Tag Archives: new york

QUEEN OF THE PLAZA by Peter Nolan Smith

St. Patrick’s Day promised to be another disaster for the Retail Collection of the Plaza Hotel. Hordes of green-clad spectators streamed down the escalator into the basement. Their eyes averted the luxury goods on offer, as their destination was the hotel’s public bathroom. Within the first hour I had given directions to the toilet over […]

St. Valentine’s Day Massacre / BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

Every Valentine’s Day diamond dealers and jewelers on 47th Street anticipated a winter spending spree by lovers for their loved ones, but each year of the 21st Century the sales numbers dropped drastically, as the economic downturn cut into everyone’s surplus, but the rich. Valentine afternoon in February 2011 shoppers crammed the chocolatiers along 5th […]

CHICKEN MESSIAHS by Peter Nolan Smith

Several years ago the media covered a story about rat-infested aGreenwich Village KFC. The stock for Yum Corp, which owns the fast food chain along with Taco Bell, dropped fifty cents on the NYSE with the negative news and I felt bad, because for several years I had been a quality control inspector for KFC […]

The Last Christmas Tree

After Thanksgiving Christmas trees crowd the sidewalks of New York. On the corner of Fulton and St. Felix Streets the holiday franchise has been run by Laurent and Amy, who have transported evergreens from the northern forest of Quebec for the last six seasons. We spoke in French with their accent a provincial Quebecois and […]

GLITTER GULCH by Jane Dickson

The Last Days of Babylon July 12, 2013 Throughout 70s and 80s NYPD Police and city authorities had designated Times Square to be DMZ for crime and sex and the neighborhood swiftly became a haven for XXX theaters, go-go girls, pimps, whore houses, rent boys, hustlers, thieves, dealers, and lowlifes on the make. The 1977 […]