FOR the first time in several years, I made my way south to Tottenville, New York State’s southernmost “town” (actually a neighborhood in NYC), on a very warm 80+-degree afternoon…

ACCORDING to sources such as the late Richard McDermott of The New York Chronicle and Steve Redlauer and Ellen Williams of “The Historic Shops & Restaurants of New York”, the Bridge Cafe, at…

NEW York City’s subway system is among the world’s largest but is largely stuck in time, like a fly in amber. Because of construction safety precautions, environmental concerns, $$$ and…

In early 2020, while Covid-19 was raging, I had some idle months. One day in July I took the Q36 bus down Little Neck Parkway to Floral Park, just south…

LARGE cast-iron stoplights I call “Wheelies” first began to show up in the late 1920s as wide boulevards began to appear and traffic got heavier. They appeared on narrower roads as…

THIS is one of 22 nearly three-ton eagles that appeared on Penn Station’s exterior, now in Philadelphia. Lorraine B. Diehl, in her comprehensive history The Late Great Pennsylvania Station, in her description…

If you know where to look, some old Uneeda Biscuit painted ads can still be seen around town, or out of town: in this case, Syracuse. A fire at a…

I have been to Los Angeles twice in my lifetime, to visit family (on my mother’s side) in 1962, when I was four; I have virtually no memory of my…

TWO decades ago while meandering about  in the rain down Maiden Lane in the eastern Financial District downtown in May 2003 I came across an unmarked street issuing north. I ascertained…

I don’t have much to say today except to say my explorations of Newark, NJ have been shamefully few over the years, paling, for example, next to Jersey City or…

My visits to New Jersey have been sporadic. For 30 years, on occasion, I have spent a lot of time in Hoboken and even worked there for a year in…

WHEN I moved to fabulous Flushing in 1993, I was still bicycling far distances in roadways, ranging as far west as Ridgewood and as far east as Garden City; these…