Category Archives: 80s

An Artist’s Fast Fingers

November 21, 2023 – 11:26 pm

My boss Manny started selling jewelry on Canal Street in 1954. He says that he didn’t sell his first diamond until a year later. “Back then all diamonds were white. We didn’t know any better and better still neither did the Gs.” Manny’s speech is colored by hundreds of diamond selling terms interspersed with Yiddish. […]

By Peter | Also posted in Art, Bet On Crazy, Diamonds, NEW YORK, semi-fiction | Tagged | Comments (0)

A Last Night At the Royal Lieu

August 15, 2023 – 12:37 pm

Paris was a beautiful city in 1985. I worked the door at several nightclubs around the city. My bosses were Albert and Serge. We also had a club in London, the Cafe de Paris, and another in Nice, Le Nautique. Jacques was my partner at the door. The ex-con was a soothing balm to my […]

By Peter | Also posted in PARIS, photo-romans | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

UPPER THERE by Peter Nolan Smith

June 29, 2023 – 7:37 am

In August of 1987 friends in Michigan extended invitations to visit them in Onekema and the Upper Peninsula. Paulie, Gregg, and I celebrated our departure at the Milk Bar in Lower Manhattan. “Why are you going to Michigan for vacation?” Scottie the owner was a New Yorker. The rest of the country was a blank […]

By Peter | Also posted in america, semi-fiction, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

GHOULS OF PERE LA CHAISE by Peter Nolan Smith

June 26, 2023 – 1:35 am

The 1980s were thirty years in the past from the 2010s and when I told stories at the 169 Bar, my young listeners suspected that I was lying about jumping off the Quincy Quarries cliffs or nearly making love with Darryl Hannah in Jamaica or watching bears eat garbage at a Maine dump. Sometimes I […]

By Peter | Also posted in PARIS, semi-fiction | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

LOST BY THE EIGHT BALL by Peter Nolan Smith

June 24, 2023 – 4:05 am

None of the cops from the 9th Precinct were happy about the closing of the basement bar next to their station house in the summer of 1980. Even fewer were excited by its re-opening as a French bistro. Evelyn?s Bistro was another sign that the East Village was giving way to a new crowd. Not […]

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