When I think back on being a little kid, I think of West End Avenue and 103rd street and I see sneakers hanging from a telephone wire.

Caught this last night. Yoga in Bryant Park. Hey, now.

I don’t mind if I rub shoulders with a woman on the subway. Sitting down, a woman next to me, the feel of their skin pushed against my shoulder, it’s okay, you know? But this week, New Yorkers are cranky from the heat. The less touching the better.

I felt bad for this dude. He got on the train this morning drenched with sweat. What a way to start the day.

Spotted on his way to the grocery store.

I love New York.

I’m afraid of heights but have always wanted to take a ride in one of these. Took this picture yesterday up in the Bronx.

Here’s another gallery of vintage New York photography.

This one features the work of Gita Lenz.

Stunning.

My man Brad pointed out this wonderful photo gallery of old New York.

Don’t miss it.

It’s boolchit hot, man. Dog Day hot. Do the Right Thing hot. Africa hot. You name it. The city is roasting, man. A regular schvitz-a-thon.

This is why air-conditioning was invented.  Stay inside if you can. Boy, what a day to play hooky and go to the movies. If you’ve got to be out, find a way to cool-out and drink a ton of water.

[Photo Credit: Nivek]

Speaking of old New York, I was on Columbus Avenue last night with my sister and my cousin, an 18-year-old Belgian girl who arrived in New York two days ago. It’s her first trip to the States so we went out for a burger last night. She is a good kid, shy, but speaks English pretty well. We strolled up Columbus after dinner, past 81st Street where my grandparents used to live. Most of the neighborhood has changed, but here is one spot, between 82nd and 83rd, that remains. It was almost arresting to see it there, a piece of my childhood in tact.

Emma hipped me to this coolness: the average color of the New York City sky, updated every five minutes.

Last Friday evening I saw these kids on the subway as I headed downtown.

Later that night, I saw the same crew again, this time on an uptown train.

Man, that’s the second time in a few weeks that I’ve run into people in both directions on the train. Weird but cool.

Sometimes a place closes and you feel nothing, like the girl in “A Chorus Line.” That’s the way it is for me and H&H Bagels. I’ve known the store my entire life. It opened the year after I was born and was located on the southwest corner of 80th Street and Broadway just a few blocks from where my grandparents lived. Next time you watch “Night Shift,” you can see the old store front in the background as Henry Winkler and Shelley Long cross the street. That was a few years before H&H blew up and became a big deal, “the” place for bagels.

H&H was famous for it’s fat, doughy bagels, extravagant prices, and for its no frills (you could buy butter or cream cheese there but they wouldn’t put it on the bagel for you). It was a yuppie phenomenon. The bagels were tasty, but they were bloated and overrated. And again, way too expensive (these days one cost $1.40). If you preferred a meaty bagel, though, it was heaven.

But it’s also a neighborhood place so many Upper West Siders are upset that H&H is closing without ceremony. I appreciate that even if I don’t share their sense of loss. What I will miss is the smell. You walked past the place and the air smelled comforting and inviting.

[photo credit: highlowfooddrink]

Man, I miss our pal Todd Drew. I think about him often and feel as if he’s still with us.

Here is a picture taken last week from his box seats at Yankee Stadium.

It was a treat to ride in a cab as a kid. The best was when we hailed one of those plump checker cabs, the kinds with the fold-out seats in the back. My brother, sister, and I would fight to claim those two seats.

Checker cabs were the bomb.

[Picture by Joel Zimmer]

The wife shops inside, the husband waits patiently outside. The marriage works.

“Women are beautiful. They are really beautiful.” –Bill Cosby.

Men are not subtle when we check out women. We stare. Most of us are developed enough not to drool.  Some start yapping and there is a fine line between appreciating a woman’s beauty and being a pig. Women are cool, though. You know a woman has checked you out when you catch them just looking away. That’s not usually the case when they look at each other. Then, they are thorough, eye-balling one another from head-to-toe, deliberately, sometimes with admiration, other times with envy or god knows what else.

They are really  beautiful.

Check out this cool photo gallery of Brooklyn circa 1974.

A young mother and her son were fighting on the train this morning. The mother sat near me with an infant strapped into a harness that pressed into her bosom. She was heavyset with blond hair and a pug nose. Her son, a toddler, got up from his seat and stood at the pole. I hadn’t been paying attention but I noticed them when he turned around the pole and the mother grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back next to her.

“You don’t say that to me, do you understand?” she said.

He stood up and reached for the pole, just a few feet away. She grabbed him by the ear this time, pulled him back. He got up again and she grabbed his arm and yanked him. The boy was strong, had round cheeks and green eyes.

“Stop beating me,” he said.

An older woman sitting across from them looked up and smiled.

The mother laughed. “You think I’m beating you?”

He stood up again and she grabbed his arm and twisted.

“Stop beating me.”

This tug of war went on for a while.

“I’m not so terrible,” he said.

He continued to get up and she’d pulled him back. Then she said, “When you get to school I’m telling your teacher you are in a time out for the whole day. Time out when you get home. No remote control.”

He started to cry. He sat down. Another woman sitting across from them smiled too.

I couldn’t concentrate on the newspaper, kept reading the same sentence over and over.

Now, the boy was sobbing. “Please don’t tell my teacher.” He grabbed his mother.

“Oh, now you are going to hug me? Maybe you’ll think before you talk to me like that again.”

“Please don’t tell my teacher.”

“You are almost four-years-old, stop crying.”

He settled down after awhile but I couldn’t go back to reading. When they got off the train a few stops later I realized that I wasn’t breathing.

[Photo Credit: Masao Gozu]

The book is “New York City at Night,” by Evan Joseph.

Peep, don’t sleep.

New Yorkers cherish our space because it is hard to come by. Happy weekend.