Photo of the day: PEEK-A-BOO
PEEK-A-BOO:
Show a little more,
Show a little less,
Let me do a few tricks,
Some old and then some new tricks,
I’m very versatile.
Add a little smoke…
And if you’re real good,
I’ll make you feel good,
I want your spirit to climb,
Welcome to Burlesque!
Everything you dream of,
But never can possess.
So let me entertain you,
We’ll have a real good time,
Yes sir!
Outside it is winter. But in here it’s so hot.
Every night we have to battle with the girls
to keep them from taking off all their clothings.
So don’t go away. Who knows?
Tonight we may lose the battle!
Nothing’s what it seems . . .
Welcome to Burlesque!
Can you determine how many cabarets these lyrics are from?
Photo of the day: WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS . . .
. . . Stays in Vegas!
(Reflection caught in policeman’s motorcycle rear view mirror in Times Square.)
Photo of the day: DON’T WISH FOR IT, WORK FOR IT
DON’T WISH FOR IT, WORK FOR IT: I was rushing through Times Square when subliminally my mind caught this chair out of the corner of my eye. It belongs to one of the street vendors. I love the positive reinforcement, even when they are sitting down! It’s a great way to start the new year 🙂
Photo of the day: THE PARTY’S OVER
“The Party’s Over, it’s time to call it a day.
They’ve burst your pretty balloon and taken the moon away.
It’s time to wind up the masquerade.
It’s time to wind up the masquerade.
Just make your mind up the piper must be paid.
The Party’s Over.The candles flicker and dim.
The Party’s Over.The candles flicker and dim.
You danced and dreamed through the night,
it seemed to be right just being with him.
Now you must wake up, all dreams must end.
Now you must wake up, all dreams must end.
Take off your make up, The Party’s Over.
It’s all over, my friend.”
Words by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and Music by Jule Styne -introduced by Judy Holliday in her last film “Bells Are Ringing” (1956), also starring -Dean Martin and Jean Stapleton
-charted by Doris Day at # 63 in 1957
NEW YORK GARBAGE COLLECTORS CLEANED UP FIFTY TONS OF GARBAGE AFTER NEW YEARS EVE IN TIMES SQUARE!
Photo of the day: THE BAD SIDE EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING
THE BAD SIDE EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING: . . . is this.
It was 65 degrees (15 Celsius) yesterday in New York City! And what does that result in – one of the older ‘regulars’ in Times Square, still wearing winter mittens and a pair of Uggs. Of course the Christmas velvet reindeer antlers with a Statue of Liberty crown to hold them in place. The pink wig matches his pink bike and matching pink streamers. Since it was so warm yesterday that rest of his outfit was shed to reveal tiny polka dot bikini.
But . . . don’t you just hate it – when you realize, after you’ve left the house, that your bikini top doesn’t match your bikini bottom? I hate when that happens!
* We have several ‘regulars’ – the naked cowboy, the naked cowgirl, the naked Indian and the naked candy man.
Photo of the day: “THIS TIME OF YEAR THE CRAZIES COME OUT”
“THIS TIME OF YEAR THE CRAZIES COME OUT”: This is officer Fernandez who I met in Times Square, he has been on the Times Square force over fifteen years.
Me: “Aren’t you cold?”
Officer: “Naw, I’m wearing my bullet proof vest.”
Me: “Oh I see. May I take your picture?”
Officer Fernandez very proudly stood tall and struck a pose.
Officer: “Yeah sure, but make it quick, this time of the year the crazies come out.”
Me: “Christmastime and the cold, really?”
Officer: “Yeah, it’s those darn office holiday parties.”
Click.
Photo of the day: CONFUSED SMURF FOUND WANDERING IN TIME SQUARE
CONFUSED SMURF FOUND WANDERING IN TIMES SQUARE . . .
“Didn’t the parade used to come through Times Square? I’m confused, I’ve got to find the parade –
before the parade passes by
before it goes on, and I’m the only Smurf left
before the parade passes by.
I’ve gotta get in step while there’s still time left
I’m ready to move out in front
Life without life has no reason or rhyme left
With the rest of them
With the best of them
I wanna hold my head up high
I need to get a goal again I need to get a drive again
I wanna feel my heart coming alive again
Before the parade passes by…
Before the parade passes by
I’ve gotta go and taste Saturday’s high life ! “
Photo of the day: YMCANDY MAN
YMCANDY MAN: “Young man, there’s no need to feel down.
I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground.
I said, young man, ’cause you’re in a new town
there’s no need to be unhappy.“
there’s no need to be unhappy.“
“But I can take a rainbow,
wrap it in a sigh,
soak it in the sun and make a groovy lemon pie.
I’m the Candy Man, the Candy Man!
I mix it all with dough and make the world taste good.“
“Young man, there’s a place you can go.
I said, young man, when you’re short on your dough.
You can bake there, and I’m sure you will find,
many ways to have a good time.
It’s fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A.“
Photo of the day: PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS
PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS: It is estimated that between the two major candidates, over $6 billion, 700 million dollars ($6,700,000,000.) was spent on the 2012 presidential campaign. Endless TV ads, mail flyers, robo calls, hats, stickers, t-shirts, posters, pins and pickets. Republicans broke all financial spending records and democrats broke all donation records.
Then there is this guy, Jeff Boss. He spent just a few thousand dollars printing a lot of posters with eye-catching phrases, but the middle-aged man wasn’t creating street art, nor putting up outdoor ads. He also ran for president. You may have seen his “campaign” here in Manhattan. The stark white posters with bold black lettering featured slogans such as:
“DID THE NSA KILL JFK, RFK, MLK, ETC?”
“NO ONE KNOW JEFF BOSS BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T WANT THE TRUTH TOLD.”
“JEFF BOSS WITNESSED THE NSA ARRANGE THE 9/11 ATTACK, I HAVE PROOF!”
Boss scattered them around Manhattan, focusing his efforts on highly trafficked areas on 42nd Street near Times Square where these ads were posted on a construction site wall. He didn’t win. But what he does have is the right to free speech and because of that – we are though still left wondering . . . ‘who the heck is Jeff Boss?!’
God bless America.
(NSA = National Security Administration)
Photo of the day: LILLIPUTIAN LIBERTY
LILLIPUTIAN LIBERTY: “Huh?!” She looked bigger on TV.” “Mum….did the green lady shrink in the rain?” “Isn’t she supposed to hold the big candle?”
I captured this priceless moment in Times Square as these little visitors from England just knew something was wrong with this pint sized Statue of Liberty, but were too polite to say to say something. Their faces pretty much say it all creating one of my favorite pictures of the year!
Photo of the day: STATUE OF LIBERTY CLOSED TILL FURTHER NOTICE
DRAPED IN LIBERTY: The Statue of Liberty is closed. Her harbor has been damaged by hurricane Sandy and will not reopen till at least spring 2013. So Times Square always has a steadfast alternative you can count on. It is overcrowded with competing ‘Liberties’.
A mute (because they don’t speak English) person draped in a mint green cloth, standing on a milk crate, wearing a Halloween Liberty mask with sunglasses and carrying a souvenir shop torch (some have flags too) – all beckoning you to come take a picture with them…for a price. ‘Ms.’ Liberty has been known to get ugly if ‘she’ is not paid a fair price. Yes, it is substantially less than a Circle Line Ferry to Liberty Island, but if you wanna play – ya gotta pay.
Photo of the day: IDENTITY CRISIS
IDENTITY CRISIS: the Milford Plaza Hotel in Times Square seems to be suffering from a bad case of identity crisis. Due to an electrical shortage the full service hotel’s sign seems to be confused between ‘Motel’ and ‘Hotel’. (Slightly reminiscent of the Bates Motel in Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Psycho”).
Photo of the day: KNEE PAD ELMO
KNEE PAD ELMO: Elmo’s dad wears knee pads and it kinda really creeps me out. I really don’t want to know what he is doing with those knee pads in the Times Square area.
Photo of the day: EARTHLY REMAINS – THE LAST RECORD STANDING AT COLONY RECORDS
Photo courtesy of Richard Turk
EARTHLY REMAINS – THE LAST RECORD STANDING AT COLONY RECORDS: My 100th post.
A story of eerie coincidence. Colony records was an iconic sheet music and record store on Broadway which sadly closed after 64 years a few weeks ago. Repeat patrons included Benny Goodman, Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, Elton John, Liza Minnelli, Eartha Kitt and Michael Jackson, who in his later years took to scheduling after-hours appointments to drop by.
In my Sept. 28 blog “The Music Man’s Last Verse” I told the story of meeting Richard Turk the owner as I was trying to photograph the moving out and demolition of the store. We shared our memories of the store and (it turns out) our mutual love for singer and actress Eartha Kitt. “I was obsessed with her song C’est Si Bon, and of course fantasized about her as the Cat Woman on the Batman TV show.” Richard fondly recounted. His fantasy came true when one night, “Eartha Kitt came in, the store simply exploded!!! An absolute dynamite personality!”
I myself became obsessed with her when I saw her sing “I Want to be Evil” on the Ed Sullivan show in the early 1960’s. In the era of blonde Doris Day virgins, here was this black woman that wanted to be evil, I thought it was divine! I sought out all her records and amassed quite a collection with the help of Colony Records. In 1978 my dream came true when I met her March 1, 1978 at the Mark Hellinger theater when she starred in all the all black version of ‘Kismet’, a new show called “Timbuktu”. She made her entrance on top of a pyramid of black muscle men, one of them being a former Mr. Universe. She slithered down the pyramid and strode to the front of the stage, curled her bare toes over the edge, rose her arms and purred “I’m here!” It usually took many minutes for the wild enthusiastic applause to die down. I was in heaven. I crashed the opening party and was invited into her dressing room and she herself then invited me to Sardi’s opening party and we became friends after that, dancing nights away at Studio 54 and then exchanging letters while she toured with the show.
Fast forward to Wednesday, September 26, 2012 and Richard and his son were shooting some video memories in the Colony, everything was cleaned out and they were in the basement when his son showed Richard one solitary record left on a shelf. “This is 100% the truth…” Richard said, “This LP was the only item left in the empty Colony”
RCA 1953 Viktor 10″ LPM 3062 “RCA Viktor Presents Eartha Kitt” containing both songs “C’est Si Bon” and “I Want to be Evil”. As Richard put it, “Erie shit…stranger than fiction eh!!”
The Earthly remains of Colony Records…Richard has kept the record for his private collection.
Photo of the day: THE MUSIC MAN’S LAST VERSE
COLONY RECORDS CLOSES
(Deja view)
On July 10th, 2005 after Howard Johnson’s Restaurant closing auction had been held, their doors shut forever. It was a knife in my heart. Finding it unbearable to part with the retro Times Square treasure I just lingered outside, photographing the restaurant as much as I could so as to preserve every piece of it and not wanting to let go. As I held my camera up the window the manager of the Howard Johnson’s came out and asked me if I wanted to take one final look inside. I walked through the empty orange and green room of memories and we sat down in the back booth. He told me of his memories of the beloved restaurant and his personal story of how he at the time had no future job offers and sensed it was the end of an era for Times Square.
Seven years later on September 18th, 2012, Colony Records located in the art deco Brill Building, closed its doors for the final time. No closing sales or auction, just a final proud last day. I stopped by on Monday, September 24th to photograph the shell of what once was. Deja vu. I found myself inching closer to the doors and photographed the workers packing up the final vestiges of the store while the demolition crew had begun tearing down the past. My eye caught a man inside, obviously not part of the demo crew taking pictures on his cell phone for himself. From the distance I thought it was perhaps a foreman, a future owner or perhaps the Brill building owner. As I got closer to peek inside for myself, I recognized the man to be Richard Turk, the owner of Colony.
DEJA VIEW
I asked if he didn’t mind me taking some last pictures of the place, he was surprisingly kind enough to let me come inside. My memories of first discovering Colony began to flood out and began to choke up. Richard asked if he could record my story for a video log they are making of people’s warm and colorful memories, I was so honored to be a part of history. We began to talk. I told him of Patti Lupone’s comment that Times Square is becoming a third rate shopping mall, that my personal ‘beginning of the end’ was the demise of Howard Johnson’s. That’s when Richard’s eyes lit up and began to open up. “That was the beginning of it! American Eagle Outfitters (which replaced HOJO) don’t care about the retail space below, they care about the giant neon advertising sings above.” He feels Mayor Bloomberg’s mall-ification of Times Square was a death sentence to those establishments above 47th Street. “There were no plans to include us up here on West 49th Street and above, we are merely side roads leading to the Square. We were never included.”
“I also can’t stop technology. If a singer wants sheet music for a song, they don’t have to buy the whole song book anymore. They can pull it up on the internet and it will even appear in their own key.” But the smell, the tactile holding of an lp, songbook, CD or sheet music is to many irreplaceable. In it’s heyday music’s royalty would come to shop from Michael Jackson, to Paul McCartney and Paul Simon. “I can tell you when Eartha Kitt came in, the store simply exploded!!! An absolute dynamite personality, I was obsessed with her song C’est Si Bon.” (For me it was “I Want To Be Evil”, which happened to be the first lp I bought at Colony.) Colony would still get the rush of the theater crowd before and after the shows, but other than those ties, it was dramatically slowing down. There was no forcing of them out by the landlord, it was solely his and his business partner Michael Grossbardt’s decision to go out with their heads held high and above water. The Brill building management team even went so far as to mount a camera atop of the newsstand on the corner to record the foot traffic coming in and out of the store. No matter how good traffic Richard said was, they argued back with their video proof. It was time to close.
Richard reminded me that Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant, ‘the meeting place of the world’ used to be next door. At one time, the eleven story building housed song writer’s offices that had a clientele that would boggle the mind of music historians. Richard pointed to the closed store adjacent to Colony. “It has been their plan all along to turn the bottom three floors into a chain store retail space.” I immediately asked about the landmark status of the building. His surprising answer was that only the main entrance of the Brill Building and the upper floors are land marked, the bottom three floors are not! The retro brass doors with the musical clef handles were custom made by Colony in 1974 and Richard is taking them with him. If you look at the new plastic wrap that has encased the ground floor, there is a horrific rendering of plans for the 3-story clothing store “Generation”. Just what we need, another place to buy a t-shirt in Times Square – not a CD, DVD, sheet music or book, but a bra and a t-shirt.
The dust was getting heavy and we exited the store just as the mailman stopped by. “I guess will have to admit we’re going to have a change of address” Richard said as he took his mail for the last time. I looked up at the iconic blue neon letters and asked quietly, “What happens to those?”. Richard said one of the signs had been a continuous piece of neon and it just crumbled as they tried to take it down, but he remaining blue letters above the doors are individual and can be saved. “As for the Colony signs“ he answered, “if I had my wish they would go into either the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame or the NY Songwriters Hall. It’s still up for discussion…it’s just my desire not a fact yet.” I shook his hand and thanked him for this private moment and left as I kept having visions of Howard Johnson’s repeat in my head. I had to return. “Richard! I can’t let this moment go without taking your picture!”. We fumbled for a spot and Richard wanted to proudly stand by his custom doors one last time, I caught the moment. He said one last thing to me, “I stood outside the door as you found me today for 2 reasons. One, the dust and noise were getting overwhelming, but most important, I couldn’t look at my Colony in the condition it is in, I guess it’s the feeling one gets when your home is destroyed by some disaster. I stood there for 3 hours, and chatted with dozens of people, like yourself, who recanted some incredible experiences at the Colony. I left feeling truly humbled and blessed.” He smiled and fumbled for his business card, “I guess I can’t give you a Colony card anymore, I’ll just have to give you this one.” It reads: Richard Turk – music man.
Photo of the day: ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING
ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING . . .: A very well fed, camera shy Elvis was caught by my camera crossing 44th Street in Times Square. It wasn’t until I got home to check the photos that I noticed the big coincidence that, in that moment, ABC television was flashing it’s neon signs advertising their news series “Nashville” on the signs above. (I don’t think ABC was desperate enough to have him do a promo for the show…).
From the gallery: FRAGMENTS OF NEW YORK
PIECES OF NEW YORK: An old shipping container becomes a pop-up Chinese food restaurant in Times Square. Segmented tiles become Liberty art. Neatly placed paint buckets and a work ladder, it becomes a still life of New York.
Photo of the day: THE QUESTION IS . . .
THE QUESTION IS . . . : Where does he keep the money?! This gentleman poses in Times Square at all times of the year in various outfits and is a regular in this part of the neighborhood. At first he would just ride through the area on a vintage girl’s bicycle wearing a big sun hat with various dresses and odd outfits to attract attention. Then he graduated to just standing perfectly still in Times Square to be photographed and not asking for money (as all the other “attractions” do). So he finally got smart and decided to ask for money to have his picture taken. Question now is . . . where does he keep the money? I guess that’s the next step he’ll have to figure out.
From the gallery: THE NAKED COWGIRL
THE NAKED COWGIRL: Yes there is the ‘Naked Cowboy’ of Times Square, but there is also this . . .
This is former stripper, turned Times Square performer Sandy Kane. She gives you the finger (in a friendly manner) if you ask her pose for you, your donations are stuffed under her sagging boobs. Considering their weight and older length – the money does stay in place. Sandy, 52, was recently sued by Robert Burck,41, the muscular male cowboy version for $5,000, he claiming the idea is his trademark . . . they settled out of court. With her defense “I’ve been naked for years!’, she won. God bless America!
Photo of the day: THE STUDIOUS COMMUTER
THE STUDIOUS COMMUTER: Manhattan commuters on the L train shuttle in Times Square will find it very tempting to curl up on the couch with a good book. This incredible ‘interior design’ is part of an advertising campaign by the web site ask.com. The titles of the books ‘on the wall’ are actually the most asked questions asked at the web site. ‘Why is the sky blue?’, ‘What do my dreams mean?’, ‘What are good remedies for headaches?’, ‘How wide is the earth?’, ‘Do fish breathe?’. . .
stu·di·ous(st
d
–
s)
d–s)
adj.
1.
a. Given to diligent study: a quiet, studious child.
b. Conducive to study.
2. Marked by steady attention and effort; assiduous: made a studious attempt to fix the television set.
3. Giving or evincing careful regard; heedful: “The major . . . was very studious of his appearance” (H.E. Bates).
4. Deliberate; contrived.
From the gallery: BROADWAY SHIMMER
BROADWAY SHIMMER: The rain makes Times Square iridescent. Peacock-like colors illuminate from beneath your feet. Broadway’s neon beckons, follow the shimmering road . . .
Photo of the day: THE PINK HAT GOES HOME
THE PINK HAT GOES HOME: Grandmother had made strawberry pie, her favorite. Her sister’s children loved the gifts she brought from back home. The Sunday church sermon was a roof raiser. She proudly wore her best new outfit with the pink hat for the church social. Sunday dinner was prepared together – like they used to.
But now Monday morning has come, and she has to leave early for that long ride back. With a bag of goodies from grammy in one hand and tightly gripping the handle of her fine red bag with the other, she makes her way proudly through Times Square to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the pink hat goes home.
NEW YORK CITY - IN THE WIT OF AN EYE 