Category Archives: Commentary

Book Review – The Day The Bubble Burst October 29, 1929

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A Classic Wall Street Tale – Soon To Be Repeated

October 29 is an important anniversary date that many do not remember because they did not live through it. On that date in 1929 the stock market crashed to an astonishing level.

Major media outlets are praising Aaron Ross Sorkin’s forthcoming book 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History–and How It Shattered a Nation, (Random House, November 4 2025). 

Coincidentally I was just finishing an older book about the same subject. It is  among the best books ever written about Wall Street.

The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts (Doubleday, 1979) is a masterful work of  storytelling.

While John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1955 book The Great Crash 1929, remains the seminal work on the economic causes of the crash, Thomas and Morgan-Witts examine the human aspects of the financial calamity which ushered in the Great Depression.

Threading together the lives of movers and shakers of Wall Street and the ordinary citizen, the authors lay out stories that resonate today. Events unfolding before us now, have similarities to the great crash of 1929. Continue reading →

How A $10 Mistake Cost A Pizza Shop $22,000

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The Customer Is Always Right (Even When You Don’t Think They Are)

I heard this story recently and in my experience, sets a record for holding a grudge against a business.

22 years ago along with her two toddlers, a steady customer went into her local upper east side pizza shop, to buy a slice.

She gave the pizzaman cashier a twenty dollar bill.

The change received was for a ten. Continue reading →

Sexual Innuendo Postcards – Same Message With Different Risque Images

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The Risque Postcard 1906-1908

While both of these double entendre postcards would be considered risque around 1900, the photographs are quite different.

This first postcard of “Practice This Piece With Me” from 1907 implies making out during piano practice time.

The second postcard goes a bit further. Notice where his hand is. Continue reading →

Old New York In Photos #185 – Ninth Avenue 23rd Street 1930

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The Ninth Avenue El From 23rd Street – May 31, 1930

With London Terrace Apartments About To Begin Construction

This photograph by Percy Loomis Sperr shows the Ninth Avenue El looking north from the west side of 23rd Street.

We can see the entire corner from 23rd to 24th Street has been cleared in preparation for the construction of the London Terrace apartment complex. London Terrace has 14 buildings stretching from Ninth to Tenth Avenues. Continue reading →

See What Products Were Produced In Major Cities Of The United States In 1939

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The United States Once Produced A Wide Array Of Goods And Products

Here’s What The Big Industrial Cities Used To Make

Parke, Davis and Company, manufacturing chemists, Detroit, Michigan. Packaging of pills and tablets on a conveyor belt May 1943 photo Arthur Siegel

The controversy over tariffs to correct a trade imbalance has its proponents and its critics. One of the goals for the United States is to be more self-reliant by bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Continue reading →

How To Properly Televise A Baseball Game – 1972

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Pure Baseball As Televised July 8, 1972

What is wrong with baseball telecasts today?

Just about everything.

Before cable television, baseball was usually televised only in your local broadcast area, if there was a major league team within your market. Otherwise you could tune into only one nationally broadcast game on Saturday, aptly named the “Game of the Week.” Continue reading →

Book Review – Of Things That Used To Be, The Bronx In The Early 20th Century

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A Step Up From New York’s Tenements

Nathan (Nat) D. Lobell’s Of Things That Used To Be  A Childhood On Fox Street In The Bronx In The Early Twentieth Century is a memoir concentrating on a striving South Bronx neighborhood full of  immigrants, primarily Jewish, Irish and Italian between World War I and the 1920s. Continue reading →

New Yorker Cartoons From 1970 That Would Now Be Inappropriate

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A Dozen 1970 New Yorker Cartoons That Would Not Get Published Today

In 1970 the Women’s Lib movement was in full swing. But it was still de rigueur for the media to portray women as sexual objects.

The New Yorker magazine has always been a mirror of society in the drawings it decides to publish.

Looking back through its cartoons that ran in 1970, reveals what once was considered funny, would now be considered politically incorrect. They may be funny as well. It depends upon your sense of humor.

Many cartoons we display below, involve sexual harassment. But back then these cartoons were a reflection of many men’s behavior and attitudes towards women.

In it’s 100 years of publishing, is there a New Yorker cartoon that was offensive or in bad taste for the time it originally ran? I have seen thousands of their cartoons and have not found one.

What I find offensive is cartoons that are not funny. How did that get published?

Here are cartoons from The New Yorker magazine in 1970, that would probably never appear in The New Yorker today.

Continue reading →

Where Was Stuffnobodycaresabout.com For Almost A Week?

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An Explanation For Those Who Wonder Why Recently There Was No StuffNobodyCaresAbout.com

To Our Readers:

From March 20 -March 24 we were offline. Gone. Kaput. Website does not exist. And a feeling of helplessness as far as getting everything back and running again. What happened?

Server and hosting issues.

It’s not like millions of people noticed as if Amazon went down. As a matter of fact, appropriately, we don’t think anybody really cared. Continue reading →