HG has written frequently about the food heaven that was the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Yes, Zabar’s, Murray’s and Barney Greengrass remain — temples of smoked fish and other delicious treats. But, in the days long before the UWS became fully gentrified there were scores of Mom-and-Pop shops, eccentric ethnic restaurants and corner greengrocers that defined the neighborhood’s culinary bent — all have disappeared, crushed by the real estate steam roller. When HG and BSK lived on the West Side during the 1960s and early 1970s the neighborhood was a bastion of rent control. Vast, affordable apartments were legion. Naturally, this attracted writers, artists, musicians, dancers, intellectuals, etc. The neighborhood had an edge. There were plenty of muggers and drug addicts. Petty larceny was the norm. Crazies, huddled in layers of clothing during the warmest weather, wandered the streets mumbling their interior monologues. At night, hookers appeared. There was a melancholy haze over the benches on Broadway where Holocaust survivors, often displaying their concentration camp tattoos, sat ringed in exhaust fumes and polluted sunshine. The great, Nobel Prize-winning author I.B. Singer, a small, pale man in a dark suit and fedora, would chat in Yiddish with these men and women (when he wasn’t feeding pigeons). Impecunious old European refugees favored the Senate Cafeteria on Broadway near 96th Street where they argued endlessly over cups of tea. HG and BSK lived in The Hereford, a moldering 12-story apartment house between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive (glorious views of the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades). The building was a repository of the arts. HG and BSK’s dear friend, the composer Michael Small lived with his wife, Lynn, on the fourth floor (HG and BSK lived on the lofty 12th). The Small’s apartment was unusual. Michael’s classmate at Williams College, Charles Gwathmey, the extraordinary architect, had ripped out walls in the apartment creating an exuberant space defined by his beautifully crafted cabinetry. Michael’s grand piano was at stage center. Peter Boyle, the actor (before jumping to fame in Young Frankenstein) lived in the building and joined HG and BSK at a Chinese cooking class. Ted Solotaroff, the visionary critic and editor (founder of The New American Review and lifelong friend of Philip Roth) became a pal of HG and BSK. Here’s a vignette of life at The Hereford: Early one evening Michael summoned HG and BSK to his apartment where he played some of his score to the film Klute (a hit with Jane Fonda as a call girl-in-peril). He went on to write the scores for many memorable films induing All The President’s Men and Marathon Man. After dinner we all went to a literary event at Ted Solotaroff’s apartment. Here, we heard Richard Howard, the poet and translator, read Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess. Memorable. Sadly, Small, Boyle, Gwathmey, Singer and Solotaroff are all gone. Richard Howard is still a figure in New York literary life. And HG continues to remember it all with great fondness.
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