The St. Patrick's Day Parade

The FDNY pipe and drum band at the end of the parade.

Marching up 5th Avenue.

Another shot up 5th Avenue, follow the green line!

Myself with Division 1 of the AOH, holding the banner.

Myself with one of Division 1's VPs.

The banner, Thomas Rogers Memorial.

Another shot of the banner for the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Division 1.

This past Thursday, New York City held it's 250th annual St. Patrick's Day parade. It's one of the city's oldest traditions, dating back to 1762, when ex-patriot British soldiers from Ireland marched in formation up lower Broadway, playing traditional songs, wearing green and speaking Irish, which was all banned in their home country. After the Revolution, the parade transformed from being a military review of British soldiers to being a gathering of the many religious, cultural, and social organizations of the city's Irish. By the the time Old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mott and Prince Streets was finished in 1815, these various groups would start from their church or headquarters, around such places as St. Peter's on Barclay and Vessey Streets, St. James' between the underpass of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, and St. Joseph's on West 8th Street and 6th Avenue, and all march toward the cathedral where they would be met by the Bishop of New York. A mass or prayer service would be held where the bishop and other dignitaries and politicians would speak, and then everyone would disperse to start celebrating.

As the heart of the city migrated further north, so did the Archdiocese with a new cathedral on 50th Street and 5th Avenue, and so did the parade. By 1851, the parade began to to unite under a single grand marshall and be led by the newly formed 69th Regiment of the Irish Brigade, which it still is to this day. Also, since 1851, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, who formed at St. James Church in 1836, have sponsored the parade. I started marching in 2007 after I had joined to AOH a almost a year earlier in April 2006. Originally founded to defend and protect Irish Catholics in America by guarding churches that would otherwise be vandalized and burnt to the ground, and standing up for the rights of neglected Irish workers, they seemed to have evolved into an organization of older guys who talk about organizing charity drives, cultural events, the Christmas party, and what time and where to meet for the parade on March 17th. All in all, pretty light stuff ... and, no, ILGO and all those gay people who are supposedly "banned" have never once been mentioned. But the parade, the largest in the world, upholds strict traditions by not having political activist groups, pro-Catholic or not, march, as well as remaining strictly a marchers' parade by not allowing floats or cars. As a member of Division 1, we meet where it all began, far downtown in Manhattan, at the Mercantile Grill on Pearl Street, not too far from Fraunces Tavern at the end of the block, where George Washington said farewell to his officers and went back home to Virginia at the end of the Revolution. However, being a Upper-East-Sider, this is my excuse for never making it to the meetings.

The parade is always backed up, and we stood on 46th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue for about two hours, and then finally was the long haul up to 79th Street. Unfortunately, the parade, and all parades in the city, were cut short by Bloomberg starting in April of last year to supposedly cut costs on sanitation. Last year's St. Patrick's Day parade was the last to march up to 86th Street and past the Irish Historical Society on 83rd Street, as the new rule went into effect on April 1st of last year. That's Bloomberg for you: if he decides he wants to do something, he just goes right ahead and does it, often despite what most New Yorkers want. It's a hefty walk just the same, though, and as it nears the end you seem to get a less formal crowd of little kids holding out their hands to slap five and older "big kids" drunkenly yelling things. All in all, there's a lot of history and tradition to all of this, and I'm happy to be able to take part in the largest parade in the world. Celebrating afterward is always good, too.

Nick Valensi's Eighth Birthday Party

Pinnacle Bagels was Valensi's parents' restaurant in the '80s.

The Gap on 42nd and 3rd was the nation's last automat until 1991.

The Strokes are currently on tour again. Little known fact, but I was once, very briefly, good friends with guitarist Nick Velensi in the second grade. For some reason, there was a time when we were around seven when he really liked me. As true then as it is now, he always seemed a little bit cooler than everyone else, especially kids like me and my brother. To prove what was already obvious to us all, Nick Valensi threw the party to end all parties at his ultra-hip parents' restaurant on 3rd Avenue at about 45rd Street in honor of his turning eight years old, and invited Mrs. Turner's entire second-grade class at P.S. 183 on East 66th Street between 1st and York Avenues.

I wish I remembered more from that night, or at least that my parents did, but all I remember was that it was a very sophisticated, adult party, set in a very loud, dark bar/lounge/restaurant, that we all seemed to be about ten to fifteen years too young for. My father remembers a large staircase leading up to the second level, lined on both sides with girls all about eight to ten years old, dressed and made up to look like they were in their twenties. Nick came with an entourage of mature-looking girls on his arm and mixed and mingled with the rest of us.

In the meantime, my dad headed out after dropping us off. My mother was at home under the covers at the time, with just about the worst case of the flu she had ever had, plus eight month pregnant with my brother Joe. So my father decided to give her some time to herself and walked down three blocks to the automat on the southeast corner of 42nd Street and 3rd Avenue. Automats, considered the height of modern-day eating-on-the-go, and an iconic symbol of New York City around fifty years earlier, were already far past their golden age, and this one on the corner of 42nd and 3rd would be the last in the country, closing two years later. Some folks tried to give the automat concept another whirl in 2006 in the East Village, with BAMN! on St. Mark's Place between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, but it closed three years later due to lack of interest. This type of dining that was once so quintessentially New York had rapidly declined in popularity due to fast food joints and people wanting fast food that was (supposedly) fresher. It was all too evident on that Saturday night in January 1989 that the automat had long past its height of popularity as my father sat there with five bums, trying to give my sick mother at home some peace and quiet.

But you know how little kids get sometimes about late-night parties in nightclubs, and only about a minute after our dad walked out the door, my brother Patrick freaked out and wanted to go home immediately. Nick's mother's only choice was to call our apartment. With that, our mom had to somehow drag herself out of bed, drag herself down the stairs, and hail a cab to come pick up Pat, all the while unbeknownst to us all that Dad was just a few blocks away. Such was life before cell phones.

Looking back on it now, my mom says it seems like such a dated story. There were no cell phones so my parents couldn't communicate (something that is so easily taken for granted now) and my dad was hanging out at the automat, one of the most dated of New York City institutions. It finally closed in April, 1991, and there's a Gap store there now.

I walked up Third Avenue the other day to try to find the building where that restaurant used to be, and I think it's Pinnacle Deli and Hot Bagels, between 45th and 46th Streets. Nick, I know you're a big-time rock star now, but remember me -- Jamie Meehan -- your old pal from Mrs. Turner's second grade class?

My Latest Walk Up The Bowery

SoHotel on the Bowery and Broome Street.

Avalon Bowery Place on the Bowery between Houston and 1st Streets.

Lately I've been reading "Up In The Old Hotel", a collection of stories by The New Yorker columnist Joseph Mitchell. All written around 1938-43, they're mainly human-interest stories of elderly, slightly off-beat New Yorkers whose heyday was about thirty years earlier. The latest one I finished was on a Commodore Dutch, an eccentric old man who wore a well-preserved but ill-fitting suit and survived solely off of the generosity of others. He was president of an "association", a hold-over from the rackets of the Tammany Hall days, that had "members" and "officers", who paid him dues regularly, and each year he would hold a ball. Dutch created the association because he owed a debt to Boss Sullivan after a long night of drinking along the Bowery, but long after the Tammany Hall machine had lost most of it's power, and the parties and fundraisers it held became a thing of the past, Commodore Dutch continued to hold his ball each year well into old age, relying solely on people around the city who seemed to get a kick out of his eccentric personality.

According to Mitchell, Dutch got the title "commodore" from John McGurk, a bartender who proudly owned "the roughest joint in town", McGurk's Suicide Hall. Every time I've read about this place, it has always been mentioned that at least five "back room girls" killed themselves by drinking carbolic acid there in 1901, thus giving the place its infamous name. Mitchell mentions this, too, in this 1941 story, and how Dutch got one of his best jobs around that time from McGurk, when he would round up sailors from the South Street Seaport and bring them up to that rough saloon at 295 Bowery at East 1st Street. Unfortunately, it was demolished in 2005. Despite a small fight to give the building landmark status, the Landmark Commission didn't feel that it had enough architectural significance.

The other day I got a well-needed haircut from my cousin who's salon is a block west of the Bowery on Elizabeth Street. So I walked around for a while while down there, noting the big new glass building that was built in place of McGurk's, and, half a block up, at Bowery and Bleecker, John Varvados, a ridiculously expensive clothing store, which used to be CBGBs. You've got to hand it to them, though -- they let people walk around the place without having to buy anything. So I walked around the old rock club, noting the old band posters and the drum set they had set up where the stage used to be, now covered in very expensive shoes.

I then walked around the corner to Marz Bar on East 1st Street and Second Avenue. This place has been long known as a beloved dive bar of the punk rock scene. Wow, what a dump this place was -- and I consider myself someone who likes dive bars. I looked around briefly and said, "Forget this, I've got to get out of here," or something like that. I read recently, though, that that bar and another one called Max Fish were going to be closed down in a matter of weeks, so I felt I had to pay them a visit.

A guy I met a few months ago who worked full-time at Lord and Taylor told me that the ill-fitting suit he was wearing was the only one he owned and that he was a punk-rocker at heart. He told me about the glory days of how those two awful little holes-in-the-wall Marz Bar and CBGBs were around the corner from each other, and how the city just isn't the same, etc., etc. If Lord and Taylor had considered me worthy to partake in their minimum wage payroll, it may have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship with this punk rocker, but as it turned out I don't even remember his name.

Mitchell's story of Comodore Dutch also mentions Big Tim Sullivan's unofficial headquarters, the Occidental Hotel on the corner of Bowery and Broome Street, which around 1911 was one of the fanciest hotels in town, but, as Dutch had bemoaned, by 1941 had become a run-down flophouse (like countless other on the Bowery) where one could stay for three dollars a week. Still standing today as a two-star hotel called "SoHotel", it is the city's longest continuously-operating hotel, dating back to at least 1805, with a chandelier store on ground floor.

Dutch recalled how the beloved, seemingly invincible boss of the Bowery slowly began to lose his mind as he got older, and was put in a home up in the Bronx, where he would occasionally escape, and cops would often find him a few hours later sitting in the lobby of the Occidental. Until one day he escaped for good. A body was found on railroad tracks up in Westchester, and remained unidentified for fourteen days. When it was about to be put in a potter's field, a cop identified him at the last minute. A funeral mass was held for him at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mott and Prince Streets, where Dutch marched in the procession and as he put it, cried the whole time. Sullivan's funeral, according to Dutch, spelled the end of the racket scene on the Bowery, as the gambling dens and bars migrated uptown and then started to dwindle away. Dutch, though, kept the dream alive buy continuing to hold his ball each year. And in 1941, he was able to rent out the back room of a bar on 3rd Avenue near 50th Street. Some people would stick around out of fascination, but would leave out of frustration when Dutch's crazy friends got out of hand. Among them were Ed and Pegeen Fitzgerald, long time radio talk show hosts who my grandfather listened to for years.

Reading Joseph Mitchell's stories, I'm always amazed at how relatable they are considering they were all written about seventy years ago. As I walked around downtown, I was able to point out all sorts of places that Dutch mentioned. A hundred years later, although a lot has changed, other places haven't changed at all. It just goes to show that despite progress and technology and the like, people, and the streets they walked, rarely change at all.

The Farley/Moynihan Post Office

The Farley Post Office, 8th Avenue from 31st to 33rd Streets.

It was announced recently that the James A. Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue from 31st to 33rd Streets will soon get a name change to honor late former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The 1912 building by McKim, Mead, and White, with it's Romanesque columns and unofficial motto of the Post Office carved on top, ("Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds), serves as a small reminder of the old Penn Station, a similar stately structure that used to be across the street where the rather ugly Madison Square Garden is now. For decades the only Post Office in the nation that was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it started closing at 10 PM a little over a year ago due to the recession.

Since 1982, the building has been named for James Farley, the 53rd United States Postmaster General, serving under FDR. He also led the presidential campaigns of FDR and Al Smith, and in 1940 was the first Catholic Presidential candidate who had crossover appeal, when he contended the President's third term. House Resolution 398 of the 97th Congress, which bestowed the honor on Farley on March 2, 1982, stated " ... the life of James A. Farley should serve as an example for present and future generations of Americans of the vital contributions which individual citizens can make to the life of the nation through diligent public service ..."

However, I guess Congress has decided that Farley has been honored enough, and the stately building will soon be honoring former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was a long-time outspoken proponent of turning the building into a new and improved concourse for the Amtrak Railway, which it looks like will actually happen in the next few years.

Moynihan went through some pretty big changes to get where he did. Born in Oklahoma, he moved to Hell's Kitchen when he was a young child, where he grew up as a street kid in a poor neighborhood, shining shoes and attending a number of public, private, and Catholic schools before graduating from Benjamin Franklin High School in Harlem. He then worked as a longshoreman before enrolling at City College, which at the time offered free admission. He spent a few years in the Navy where he got a degree from Tufts University. He went on to serve in four successive Presidential administrations (JFK, LBJ, Nixon and Ford), and then in the Senate for three terms, declining a run for a fourth in 2000. When he died in 2003, many praised him for being the last of a dying breed of politician -- the unapologetic intellectual, who defied party lines and believed strongly in heated debate and discussion without frills.

As the city moves forward to revamp this old building, the last reminder of the old Penn Station that was torn down in what became one of the biggest mistakes in the city's redevelopment history, whatever changes they make, I know the city now has a little more respect for its architectural past, and I just hope it's done quickly and painlessly (but, honestly, I think it will be slow and painful). "Freedom Tower". Second Avenue subway. Enough said.

The Tree at Rockefeller Center

The Rockefeller Center Tree.

There probably isn't a more recognizable or iconic symbol of Christmas in New York City than the tree at Rockefeller Center. It has got to be one of the biggest tourist attractions in the city, and the crowds say it all. I went down there for the lighting ceremony once years ago, and, man, I hate to say it, but what a mistake that was. It was an early taste of how unbearably crowded these touristy places can get, and I couldn't get anywhere near the tree. As I recall, police barricades guarded the ceremony from blocks away and I could barely even see the jumbo-tron they had set up.

So I realized that the Christmas tree lighting is right up there with the ball dropping on New Year's Eve as far as events to avoid in this city go. But despite all this negativity, I've got to hand it to this city for having yet another event that is recognized and admired throughout the world. And so I took a walk down to Rockefeller Center, and as always noted how the sidewalks got increasingly more crowded as I came from the Upper East Side.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., leased the space in 1929 from Columbia University with the intention of building a new theatre for the Metropolitan Opera. However, due to the Stock Market crash, the plan fell through, and, left with only a few options, he decided to fund a new project entirely with his own money, making it the largest private building project undertaken in modern times. On the land was built a complex of fourteen office buildings. Rockefeller originally didn't want his name associated with the new development, but public-relations pioneer and prominent family advisor Ivy Lee persuaded him that it would attract more tenants.

A major controversy was avoided in the mid-30s when Lee and other advisers attempted to lease a number of buildings to German commercial interests and be dubbed the "Deutsche Haus", but strained relations with Hitler prevented that from happening. They were instead dubbed "International House North", and became the center for British in the U.S., and later Allied Intelligence during World War II.

Rockefeller Center actually kind of represented the end of an era in the history of architectural sculpture because it was one of the last major building projects in the country to sponsor a program of integrated public art. Sculpture Lee Laurie contributed twelve pieces, including the statue of Atlas across the street from the main doors of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Acclaimed architect Paul Manship was commissioned to create a masterwork for the central sunken plaza, and produced the gilded statue of the Titan Prometheus that is seen today. Although many sources throughout the world consider it to be the fourth most recognizable sculpture in the United States, followed by the Lincoln Memorial, Mount Rushmore, and the Empire State Building, it was not a work that Manship was particularly proud or fond of. Other sculptures that were at first commissioned and planned for throughout the plaza were all abandoned, and instead on Christmas Day, 1936, the ice rink opened up.

The first tree, however, was hastily and unceremoniously put up by construction workers in December, 1931. At a mere twenty feet, workers decorated the tree with strings of cranberries, paper, and even tin cans and the foil ends of blasting caps. Two years later, when 30 Rock opened, the official tradition began, and lasts to this day, with trees picked from around the tri-state area ranging from seventy to one hundred ten feet. Due to the width of the streets passing through, the tree can't exceed this height.

Plus, the star placed on top of the tree ways five hundred fifty pounds. All in all pretty extravagant, but that's New York for you I guess. Time for me to go to country for a while and get away from the hustle and bustle of this place. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Old St. Patrick's Cathedral Becomes a Basilica

The altar at Old St. Patrick's.

The umbrella presented to the church, signifying its new rank as a basilica.

A closer shot of the altar

Another shot of the organ.

The organ.

A Chinese family that wished to take their picture with me.

A shot of the crowd during the reception.

Another shot of the crowd.

That skull on a cell phone that is common on condemned buildings.

This past week I got an e-mail from the Hibernians that Old St. Patrick's Cathedral, on Mott and Prince Streets in Little Italy, was being upgraded to a basilica, an honor sometimes given to important churches in a city, making Old St. Patrick's the Pope's official church in New York. Completed in 1815, it's unique-looking because it has no windows in the front, and high walls guard the graves on either side, a reflection of the anti-Catholic sentiment at the time, as rioters would destroy the stained-glass, and at one point nativist mobs even tried to burn the church to the ground. Despite its centrality to early Catholic life in this country, the Archbishop said that while filling out the paper work to apply for basilica status, he needed to prove that the church was still an active and important house of worship, and the Archbishop noted that despite all it's history, this church was not a "museum", but a "living, vibrant parish", as could be seen by the hundreds of Chinese faithful who packed the sides of the church, while some important guests took up the pews.

I was hastily given the job of an usher and a green, white and orange sash, and told to seat a well-dressed older Chinese woman in pew 5. She was with Father Jonathan Morris, who often appears on Fox News. I knew I recognized him but didn't say anything ... then I took the obviously important Chinese woman 5 rows to the back of the church instead of the front. My mistake. I just told her it was my first day here. I tend to say that a lot.

Anyway, it was a little unorganized as I had to guard two pews for Hibernians marching in the procession, trying my best to stop a whole slew of octogenarians who were trying to sit there, most of them with canes, one of them even blind. I didn't exactly feel comfortable asserting my authority over these people, and nobody was really going to listen to me anyway. But even though the Hibernians and Knights of Columbus bickered for a little while over who needed to sit where, and that two seats in the second pew needed to be saved for Justice Scalia and his wife (who I don't think showed up), eventually everything got settled just in time for the ushers to start spreading the word to each other that the Archbishop was coming through the door at any minute.

I stood in the back throughout most of the service mainly hoping that I wasn't in the way, until the head of the Hibernians asked me to go up to the front of the church so that I could help supervise the filing out at the end. So I walked up the center aisle alone during the closing prayer while the Knights of Columbus flanked me, about twenty on each side, a bunch of old guys in full uniform and swords drawn. When I got to the front of the church I made sure not to trip or fall backward or anything because I knew everyone would see me but at the end of the service Cardinal Egan came up to me and said, "Thanks for coming."

Next was off to the reception, where I went straight for the buffet table because I hadn't eaten all day. The place was packed and the line barely moving, and unfortunately prevented me from talking to Archbishop Dolan again. By the time I spotted him, he was already leaving. He gave a general wave in my direction and then a cop escorted him out the door.

I did meet Cardinal Egan, though. He was signing programs, and luckily had time for one more. He said, "So tell me about yourself."

Now, I knew I'd get about thirty seconds to talk, so I tried to make it count. "Well, Your Eminence, I'm with the Hibernians, I'm the Division 1 Historian, and I'm happy to be a part of all this. This is a great church with a lot of history." (Or something like that.)

He signed my program and then said, "And off we go." And quickly walked out the door with a priest. He had said something similar the last time I saw him ... he's obviously coached.

While wandering around the reception, a Chinese woman who barely spoke any English and had two small children came up to me and gestured to a camera. I thought she wanted me to take a picture, but soon realized that she wanted her four-year-old son to take a picture of her with me. The lady obviously thought I was more important than I really was. Her son could barely work the camera, taking a couple of pictures of the ceiling, so I suggested that someone get a picture of all of us.

On a side note, after I left, I saw a big picture of a skull talking on a cell phone, on a dumpster outside the Puck Building. I was surprised to see it because I'd seen the same picture on the side of McGurk's Suicide Hall, at 295 Bowery near East 1st Street, which was unable to receive landmark status and was demolished in 2005, but around the turn of the twentieth century prided itself as being "the roughest joint in town", a very dangerous dive bar where at least five back-room girls killed themselves by drinking carbolic acid.

I've added a video here that I found on YouTube of a news report of the ceremony, but, no, I wasn't able to spot myself.

Gentrification and Change in Brooklyn

St. John's "Church of the General's" in Bay Ridge, built 1834.

For the first time, I thought I'd venture out of Manhattan, and write a little something about Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, my father's hometown, and nearby Coney Island, which is undergoing a makeover that is forcing many businesses that have been around since the early twentieth century to pack up and leave. Gentrification throughout the city has, as we all know, had its good and bad points, as it has made the city a safer, more family-friendly place to live, it has also made it absurdly over-priced. I can't help but think that these changes will redefine what a "New Yorker" is altogether. The born-and-bred "New Yorker" or "Brooklynite" of my father's day, a middle-class type who lived and worked in the city, will be weeded out, being replaced by the very wealthy, and as some other bloggers whose work I've read have attested, the city will become an private enclave for the rich. I think it's kind of a disgrace, but that's the way of the world I guess.

I used to be all for turning the city into a safer place by any means necessary, even if it meant "Disney-fying" it to the point that it was a very phony, commercialized, over-priced tourist destination, but now I've got to admit I'm not so sure. I've read a few blogs from some aging rockers who grew up in this city and wholeheartedly despise what it has become, and mourn deeply what it was in the '70s and '80s, what seems to be gone forever, and I've got to admit, the more I study the city's past, the more I'm starting to agree with them. Granted, it's great that I can walk through the city at three in the morning and not worry about being mugged, but I'm already beginning to feel that people like myself, who aren't criminals or drug addicts, are being weeded out as well.

But I digress. My grandmother's house in Bay Ridge was sold this past week, and it was the end of an era. In 1923, Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as President, the old Yankee Stadium opened up in the South Bronx because the Polo Grounds couldn't fit all the people who were coming to see Babe Ruth hit home runs, and my great-grandfather from Dundalk bought the three-family row house at 222 88th Street. My aunt used to like to take my father out to Coney Island, to Luna Park, the Steeple Chase and the Cyclone, and now, many of the businesses along the boardwalk are going to have to close up shop and fast.

I've haven't made the trip down to Bay Ridge yet, but need to soon to take some pics, such as the 1834 "Church of the Generals," St. John's, where Robert E. Lee was a vestryman and where Stonewall Jackson was baptized in 1849. I hate to say it, but if we New Yorkers are not careful, it may someday be gone to, and it is up to amateur city historians like myself to keep the memory of places like this alive.