Paul LaRosa/Here is New York

Hot down, summer in the city...

Okay, I know tourists love sitting on those ugly plastic lawn chairs in Times Square but, as a native New Yorker, I hate it! There, I've said it. Times Square is for cars. There's something downright unnatural about people sitting on lawn chairs there, not that I can see any reason why anyone would want to. (continue reading)

If you think this real estate market is bad....

There's been worse....I was reminded of that when I read a recent column by real estate expert Barbara Corcoran. Corcoran claims that in 1974 -- in an even worse real estate market -- a seller who lived in the famous Dakota Apartments approached her with a unique offer. He had a 14-room apartment in the building with park views and he wanted to unload it. The price? (continue reading)

Remembering Co-Op City...

There's a relatively new book out that examines what it was like to grow up in Co-op City, not too far from where I lived in the Bronx. I always wondered about those behemoths near City Island and I bet a lot of you have too. That's why this book,"The Bookmaker: A Memoir of Money, Luck and Family from the Utopian Outskirts of New York" by Michael J. Agovino, is a revelation. The bookmaker in question is Agovino's father. He's a larger than life character but so is Co-Op City. Beautifully written. I recently posed some questions to Agovino about his book and he was kind enough to send me his responses. (continue reading)

Happy Father's Day Dad...

This is a photo of my father when he was 18 years old, after he was drafted out of high school to fight for the U.S. Army during World War II. So young, probably so scared, but...it was one of the highlights of his life. He spoke of it often and...(continue reading)

Give up that subway seat....

The NY Times Wednesday ran a blog item on that age-old problem of people not giving up their subway seats to the pregnant, elderly and infirm. Believe it or not, it happens every day. I see it, and I've formulated my own rules on how I behave. I immediately....(continue reading)

When you walk in Park Slope, ya never know...

Here are three photos I took Saturday morning with my cell phone as I walked to the farmer's market in my nabe -- Park Slope, Brooklyn. (continue reading)

Hey, let me in!

Every day, I walk by the gorgeous and green Hearst Tower which rises majestically on the corner of W. 57th Street and 8th Avenue. It's been called "the most beautiful skyscraper to go up in New York since 1967," by the New Yorker Magazine. (continue reading...)

No extraneous trash & he means it!!

New Yorkers are particular about their trash -- especially when it comes to other people. Eighth Street in Park Slope, between 7th and 8th Avenues, is one of the prettiest blocks in NYC. Nearly every brownstone has a lovely display of flowers and plants. But then you get to the end of the block and, if there was a Soup Nazi, then this guy is the Trash Nazi...
(continue reading)

An amazing piece of New York....

I'm talking about the humble subway turnstile. Really!

Imagine if I told you that I was going to devise a transportation system used by millions of people each day and that everyone of those people would have to use the same way in and same way out -- at the same time.

What??!! You'd tell me I was insane, that it would never work! (continue reading)

Sonia Sotomayor....from "my Bronx"

I read all the newspaper stories today about Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, and while they all mentioned her Catholic School education at Cardinal Spellman High School, not one mentioned that — for the EIGHT years before that — she attended Blessed Sacrament School on Beach Avenue. So did I — at the same time.

(continue reading at www.paullarosa.com/blog)

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Please check there for my latest entries. I think that will be easier for everyone to remember. Thank you for reading my blog.

Paul

Who says NYC is an expensive town?

Not when it has bargains like this!! Photo was taken Wednesday across the street from Carnegie Hall. Oh, and the hot dog does come with a bun and catsup and mustard etc. 

The NY Times today is featuring other "recession photos" taken from around the world. 

Okay so I'm addicted to "Real Housewives of NY"....

....at least the cat fights anyway. I can't say this is a great TV show but it is great television, if that makes any sense. 

I know that a lot of the conversations these women have are set up, but the reason it's irresistible television is because the "housewives" (and the producers are using this term loosely) cannot avoid showing their true colors. My personal favorite is Bethenny (pictured) because the lines that come out of her mouth are so funny and so NYC. 

She was upset with Kelly (the world's oldest model next to Janice Dickenson...meow) because Kelly would not allow her name to be put on an invitation for an arthritis charity. To which Bethenny said: "Oh please, I've seen her name on Chinese menus."

It just popped right out of her mouth. You go Bethenny!

Why can't escalators be adjusted for rush hour?

  Every day when I see this situation at the Columbus Circle subway stop, I think to myself, "They should reverse those escalators so that both go up during the morning rush, or down during the afternoon rush."

Now you may think I have too much time on my hands...or maybe, like me, you think it's a good idea. Of course, my plan presumes that the Columbus Circle escalators both work...and they almost never both work at the same time. I don't know why but escalators in the subways seem always to be broken.

Why can't these escalators be like the granddaddy of all escalators -- the wooden ones in Macy's Herald Square that have been working pretty well since 1927!!

If there are any other wooden escalators in NYC, I'd like to know about them.

Of boys and arrows.....

  The strangest thing happened in the Bronx last week -- a woman in Riverdale, just standing in a driveway minding her own business -- suddenly got hit by an arrow fired from who knows where. Now a lot of people get shot in the Bronx, more get stabbed, but hardly anyone gets hit with an arrow! At least not these days.

But the story brought me back to another time in the Bronx, back when I lived in the James Monroe Housing Projects in the Soundview section. It was the mid-60's and believe it or not, the Bronx was like a wilderness. Really.

The surrounding lots, which had once been farmland, were undeveloped and had been left to lay fallow for decades. In the middle of all these lots, the city built James Monroe, and when my family moved there in the 60's, there was very little surrounding the projects except for these lots.

My friends and I wandered through these lots every chance we got. We spent days in there, and our parents had no idea where we were going or what we were doing, and I don't recall anyone worrying about that too much. What we found in those lots were honest-to-God tar pits that had been there who knows how long. We took turns throwing everything from rocks to car batteries into those pits, and every single object sunk, never to be seen again.

Those lots were wild, so wild that rabbits and pheasants were running around everywhere, and this is where the arrow story connects to my story. A few of us got the bright idea to buy bows and arrows from the nearby E.J. Korvette's department store so we could hunt the rabbits and pheasants. The salesman at Korvette's had no problem selling actual bows and metal-tipped arrows to 12 year old boys and so off we went on the hunt.

We never hit a single rabbit or pheasant but I did once hit a friend of mine in the thigh. He looked at the arrow for a moment, yelled at me, and then pulled it out and kept on walking. It was a different time.

My mother has met the digital TV conversion....

  ...and suffice it to say she does not like it.

Who can blame her? When she was younger -- as in this photo when she posed with our family's first TV set in the 1950's -- televisions were relatively simple and my mother likes them that way. (mom was probably 30 years old then; these days she is older)

It's not for nothing (as we say in Brooklyn) that, up to today, her television set was a 30-year-old piece of furniture that she got free from a bank for opening a checking account. Boy, that does seem like a long time ago in bank years.

That television was perfectly fine with her. It had the basic channels, did not need cable, and did not come with a remote. That's how I get my exercise, she's fond of telling her children.  

I tried to prepare her for the digital conversion but she's confounded by it.

Why do I have to change my television?

Well, mom, because it's so old that there is nowhere to plug in the digital conversion box.

My brother and I tried to jerry-rig the damned thing but the end result was that there were more wires coming out the back of that set than Phillipe Petit used to walk across the Twin Towers.

And the reception got worse. So today I presented mom with a new digital television over her objections. I told her it was an early mother's day present. She kind of liked it but wanted to know: What happened to Channel 13?

[For more from this blogger, click here.]

It was among the missing because my mother has put her foot down -- under no circumstances will she accept cable television, whether we pay for it or not. So I was reduced to buying her a digital antenna but, along the way, Channel 13 disappeared. Wouldn't you know it? That's her favorite channel!!

Never mind that most of the channels come in amazingly sharp. The other problem is that the reception on Channel 7 is lacking also.

That's my other favorite station!!

Well mom, we can get you cable.

Forget it. Why is the government doing this to me??!!

I don't know mom.

So anyway, we're waiting for the full digital conversion to take place in June and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Channel 13 will reappear!! Oh, and my mother does not like the new-fangled remote control either!!

How will I get my exercise??

Below is my mother today with her new digital set. She was only smiling for the camera.

Why the Kindle 2 is an amazing tool for writers....

 

I'm in the process of writing a book and one thing I do when I'm writing -- and so do a lot of other writers -- is read my prose aloud to make sure it has a certain rhythm that I intended. If a sentence sounds clunky to the ear, it needs a rewrite.

I got the bright idea this morning that I would email my book-in-progress to my Kindle 2, and then use the audio function to listen to it. In minutes, I was able to listen to my book-in-progress. Kindle 2 had turned it into an audio book immediately. Now that's impressive! The semi-robotic voice is not perfect but it's better than you might expect, and it's interesting to listen to someone else read your words out loud -- for no cost!

This new audio feature of the Kindle 2 has raised concerns with the AuthorsGuild because no one is paying authors for the right to turn their printed books into audiobooks, as opposed to when publishers create audiobooks which is a lucrative market. I'm not convinced that this Kindle 2 feature will cut into the audiobook market but you can read the NY Times op-ed piece on this here.

Cafe Grumpy coming to Park Slope....

Hot off the presses. Apparently, Cafe Grumpy -- which serves one of the best cups of coffee in the city -- is coming to Park Slope, on 7th Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets, according to my friend who I'll call Fast Bike Racer. 

This is great news for Park Slope generally and me specifically since I live not far away, and the area is sorely in need of someone/anyone who can make a decent cup of coffee. The reported opening will be in May.

 The photo is from the Cafe Grumpy photostream on Flickr. The cafe has two other locations, on 20th Street in Chelsea, and another in Brooklyn on Meserole Avenue.  

One thing I love about NYC...

...are hotel lobbies. I mean really nice hotel lobbies.

It's one of my secret pleasures of NYC, to just people watch in a big hotel lobby, or alternately, to sit quietly in the plush surroundings and read a newspaper and have a cup of coffee in the mornings. I don't think most NY'ers know how tranquil this can actually be.

Today, I was early for work so I stopped in at a hotel lobby in the area, sat in front of a fireplace in this huge quiet room, sipped my cappacino, and read the NY Times. It was a great way to start the day. And here are the pix, taken with my new handy, dandy Blackberry 8900....that's my Starbucks, btw.

 

Snow melts, yes it does. My backyard picnic table....

During Monday's snowstorm and.....

....three days later....

Looks good but don't start lacing those sneakers....

 

This photo is an example of all the city does right and all it does wrong. What you're looking at is the inside of the Park Slope Armory which is on 8th Avenue and 14th Street in Brooklyn.

The city has spent $16 million to convert the inside of the humongous shelter into this wondrous sports facility. It is supposed to be an adult fitness center, and also an after-school center for children. Right now, the rest of the armory (the part not shown) remains what it's been for years now -- a shelter for homeless women. 

It was a great idea to convert the empty space to what is pictured above. The only problem is that this state of the arts sports facility has been finished since 2007 and it's still not open! It's been sitting there, looking real purdy like this, for nearly two years, waiting for someone, anyone, to run around that track.

Negotiations between the city and the YMCA -- the only vendor the city could find to operate the center -- has been mired in minute details. The promised opening is now May but I can't help wondering if the center will remain what it's been since it was finished -- a mirage.

Le Metro, it ain't....

So this is what my subway stop in Brooklyn looks like. I took this photo today and while most days, it makes no impact, today I noticed and wondered to myself how the NYC subways can be in such poor condition when the Paris Metro is in such beautiful condition. Both cities have large populations that use the subway constantly. Why must ours look like this? 

And to think the MTA is talking about raising fares and cutting service -- all at a time when more people are using mass transportation than ever before. What is wrong with this picture? 

Oh and this is what Le Metro looks like in most stations:

Ah, to get a flat tire...

 

Believe me, there are many things I do not like about New York but getting a flat tire is not one of them. Oddly enough, in this city where parking must be plotted out like war strategy and going to a movie requires careful thinking, getting a tire fixed is one of the joys of life.

I almost look forward to getting a flat because I know how easy it will be to fix. Today was one of those days. My tire looked suspiciously low so I knew what I had to do -- cruise down Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn until I spotted the orange cones in front of one of any number of stores that advertise "flat fix."

It's never "flats fixed," mind you. Always, "flat fix." It's kind of like a franchise of hard workers with bad grammar but who cares.

I pull up in front of the store, and a man runs out immediately so he can move the orange cones illegally placed in front of his store for customers like myself. Hey, I'm not complaining, not when I'm benefiting.

"Buenas dias," I say, showing off two of the 10 Spanish words I know.

"Buenas dias," he says.

I say nothing more. He knows what to do. Out comes the jack, the power drill to remove the lug nuts, and within two minutes, he is inside his shop diagnosing the problem. I take a couple of photos with my cell phone (see above) and out he comes.

"Nail," he says.

I nod. The tire is already plugged, pumped full of air and ready to go back on the car.

"Quanto?"

"Five," he says.

Five dollars??!! For such great service. I pay almost as much for a stupid cappuccino at Starbucks and wait far longer. I give him a $10, feeling good about the service, myself, and my newly inflated tire.

I can't wait until this happens again.

Back from the lake...

 

For a week, this is what I saw when I awoke each morning. I was living on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, near a remote village where there were no ATM machines and business was transacted without the aid of credit cards. I was not even aware there were still places like that but there I was. 

No all-news radio, no newspapers, no news, period. It was blissful. 

I knew it couldn't last but I didn't think it would end so precipitously. When I woke up this morning in Brooklyn, I thought, when I opened my eyes, that I might yet see that volcano across the lake, the volcano rumored to be the very one that inspired Antoine St. Exupery to write Le Petit Prince. 

That fantasy came crashing down when I remembered something I was trying to forget -- I had to find a spot for my car because of alternate side of the street parking. Vacation was at an end. I pulled on some clothes and off I went. 

Goodbye view, goodbye volcano, goodbye breakfast at the lake. 

Back to reality and hello parking. I did find a parking spot so I guess I should be pleased.

Best of NYC....a really cheap breakfast....

Magazines, like this month's ultra-slick Manhattan magazine, knock themselves making lists of reasons why we should love NYC. I have my own list and it's decidedly different from their's. 

I'm going to run my own list in dribs and drabs when I can but here's one reason to love NYC: you can get a really cheap breakfast on the run. In the morning all over NYC, you can grab a coffee and giant pastry on nearly corner thanks to those ubiquitous coffee carts that seemingly appear and disappear every day between the hours of 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. Where do they come from? Where do they go? Who knows… 

All I know is that they're old reliables, hawking decent coffee for a dollar, and nutritious (?) pastries and muffins for slightly more. It's an authentic NY breakfast for busy A-types on the go....and it's healthy. Well, not really, but what do you want for $2? Check them out in midtown…who needs a $4 Starbucks when you have these guys?