The Spell of the El (New York City)

NY Times ^ | May 1, 2005 | SEWELL CHAN

[TBP]

I used to go to the Stadium during the "Guidry" years....

do you remember a reliever for the Red Sox named Dick Drago?

A friend of m ine used to like to get on Drago with a line only a New Yorker would get: "Hey, Drago, fix my shoes."

[geege]

Yea I remember Dick Drago.....I'm missing the "fix my shoes" remark???????

[geege]

Gorton here.....

I used to go to "Benny's" on No. Broadway....great food.

[angcat]

New York is MY home and everywhere else I am in Exile.


Exactly! I consider PA my children’s home but it's just the place where I live.

[angcat]

lol

[neverdem]

Great catch! It wasn't an optical illusion. They completed a 14 story building with a water tower around the block from where I grew up at Nagle Avenue just south of Ellwood Street in 1990. I moved from there in 1980. I rarely pass that way now.

[nutmeg]

Great thread, Cacique. Thanks for the ping!

[TBP]

Tehre was a chain of shoe repair shops called Drago Shoe Repair.

[TBP]

Ever tried The Horseman on North Broiadway in Sleepy Hollow (which used to be North Tarrytown)? A terrific little diner.

[TBP]

There is a famous story that a father and son were driving by where the Polo Grounds used to be (W. 157th in Manhattan, right on the river, virtually directly across from Yankee Stadium) and the father told his son that that was where Bobby Thomson hit the homerun that won the pennant for the Giants.

The son looked for a few seconds and asked, "Yeah? Which floor?"

[geege]

Never heard of the "Horseman", It was probebly after my time there.....I do miss the deli's in Yonkers, where I'm living in NJ there is no such thing of a "real" Italian "smelly deli" as we used to call them!!!!!!!

[TBP]

It might be. I don't know how long The Horseman has been open. If you go up Route 9 (Broadway) past Sleepy Hollow High School, just about when it forks you'll see the place. Whenever you're back in Westchester, look it up.

[nycgal]

My family lived right by the el on 30th & 3rd from the 1940s until my mother finally left our tenement in the 70s. Our neighborhood was very ethnic and very lower middle class and being situated adjacent to the el not very desirable from a real estate point of view. When the el came down in the 50s we all rejoiced because we didn't have to hear the trains rumbling by at all hours of the day and night and the sun finally shone on Third Avenue!

Well, with the demolition of the el the area became prime real estate, the Italian, Greek and Armenian shops disappeared, yuppies moved in as my friends and neighbors moved out. High rises went up as brownstones and older apartment buildings disappeared.

I've since moved to California but sometimes wish I could return to the old neighborhood as it was in the 40s and 50s even with the rumble of the el trains and the lack of sunlight on the avenue.

[firewalk]

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