Read Online Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition by Josh Alan Friedman - Free Book Online
Authors: Josh Alan Friedman
Tags: United States, History, Psychology, Politics & Social Sciences, Sociology, Social Sciences, Health; Fitness & Dieting, Essay/s, State & Local, Psychology & Counseling, Medical Books, Sexuality, Education & Teaching, Pornography, Historical Study & Educational Resources, Popular Culture, Americas, Historical Study
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pouch with the quarters. Then I rushed out to the Automat, pulled out my coins and put them in the slots. Clink, clink, the doors open, it’s always so much fun to pull out food with my hands. I stood there at the counter eating fast, the hot chocolate burning, then I rushed out of the Automat, into the American Music Hall, where Benny the usher was waiting red with rage. He took my hand, pulled me down the aisle and threw me across the knees of the people at the very moment that Eddie’s music came on. And out he came, dancing with his cane in his left hand, and his bowler up in the air, and when he came center stage, the lights went down, the spotlight came on, and he looked down, saw me, and smiled.
“‘Maestro, stop the music!’ he said. It was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop. Then he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you have a treat coming tonight. I’m going to introduce you to the prettiest, sweetest little lady on 42nd Street. I give you Fanny. Stand up! The Princess of 42nd Street! ’“
The Crystal Ball of 42nd Street
Times Square’s most miserable, ghastly forms simmer in a witches’ brew along Eighth Avenue from 39th to 43rd streets. Here are the official dregs of society, the scum of the earth, the lowlife’s lowlives whom Mother Teresa Wouldn’t bother to save. A Puerto Rican pre-op transsexual stabs a trick in the eye with a sharp fingernail to grab his cabfare before he pays the driver. Brain-damaged evangelists rave aloud to themselves; 300-pound hookers flip out their hooters to stop traffic. Old shoeshine uncles give “spit shines” with more phlegmy bile than polish—though some might look at you as though you were out of your mind if you asked for a shine. Near-dead human vegetation take root in their own excretion in condemned doorways—most of them have slit pockets from scavengers searching for their wine-bottle change. The drug-pitch skells would rather tear off with a wallet than transact an actual exchange, and they make the teenage chicken fags seem like the most discreet commodity on the street. Fifteen ghetto guerrillas wearing Pro-Keds (what transit cops call “felony sneakers”) swoop down on a victim, then scatter back into subway oblivion.
Entrenched beneath all of this, at ground zero, on the corner, is old Charles Rubenstein, eighty-three, who has been in the penny arcade business for sixty years. The amusement parlor he built and owns at Eighth and 42nd is down a short hop of stairs en route to the subway:
“When I opened up here in 1939, we had all legitimate theaters, beautiful theaters, and people used to come down in tuxedos and evening gowns during intermission. No one was there to attack them, to molest them. We had four policemen walking the whole street, and we didn’t need that many. I remember that a girl used to go out onstage in a bikini and the patrol wagons were there and locked ‘em up. Then all of a sudden I see where they dance nude and nothin’ is happening.
“We saw the changes about 1965. Sixty-four, sixty-three, it was still all right. Then we saw that the good people are not coming down here, and I says, well, it’s goin’ bad. It was a change of neighborhoods, the lower class used to congregate here because it was free.
“If I were to come today, I would never go into business here. But I grew into this here business. I have the experience from way back handling all kinda people. So my experience keeps me going, I’m not a-scared of any individuals that tries to threaten me.”
Charlie Rubenstein also owned the Playland Amusement Parlor on 125th Street in Harlem, which he closed in 1972 after forty years, commenting, a little late, that “the neighborhood ran down.” Left with his primary arcade on 42nd Street, his stubbornness in remaining open fading amid unfathomable squalor and ruin, facing legal efforts to remove him—Charlie was suddenly rejuvenated by the coming of video games and decided to stay in biz.
“You have at
“‘Maestro, stop the music!’ he said. It was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop. Then he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you have a treat coming tonight. I’m going to introduce you to the prettiest, sweetest little lady on 42nd Street. I give you Fanny. Stand up! The Princess of 42nd Street! ’“
The Crystal Ball of 42nd Street
Times Square’s most miserable, ghastly forms simmer in a witches’ brew along Eighth Avenue from 39th to 43rd streets. Here are the official dregs of society, the scum of the earth, the lowlife’s lowlives whom Mother Teresa Wouldn’t bother to save. A Puerto Rican pre-op transsexual stabs a trick in the eye with a sharp fingernail to grab his cabfare before he pays the driver. Brain-damaged evangelists rave aloud to themselves; 300-pound hookers flip out their hooters to stop traffic. Old shoeshine uncles give “spit shines” with more phlegmy bile than polish—though some might look at you as though you were out of your mind if you asked for a shine. Near-dead human vegetation take root in their own excretion in condemned doorways—most of them have slit pockets from scavengers searching for their wine-bottle change. The drug-pitch skells would rather tear off with a wallet than transact an actual exchange, and they make the teenage chicken fags seem like the most discreet commodity on the street. Fifteen ghetto guerrillas wearing Pro-Keds (what transit cops call “felony sneakers”) swoop down on a victim, then scatter back into subway oblivion.
Entrenched beneath all of this, at ground zero, on the corner, is old Charles Rubenstein, eighty-three, who has been in the penny arcade business for sixty years. The amusement parlor he built and owns at Eighth and 42nd is down a short hop of stairs en route to the subway:
“When I opened up here in 1939, we had all legitimate theaters, beautiful theaters, and people used to come down in tuxedos and evening gowns during intermission. No one was there to attack them, to molest them. We had four policemen walking the whole street, and we didn’t need that many. I remember that a girl used to go out onstage in a bikini and the patrol wagons were there and locked ‘em up. Then all of a sudden I see where they dance nude and nothin’ is happening.
“We saw the changes about 1965. Sixty-four, sixty-three, it was still all right. Then we saw that the good people are not coming down here, and I says, well, it’s goin’ bad. It was a change of neighborhoods, the lower class used to congregate here because it was free.
“If I were to come today, I would never go into business here. But I grew into this here business. I have the experience from way back handling all kinda people. So my experience keeps me going, I’m not a-scared of any individuals that tries to threaten me.”
Charlie Rubenstein also owned the Playland Amusement Parlor on 125th Street in Harlem, which he closed in 1972 after forty years, commenting, a little late, that “the neighborhood ran down.” Left with his primary arcade on 42nd Street, his stubbornness in remaining open fading amid unfathomable squalor and ruin, facing legal efforts to remove him—Charlie was suddenly rejuvenated by the coming of video games and decided to stay in biz.
“You have at
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