SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, THE STORY OF TONY MANERO

Today, The Newtons and The Grandma has visited the 2001 Odyssey discotheque where Tony Manero danced until being exhausted.

 

Before dancing, The Newtons has studied some English grammar. They have chosen Can/Can't.

 

More information: Can/Can't & The Date

 

Saturday Night Fever is a 1977 American dance drama film directed by John Badham and produced by Robert Stigwood.

It stars John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young Italian-American man from the Brooklyn borough of New York who spends his weekends dancing and drinking at a local discothèque while dealing with social tensions and general restlessness and disillusionment with his life as he feels directionless and trapped in his working-class ethnic neighborhood.

The story is based upon Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night, a mostly fictional article by music writer Nik Cohn, first published in a June 1976 issue of New York magazine. The film features music by the Bee Gees and many other prominent artists of the disco era.

A major critical and commercial success, Saturday Night Fever had a tremendous effect on popular culture of the late 1970s.

The film helped significantly to popularize disco music around the world and made Travolta, who was already well known from his role in the TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, a household name. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, becoming the fifth-youngest nominee in the category.

The film showcased aspects of the music, the dancing, and the subculture surrounding the disco era: symphony-orchestrated melodies; haute couture styles of clothing; pre-AIDS sexual promiscuity; and graceful choreography.

The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, featuring disco songs by the Bee Gees, is one of the best-selling soundtracks in history.

John Travolta reprised his role of Tony Manero in Staying Alive in 1983, which was panned by critics despite being successful at the box office.

In 2010, Saturday Night Fever was deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

More information: Vanity Fair

The film's relatively low budget ($3.5 million) meant that most of the actors were relative unknowns, many of whom were recruited from New York's theatre scene. For more than 40% of the actors it was their film debut. The only actor in the cast who was already an established name was John Travolta, thanks to his role on the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter. His performance as Tony Manero brought him critical acclaim and helped launch him into international stardom.

Travolta researched the part by visiting the real 2001 Odyssey discotheque, and claimed he adopted many of the character's swaggering mannerisms from the male patrons.

The film was shot entirely on-location in Brooklyn, New York. 

The 2001 Odyssey Disco was a real club located at 802 64th Street, which has since been demolished. The interior was modified for the film, including the addition of a $15,000 lighted floor, which was inspired by a Birmingham, Alabama establishment Badham had visited. A similar effect was achieved on the club's walls using tinfoil and Christmas lights.

Since the Bee Gees were not involved in the production until after principal photography wrapped, the Night Fever, You Should Be Dancin', and More Than a Woman sequences were shot with Stevie Wonder tracks that were later overdubbed in the sound mix. During filming, the production was harassed by local gangs over use of the location, and was even firebombed.

The dance studio was Phillips Dance Studio in Bensonhurst, the Manero home was a house in Bay Ridge, the paint store was Pearson Paint & Hardware, also in Bay Ridge. Other locations included the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, John J. Carty Park, and the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

More information: Robert Ebert

I'll dance with you, but it's not like
you're my dream girl or nothin'.

Tony Manero

WALL STREET, THE WORLD'S LARGEST STOCK EXCHANGE

Today, The Grandma has visited Wall Street to invest and know more things about the finantial market.

Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. 

It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east.

The term Wall Street has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry, New York–based financial interests, or the Financial District itself.

Wall Street was originally known in Dutch as de Waalstraat when it was part of New Amsterdam in the 17th century, though the origins of the name vary. An actual wall existed on the street from 1685 to 1699. 

During the 17th century, Wall Street was a slave trading marketplace and a securities trading site, as well as the location of Federal Hall, New York's first city hall.

In the early 19th century, both residences and businesses occupied the area, but increasingly business predominated, and New York City's financial industry became centered on Wall Street. In the 20th century, several early skyscrapers were built on Wall Street, including 40 Wall Street, once the world's tallest building.

The Wall Street area is home to the New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest stock exchange by total market capitalization, as well as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and many commercial banks and insurance companies. 

Several other stock and commodity exchanges have also been located in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street, including the New York Mercantile Exchange and other commodity futures exchanges, and the American Stock Exchange. To support the business they did on the exchanges, many brokerage firms had offices nearby. However the direct economic impacts of Wall Street activities extend worldwide.

Wall Street itself is a narrow winding street running from the East River to Broadway and lined with skyskrapers, as well as the New York Stock Exchange Building and Federal Hall National Memorial and One Wall Street at its western end. The street is nearby multiple subway lines and ferry terminals and the World Trade Center (1973–2001) site.

More information: The Street

Wall Street is a 1987 American drama film, directed and co-written by Oliver Stone, which stars Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Daryl Hannah, and Martin Sheen.

The film tells the story of Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), a young stockbroker who becomes involved with Gordon Gekko (Douglas), a wealthy, unscrupulous corporate raider.

Stone made the film as a tribute to his father, Lou Stone, a stockbroker during the Great Depression. The character of Gekko is said to be a composite of several people, including Dennis Levine, Ivan Boesky, Carl Icahn, Asher Edelman, Michael Milken, and Stone himself. The character of Sir Lawrence Wildman, meanwhile, was modelled on the prominent British financier and corporate raider Sir James Goldsmith. Originally, the studio wanted Warren Beatty to play Gekko, but he was not interested; Stone, meanwhile, wanted Richard Gere, but Gere passed on the role.

The film was well received among major film critics. Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the film has come to be seen as the archetypal portrayal of 1980s excess, with Douglas' character declaring that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. 

It has also proven influential in inspiring people to work on Wall Street, with Sheen, Douglas, and Stone commenting over the years how people still approach them and say that they became stockbrokers because of their respective characters in the film.

Stone and Douglas reunited for a sequel titled Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which was released theatrically on September 24, 2010. 

More information: Roger Ebert

Wall Street is the only place that people
ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice
from those who take the subway.

Warren Buffett

HIGH SCHOOL OF PERFORMING ARTS, YOU WANT FAME

Today, The Grandma has visited some old friends at High School of Performing Arts, informally known as PA, the public alternative high school established in 1947 and located at 120 West 46th Street in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, from 1948 to 1984.

In 1961, the school was merged with another alternative arts school, the High School of Music & Art, while each retained its own campus. Plans for establishing a joint building for the merged schools took many years to be realized. There was opposition to the loss of PA's individual identity, but both student bodies eventually moved into a shared building in 1984, christened the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School. 

Leaving behind PPAS, a middle and high school created in 1990 to meet the needs of two groups of students: those who wanted to pursue professional work in the arts as they earned a junior/senior high school diploma and those who wanted to study the arts as an avocation.

Many well-known performers were trained at the school, such as Eartha Kitt, Liza Minnelli, Jennifer Aniston, Ving Rhames, Lorraine Toussaint, acting coach Bernard Hiller and Suzanne Vega, Hwang Hyunjin.

The 1980 film Fame was set in the High School of Performing Arts, though the building was not used in filming.

This school was created in 1947 by educator and creative thinker Franklin J. Keller, as a part of Metropolitan Vocational High School, using his staff and administrators on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Under Keller's stewardship, it offered music and theater arts programs in addition to the traditional trade skills.

In 1948, the school occupied Public School 46, a disused 1894 public school building on West 46th Street in the Times Square area. The new school offered programs in music, dance, drama, and, for a time, photography. There were many professionals on staff, including the young Sidney Lumet in the drama department. His production in 1948 was The Young & Fair.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, the New York City administration announced plans to move PA out of its ancient building and into new quarters. These plans evolved to joining the student body with that of the High School of Music & Art M&A in a newly constructed building. A site in the Lincoln Square area was chosen, eventually settling to within the newly developed Lincoln Center complex.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held in 1958, where Mayor Robert F. Wagner and the City Council publicly promised completion by 1964. In anticipation of this, PA and M&A formally merged in 1961 as sister schools on paper while retaining their respective campuses.

In 1969, the combined institution was coined the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, named after the founder of M&A.

PA continued to audition, educate, and graduate students in its old location during these decades of uncertainty. 

In 1973, ground was again broken for a new building at Lincoln Center, but New York City's budget crisis forced all construction to be suspended until the early 1980s. 

Finally, in September 1984, the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts welcomed students from both schools into their new building.

In 1980 the motion picture Fame, based loosely on student and faculty life at PA, premiered. In 2009 a remake was released.

More information: New York Post

Fame is an American television series originally produced between January 7, 1982, and May 18, 1987, by Eilenna Productions in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television and sponsored by Yamaha musical instruments, which are prominently showcased in the episodes.

The show is based on the 1980 motion picture of the same name. Using a mixture of comedy, drama and music, it followed the lives of the students and faculty at the New York City High School for the Performing Arts  -a fictional establishment, but based heavily on the actual Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

Most interior scenes were filmed in Hollywood, California. In all seasons except the third, the show filmed several exterior scenes on location in New York City.

The popularity of the series around the world, most notably in the United Kingdom, led to several hit records and live concert tours by the cast.

Despite its success, few of the actors maintained high-profile careers after the series was cancelled. Several of the cast members were seen again briefly in Bring Back...Fame, a reunion special made for Channel 4 in the United Kingdom in 2008.

The series won a number of Emmy awards, and in 1983 and 1984, it won the Golden Globe Awards: Television, Best Series, Musical/Comedy. Actress, director and choreographer Debbie Allen, who had a small role in the motion picture, but played a major character in the television version, also won several awards.

More information: Shondaland

You've got big dreams. You want fame. Well, fame costs.

And right here is where you start paying: in sweat.

Lydia Grant

THE COTTON CLUB, PROHIBITION & RACIAL SEGREGATION

Today, The Grandma has been remembering old memories about the Cotton Club, one of her favourite locals in Harlem, New York.

The Cotton Club was a New York City nightclub from 1923 to 1940. It was located on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue (1923-1936), then briefly in the midtown Theater District (1936–1940).

The club operated during the United States' era of Prohibition and Jim Crow era racial segregation. 

Black people initially could not patronize the Cotton Club, but the venue featured many of the most popular black entertainers of the era, including musicians Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Willie Bryant; vocalists Adelaide Hall, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Aida Ward, Avon Long, the Dandridge Sisters, the Will Vodery Choir, The Mills Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and dancers such as Katherine Dunham, Bill Robinson, The Nicholas Brothers, Charles 'Honi' Coles, Leonard Reed, Stepin Fetchit, the Berry Brothers, The Four Step Brothers, Jeni Le Gon and Earl Snakehips Tucker.

At its prime, the Cotton Club served as a hip meeting spot, with regular Celebrity Nights on Sundays featuring guests such as Jimmy Durante, George Gershwin, Sophie Tucker, Paul Robeson, Al Jolson, Mae West, Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Langston Hughes, Judy Garland, Moss Hart, and Jimmy Walker, among others.

In 1920, heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson rented the upper floor of the building on the corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue in the heart of Harlem and opened an intimate supper club called the Club Deluxe. Owney Madden, a prominent bootlegger and gangster, took over the club after his release from Sing Sing in 1923 and changed its name to the Cotton Club. The two arranged a deal that allowed Johnson to remain the club's manager. Madden used the cotton club as an outlet to sell his #1 beer to the prohibition crowd.

When the club closed briefly in 1925 for selling liquor, it soon reopened without interference from the police. An extensive drink list continued to be available on the Cotton Club menu and sold to white guests following the shut down. Herman Stark then became the stage manager. Harlem producer Leonard Harper directed the first two of three opening night floor-shows at the new venue.

The Cotton Club was a whites-only establishment with rare exceptions for black celebrities such as Ethel Waters and Bill Robinson. It reproduced the racist imagery of the era, often depicting black people as savages in exotic jungles or as darkies in the plantation South. A 1938 menu inclued this imagery, with illustrations done by Julian Harrison, showing naked black men and women dancing around a drum in the jungle. Tribal mask illustrations make up the border of the menu.

Shows at the Cotton Club were musical revues, and several were called Cotton Club Parade followed by the year. Musical revues were created twice a year in hopes of becoming successful Broadway shows.

The revues featured dancers, singers, comedians, and variety acts, as well as a house band.

The club closed temporarily in 1936 after the race riot in Harlem the previous year. Carl Van Vechten had vowed to boycott the club for having such racist policies as refusing entry to African Americans in place.

The Cotton Club reopened later that year at Broadway and 48th. The site chosen for the new Cotton Club was a big room on the top floor of a building where Broadway and Seventh Avenue meet, an important midtown crossroads at the center of the Great White Way, the Broadway Theater District.

More information: Harlem World Magazine

The Cotton Club is a 1984 American crime drama film co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and based on James Haskins' 1977 book of the same name. 

The story centers on the Cotton Club, a Harlem jazz club in the 1930s. The film stars Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, Diane Lane, and Lonette McKee, with Bob Hoskins, Jennifer Grey, James Remar, Nicolas Cage, Allen Garfield, Gwen Verdon, Fred Gwynne, and Laurence Fishburne in supporting roles.

The film was noted for its over-budget production costs, and took a total of five years to make. Despite being a disappointment at the box-office, the film received generally positive reviews and was nominated for several awards, including Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Picture (Drama) and Oscars for Best Art Direction (Richard Sylbert, George Gaines) and Best Film Editing.

inspired to make The Cotton Club by a picture-book history of the nightclub by James Haskins, Robert Evans was the film's original producer. Evans hoped the film would bring public attention to African-American history in a similar way that Gone with the Wind did for the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era.

More information: Vanity Fair

 The Cotton Club was a great place
because it hired us, for one thing,
at a time when it was really rough
for Black performers.

Lena Horne

GOODFELLAS, THE MASTERPIECE OF GANSTER GENERE

Yesterday, Ray Liotta left us. The Grandma wants to pay a tribute to this incredible actor talking about one of his nest films, Goodfellas, where he played the unforgettable character of Henry Hill in a film shot on location in Queens, New York.

Goodfellas is a 1990 American biographical crime film directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Nicholas Pileggi and Scorsese, and produced by Irwin Winkler.

It is a film adaptation of the 1985 nonfiction book Wiseguy by Pileggi. Starring Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco and Paul Sorvino, the film narrates the rise and fall of mob associate Henry Hill and his friends and family from 1955 to 1980.

Scorsese initially titled the film Wise Guy and postponed making it; he and Pileggi later changed the title to Goodfellas. To prepare for their roles in the film, De Niro, Pesci and Liotta often spoke with Pileggi, who shared research material left over from writing the book.

According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals wherein Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines he liked most and put them into a revised script, which the cast worked from during principal photography.

Goodfellas premiered at the 47th Venice International Film Festival on September 9, 1990, where Scorsese was awarded with Silver Lion for Best Director, and was released in the United States on September 19, 1990, by Warner Bros.

The film was made on a budget of $25 million, and grossed $47 million. Goodfellas received widespread critical acclaim upon release: the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes calls it arguably the high point of Martin Scorsese's career.

The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, with Pesci winning for Best Supporting Actor. The film won five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, including Best Film and Best Director. Additionally, Goodfellas was named the year's best film by various critics' groups.

More information: Roger Ebert

Goodfellas is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, particularly in the gangster genre. 

In 2000, it was deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. Its content and style have been emulated in numerous other films and television series.

Goodfellas is based on New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi's book, Wiseguy. Martin Scorsese did not intend to make another mob film, but he saw a review of Pileggi's book, which he then read while working on the set of The Color of Money in 1986.

He had always been fascinated by the mob lifestyle and was drawn to Pileggi's book because he thought it was the most honest portrayal of gangsters he had ever read. After reading the book, Scorsese knew what approach he wanted to take, To begin Goodfellas like a gunshot and have it get faster from there, almost like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer. I think it's the only way you can really sense the exhilaration of the lifestyle, and to get a sense of why a lot of people are attracted to it." 

According to Pileggi, Scorsese cold-called the writer and told him, I've been waiting for this book my entire life, to which Pileggi replied, I've been waiting for this phone call my entire life.

The film was shot on location in Queens, New York state, New Jersey, and parts of Long Island during the spring and summer of 1989, with a budget of $25 million.

More information: New York Post

 As far back as I can remember

I wanted to be a gangster.

Henry Hill

ENJOYING BASEBALL IN NEW YORK, YANKEES VS. METS

Today, The Grandma has watched a baseball match between the New York Yankees and Baltimore. She likes baseball a lot and she has spent a great day.

The Yankees and Mets are the two major league clubs based in New York City.

The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. 

The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division.

They are one of two major league clubs based in New York City, the other being the National League's (NL) New York Mets. 

The Yankees began play in the 1901 season as the Baltimore Orioles (no relation to the modern Baltimore Orioles).

In 1903, Frank Farrell and Bill Devery purchased the franchise after it ceased operations and moved it to New York City, renaming the club the New York Highlanders. The Highlanders were officially renamed the New York Yankees in 1913.

The team is owned by Yankee Global Enterprises, an LLC that is controlled by the family of the late George Steinbrenner, who purchased the team in 1973. Brian Cashman is the team's general manager, and Aaron Boone is the team's field manager. The team's home games were played at the original Yankee Stadium from 1923 to 1973 and from 1976 to 2008.

In 1974 and 1975, the Yankees shared Shea Stadium with the Mets, in addition to the New York Jets and the New York Giants.

In 2009, they moved into a new ballpark of the same name that was constructed adjacent to the previous facility, which was closed and demolished. The team is perennially among the leaders in MLB attendance.

Arguably the most successful professional sports team in the United States, the Yankees have won 19 American League East Division titles, 40 American League pennants, and 27 World Series championships, all of which are MLB records.

The team has won more titles than any other franchise in the four major North American sports leagues, after briefly trailing the NHL's Montreal Canadiens by one or two titles in the 1990s.

The Yankees have had 44 players and 11 managers inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Mariano Rivera, and Derek Jeter, with Rivera and Jeter having the two highest vote percentages of all Hall of Fame members.

According to Forbes, the Yankees are the second-highest valued sports franchise in the United States and the second in the world, with an estimated value of approximately $5 billion. The team has garnered enormous popularity and a dedicated fanbase, as well as widespread enmity from fans of other MLB teams. The team's rivalry with the Boston Red Sox is one of the most well-known rivalries in North American sports.

From 1903 to 2021, the Yankees' overall win-loss record is 10,503-7.

More information: New York Yankees

The New York Mets are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of Queens. 

The Mets compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) East division.

They are one of two major league clubs based in New York City, the other being the American League's (AL) New York Yankees.

One of baseball's first expansion teams, the Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed NL teams, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. The team's colors evoke the blue of the Dodgers and the orange of the Giants.

For the 1962 and 1963 seasons, the Mets played home games at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan before moving to Queens. From 1964 to 2008, the Mets played their home games at Shea Stadium, named after William Shea, the founder of the Continental League, a proposed third major league, the announcement of which prompted their admission as an NL expansion team.

Since 2009, the Mets have played their home games at Citi Field next to the site where Shea Stadium once stood.

In their inaugural season, the Mets posted a record of 40-120, the worst regular-season record since MLB went to a 162-game schedule. The team never finished better than second-to-last in the 1960s until the Miracle Mets beat the Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series, considered one of the biggest upsets in World Series history despite the Mets having won 100 games that season.

The Mets have qualified for the postseason nine times, winning the World Series twice (1969 and 1986) and winning five National League pennants (most recently in 2000 and 2015).

Since 2020, the Mets have been owned by billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen who purchased the team for $2.4 billion.

As of the end of the 2021 season, the team's overall win-loss record is 4,551-4,927.

More information: New York Mets

Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.

Yogi Berra

SING GOSPEL IN HARLEM, GIVE THANKS TO EVA NEWTON

Today, The Newtons and The Grandma have said goodbye to another member of their family. 

Eva Newton has decided to follow her dreams and becomes a new member of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where she will be able to guide lost souls and help needed people.

Before saying goodbye to Eva, the family has been practising some English grammar. They have chosen Prepositions of Time and Plurals.

Goodbye, Eva and goodluck! God bless you!

More information: Prepositions of Time & Plurals

Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighbourhoods and extends west to the Hudson River, north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and East 96th Street.

Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. 

Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle.

Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century, but African-American residents began to arrive in large numbers during the Great Migration in the 20th century.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the center of the Harlem Renaissance, a major African-American cultural movement. With job losses during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly.

In the 21st century, crime rates decreased significantly, and Harlem started to gentrify.

The area is served by the New York City Subway and local bus routes. It contains several public elementary, middle, and high schools, and is close to several colleges including Columbia University and the City College of New York.

Central Harlem is part of Manhattan Community District 10. It is patrolled by the 28th and 32nd Precincts of the New York City Police Department. The greater Harlem area also includes Manhattan Community Districts 9 and 11 and several police precincts, while fire services are provided by four New York City Fire Department companies.

Starting around the time of the end of World War I, Harlem became associated with the New Negro movement, and then the artistic outpouring known as the Harlem Renaissance, which extended to poetry, novels, theater, and the visual arts. So many black people came that it threaten[ed] the very existence of some of the leading industries of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama.

Many settled in Harlem. By 1920, central Harlem was 32.43% black. The 1930 census revealed that 70.18% of central Harlem's residents were black and lived as far south as Central Park, at 110th Street.

More information: Harlem Heritage

Religious life has historically had a strong presence in Black Harlem. The area is home to over 400 churches, some of which are official city or national landmarks.

Major Christian denominations include Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists (generally African Methodist Episcopal Zionist, or "AMEZ" and African Methodist Episcopalian, or "AME"), Episcopalians, and Roman Catholic.

The Abyssinian Baptist Church has long been influential because of its large congregation. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built a chapel on 128th Street in 2005.

Many of the area's churches are storefront churches, which operate in an empty store, or a basement, or a converted brownstone townhouse. These congregations may have fewer than 30–50 members each, but there are hundreds of them. Others are old, large, and designated landmarks. Especially in the years before World War II, Harlem produced popular Christian charismatic cult leaders, including George Wilson Becton and Father Divine.

Mosques in Harlem include the Masjid Malcolm Shabazz (formerly Mosque No. 7 Nation of Islam, and the location of the 1972 Harlem mosque incident), the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood and Masjid Aqsa. 

Judaism, too, maintains a presence in Harlem through the Old Broadway Synagogue. A non-mainstream synagogue of Black Hebrews, known as Commandment Keepers, was based in a synagogue at 1 West 123rd Street until 2008.

More information: Abyssinian Baptist Church

And now let the weak say, I am strong
Let the poor say, I am rich
Because of what the Lord has done for us
Give thanks with a grateful heart.

Henry Smith

NEW YORK, NEW YORK. SINATRA, MINNELLI & LADY GAGA

Today, The Newtons & The Grandma has visited Radio City Music Hall where some old Grandma's friends have been singing some different versions about New York, New York, one of the best-known songs about New York City.

Before arriving to the Radio City Music Hall, the family has been studying some English grammar. They have chosen To Have Got and some State Verbs.

More information: To Have Got & State Verbs

New York, New York is a 1977 American musical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Mardik Martin and Earl Mac Rauch based on a story by Rauch. It is a musical tribute, featuring new songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb as well as jazz standards, to Scorsese's home town of New York City, and stars Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli as a pair of musicians and lovers.

The story is about a jazz saxophonist (De Niro) and a pop singer (Minnelli) who fall madly in love and marry; however, the saxophonist's outrageously volatile personality places a continual strain on their relationship, and after they have a baby, their marriage crumbles, even as their careers develop on separate paths. The film marked the final screen appearance of actor Jack Haley.

More information: The New York Times

The regrets of yesterday 

and the fear of tomorrow can kill you.

 Liza Minnelli

Theme from New York, New York or New York, New York is the theme song from the Martin Scorsese film New York, New York (1977), composed by John Kander, with lyrics by Fred Ebb. 

It was written for and performed in the film by Liza Minnelli. It remains one of the best-known songs about New York City.

Composer John Kander and Lyricist Fred Ebb stated on the A&E Biography episode about Liza Minnelli, that they attribute the song's success to actor Robert De Niro, who rejected their original theme for the film because he thought it was too weak. The song did not become a popular hit until it was picked up in concert by Frank Sinatra during his performances at Radio City Music Hall in October 1978.

In 1979, Theme from New York, New York was recorded by Frank Sinatra for his album Trilogy: Past Present Future (1980), and became closely associated with him as one of his signature songs. Don Costa received a Grammy nomination for the energetic orchestration.

Sinatra occasionally performed the song live with Minnelli as a duet. 

Sinatra recorded it a second time for his 1993 album Duets, with Tony Bennett.

More information: Frank Sinatra

Start spreading the news,
I'm leaving today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York

These vagabond shoes are longing to stray
And step a round of heart of it
New York, New York

I want to wake up in that city, that doesn't sleep
To find I'm king of the hill
Top of the heap
My little town blues,
Are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there,
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you
New York, New York
New York, New York

I wanna wake up, in the city that doesn't sleep,
To find I'm king of the hill, head of the list
Cream of the crop at the top of the heap
My little town blues are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it, in old New York
If I can make it there, I'd make it anywhere
Come on, come through New York, New York

More information: Song Facts

 There's no place like New York.
It's the most exciting city in the world now.
That's the way it is. That's it.

Robert De Niro

CHINATOWN IN MANHATTAN, THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON

Today, The Grandma has visited Chinatown to meet Capt. Stanley White, the Vietnam War veteran assigned to the 5th Precinct of the New York City Police Department.

Manhattan's Chinatown, in traditional Chinese 曼哈頓華埠, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, bordering the Lower East Side to its east, Little Italy to its north, Civic Center to its south, and Tribeca to its west.

With an estimated population of 90,000 to 100,000 people, Chinatown is home to the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere.

Manhattan's Chinatown is also one of the oldest Chinese ethnic enclaves. 

The Manhattan Chinatown is one of nine Chinatown neighborhoods in New York City, as well as one of twelve in the New York metropolitan area, which contains the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, comprising an estimated 893,697 uniracial individuals as of 2017.

Historically, Chinatown was primarily populated by Cantonese speakers. 

However, in the 1980s and 1990s, large numbers of Fuzhounese-speaking immigrants also arrived and formed a sub-neighborhood annexed to the eastern portion of Chinatown east of The Bowery, which has become known as Little Fuzhou (小福州) subdivided away from the primarily Cantonese populated original longtime established Chinatown of Manhattan from the proximity of The Bowery going west, known as Little Hong Kong/Guangdong (小粵港).

As many Fuzhounese and Cantonese speakers now speak Mandarin-the official language in Mainland China and Taiwan-in addition to their native languages, this has made it more important for Chinatown residents to learn and speak Mandarin.

Although now overtaken in size by the rapidly growing Flushing Chinatown (法拉盛華埠) (located in the New York City borough of Queens) and Brooklyn Chinatown (布魯克林華埠), the Manhattan Chinatown remains a dominant cultural force for the Chinese diaspora, as home to the Museum of Chinese in America and as the headquarters of numerous publications based both in the U.S. and China that are geared to overseas Chinese.

Chinatown is part of Manhattan Community District 3, and its primary ZIP Codes are 10013 and 10002. It is patrolled by the 5th Precinct of the New York City Police Department.

Chinese greengrocers and fishmongers are clustered around Mott Street, Mulberry Street, Canal Street (by Baxter Street), and all along East Broadway (especially by Catherine Street). 

The Chinese jewelers' district is on Canal Street between Mott and Bowery. There are many Asian and American banks in the neighbourhood. Canal Street, west of Broadway (especially on the Northside), is filled with street vendors selling knock-off brands of perfumes, watches, and handbags. This section of Canal Street was previously the home of warehouse stores selling surplus/salvage electronics and hardware.

More information: DNA Info

Year of the Dragon is a 1985 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Michael Cimino and starring Mickey Rourke, Ariane Koizumi and John Lone. The screenplay was written by Cimino and Oliver Stone and adapted from the novel by Robert Daley.

Cimino's first film after his career-ruining failure of Heaven's Gate (1980) in the wake of the studio cutting a third of the picture's running time for its general release, Year of the Dragon is a New York crime drama and an exploration of gangs, the illegal drug trade, ethnicity, racism, and stereotypes. Despite mixed reviews and being a box office flop, it has gained a cult following in the years since its release.

More information: The Culture Trip

 Chinatown is tremendously interesting...
It's a part of the city that hasn't really been explored
in crime literature or in any general literature.
It's as though Chinatown didn't exist.
People write about New York without mentioning Chinatown at all.

S. J. Rozan

THE EAST RIVER, THE SALT WATER TIDAL ESTUARY IN NYC

Today, The Grandma has been walking along the East River. She has remembered the story of Henry Morgan, her immortal friend who reborns at the East River every time he dies.

The East River is a salt water tidal estuary in New York City. 

The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens on Long Island from the Bronx on the North American mainland, and also divides Manhattan from Queens and Brooklyn, also on Long Island.

Because of its connection to Long Island Sound, it was once also known as the Sound River. The tidal strait changes its direction of flow frequently, and is subject to strong fluctuations in its current, which are accentuated by its narrowness and variety of depths. The waterway is navigable for its entire length of 26 km, and was historically the center of maritime activities in the city.

Technically a drowned valley, like the other waterways around New York City, the strait was formed approximately 11,000 years ago at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation.

More information: Brooklyn Waterfront History

The distinct change in the shape of the strait between the lower and upper portions is evidence of this glacial activity. The upper portion (from Long Island Sound to Hell Gate), running largely perpendicular to the glacial motion, is wide, meandering, and has deep narrow bays on both banks, scoured out by the glacier's movement.

The lower portion (from Hell Gate to New York Bay) runs north-south, parallel to the glacial motion. It is much narrower, with straight banks. The bays that exist, as well as those that used to exist before being filled in by human activity, are largely wide and shallow.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the land north of the East River was occupied by the Siwanoys, one of many groups of Algonquin-speaking Lenapes in the area. Those of the Lenapes who lived in the northern part of Manhattan Island in a campsite known as Konaande Kongh used a landing at around the current location of East 119th street to paddle into the river in canoes fashioned from tree trunks in order to fish.

Dutch settlement of what became New Amsterdam began in 1623. Some of the earliest of the small settlements in the area were along the west bank of the East River on sites that had previously been Native American settlements.

As with the Native Americans, the river was central to their lives for transportation for trading and for fishing. They gathered marsh grass to feed their cattle, and the East River's tides helped to power mills which ground grain to flour.

By 1642 there was a ferry running on the river between Manhattan island and what is now Brooklyn, and the first pier on the river was built in 1647 at Pearl and Broad Streets. 

After the British took over the colony in 1664, which was renamed New York, the development of the waterfront continued, and a shipbuilding industry grew up once New York started exporting flour. By the end of the 17th century, the Great Dock, located at Corlear's Hook on the East River, had been built.

More information: Untapped New York

New Yorkers only cross water for visual culture
if the water is an ocean.
The East River throws us for a huge loop.
If we started going to Queens and the Bronx
for visual culture, many of our rent, space,
and crowding problems would be over indefinitely.

Jerry Saltz

LITTLE ITALY, THE GODFATHER & THE CORLEONE FAMILY

Today, The Grandma has visited Little Italy in Lower Manhattan to meet the Corleone family, some American-Sicilian friends of her who lived in this beautiful neighbourhood.

Little Italy, also in Italian Piccola Italia, is a neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, once known for its large Italian population. It is bounded on the west by Tribeca and Soho, on the south by Chinatown, on the east by the Bowery and Lower East Side, and on the north by Nolita.

Little Italy on Mulberry Street used to extend as far south as Worth Street, as far north as Houston Street, as far west as Lafayette Street, and as far east as Bowery. It is now only three blocks on Mulberry Street north of Canal St.

Little Italy originated at Mulberry Bend south of Canal, in what had formerly been the Five Points area but is now the heart of Chinatown. Jacob Riis described Mulberry Bend as the foul core of New York's slums.

During this time period Immigrants of the late 19th century usually settled in ethnic neighbourhoods.

Therefore, the mass immigration from Italy during the 1880s led to the large settlement of Italian immigrants in lower Manhattan. The results of such migration had created an influx of Italian immigrants which had led to the commercial gathering of their dwelling and business.

Bill Tonelli from New York magazine said, Once, Little Italy was like an insular Neapolitan village re-created on these shores, with its own language, customs, and financial and cultural institutions.

Little Italy was not the largest Italian neighborhood in New York City, as East Harlem (or Italian Harlem) had a larger Italian population. Tonelli said that Little Italy was perhaps the city's poorest Italian neighborhood.

In 1910 Little Italy had almost 10,000 Italians; that was the peak of the community's Italian population. At the turn of the 20th century, over 90% of the residents of the Fourteenth Ward were of Italian birth or origins.

After World War II, many residents of the Lower East Side began moving to Brooklyn, Staten Island, eastern Long Island, and New Jersey. Chinese immigrants became an increased presence after the U.S. Immigration Act of 1965 removed immigration restrictions, and the Manhattan Chinatown to Little Italy's south expanded.

In 2010, Little Italy and Chinatown were listed in a single historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. Little Italy, by this point, was shrinking rapidly.

Little Italy was home to dozens of restaurants that serve authentic Italian cuisine.

Since 2004, Sorrento Lactalis funds neighborhood cultural events in Little Italy.

The Feast of San Gennaro originally was once only a one-day religious commemoration. It began in September 1926 with the new arrival of immigrants from Naples. The Italian immigrants congregated along Mulberry Street in Manhattan's Little Italy to celebrate San Gennaro as the Patron Saint of Naples. 

The Feast of San Gennaro is a large street fair, lasting 11 days, that takes place every September along Mulberry Street between Houston and Canal Streets. The festival is an annual celebration of Italian culture and the Italian-American community.

Little Italy residents have seen organized crime since the early 20th century. Powerful members of the Italian Mafia have operated in Little Italy.

More information: Untapped New York

The Godfather is a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, based on Puzo's best-selling 1969 novel of the same name. 

The film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, and Diane Keaton. It is the first installment in The Godfather trilogy. 

The story, spanning from 1945 to 1955, chronicles the Corleone family under patriarch Vito Corleone (Brando), focusing on the transformation of his youngest son, Michael Corleone (Pacino), from reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss.

Studio executives had trouble finding a director; the first few candidates turned down the position before Coppola signed on to direct the film but disagreement followed over casting several characters, in particular, Vito and Michael. 

Filming took place primarily on location around New York City and in Sicily, and was completed ahead of schedule. 

The musical score was composed principally by Nino Rota, with additional pieces by Carmine Coppola.

More information: Smithsonian Magazine

 International affairs is very much run like the mafia.
The godfather does not accept disobedience,
even from a small storekeeper who doesn't pay his protection money.
You have to have obedience; otherwise,
the idea can spread that you don't have to listen to the orders,
and it can spread to important places.

Noam Chomsky

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, A PARANORMAL TRUE STORY

Today, The Grandma has visited Amityville, a village in the Town of Babylon in Suffolk County, on the South Shore of Long Island, in New York. The population was 9,523 at the 2010 census.

Huntington settlers first visited the Amityville area in 1653 due to its location to a source of salt hay for use as animal fodder. Chief Wyandanch granted the first deed to land in Amityville in 1658.

The area was originally called Huntington West Neck South (it is on the Great South Bay and Suffolk County, New York border in the southwest corner of what once called Huntington South), but is now the Town of Babylon. According to village lore, the name was changed in 1846 when residents were working to establish its new post office.

The meeting turned into bedlam and one participant was to exclaim, What this meeting needs is some amity. Another version says the name was first suggested by mill owner Samuel Ireland to name the town for his boat, the Amity.

The place name is strictly speaking an incidental name, marking an amicable agreement on the choice of a place name.

The village was formally incorporated on March 3, 1894. In the early 1900s, Amityville was a popular tourist destination with large hotels on the bay and large homes. Annie Oakley was said to be a frequent guest of vaudevillian Fred Stone. Will Rogers had a home across Clocks Boulevard from Stone.

Gangster Al Capone also had a house in the community. Congregants began holding meeting for St. Mary's Church in 1886, building a Chapel in 1888 by Wesley Ketcham under Rev. James H Noble and the church was consecrated in 1889, pre-dating the town incorporation.

More information: Classic New York History

Amityville is the setting of the book The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson, which was published in 1977 and had been adapted into a series of films made between 1979 and 2018.

The story of The Amityville Horror can be traced back to a real life murder case in Amityville in November 1974, when Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot all six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue.

In December 1975 George and Kathy Lutz and Kathy's three children moved into the house, but left after twenty-eight days, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena produced by the house. Jay Anson's novel is said to be based on these events but has been the subject of much controversy; the murder case actually happened, but the house being haunted remains a matter of debate.

The house featured in the novel still exists but has been renovated and the address changed in order to discourage tourists from visiting it. The Dutch Colonial Revival architecture house built in 1927 was put on the market in May 2010 for $1.15 million and sold in September for $950,000, equivalent to $1.2 million in 2021.

More information: All That's Interesting

There are two different stories in horror: internal and external.
In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside,
the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don't understand.
Internal is the human heart.

John Carpenter

THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING, REMEMBERING KING KONG

Today, The Grandma has visited the Empire State Building to remember one of her favourite stories, King Kong.

The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.

The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from Empire State, the nickname of the state of New York. The building has a roof height of 380 m and stands a total of 443.2 m tall, including its antenna.

The Empire State Building stood as the world's tallest building until the construction of the World Trade Center in 1970; following the later's collapse in 2001, the Empire State Building was again the city's tallest skyscraper until 2012.

As of 2020, the building is the seventh-tallest building in New York City, the ninth-tallest completed skyscraper in the United States, the 49th-tallest in the world, and the sixth-tallest freestanding structure in the Americas.

The site of the Empire State Building, in Midtown South on the west side of Fifth Avenue between West 33rd and 34th Streets, was developed in 1893 as the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. 

In 1929, Empire State Inc. acquired the site and devised plans for a skyscraper there. The design for the Empire State Building was changed fifteen times until it was ensured to be the world's tallest building.

Construction started on March 17, 1930, and the building opened thirteen and a half months afterward on May 1, 1931. Despite favorable publicity related to the building's construction, because of the Great Depression and World War II, its owners did not make a profit until the early 1950s.

The building's Art Deco architecture, height, and observation decks have made it a popular attraction. Around four million tourists from around the world annually visit the building's 86th- and 102nd-floor observatories; an additional indoor observatory on the 80th floor opened in 2019. 

The Empire State Building is an American cultural icon: it has been featured in more than 250 TV shows and movies since the film King Kong was released in 1933.

The building's size has become the global standard of reference to describe the height and length of other structures. A symbol of New York City, the building has been named as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It was ranked first on the American Institute of Architects' List of America's Favorite Architecture in 2007.

Additionally, the Empire State Building and its ground-floor interior were designated city landmarks by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1980, and were added to the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

More information: The Empire State Building

King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code adventure fantasy horror monster film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. 

The screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose was developed from an idea conceived by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. It stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot, and tells the story of a giant ape dubbed Kong who attempts to possess a beautiful young woman. It features stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and a music score by Max Steiner. It is the first entry in the King Kong franchise.

King Kong opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews, and has since been ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the greatest horror film of all time and the fifty-sixth greatest film of all time.

In 1991, it was deemed culturally, historically and aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. 

A sequel, titled Son of Kong, was fast-tracked and released the same year, with several more films made in the following decades, including two remakes which were made in 1976 and 2005 respectively, and a reboot in 2017. 

More information: The Hollywood Reporter

 Well, the Empire State was about 40' high in the studio.
King Kong was a little model about 2' high,
and the scenery that he worked in was in proportion to his size.

Fay Wray