Want to know what it was like to drive a cab in New York City in 1945? Ask Johnny "Spider" Footman -- he's still doing it.
Quote of the Week: "They had sex in the back [seats] in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s,” he recalled with a twinkle in his eye. “The cabs were a lot bigger then."
H/T: New York Post
AMC's Mad Men returns to TV Sunday night. The New York Daily News has a great photo archive of what it was like to live in New York City during the early '60s. It's worth checking out. (Warning: Slide Show)
Where were you 30 years ago tonight?
If you're over the age of 40, you remember. While I was too young to remember where I was the day JFK was shot, I know exactly where I was the night the world learned that a deranged nothing snuffed out the life of my generation's most strident poet.
Since I live across the street from The Dakota, the famed apartment building where John Lennon lived -- and at whose front gate he was killed -- it's going to be a sad day in the neighborhood. The TV crews were already staking out positions last night at the 72nd Street Gate to Central Park -- positioned right between the front gates to The Dakota and Strawberry Fields, the peace park created just across the way to commemorate John and the goal of world peace he always wished for.
Rather than focus too much on his death, I'm going to try to remember his life. John was, like me, a transplanted New Yorker, not a native. But he grew quickly to love this city, just as I'm quickly growing to love it. He loved its grittiness, its energy. He loved the anonymity that the streets afforded him. I love these things too, but also the city is a much friendlier place than its reputation affords it.
Peace? Not always. But you can find peace here if you search hard enough.
The countdown to my departure from the South has begun. And with it comes the reality that I will be leaving the only life I've ever known. A life of walking barefoot, of ya'lls a ma'ms and blackberry jams. So amidst the chaos of packing, selling the trailer, loading up the car, finding a job and figuring out whether to drive up I-95 or I-81, I need to find time to do that "one thing, one last time" before I depart the region of my birth. So here's a short list I devised, a sort of "Hillbilly Bucket List." Feel free to add suggestions in the comments section below.
Did I leave anything out?
This photograph of John Lennon is iconic. When he moved to New York City in 1971 he was fleeing the disintegration of The Beatles and the country in which he'd spent all his life.
New York was a new adventure to him. He commented that if he had lived in Roman times he would have moved to Rome. Since the United States was the dominant empire of his time, it was natural he would gravitate toward it's epicenter, New York.
Lennon liked the power of the city. The energy. The clubs. The activities. But he also liked the fact that it afforded him a little anonymity. With a hat pulled over his head and some sunglasses he could walk on the streets with little fanfare. For someone who had been mobbed by Beatle fans for most of his 20s, it was a great feeling.
I don't know how close I'll be living to The Dakota, the well-known and ritzy apartment building where he lived and where in front of its entrance he died, but I have little doubt I'll walk by it often. Sadly, I've noticed it's become a major stop on the tourist routes, and during the summer you can't go by without seeing someone taking photographs of the spot where John was shot and killed.
Lennon's New York years are so iconic, the Rock and Roll Museum's New York Annex even has an exhibit about John's time living in New York:
New Yorkers still have a warm spot for Lennon, and many of them were instrumental in battling Nixon when he tried to have John deported after his green card expired in 1972 and he wanted to becoming a citizen. They liked him because he chose them, and they appreciated the compliment. He got his permanent resident card on July 4, 1976, and would have been eligible to apply for citizenship in 1981.
I've chosen New York too, and hopefully I will love the energy, excitement and opportunity of the city as much as John did.
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