Category Archives: New York

The Forgotten Brooklyn Elevated Train Crash Of 1923

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June 25, 1923 Intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues

Photo © Osmund Leviness

“Those who died were fortunate it seemed to me when I looked inside the cars. As long as I live I can never forget it. All the people were in a mass there, struggling and screaming, with blood running over them. They all seemed to be bleeding or stained with blood. One woman’s head was terribly cut on top, and one jaw seemed to be crushed in. The hand of another woman was almost cut off. One woman I took out through a window died a few minutes after I carried her into the post office. I can’t forget the inside of those cars. They looked like my idea of purgatory.” –  Traffic Officer Joseph J. Ryan who was on the scene immediately after the crash.

This incredible accident happened 89 years ago, Monday, June 25, 1923  as two cars of the BMT derailed and plunged 35 feet into the street at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn. Continue reading →

Joe DiMaggio’s Comeback 1949

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The Yankee Clipper Gets Ready To Return To Play – June 21, 1949

Many who saw Joe DiMaggio play say he was the greatest all-around ballplayer who ever lived. Everything he did seemed effortless. Of course this is a huge exaggeration. Everything DiMaggio did so well required practice, patience and hard work.

When DiMaggio missed the first three months of the 1949 baseball season with a painful heel injury, many fans, players and sportswriters thought he might never play again.

So it was hush-hush when DiMaggio went to an empty Yankee Stadium to test out his heel in a full workout on June 21, 1949.

Things went well and DiMaggio returned to the Yankee line-up on June 28, 1949 at Fenway Park against the Red Sox to start a three game series. He hit a homerun in the first game which the Yankees won by a score of 5-4. The Yankees swept the series and when DiMaggio left Boston, he had hit four homeruns and driven in nine runs.

The impact of his return cannot be understated. In the 76 games DiMaggio played for the remainder of the year, he batted .346, hit 14 homeruns and drove in 67 runs. His on base percentage was the highest of his career, .459. In 329 plate appearances he struck out only 18 times.

The Yankees ended up edging the Red Sox by one game in the final season standings, propelling the Yankees into the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

DiMaggio would go on to have the worst World Series performance in his storied career, batting just .111. But the Yankees still defeated the Dodgers four games to one, starting their stretch of winning five World Championships in a row.

The New York Times Obituaries Occasionally Celebrates Low-Lifes, Yet Ignores Deserving Artists and Notables

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Who Gets A New York Times Obituary Write-up?

What do legendary blues and heavy metal guitarist, Gary Moore, rock album photographer Jim McCrary and playwright, screenwriter, author and jazz champion Max Wilk all have in common?

When they died, the New York Times did not cover their deaths in the obituary column. We all know space is limited, but these people were significant in their artistic fields, enriching the lives of countless others.  It would be nice had the self-proclaimed “newspaper of record” recorded and noted their amazing lives. But The Times editors felt these people were not deserving.

The official policy about who the The Times decides to write up is :

When we look to see whether someone had made a newsworthy impact in some way — who “made a wrinkle in the social fabric,” — we don’t equate significance with fame. In point of fact, 9 out of 10 people we write about are indeed not household names (the 10th is — a movie star, a secretary of state). But that doesn’t negate their importance. Most made their marks in quiet ways, out of the public limelight, but they still made a mark, possibly on your life and mine.

So who is deserving?

Apparently an unremarkable low-life, graffiti tagger, StayHigh 149, a.k.a. Wayne Roberts , can get a full write-up.

Yes, Roberts definitely, as the Times puts it, “made a mark on your life and mine.”

More like a blemish.

Especially in New York City in the 1970’s when the city was bombarded with the eyesore of graffiti defacing public and private property.

As is noted in the obituary, this great man (sarcasm) in the 1960’s was working as a messenger on Wall Street and smoking about an ounce of marijuana a week, earning the Stay High nickname.

Inspired by other vandals tagging subway cars, he then began defacing public property.

Chris Pape a fellow graffiti  aficionado says in the Times obituary:

“He (Roberts) rode empty trains all day with markers in his pocket, and he wrote everywhere.” By the early ’80s, Pape said, drugs had begun to take their toll. Roberts left his World Trade Center job, and his wife, because of his drug use. “He was a functional junkie who occasionally did time in prison for stupid things,” Pape said. “He was like that for 20 years. He didn’t want to be found.”

For some reason, I can only think of the millions of wasted dollars that it cost taxpayers to eradicate the vandalism this cretin created.  As I have said before – graffiti is definitely not art.

This is the sort of person The New York Times chooses to cover in their obituaries?

For the record, when one of the most influential singers in heavy metal history, Ronnie James Dio, died on May 16, 2010, the following day The Times devoted 493 words to summing up his life.

Graffiti vandal Wayne Roberts had 838 words written about him.

Old New York In Photos #18 – Henry Hudson Parkway Improvement 1937

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Henry Hudson Parkway and Riverside Park December 6, 1937

Photo © Ben Heller (Underwood & Underwood)

Looking north from 72nd Street on December 6 , 1937 we see the newly opened stretch of The Henry Hudson Parkway. Continue reading →

Where Did The Saying “Up The River” Come From?

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A Movie Cliche’s New York Origins

If you ever watch any gangster films from the 1930’s or 40’s, one of the lines of dialogue that always pops up is: “up the river.”

Somebody would utter it: a criminal; prosecutor; police officer; or a fellow gangster. Listen and it will be said in most of these early crime movies.

Lines like:

“Didn’t you hear, Rocky’s going up the river.”

“If you don’t talk Ike, I can guarantee you’re going to spend a long stretch up the river.”

“I’m not takin’ the fall to go up the river for a heist you did, Spats.”

The term “up the river” as most people know refers to going to prison.

So where did the saying come from?

In the 1800’s, when you were charged with a crime and sent to prison in New York City, the accused would first be taken to the prison on Centre Street in lower Manhattan which was known as “the Tombs” built in 1838.

The Tombs were so named because the original structure had large granite columns on the outside of the building which  resembled Egyptian burial architecture, a.k.a. tombs. The Tombs though, were merely a holding prison for the accused criminals awaiting trial.

After sentencing, convicts were sent to a prison on Blackwell’s Island (today known as Roosevelt Island) in the middle of the East River.

However if you were a habitual offender or committed a very serious offense, you would be sent thirty miles north, up the Hudson River to Sing Sing prison. This is the origin of the phrase being sent, “up the river.” Sing Sing separated the hardened criminals from the run of the mill pickpockets, burglars and ordinary thieves.

Even though, the term “up the river” originally referred to Sing Sing, it was eventually applied to anyone being sent to any prison.

Squealer’s End

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What Happens To Squealer’s

This is not The Sopranos or The Godfather.

75 years ago, gangsters did really nasty things to you, if you talked to the cops.

The back of this Acme news photograph sums it up:

Trussed from head to foot, the body of Samuel Silverman is examined by Deputy Medical Examiner Romeo Auerbach. The victim was found in a car parked in Brooklyn, N.Y. with three bullets in his skull. Police believe Silverman was killed for “putting the finger” on other men involved in a hold up, for which he was out on bail.  July 16, 1937

Silverman , 25, who lived at 869 Hopkinson Avenue, Brooklyn, was found in front of 324 East 91st Street, Brooklyn on July 15, 1937. The body was discovered at 5 pm by a youth who happened to glance inside the parked car.

Silverman had been arrested Continue reading →

Classic Hollywood #13 – Betty Grable & Marilyn Monroe

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Candid Photographs of Marilyn Monroe

Instead of the typical movie publicity or glamor photographs of Marilyn Monroe, we thought we’d highlight three photographs that show Marilyn in a bit of a different light.

Betty Grable and her How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) co-star Marilyn Monroe emerge from a Hollywood restaurant. Grable who was 20th Century Fox’s blond bombshell for most of the 1940’s was being “replaced” by Monroe. Grable was relieved as she was getting tired of fighting with Daryl F. Zanuck, Fox’s studio chief. Supposedly she told Marilyn privately, “Honey, I’ve had my time in the spotlight, now it’s your turn!”

Marilyn takes a break and kneels on the steps of a brownstone while filming Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch (1955).  A portion of the film was shot on location in New York City. The brownstone where the lead character, Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) lives with Marilyn subletting the apartment above him, is located at 164 East 61st Street. The building is still there, though somewhat modified.

Marilyn Monroe with a very dour looking Joe DiMaggio in Florida in 1961. Monroe was visiting DiMaggio, who was a special instructor to the New York Yankees during spring training. After their nine month marriage ended in divorce in 1954, the couple remained friends and got closer as the years passed. There were rumors that Monroe and DiMaggio were contemplating remarrying one another when Monroe passed away in 1962.

Bill Moose Skowron Dies at 81 – An Appreciation of a Kind Man

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Casey Stengel and Bill “Moose” Skowron

Bill “Moose” Skowron died today, April 27, 2012 of congestive heart failure in Arligton Heights, IL.

In this news photograph above, the caption says, “Bill Moose Skowron reports for his first day, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, September 19.”

The only problem with this is that Moose’s first game was April 13, 1954 and it was not at Comiskey Park.  And the Yankees did not play in Chicago on September 19, 1954.

So what is the answer to this problem? Continue reading →

Subway Song

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“I Saw It in The BRT”

An ode to the subway.

This 1917 ditty was written about the BRT (Brooklyn Rapid Transit System), which was the former name to the BMT (Brooklyn Manhattan Transit System).  The words which extoll the virtues of the advertising you would see on the train were written by Charles H. Willich and the music by George A. Sumner.

It is amazing how many products mentioned in the song are still around from almost 100 years ago: Grape Nuts, Wrigley’s Gum, Cracker Jacks, Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix and many others.

New Yorker’s have no more BRT, BMT, IND (Independent) or IRT (Interboro Rapid Transit). Now we just call it the subway, run by the oligarchal fiefdom called the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority).  And most of the ads you see are for acne treatments, learning English, and filing lawsuits.

Lyrics can be read here (click to enlarge):