FNY IN THE NEW YORK POST

I have had good luck with New York City newspapers. Just a couple of weeks after Forgotten NY was launched on March 26, 1999, it received a good review by David Kirby in the New York Times‘ long-gone NYC websites column in the long-gone Metro section. A couple of years later, Forgotten NY was profiled by the New York Post‘s late great Joseph Cunningham. For the article, we drove around in Red Hook looking for a good place to take my picture and we settled for a rooftop where I stood with the E.J. Trum billboard in back of me, the one that has a single letter “R” remaining. Another feature in Newsday saw the reporter and I travel to obscure Cornell Lane in Little Neck. I did that one on my lunch hour from Publishers Clearing House in Port Washington. Denis Hamill profiled me in the Daily News years ago.

I have also been given the opportunity to do FNY-type columns: for one in the Daily News I was tapped by Dawn Eden Goldstein, then a features editor there; she has had a fascinating career, from rock journalist to doctor of theology, and she has just published a memoir, Sunday Will Never Be the Same; later, New York Times feature editor Clay Risen had me do a pictorial FNY feature on the editorial page, where it appeared “above the fold.” Below the fold were mainstays David Brooks and Paul Krugman.

To celebrate FNY’s 20th anniversary, I received a two-page spread in the New York Post on April 6, 2019. Columnist Hana Alberts spent an hour with me on the phone in two separate sessions. (For those who think I sound stiff in these newspaper columns, once you meet me, your suspicions are realized.) I spent an additional hour in Mount Zion Cemetery in Maspeth with photographer Brian Zak. I tried to beg off the photo shoot, since I am legendarily nonphotogenic, but fortunately the Post photo editors did not choose a closeup.

You can read the column here as long as the Post keeps the link active. I do have PDFs of the column if they ever take it down.

Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop, and as always, “comment…as you see fit.”

4/6/19