As a rule, I am a passing observer on the daily scene. I don’t discuss politics either here or on social media, as my opinions will infuriate everyone, and today,…

As Midtown commuters know, Penn Station has been a complete morass of construction, at least for Long Island Rail Road customers, as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is expanding the main…

YOU can observe a lot just by looking, as Yogi Berra used to say. For example, here’s a handsome brick building on Washington and st. Mark’s Avenues at the edge…

THERE was a time, specifically back in the 1960s, when tiny signs like this, at 39th Street and 8th Avenue, were all you had to indicate a bus route as…

BACK in March I took a PATH train to Newark and then rode the Newark Light Rail all the way to its terminal at Grove Street in Bloomfield, which is…

THE 34th Street Herald Square subway complex is truly vast and contains subway lines on three separate levels. In fact, I’m so fascinated with it I made a pilgrimage there…

I lived in Bay Ridge from 1957-1993 and have always been an admirer of the woodcut Alpine Realty sign at 5th Avenue and 84th, a block away from my childhood…

NOT being a Murray Hiller, I had never been in the Clover Deli at 2nd Avenue and East 34th Street, but its red and green neon sign had long been…

FUNNY how I miss things. Even though I have considered myself more diligent than ever in tracking down remnants of NYC’s past as an infrastructural archeologist, It’ surprising how much…

Back in 2016 I was enthusiastically noting Bartunek Hardware’s ancient sign at its #28-07 23 Avenue location, nearby the Ditmars Boulevard N train station. The store has been in business…

FOR 8 years or so, from 1982-1990, I lived in a railroad-flat type apartment at #654 73rd Street, which until 1960 or so was smack in the middle of the…

Forgotten New York correspondent and President of the Newtown Historical Society Christina Wilkinson found this sign on a telephone pole at 155th Avenue and Huron Street in Howard Beach, just…