BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: NEW YORK, NEW YORK

for Arnie and Karen Markoe, and Ken Jackson
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"I don't have to live in New York. I could live in hell."
                                      Greta Garbo

Epigraph to Married to the Icepick Killer 
by Carol Muske-Dukes (New York: Random House, 2002)
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NEW YORK CITY'S JACOB BEACH

Jacob Beach in Manhattan was the descriptive
phrase referring to a small area near the old
Madison Square Garden. It was named for the 
noted fight promoter. Jacob's Beach was the
principal market place for fighters, managers,
promoters and their satellites to make 
arrangements for boxing matches etc.

Nat Fleischer. The Heavyweight Champions, 1948.

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THE BIG APPLE

Paul Bloess: "The term 'Big Apple' was originally used in the 1920s and '30s by jazz musicians as a way of saying, 'There are many apples on the success tree, but when you pick New York City, you pick the Big Apple. '"
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PRAISE FOR THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE

“Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first world promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world…
  “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over the bridge,” I thought, “anything at all.”

              F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby.

Epigraph to New York Days by Willie Morris
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FAMOUS NEW YORKER #1

"Joseph C. Gayetty (c.1827 – May 2, 1895) was an American inventor credited with the invention of commercial toilet paper. It was the first and remained only one of the few commercial toilet papers from 1857 to 1890 remaining in common use until the invention of splinter-free toilet paper in 1935 by the Northern Tissue Company."

Wikepedia

* Many references cite that Joseph Gayetty was born in c. 1817, give or take a decade, in Massachusetts, USA. Not much is known about his early years, seeing as the first mention was in the U.S. census of 1850. He was living in New York City with his wife, Margaret Louisa Bogart, and their two children.
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RENTAL NEWS (2024)
27-year-old pays $1,850/month to live in an old NYC laundromat: ‘I knew true community as a child and I know it again now’
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NOT ALL MOVIES ABOUT NYC ARE SUCCESSFUL

1946 film --SO THIS IS NEW YORK, produced by Stanley Kramer,
With    Henry Morgan,	Rudy Vallee,Leo Gorcey,	Virginia Grey	
irected by Richard O. Fleischer, with music by Dimitri Tiomkin.

 The film was savaged by the critics and it did poorly at the box office. One of the comment cards submitted at a preview screening was particularly brutal, saying, "What belongs in the toilet shouldn't be exhibited first in a theater."

iDMb Trivia
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NEW YORK CITY'S SUBWAY SYSTEM
" The subway system runs for 840 miles with 34 lines and 469 stops, it is counted amongst the largest urban mass transportation systems of the world, taking five million people to their destinations each day. You can cover the entirety of the system in 21 hours and 49 minutes --do it quicker and you'll have broken the current world record."

Ace Rider.  Now Wait Just A New York Minute & Other Fun Facts About The City (Orlando, Florida, 2023)
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110 Riverside Drive, New York, NY-- where Babe Ruth lived.

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The First known radio Commercial  Aired in 1926

The first known radio advertisement was a real-estate commercial for the Hawthorne Court Apartments in Jackson Heights, Queens, broadcast by New York station WEAF in August 1922. There’s a bit of disagreement over whether the duration of the ad was 10 minutes or 15 minutes, but fortunately for listeners, it wasn’t long before the ad format was pared down considerably. 

https://historyfacts.com/science-industry/article/5-facts-about-the-golden-age-of-radio/.    
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THE MURKY WATERS OF HELL GATE

The murky waters of Hell Gate, between Queens and Manhattan, hide a mystery that has puzzled historians and treasure hunters for hundreds of years. A British ship, the HMS Hussar, went down in Hell Gate’s perilous waters after colliding with Pot Rock in 1780. The ship was rumored to be carrying a significant British military payroll. Despite these stories, no treasure has ever been recovered. Could remnants of the ship and its gold still lie beneath the waves? Whether or not there is a fortune waiting to be found, there are remnants of the Hussar shipwreck you can see without a diving permit."

UNTAPPED CITIES
https://untappedcities.com/2024/04/02/hms-hussar-british-shipwreck-east-river

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MANHATTAN LULLABYE

Hush, my little baby,
  Before You go to sleep.
Listen to the lullaby
  Of BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.

Honk, whirr,HONK,HONK,
   Clomp,BANG, bang, crash.
"Watch where yer going, Mac!"
   Clomp,bang,BANG, smash!

VAROOM, varoom, pa-tow,
   Buzz, Woooo-wooo,Careee.
Forget it, kid,you might as well
   Stay up all night with me.

Louis Phillips