By Caitlin Hawke

The Alexandria was built as a hotel in 1916-17 and later converted to apartments. It's hard to make out but the awning below has "Hotel Alexandria" atop it in big letters -- well visible for travelers exiting the 103rd Street subway. The area had numerous hotels and the Alexandria was just paces away from the Hotel Marseilles built 11 years earlier to its east at the southwest corner of W. 103rd Street and Broadway.

The Alexandria is a 14-story classical revival stone and brick construction by architects William L. Rouse and L.A. Goldstone whose elegant work may be seen in many other buildings in these parts (Chesterfield, Allendale and Stuyvesant, to name only a few).

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By Caitlin Hawke

My guess is you'd have to have been born by 1960 or earlier to hear the name Vaughn Meader and begin to chuckle.  An old-time Bloomingdaler, Manhattan Mark, turned me on to this comedian and JFK impersonator whose 1962 album "The First Family" captured everyone's attention and won the Grammy for best album of the year.

It is hilarious. Good, clean, spoofing fun is made of JFK, Jackie, Bobby, Teddy, the kids and members of the kitchen cabinet.  Kids listened with their parents.  Adults popped it on the turntable after dinner parties. It flew out of stores as the fastest selling album ever with 1.2 million records sold in the first fortnight.

It was such a sensation that Kennedy quipped at one function that Vaughn Meader wasn't able to make it so he had come instead.

If you listen to the full first album at the bottom of this post (email subscribers, click on the post's title to listen to it on the website), you'll see Meader's spot on mimicry of Kennedy's accent and cadence and even the JFK wit.  It's so innocent and so clean by today's standards you'll be charmed.  And it plays as a very interesting counterpoint to contemporary comedians' take on the current POTUS.

To get to the UWS connection, the second volume, which Meader released in 1963, includes an adorable on-site interview with 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders at the Alexander Robertson School at 95th Street and Central Park West.  The first video below is teed up to take you right to the kids (you can rewind to listen to the whole record).  Make sure to listen to the first album when you have time -- the second video below.

The timing of the Volume 2 release was not felicitous, arriving in stores just a few months before Dallas. Meader's soaring popularity and lighthearted appeal had no place in the darkness and aftermath of JFK's assassination. The second album was withdrawn from stores. Meader's career never recovered, and he said that he himself also died on November 22nd.

That part of his career did go away, but Meader lived on through the tumult of the Sixties and had a few more turns to his career. He died in October 2004.

May 29th is the 101st anniversary of JFK's birth, and this is my nod to the legend that lives on.  And to a comedian whose timing was both excellent and terribly bad.

Above is an excerpt from Volume 2 featuring Vaughn Meader's visit to an elementary school on Central Park West and 95th Street circa 1962/3.  (To stream this in your browser if you are reading this via email, click here).

Above is the entire recording of "The First Family" -- Vaughn Meader's knockout comedy album of 1962.  (To stream this in your browser if you are reading this via email, click here).

By Caitlin Hawke

Note: For readers who prefer me to keep it hyper-local here on the Block Association blog, please indulge me today. It's a New York story, with traces of the Upper West Side. But it's a special occasion.


Losing Philip Roth is a body blow. I haven't processed his death yet, but I mention it because of the joy his writing has given me. Sentences that go on at the length of mini-novellas. Laugh-out-loud humor impregnating even the darkest of novels. Stories so imaginative, prophetic, true.

The magnetism of his narrative voice and sheer force of his imagination was singular.

And yet, as he'd announced and then enacted the halt of his writing career, I'd grown used to the idea that he was done producing and had chosen the Upper West Side as his home away from his Connecticut home. Over the last couple of years, there were many sightings of Roth near the American Museum of Natural History (he lived at 130 West 79th Street). And at 85, I thought hopefully, he still had a long time here with us. That comforted me.

When the Nobel brouhaha erupted recently, suspending the literature award this year, I thought: 'Philip hang in there old chap, 2019 is yours.' 

Alas, no.

Sort of like a Bizarro universe version of the Lance Armstrong Tour de France "victories" which now all have asterisks and blanks where his name once appeared, I propose that we ink in Roth for the 2018 Nobel-that-cannot-be and be done with it. Like swearing in Merrick Garland at the next possible chance. Because it's the right thing to do.

I know this is a very roundabout way of getting to Bob Dylan. And some readers may spontaneously link the two by way of the Nobel. Many felt Roth should have gotten it the year Bob Dylan did, figuring the prize committee would not name back to back US laureates. Some were outright scandalized that Dylan got it at all.

Not me. But it smarts that Roth's chances are now done.

Philip Roth and Bob Dylan are filed in the very same drawer of my brain right beside each other. Send me to a desert island and that's who I am taking. Just me and my American boys.

Their work provides a roadmap for our society. Rosetta stones decoding what it was to be American-born in the 30s and 40s. Creative consciences for when we'd veered off course. Commenters on hypocrisies peddled by politicians. And unabashed patriots whose Americanism defines them.

They are also wordsmiths unlike any others, Kilauea-like in productivity.

And so onto Bob who turns 77 today. I felt in the mood to celebrate him rightly.

I'm not asking you to like his voice. But it deserves a second listen. I'm not asking you to understand why he's not surrendered his personal life to the relentless tabloid consumer. But it merits respect and contemplation in an Instagram world, where Kardashians rule. I'm not asking you to sweep aside his 1960s self in favor of his post-Time Out of Mind full-bodied smoothness. But you could consider it. Nor would I insist you revisit the wrongly-reviled Gospel era. His born-again phase has already been born again with critics exalting it. If you live long enough, you see everything. And "Trouble No More" has been at long last deemed worth the trouble.

Bob Dylan contains multitudes, but he couldn't be what he is without his epic rise during his New York years.

Marguerite Yourcenar wrote that "the true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself."  What makes Bob one of us is that his true birthplace is New York City.

This I know.

At his post-9-11 concert at Madison Square Garden, we -- all 19,000 of us -- were broken, shellshocked sleepwalkers. No matter which song Dylan chose the night of November 19, 2001, he found a way to comment on what the city had just been through, how we felt about NYC, how senseless the attack was, how we mourned the victims. His lyrics are that encompassing. But the songwriter also chose his setlist carefully. "Waiting for the Light to Shine," "Lonesome Day Blues," "Searching for a Soldier's Grave," and finally "Things Have Changed." There were lines like the following pouring out of those songs, resonating against the 9-11 backdrop:

"Folk lose their possessions, the folks are leaving town." "I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'." "If the bible is right, the world will explode." "Some things are too hot to touch, the human mind can only stand so much." "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke."

With Ground Zero still smoldering and the spate of anthrax attacks fresh on everyone's mind, things were quite raw. And that night at the Garden, it was his references to our hometown and Dylan's own demeanor that were tenderest. With Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton alongside him and the rest of one great Dylan touring band, he launched into "Tom Thumb's Blues" with its "I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough" earning a collective roar. And then nearing the end of his performance, in acknowledgment of the roomful of pain, Dylan pronounced: 'No one needs to tell me how I feel about New York City.'

This provoked a catharsis because Dylan had just made it very personal, a rare glimpse of the flesh and bones behind the song and dance man. There are other wonderful memories of that night, but I'll keep it about New York for now. And New York Town's 77 year-old son.

In his honor on this day, I give you below Bob Dylan in a New York state of mind.

(Email subscribers: you'll have to click on the blog post title to see the videos on our site).

"Hard Times in New York Town," 1962

"Talkin' New York," live at Town Hall, 1963

"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," 1965-66

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," 1965 - One interpretation says this was Dylan slamming the door on the city's folk and protest singer scene. That of course could be disputed. I'm including it because it's hard to top.

"Visions of Johanna," 1966 - a slowed down live version from a Sheffield concert. The song references the D train.

I include these last two not for New York reference, per se, though the one immediately above is Bob's star-studded 30th Anniversary Concert at Madison Square Garden.  I'm posting these two renditions of "My Back Pages" as a birthday mantra: "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...."

Happy Birthday from New York Town.

By Caitlin Hawke

This is really a Throwback Thursday post, but I am putting it up a bit early because it is pegged to an event today, Wednesday, May 23, that I wanted you to know about. But first the facts.

Yes, in the photo above, that is famed tightrope walker and master of mystery Philippe Petit walking a line to St. John the Divine on September 29, 1982, to fete the construction of a new tower. If you look closely at the grainy newspaper image below from the Columbia Spectator, you  can just about make out a trowel on his belt that he was symbolically delivering across Amsterdam Avenue -- 150 feet in the air -- to the cathedral and its Bishop. A flourish to inaugurate construction of the south tower of the cathedral's west elevation.

So, the photo above depicts an authorized -- orchestrated! -- walk to the cathedral. You don't have to imagine it because there's film of it (if you are receiving this message by email, make sure to click on the blog post title to view the video on our website). And indeed the trowel is looped on his belt as he makes his way across an unbelievably taught rope in his deacon purple stockings, pausing once to kneel on the wire and once to do a stork pose, then bowing deeply over the edge of St. John's roofline to the applauding crowd. One incredulous spectator shakes her arms over her head saying "Oh boy am I glad that's over!"

Great, yes. But let's just say it was not Petit's first walk at SJTD. That was in 1980, and he went stealth that time as was his wont.

Many a New Yorker knows Petit was a guerilla walker extraordinaire. In 1974, his clandestine operation and magnificent stroll between the two unfinished World Trade Center towers on a 131-foot cable suspended 1,300 feet above the construction site by his merry cabal was first one for the law enforcers; and then one for the history books; and finally one for the spiritual coda of those two towers whose fate we all remember too, too well. I've included two snaps at the bottom of that walk, one where he has an ear-to-ear smile, presumably elated or high on height. And the other of him lying down on the rope. He also danced on the wire that day in '74. Giddy, lollygagging about, and perhaps toying with the powers that be who had no way to get to him. That walk was an act of hubris, insanity, and majesty rolled into one.

In short, so great was Petit that his 1980 tightrope walk, which was inside St. John the Divine, led officials there to name him as one of the first Cathedral Artists-in-Residence. Better to have him with you than against you, you might suppose they reasoned. But actually, the Dean of the cathedral was all for the interior walk. He just couldn't get his board to sign off on it, presumably for liability reasons. Petit, characteristically undeterred, went ahead with the 1980 nave walk. The cops cuffed him on his way down from the wire that day for trespassing; but the Dean, James Parks Morton, intervened and thinking quickly informed the police that Petit couldn't be trespassing because he was, um, an artist in residence, right, that's the ticket.

To this day, the funambulist retains his resident artist title. And he's walked a wire many a time since including once after the terrible fire that broke out in the gift shop to help heal and herald a new beginning.

In a 1999 New Yorker piece by Calvin Tomkins, Petit was quoted as saying:

“When you think about it, wire walking is very close to what religion is. ‘Religion’ is from the Latin religare, which means to link something, people or places. And to know, before you take your first step on a wire, that you are going to do the last one—this is a kind of faith.”

Dean Morton told Tomkins that Petit was "one of the most religious people [I know]....Sometimes very unusual people turn out to be the most religious....I think of this as God’s joke.”

I do believe he believes. Just not in terrestrial authorities.

I love that he has this connection to our neighborhood. Since 9-11, Petit to me is an anthropomorphic poem. He's our living link to the towers he owned for a mid-seventies day. Religare.

In Bloomingdale, we live in the shadow of SJTD, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, or if you prefer, one of the five largest church buildings in the world. You'll agree that its secrets -- like the Petit tales -- and its history are poorly known.

One place to rectify that is with the romp of a Bowery Boys podcast episode devoted to the cathedral -- I'm embedding the audio below. (If you are receiving this by email, please click on the title of the blog post to view the video on our website.) And if you can go to SJTD tonight, May 23, for $125 you can celebrate with the Bowery Boys the 125th anniversary of the ground breaking.

Probably tickets are sold out for the birthday bash. But tell me you weren't tempted!

Replete with peacocks, Greek revival remnants of the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum of 1843, and the little rope-walking giant, the cathedral is a neighborhood gem, a work in progress, ours to cherish, and ours to divine.

The link above is to the Bowery Boys podcast #262: Secrets of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. You may not love their style, but stick with it for lots of great historical information.

By Caitlin Hawke

If you are a regular or long-time reader of this blog and know one culinary thing about me, it's my fondness for Sun-Chan. That fondness is hard to dissociate from the late co-owner, Kumiko Imamura, who died suddenly just a couple of weeks ago. It makes me terribly sad that I don't have a decent picture of her, except for in my mind where she is alive and vibrant as ever. But the picture above captures her in context and in motion, as she aways was. And the picture below shows her at far left beside Tokishige, her co-owner and husband, at work in the kitchen.

If you want to know why I was a hugely appreciative fan, you could have a look at this post or this one. And I wrote this one, stunned by the news of her loss.

On Sunday, May 20, from 2 to 6 p.m. at the restaurant on the west side of Broadway between W. 103rd and 104th Streets, Tokishige and the Sun-Chan family will hold a remembrance. If you appreciate all that is authentic, slow, down to earth, communal, and kind, you join me in mourning her.

 

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By Caitlin Hawke

This year's Block Association's Spring Planting Day got me thinking (click the link to see the gallery if you missed it). Where and when did this tradition all begin?

I did some digging and found an interesting piece in the NYT that seems to explain pieces of our history I'd never heard. Specifically, that our Block Association began in 1967 on West 103rd Street with a planting and beautification initiative. West 102nd Street was rolled in quickly and about four years later, the Block Association as we know it formally launched, as can be seen in our first newsletter in 1971 here.

Going back all the way to June 25, 1967, 51 years ago, the Times article below recounts how four local mothers had recently come together, mailed out letters to neighbors asking for funds for the improvement of West 103rd Street between Riverside and Broadway, and collected $1201 to buy London plane trees -- the then-favorite trees for our streets because it "grows fast and withstands city pollution."

So there you have it in a nutshell. Our Block Association's raison d'etre: the planting of trees to improve our environment. It's just second nature to the B.A. Hence the twice-yearly tradition of beautifying tree wells, of gently coaxing residents out to assist, of collecting funds to make it possible, and of liaising with the city to keep the greening going when a tree is lost or maimed.

In retrospect, it's pretty great that by the 1971 inaugural issue of the B.A. newsletter, the association already boasted 400 contributing members and had raised enough dough to plant 45 trees! Not too shabby at all.

So when you are walking around enjoying the leafing-out season, consider any tree that looks about 50 years old, and whisper an ode of gratitude to that founding crew -- starting with those four moms -- who planted and planted and planted. They made this such a beautiful neighborhood. And many continue today in their spirit, also thanks to the groundwork they laid in establishing the W. 102-103 Streets Block Association.

If you haven't stepped out or up to help the Block Association this year, it isn't too late. You can join anytime right here.

Because the image below is a little blurry, I am including a pdf file above that you should be able to click on and download.

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By Caitlin Hawke

Perhaps you are planning to be a vendor at this Saturday's Block Party? Good for you: you've tidied your cabinets and winnowed your closets of old items that you are now giving a chance at another good home. But a few toxins remain to be dealt with.

Or if you've been lazily watching everyone ferry their stuff to the Block Party to sell it off and you're feeling guilty that your clutter is amassing, here's an event for you.

On Sunday, you can get rid of all that hard-to-toss stuff at a SAFE Disposal Event put on by NYC's Department of Sanitation. SAFE Disposal is specifically for items that fall into the categories of Solvents, Automotive, Flammable and Electronics.

SAFE Disposal takes place on Sunday, May 20, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., on W. 120th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

Materials accepted include common household products such as auto fluids, batteries, electronics, strong cleaners, medications, paint and more.

See this link for further details.

By Caitlin Hawke

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The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of block association newsletters for new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read others pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

The one from the vault below by past editor of the Block Association newsletter Jock Davenport is about parking challenges. The piece is now over 20 years old but given new talk about parking garages, paying for street parking, and congestion pricing, I thought it might resonate.

Today, parking spaces cost considerably less than rent on a studio apartments (at least in this community), but much of this sounds rather familiar.  It's the time honored dance of alternate side of the street parking.

Some of you know the ASSP dance all too well, crosswords and coffee in hand or maybe it's Words with Friends.  You manage to work your schedule around this very NYC ritual.  Enjoy it while you can. 

Just not this coming Thursday, May 10, when rules are suspended for Ascension!

The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of block association newsletters for new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read others pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

New to the neighborhood or simply moved here in the last 13 years? Perhaps you've wondered about the story behind the stories of the two towers at W. 100th Street and Broadway. Wonder no more. This one from the vault written by David Reich lays it all bare.  St. Michael's was a player in the rising skyline.  That intangibly opaque thing involving the acquisition of 'air rights' added to the mix.  A key decision not to put in parking underground allowed the whole thing to move forward "as of right." And lo!  Two highrises were a fait accompli.  Yeah, I know.  The Zeckendorf's Columbia on the NW corner of Broadway and 96th was the game changer of the early 1980s.  And in the early 2010s Columbus Square transformed the Park West Village area. And I know what is now happening up on W. 108th Street.

All those carveouts (see illustration below) on the west side of Broadway in the last landmarking phase in 2015 will usher in new stories of skyscraping construction soon enough.

Some new construction will be known to neighbors in advance.  Some will squeak by under cover of night.  Of this I am sure.

(See the "As Designated" map with the 2015 landmark boundaries that exclude nearly every building on the west side of Broadway. The map "As Proposed" with the red border only carved out a few buildings by contrast.)

So, you got something to say about Ariel East and West?

Extell me about it!