https://www.cityofsmoke.com New York in History and Anecdote Thu, 24 Dec 2015 23:14:39 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 https://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/300 Fri, 30 Jan 2015 03:37:39 +0000 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=300 Every August 6 for more than three decades, an attractive older woman entered a Greenwich Village bar that had been a restaurant back in the Jazz Age. She sat alone in a booth and ordered two cocktails. She raised one, murmured, "Good luck, Joe, wherever you are," drank it slowly]]> https://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1450 Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:30:44 +0000 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=1450 Arecent encounter with the first half-hour or so of Jane Eyre, The Musical put me in mind of the 1857 murder of Dr. Harvey Burdell. (The connection won't immediately be apparent.) A friend with a professional interest in seeing the show had asked me along, and since she'd paid for the tickets and wanted to leave, we did--well before the act break--driven out by the inexorable staccato of the leading lady's enunciation. The show had not been exceptionally or unexpectedly appalling, but it made you realize that it's possible to get anything produced on Broadway these days, provided it has a child in it. Absolutely anything. People are desperate to get their offspring out of the house, and anything with a kid in it is considered family fare. This re-emergence of the child as live attraction may be a by-product of the current baby boom. But it has its roots, I think, in the Burdell affair and its aftermath. ]]>