George’s Diner

[72 Third Avenue, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I like seeing a diner wherever there’s space for one. Nature abhors a vacuum. See also the Loring Grill, the Tiny Diner, the Unique Diner, and Jack’s Diner, which is right down the avenue from George’s.

The church to the right still stands, now as the Temple of Restoration. (You can see the words Church Office on that door.) The space once occupied by the diner is now a church parking lot.

Thanks, Brian, for pointing me to this diner.

Related reading
All OCA More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

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Recently updated

Words of the year Now with demure and kakistocracy.

An interview with Wyna Liu

From The Atlantic, an interview with Wyna Liu, editor of the New York Times puzzle Connections: “The Most Controversial Game on the Internet.” (Talk about hype). An excerpt, explaining the puzzle’s color categories:

Purple is the wordplay category. The four words in that group are not defined by their literal meanings. It’s words that end with ___ or homophones or something. Blue is trivia that is maybe a bit more specialized, not just definitions. Maybe it’s all movies or certain bands. Sometimes that’s the hardest one. Yellow and green are other category types: They might be four things you bring to the beach, or sometimes they’re all synonyms for the same word. I would say that yellow is the most straightforward.

Another way to define the purple category: it’s the words that are left over after you get the yellow, green, and blue.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Anna Stiga,” Stan Again, Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, using an alias that signals an easier Stumper of his making. Ehh, not that easy — half an hour for me, with the bottom half of the puzzle considerably more difficult than the top. The puzzle’s distinctive feature: two stacks of thirteen-, thirteen-, and fifteen-letter answers.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, six letters, “Talk related to ‘gargle.’” Etymologically? Maybe close, but I don’t think so. As slang? I have no idea.

3-D, five letters, “Name on the cover of I Dissent (2016).” And if only —

6-D, three letters, “Broth with tái lan.” I bet more solvers will be familiar with the broth than with this ingredient that can go with it.

14-A, thirteen letters, “The stripes of its American flag represent the Medicines of Life.” There are so many things I haven’t learned yet.

21-D, six letters, “Surname derived from oven operators.” A surprising factoid.

30-A, seven letters, “Prepares for sale, as related products.” Strange to see the present-tense verb.

31-D, eight letters, “Whom Du Bois called ‘scholar and knight.’” I don’t know how I pulled the name from my memory vault, but I did.

34-A, seven letters, “What John Appleseed promoted early on.” Read the clue carefully.

40-D, four letters, “Nickname with a despotic homonym.” Good Lord. This seems like an awful way to clue the nickname.

42-A, four letters, “Is aimless.” A verb looking odd on its own. 43-A, four letters, “Soil or schmo.” Ha!

46-A, five letters, “Nine-year-old on Swedish kronor.” Huh? What?

47-A, fifteen letters, “‘May I have more?’” My favorite of the long answers.

My favorite in this puzzle: 29-A, seven letters, “Stuffed street food.” Represent.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Separated at birth

Fresca at Noodletoon wrote a bit about George Caleb Bingham’s painting The Jolly Flatboat Men. I thought I’d seen it, but no, it’s in the National Gallery, and the painting I know is in the St. Louis Art Museum, with a different fiddler. The painting in St. Louis is Bingham’s Jolly Flatboatmen in Port, and I’ve had it in mind for years as a good item for a post, because the fiddler, to my eye, is John Hartford.

[Click either image for a larger view.]

I looked up John Hartford in the same old place and was both surprised and not surprised to find this detail:

He spent his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was exposed to the influence that shaped much of his career and music: the Mississippi River. From the time he got his first job on the river, at age 16, Hartford was on, around, or singing about the river.

I think it’s unlikely that John Hartford did not know and love this painting.

Related reading
All OCA “separated at birth” posts (Pinboard)

[I found and cropped a photograph of John Hartford from his official Facebook page — no photographer credited. The Pinboard link does a search — no account needed.]

A third law

From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

If there was one law for the poor, who have neither money nor influence, and another law for the rich, who have both, there is still a third law for the public official with real power, who has more of both. After the Taylor Estate fight, Robert Moses must have known — he proved it by his actions — that he could, with far more impunity than any private citizen, defy the law. He gloried in the knowledge; he boasted and bragged about it. For the rest of his life, when a friend, an enemy — or one of his own lawyers — would protest that something he was doing or was proposing to do was illegal, Moses would throw back his head and say, with a broad grin, a touch of exaggeration and much more than a touch of bravado: “Nothing I have ever done has been tinged with legality.”

Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Pinboard)

[The Taylor Estate: property that Moses wanted, and got, for a state park.]

Talking about contingency

Calbert Graham (Stephen McKinley Henderson) in “From Russian Hill with Love,” an episode of the Netflix series A Man on the Inside (2024):

“Every great thing in your life, when you look back on it, feels like a miracle.”

If you watch, you’ll see that he’s talking about contingency.

A related post
Fluke life

[The eight-episode series is worth seeking out.]

Thanksgiving 1924

[“Jails and Hospitals Gay with Feasting: From Ludlow Street To Sing Sing Death House, Thanksgiving Is Celebrated.” The New York Times, November 28, 1924. Click for a larger view.]

Wikipedia provides some background:

The first book of crossword puzzles was published by Simon & Schuster in 1924, after a suggestion from co-founder Richard Simon’s aunt. The publisher was initially skeptical that the book would succeed, and only printed a small run at first. The book ... was an instant hit, leading crossword puzzles to become a craze of 1924.

Crosswords or no crosswords, Keiths or no Keiths, Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Nick Cave’s advice

Nick Cave offers advice to a thirteen-year-old correspondent asking how, in a world of hatred and disconnection, to live life to the fullest and not waste one’s potential. Cave’s reply begins: “Read.”

Wonderful stuff: read the full response.

See also Nick Cave’s explanation of the point in life.

A pocket notebook sighting

[From 13 West Street (dir. Philip Leacock, 1962. Click for a larger view.]

That’s Rod Steiger as Detective Sergeant Pete Koleski. Don’t mistake him for a contemptuous waiter.

Related reading
All OCA notebook sightings (Pinboard)

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