“I know what I am, I’m glad I’m a man, and so’s Lola,” Ray Davies of the Kinks once sang. It’s good to know what you are. I’m not a…

I was recently sent this image of a Fteley / Watson Avenues sign from the Soundview Bronx neighborhood. These navy and white signs were employed in Manhattan and the Bronx…

I cannot tell you if Al Horn Baking Equipment, a wholesaler in the Westchester Square area, is still in business. I can tell you that the ghosts of its plastic…

In September 2021 I was making my unsteady and furtive way down 34th Avenue from Woodside to Jackson Heights when I spotted this extra-large 69th Street sign. Hard to see…

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…