Daily life was dramatic on New York's Lower East Side in the late 1960s. Klein the Biker, Straight Charlie, Sammy the Madman, Frank and the Chick from Canarsie and a cast of tens romp through the city in the dawning of a new age. Jake, the narrator, delivers artistic distance to these dysfunctional people grasping at the metaphorical magic of hitting every green light on Second Avenue. Their highs and lows are chronicled with humor and insight, elation and sadness. The collection updates a rich heritage of vernacular story-telling in the genre of O. Henry's Collected Stories, Pulitzer-winner Jimmy Breslin's The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, and Damon Runyon's Guys and Dolls.
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An Excerpt from: Cruising the Green of Second Avenue
Frank Cassidy and the Canarsie Chick
by Walter Giersbach © 2006
All rights reserved Wild Child Publishing
If seriousness was a statue, Frank Cassidy would have been forty feet tall. He was too solemn for his own good, or anyone else's. I suspect he lacked even a particle of devil-may-care attitude because he had a serious upbringing in New Jersey.
Frank was a Princeton boy. The town, not the university, was his home. His parents were lawyers, he said, and they impressed upon him that life was rational, sex was perilous, and the best gratification was the kind that was deferred.
Maybe that's why he went all the way across country to Reed College in Oregon to find himself. Then, in 1965, he bounced back to New York after graduation and found himself in a hundred-dollar-a-month walkup on the Lower East Side.
That's when I met him, as he was waiting for a berth to open up as a reporter for The New York Times and probably aware of his folks looking over his shoulder. The Times had a cachet of serious journalism that would please Mom and Dad, while his true interest in cinema would be satisfied simply by working in the same building as the paper's iconic film critic, Bosley Crowther. For the time being, he was writing movie reviews for a shopper news that served the Lower East Side with neighborhood features and insights into grocery specials.
"Having a paycheck gives you a perspective on things you don't get in college," he said. "And I like movies. The cinema. Free tickets are a fringe benefit to witnessing the culture of our generation unfolding at twenty-four frames per second."
Tall, dark and good-looking in a preppie kind of way, Frank should have had girls on him like rats fighting over a bagel. But that wasn't the case. He had more girl problems than any person I've known since the invention of Clearasil.
The astounding point about Frank striking out with women is that he got this close to them before he realized the ending had already been written by his too-serious character. He'd knock on the door at the penthouse of love only to have someone inside shout There's no one home! If they made a movie about Frank, he would be Wile E. Coyote.
"I don't know what it is," he told me one night while we were having a beer at Pete's Tavern on Irving Place. "I'm polite. I never offend anyone unintentionally. I pay for dinner. And then they say, 'Don't call me. I'll call you.'"
I'd had this kind of brush-off myself, getting ready for a goodnight kiss only to find it was the ninth inning of a shut-out game. Scoreless again.
"I struck up a conversation with a nice-looking girl I met at the Strand bookstore," he went on. "She gave me her telephone number, but when I called the next day, I discovered it was lost and found at Grand Central Station."
"Frank, I am one hundred percent sympathetic."
"They say your best friend won't tell you if you have bad breath, but you're not my best friend. Do I have halitosis?" He was drowning in his third beer.
"I think part of the problem may be that you have a case of being terminally serious." I felt uncomfortable saying this. Guys don't talk about relationships. Girls may. When Mr. Puberty issues different sets of hormones, boys think of point spreads for the New York Giants and girls begin defining relationships like a bunch of medieval theologians. "You need to loosen up, Frank. Hang loose."
"Last week, I thought I'd found a kindred spirit," he said morosely. "I was invited onto the set where they were filming that Sean Connery movie, A Fine Madness. Over on Fifth Street and Bowery."
"Hey, I used to live there. They really shot a scene there?"
"Connery is this macho poet who lands in the loony bin. I saw him. Jean Seberg even said hi to me. Anyway, I got to talking with the script girl. A really tall girl who went to Bennington. Her name was Jill. She said things like, 'Ovah heah we do cinema diff'rently.' She talked with a kind of lockjaw, like Katherine Hepburn. I bought her a coffee, we chatted, and then I asked her what a best boy is. I never knew. See, in all the credits they identify the hairdresser and the caterer and the set designer. In every film credit there's a best boy."
"Don't give me details. Just cut to the chase, Frank."
"Well, Jill said it's a very important position, but her explanation was interrupted when she was called away by Irvin Kershner, the director. Next thing I saw was the best boy having his lunch delivered on a silver tray, and Jill came back and yelled that his limo was ready. Oh, and when he had a minute, Joanne Woodward would like to consult with him. Jill confided to me then that the best boy had a script being read by Warren Beatty and I should put that in my column."
I sensed something bad was coming and was torn between feeling I had to hear Frank out and wanting to go to the men's room to get away from the ending.
If seriousness was a statue, Frank Cassidy would have been forty feet tall. He was too solemn for his own good, or anyone else's. I suspect he lacked even a particle of devil-may-care attitude because he had a serious upbringing in New Jersey.
Frank was a Princeton boy. The town, not the university, was his home. His parents were lawyers, he said, and they impressed upon him that life was rational, sex was perilous, and the best gratification was the kind that was deferred.
Maybe that's why he went all the way across country to Reed College in Oregon to find himself. Then, in 1965, he bounced back to New York after graduation and found himself in a hundred-dollar-a-month walkup on the Lower East Side.
That's when I met him, as he was waiting for a berth to open up as a reporter for The New York Times and probably aware of his folks looking over his shoulder. The Times had a cachet of serious journalism that would please Mom and Dad, while his true interest in cinema would be satisfied simply by working in the same building as the paper's iconic film critic, Bosley Crowther. For the time being, he was writing movie reviews for a shopper news that served the Lower East Side with neighborhood features and insights into grocery specials.
"Having a paycheck gives you a perspective on things you don't get in college," he said. "And I like movies. The cinema. Free tickets are a fringe benefit to witnessing the culture of our generation unfolding at twenty-four frames per second."
Tall, dark and good-looking in a preppie kind of way, Frank should have had girls on him like rats fighting over a bagel. But that wasn't the case. He had more girl problems than any person I've known since the invention of Clearasil.
The astounding point about Frank striking out with women is that he got this close to them before he realized the ending had already been written by his too-serious character. He'd knock on the door at the penthouse of love only to have someone inside shout There's no one home! If they made a movie about Frank, he would be Wile E. Coyote.
"I don't know what it is," he told me one night while we were having a beer at Pete's Tavern on Irving Place. "I'm polite. I never offend anyone unintentionally. I pay for dinner. And then they say, 'Don't call me. I'll call you.'"
I'd had this kind of brush-off myself, getting ready for a goodnight kiss only to find it was the ninth inning of a shut-out game. Scoreless again.
"I struck up a conversation with a nice-looking girl I met at the Strand bookstore," he went on. "She gave me her telephone number, but when I called the next day, I discovered it was lost and found at Grand Central Station."
"Frank, I am one hundred percent sympathetic."
"They say your best friend won't tell you if you have bad breath, but you're not my best friend. Do I have halitosis?" He was drowning in his third beer.
"I think part of the problem may be that you have a case of being terminally serious." I felt uncomfortable saying this. Guys don't talk about relationships. Girls may. When Mr. Puberty issues different sets of hormones, boys think of point spreads for the New York Giants and girls begin defining relationships like a bunch of medieval theologians. "You need to loosen up, Frank. Hang loose."
"Last week, I thought I'd found a kindred spirit," he said morosely. "I was invited onto the set where they were filming that Sean Connery movie, A Fine Madness. Over on Fifth Street and Bowery."
"Hey, I used to live there. They really shot a scene there?"
"Connery is this macho poet who lands in the loony bin. I saw him. Jean Seberg even said hi to me. Anyway, I got to talking with the script girl. A really tall girl who went to Bennington. Her name was Jill. She said things like, 'Ovah heah we do cinema diff'rently.' She talked with a kind of lockjaw, like Katherine Hepburn. I bought her a coffee, we chatted, and then I asked her what a best boy is. I never knew. See, in all the credits they identify the hairdresser and the caterer and the set designer. In every film credit there's a best boy."
"Don't give me details. Just cut to the chase, Frank."
"Well, Jill said it's a very important position, but her explanation was interrupted when she was called away by Irvin Kershner, the director. Next thing I saw was the best boy having his lunch delivered on a silver tray, and Jill came back and yelled that his limo was ready. Oh, and when he had a minute, Joanne Woodward would like to consult with him. Jill confided to me then that the best boy had a script being read by Warren Beatty and I should put that in my column."
I sensed something bad was coming and was torn between feeling I had to hear Frank out and wanting to go to the men's room to get away from the ending.
An Excerpt from: Cruising the Green of Second Avenue
Frank Cassidy and the Canarsie Chick
by Walter Giersbach © 2006
All rights reserved Wild Child Publishing
If seriousness was a statue, Frank Cassidy would have been forty feet tall. He was too solemn for his own good, or anyone else's. I suspect he lacked even a particle of devil-may-care attitude because he had a serious upbringing in New Jersey.
Frank was a Princeton boy. The town, not the university, was his home. His parents were lawyers, he said, and they impressed upon him that life was rational, sex was perilous, and the best gratification was the kind that was deferred.
Maybe that's why he went all the way across country to Reed College in Oregon to find himself. Then, in 1965, he bounced back to New York after graduation and found himself in a hundred-dollar-a-month walkup on the Lower East Side.
That's when I met him, as he was waiting for a berth to open up as a reporter for The New York Times and probably aware of his folks looking over his shoulder. The Times had a cachet of serious journalism that would please Mom and Dad, while his true interest in cinema would be satisfied simply by working in the same building as the paper's iconic film critic, Bosley Crowther. For the time being, he was writing movie reviews for a shopper news that served the Lower East Side with neighborhood features and insights into grocery specials.
"Having a paycheck gives you a perspective on things you don't get in college," he said. "And I like movies. The cinema. Free tickets are a fringe benefit to witnessing the culture of our generation unfolding at twenty-four frames per second."
Tall, dark and good-looking in a preppie kind of way, Frank should have had girls on him like rats fighting over a bagel. But that wasn't the case. He had more girl problems than any person I've known since the invention of Clearasil.
The astounding point about Frank striking out with women is that he got this close to them before he realized the ending had already been written by his too-serious character. He'd knock on the door at the penthouse of love only to have someone inside shout There's no one home! If they made a movie about Frank, he would be Wile E. Coyote.
"I don't know what it is," he told me one night while we were having a beer at Pete's Tavern on Irving Place. "I'm polite. I never offend anyone unintentionally. I pay for dinner. And then they say, 'Don't call me. I'll call you.'"
I'd had this kind of brush-off myself, getting ready for a goodnight kiss only to find it was the ninth inning of a shut-out game. Scoreless again.
"I struck up a conversation with a nice-looking girl I met at the Strand bookstore," he went on. "She gave me her telephone number, but when I called the next day, I discovered it was lost and found at Grand Central Station."
"Frank, I am one hundred percent sympathetic."
"They say your best friend won't tell you if you have bad breath, but you're not my best friend. Do I have halitosis?" He was drowning in his third beer.
"I think part of the problem may be that you have a case of being terminally serious." I felt uncomfortable saying this. Guys don't talk about relationships. Girls may. When Mr. Puberty issues different sets of hormones, boys think of point spreads for the New York Giants and girls begin defining relationships like a bunch of medieval theologians. "You need to loosen up, Frank. Hang loose."
"Last week, I thought I'd found a kindred spirit," he said morosely. "I was invited onto the set where they were filming that Sean Connery movie, A Fine Madness. Over on Fifth Street and Bowery."
"Hey, I used to live there. They really shot a scene there?"
"Connery is this macho poet who lands in the loony bin. I saw him. Jean Seberg even said hi to me. Anyway, I got to talking with the script girl. A really tall girl who went to Bennington. Her name was Jill. She said things like, 'Ovah heah we do cinema diff'rently.' She talked with a kind of lockjaw, like Katherine Hepburn. I bought her a coffee, we chatted, and then I asked her what a best boy is. I never knew. See, in all the credits they identify the hairdresser and the caterer and the set designer. In every film credit there's a best boy."
"Don't give me details. Just cut to the chase, Frank."
"Well, Jill said it's a very important position, but her explanation was interrupted when she was called away by Irvin Kershner, the director. Next thing I saw was the best boy having his lunch delivered on a silver tray, and Jill came back and yelled that his limo was ready. Oh, and when he had a minute, Joanne Woodward would like to consult with him. Jill confided to me then that the best boy had a script being read by Warren Beatty and I should put that in my column."
I sensed something bad was coming and was torn between feeling I had to hear Frank out and wanting to go to the men's room to get away from the ending.
If seriousness was a statue, Frank Cassidy would have been forty feet tall. He was too solemn for his own good, or anyone else's. I suspect he lacked even a particle of devil-may-care attitude because he had a serious upbringing in New Jersey.
Frank was a Princeton boy. The town, not the university, was his home. His parents were lawyers, he said, and they impressed upon him that life was rational, sex was perilous, and the best gratification was the kind that was deferred.
Maybe that's why he went all the way across country to Reed College in Oregon to find himself. Then, in 1965, he bounced back to New York after graduation and found himself in a hundred-dollar-a-month walkup on the Lower East Side.
That's when I met him, as he was waiting for a berth to open up as a reporter for The New York Times and probably aware of his folks looking over his shoulder. The Times had a cachet of serious journalism that would please Mom and Dad, while his true interest in cinema would be satisfied simply by working in the same building as the paper's iconic film critic, Bosley Crowther. For the time being, he was writing movie reviews for a shopper news that served the Lower East Side with neighborhood features and insights into grocery specials.
"Having a paycheck gives you a perspective on things you don't get in college," he said. "And I like movies. The cinema. Free tickets are a fringe benefit to witnessing the culture of our generation unfolding at twenty-four frames per second."
Tall, dark and good-looking in a preppie kind of way, Frank should have had girls on him like rats fighting over a bagel. But that wasn't the case. He had more girl problems than any person I've known since the invention of Clearasil.
The astounding point about Frank striking out with women is that he got this close to them before he realized the ending had already been written by his too-serious character. He'd knock on the door at the penthouse of love only to have someone inside shout There's no one home! If they made a movie about Frank, he would be Wile E. Coyote.
"I don't know what it is," he told me one night while we were having a beer at Pete's Tavern on Irving Place. "I'm polite. I never offend anyone unintentionally. I pay for dinner. And then they say, 'Don't call me. I'll call you.'"
I'd had this kind of brush-off myself, getting ready for a goodnight kiss only to find it was the ninth inning of a shut-out game. Scoreless again.
"I struck up a conversation with a nice-looking girl I met at the Strand bookstore," he went on. "She gave me her telephone number, but when I called the next day, I discovered it was lost and found at Grand Central Station."
"Frank, I am one hundred percent sympathetic."
"They say your best friend won't tell you if you have bad breath, but you're not my best friend. Do I have halitosis?" He was drowning in his third beer.
"I think part of the problem may be that you have a case of being terminally serious." I felt uncomfortable saying this. Guys don't talk about relationships. Girls may. When Mr. Puberty issues different sets of hormones, boys think of point spreads for the New York Giants and girls begin defining relationships like a bunch of medieval theologians. "You need to loosen up, Frank. Hang loose."
"Last week, I thought I'd found a kindred spirit," he said morosely. "I was invited onto the set where they were filming that Sean Connery movie, A Fine Madness. Over on Fifth Street and Bowery."
"Hey, I used to live there. They really shot a scene there?"
"Connery is this macho poet who lands in the loony bin. I saw him. Jean Seberg even said hi to me. Anyway, I got to talking with the script girl. A really tall girl who went to Bennington. Her name was Jill. She said things like, 'Ovah heah we do cinema diff'rently.' She talked with a kind of lockjaw, like Katherine Hepburn. I bought her a coffee, we chatted, and then I asked her what a best boy is. I never knew. See, in all the credits they identify the hairdresser and the caterer and the set designer. In every film credit there's a best boy."
"Don't give me details. Just cut to the chase, Frank."
"Well, Jill said it's a very important position, but her explanation was interrupted when she was called away by Irvin Kershner, the director. Next thing I saw was the best boy having his lunch delivered on a silver tray, and Jill came back and yelled that his limo was ready. Oh, and when he had a minute, Joanne Woodward would like to consult with him. Jill confided to me then that the best boy had a script being read by Warren Beatty and I should put that in my column."
I sensed something bad was coming and was torn between feeling I had to hear Frank out and wanting to go to the men's room to get away from the ending.
SUSAN SLUTT, GIRL SHAMUS
