to Manhattan. Many people forget, including the city government, that New York … Continue reading →

300. New York City Photo Journal: Manhattan doin’s: 9/21/08

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

Sunday, September 21, 2008. We celebrated the first day of Fall in Manhattan. We had theater tickets in hand as we luckily found a parking spot–yes, in Manhattan on a Sunday. To make the city all the more interesting, there was a street fair, and you know what that means; food. And plenty to see and smell. We explored the street fair a little but decided to have lunch in a more quiet nearby area where we could sit and be served. New York City is the Sunday Brunch capital of the world; you’ll find the thousands of restaurants full … Continue reading →

[293.] NYC Photo Journal: From Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan: A visual essay and a prelude…

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

Red Hook, Brooklyn. Labor Day, 2008. This area had been neglected, was run down, seedy, and not very visitable. It’s main landmark was a city housing project. And then something wonderful happened. The Swedish home furnishings company know as IKEA, stepped in and did wonders. In return for its waterfront property it created Erie Basin Park, a free water taxi service to lower Manhattan (to lure over Manhattan-ites). The great thing is, anyone can use the taxi service, and they do, to go to work or to get to Manhattan. Many people forget, including the city government, that New York … Continue reading →

Theater: The Whipping Man: at what point does slavery end?

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

Theater: The Whipping Man: at what point does slavery end? Recently my cold, snow-filled Winter was melted by the Manhattan Theater Club’s production of The Whipping Man, a new play by a new playwright, Matthew Lopez. Mr. Lopez, a New Yorker is the son of a Puerto Rican father and a Polish-Russian mother. His unusual theme about a Jewish Confederate soldier and the slaves who were raised as Jews is a gripping historic profile of possibilities. He raised the parallel between the Jewish and African slavery experience and shone a light on the Jewish presence in this country during the … Continue reading →

[586.] NYC Photo Journal: A visit to the WTC site: Part a: The Guide

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

On July 11, 2012 I visited the site of the World Trade Center; I had visited before when one could only peer through the fence and shudder, when foreigners would line up and take photos of one another against the background of devastation and restriction. I watched over the years as the debris was cleared. I watched every memorial, listened to every name. I cried for people I never met and for the families that will forever miss them. But visiting at this point, with the dust gone along with the shards and blood stains, was a surreal experience. One … Continue reading →

587. New York City Photo Journal: Part 2: Observations and Photographs

Cerebral Jukebox Magazine Posted on by

In the preceding post, I replicated the guide to the World Trade Center Site. It contains a lot of fascinating information about what was, is and will be. The story of the survivor tree is one to be remembered. Just so you understand the sequence of the photographs there are three groups: A: a walk around Battery Park City and a visit to the atrium that has been reconstructed B: the visit to the WTC site: as you view the photos, just keep reminding ourself of the scale of the people against the buildings and the pools C: and Zucotti … Continue reading →