May 2008

It’s never hip or cool to be a nostalgist. I’ve always been a nostalgist, and have never cared about being hip. I return to Bay Ridge frequently. But when I lived…

Coney Island Avenue is among Brooklyn’s lengthiest routes, extending from Ocean Parkway and Parkside Avenue where Prospect Park meets the Parade Grounds and runs generally straight south all the way…

FNY has spent too little time in the Bronx over the years — without making excuses, it’s a ways from Flushing and Little Neck. I do have a backlog of…

What you see here is Bay Ridge’s main drag…for most of the 19th Century, that is. Stewart Avenue (it likely takes that name from a landowner along its route) once…

It’s fairly easy to walk Wyckoff Avenue in Brooklyn and Queens from one end to the other, and it can be done in about two hours, if, like your webmaster,…

Making up somewhat for previous oversights, I invaded Chinatown in February in search of ancient laneways that contain hidden architectural “Easter eggs” and traces of long-vanished neighborhoods. I’d be remiss…

Your webmaster will admit it: I haven’t bought a CD in a couple of years, though I still have a CD collection numbering about 400 and an LP collection of…

I had gone past Claremont Terrace thousands of times — literally –without giving it a second thought about what it was. It’s an alley that is hidden along another dead…

For such a huge city, NYC is short on roadside oddities. You know, like the World’s Biggest Lightbulb in Menlo Park NJ, or the Big Duck of Flanders, NY in Suffolk County, or the Paul…

Continued from West Broadway Part 2 West Broadway and Grand Street. Once north of Canal Street, West Broadway enters Soho (no longer below Canal but now south of Houston) and changes…

Continued from West Broadway Part 1 Here’s the scene on West Broadway between Duane and Thomas Streets. All the buildings are from 1860-1875, and two have “Easter eggs” that give clues…

Those who live in or who’ve been to Atlanta say that an inordinate amount of streets are called Peachtree; in Manhattan, meanwhile, there are 6 streets called Broadway, and all…