ROLLS ROYCE SILVER WRATH TOURING LIMO

Imagine owning or even driving this 1956 Rolls Royce Limousine. Well, I tried to imagine owning it. Can’t you see the smugness in my face as I stand guard over this car in 2009 as it was parked on Madison Avenue?


It was in NYC in 2009 for the filming of the movie Arthur staring Russell Brand. It is the same car used by Dudley Moore in the original Arthur filmed in 1981. Because Arthur was drunk all the time, he preferred to be chauffeured through Central Park rather than drive his Packard One-Twenty.

The role of chauffer and butler, Hobson, was played by Sir Arthur John Gielged who won an academy award for this role.

According to Google, This car was delivered new to Ms. A.W. Frink at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris on July 10, 1956. It would arrive in America in 1980, just in time for the 1981 movie. Although the vehicle no longer bears Arthur Bach’s crest on the doors, the cream and maroon paintwork looks the same. The 4.9-liter engine makes 135 hp. This seems like a bit much to carry around 4,620 lbs worth of car, but in true Rolls-Royce fashion, the car can carry its weight with dignity. The car was recently sold for $96,800.

Today, the limo has a novelty plate from New York that reads “Arthur” on the front to mimic the one from the movie. The rear Florida “Arthur” plate is a real one that it has had because this Rolls-Royce limo retired to Boca Raton nearly thirty years ago.

HARD WORKING YET FRIENDLY NEW YORKERS

I moved to New York about ten ears ago from Washington DC. I lived in DC for 25 years and loved every minute of it. The City is clean, has beautiful foliage, spectacular architecture, a low svelte profile to the buildings, first-class restaurants world class (and free) museums, and of course, an astounding history and sense of importance. But it is sterile, and antiseptic. The city if often euphemistically referred to as “Ten square miles surrounded by reality.”

I moved to New York to experience a real city. A place where people have a assortment of interests, (not just politics) a place where they actually make things, a place to experience the gustiness of life while living amongst a most diverse population.

Probably my biggest surprise when I arrived was how hard working New Yorkers are. In DC so many people follow the Governments 9-5 mentality. The woman pictured is on the corner of 40th and Madison every morning from 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM selling newspapers. Her name is Mashid. She is on location every day no matter the weather. But Mashid is different, she remembers what paper her customers buy. When she sees a customer down the block, she immediately pulls a paper for you out of the middle of the stack, roll it like a jelly roll and hand it to you when you walk up. She always has a gracious smile.

Cee Cee who runs “36 Cleaners” on 36th street between Madison and 5th Avenues works from 7:00 A.M to 7:00 PM five days a week and from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Saturday. In the ten years that I have been going to her, I have never seen her absent for a sick day or vacation day. Never! When I ask her about taking time off, she replies “I think God for the strength to keep working.”

As I look around the City I see many other examples of hard workers, the push cart vendors, the delivery guys who bring us dinner when it is too cold or rainy to go out, my barber who works six days a week. On the corner of 36th Street and 5th Avenue is a push cart operator. He is there from early morning to just after lunch. Then he goes to he second job at Quick Books where he works until late evening.

Hats off to Mashid, Cee Cee and all hard working New Yorkers.

TOUR GROUPS

I find them everywhere. They block the sidewalk when I am trying to get to work or get home or get to a meeting. They wonder along the sidewalk four abreast as if they are strolling in a suburban shopping mall or deciding what rides to take at Disney World. They wait patiently at an intersection for the “Walk” sign to appear. They are always snapping pictures of anything that moves or doesn’t move. I believe that I am in more pictures than Tom Cruise.

They are always looking up. If you see one approaching, be aware, they will definitely run into you spilling their latte on your suit.   They say "whoops" and then laugh.

In this picture, this group is standing on 42nd Street across from Grand Central Terminal listening closely to their tour guide as he points out the statue of Commander Vanderbilt, the famous clock, the Park Avenue auto cut and the looming Met Life Building.

 Undoubtedly, group received the “tourist comfortable dress” email in advance as they are all wearing the official day-tripper uniform, sensitive shoes, slacks for the women, satchels for carrying maps, cameras, water, folding umbrella, scarf or light jacket in case it gets windy, aspirin, and band aids for blisters.

In this group everyone is looking up except the one woman in the front. Instead, she is examining her smart phone. She seems disinterested in what the tour guide is saying. Clearly, she is a tourist, with sun glasses perched on head in case sun comes out so, I can only imagine that she is texting someone in Canton Ohio “Guess where I am standing?”

ESPOSITO’S PORK SHOP

This would be a perfect location for the “Soprano’s” TV series, complete with hanging sides of meet and men in white coats. They have everything including a place to hang the fur coats until they “cool off.”

In 1933 that Giovanni Esposito started a fresh meat and poultry butcher shop at 550 – 9TH Avenue at 38th Street in Hell's Kitchen where it remains today. It is a classic family-run butcher shop outfitted with traditional meat showcases and celebrity photos on the walls of Brenda Vaccaro and Pat Cooper.

As Giovanni's sons grew up, they too came to work in the family business. The next generation of Esposito’s split the business into two separate entities, a retail butcher shop and a wholesale manufacturer. Esposito’s sausages are now available from Florida to Nantucket.

Don't go home without some home-made links, like the hot Italian varieties or meat, broccoli, and mozzarella-stuffed tubes with the selection of fresh-baked breads brought in from Valente Bakery of Fairview, New Jersey.

BRYANT PARK RMEMBERS 9/11

One year ago, Bryant Park remembered the victims of the World Trade Center Bombing by arranging  2606 chairs in perfect formation all facing South.  This was an incredibly solemn tribute seeing all those empty seats.

As I ponder the event eleven years ago I am reminded of what Samuel Johnson once said:  "If Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, it is not merely because evil deeds may be performed in the name of Patriotism, because Patriotic fervor can obliterate moral distinction all together" 

LONESOME PHONE BANK

Imagine, amongst the hustle and bustle of Grand Central Terminal, a quiet spot, a lone solitary location where no one bothers you. With over two million visitors per year, GCT is one of the busiest places in NYC. Before the advent of cell phones there would have been constant lines at these pay phones. If these pay phones could only talk, imagine the stories they could tell of people patiently awaiting their turn to call home to report a missed train, to call the office to report a late train, or to arrange a secret rendezvous.
One can only imagine how many sweethearts were called during WWII as returning troops arrived New York return safely from the war in Europe. Imagine the star struck tourist from Idaho upon arriving in Grand Central placing a call to a friend back in Boise proclaiming the presence of Mercury, Hercules and Minerva overhead in New York’s magnificent palace.

In the 1930’s at 5:55 p.m. there may have been a last minute call home before boarding the famed Twentieth Century Limited scheduled to leave for Chicago at 6:00 p.m.


The sadness of the ignored phone booths remind me of the song:
Send in the Clowns from a Little Night Music. .... This is a theater reference meaning if the show isn't going well, "let's send in the clowns"; in other words, "let's do jokes, anything to get people’s attention."  But alas, the clowns don’t come and the pay phones sit abandoned.

DINTY MOORE'S RESTAURANT

    A favorite hangout for the theater crowd in 1946 was Dinty Moore's on West 46th Street. It was an Irish pub/steak and chop house with high prices that had been named by its owner, James Moore, after the saloon where Jiggs hung out in the popular comic strip "Bringing Up Father." The comic strip about a stereotypical Irish-American, who becomes rich by winning the Irish Sweepstakes, and his social-climbing wife started in 1913 and was so popular that many Irish men at the time named Moore were nicknamed Dinty.


James Moore, who began to call himself Dinty after opening the restaurant, was notorious in the 1920s for his flagrant disregard of Prohibition which endeared him with the hard-drinking celebrity set. The restaurant also served an Irish stew made from kosher beef and lamb

"The Grasshoppers and the Aunt," collected in the anthology Beacon Light of Literature, the heroine is taken to Dinty Moore's to experience sophisticated Manhattan life and is astonished to discover linoleum on the floor and the only decoration "a lot of black-and-gold signs hung around with a portrait of an oyster on them." The menu seemed mundane but to her astonishment the place actually was full of celebrities.

 On the other hand, in Ghost Light: A Memoir, Frank Rich remembers the place on his first visit some decades later as "exotic as everything else I'd seen in my few hours in the city. The warm glow of brass gleamed from every nook; a long wooden bar with bottles and gold spigots aligned behind it ran the length of a wall." Crisp white clothes covered the tables and the attentive waiter wore a black suit, starched white shirt and bow tie. But Rich was just a kid and easily impressed.