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Apology For Breathing
Leibling describes New York City as a complicated place that has my things going on at once. He talks about different types of New Yorkers, just like we read in “Here Is New York”. Leibling however put them in two categories instead of three. The first type of New Yorker that Leibling talks about is a person so involve in one environment that they completely forget about the many others. The second type of New Yorker is the person who is aware of NY’s natural history but thinks little of them.
Leibling describes how New York has its own language.Leibling says that New York is a real city because even though it is an old place, New York City doesn’t stay in the past. New York City keeps on renewing itself.
The way New York is described in “Apology For Breathing” is fairly the same as it is today. One noticeable difference would have to be is the people. Leibling writes, “Native New Yorkers ae the best mannered people in America…New Yorkers are modest.” Well mannered and modest is not how New Yorkers are usually described.
The way Leibing describes New Yorkers was not objective. If he had lived in another city, would he still write the same thing?
Apology for Breathing by A. J. Liebling
A.J. Liebling digs deeper into New York’s essence by honoring the modern people of the city. Liebling viewed New York not through its history, but through the quirks that makes it a haven to so many people coming from different areas of the world today. One particular passage that really showcases this is his vivid description of the characters he meet in the city:
“I like to think of all the city microcosms so nicely synchronized through unaware of one another: the worlds of the weight-lifters, yodelers, tugboat captains and sideshow barkers, of the book-dutchers, sparring partners, song pluggers, sporting girls and religious painters, of the dealers in rhesus monkeys and the bishops of churches that they establish themselves under the religious corporations of law.”
The view of the city as a microcosm, as a tiny world full of thriving lives oblivious of each other’s existence is a very familiar thought that Liebling shares with many New Yorkers today. This microcosm of various faces and can be seen during commutes on the train, where people avoid others’ gazes despite being merely inches away from each other. There is a sense of freedom in the city that lets this people be—whether they’re religious painters or song pluggers. It’s a kind of freedom attained from New Yorkers who simply cannot care about anything else beyond what is on their daily agenda. As Liebling mentions, there are New Yorkers who die oblivious of their surroundings and history, and there are New Yorkers who rather ignore what they are aware of. Either way, it’s a paradox that defines New York City as the liveliest and loneliest sanctuary in the world.
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Apology for Breathing
A.J. Liebling’s “Apology for Breathing,” gave me a deeper understanding of what it is like to be a native New Yorker—one who is polite and knows when to interrupt in conversations.Not the New Yorker who is from a small town, used to having his or her thoughts seem grand and wise. But instead the true New Yorker accommodates and bends to the multitude of cultures and lifestyles that make the city whole.
The author does a wonderful job at uncovering these truths in a way that sounds like a little self-realization coupled with vivid portraits of the city’s inhabitants. It could have very well sounded like an anthropological assessment or an analysis. But it did not.
Since this piece reads like an anecdote, of course the city’s representative inhabitants will change from time to time. I found it difficult to identify most of these people on Liebling’s list below. But I do get the undercurrent of his message : the city can sometimes look more like a mixed salad than a melting pot.
“I like to think of all the city microcosms so nicely synchronized though unaware of one another : the worlds of weight lifters, yodelers, tugboat captains, and sideshow barkers, of the book ditchers, sparring partners, song pluggers, sporting girls and religious painters, of the dealers in rhesus monkeys and the bishops of churches they established themselves…”
A sentence that I appreciated much from Liebling was his point later in the passage pointing out the city’s irony—its residents live so close, yet know nothing about each other.
“There are New Yorkers so completely submerged in one environment, like the Garment Centre or Jack and Charlie’s, that they live and die oblivious of the other worlds around them.”
This I believe was once a universal statement about the city, but now a notion which I think is under revision now with the fever of “The Tale of Two Cities,” the mantra of the city’s lead mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio.
A.J Liebling: Tummler
A.J. Liebling is remembered as a critic of the press. He claimed he could write faster and better than his colleagues, which reminds me of the muckraker Seymour Hersh.
“I am a better American than 99% of the guys in the White House,” Hersh said.
And if I can draw those similarities, I see that Liebling preferred to approach news for what it was. It was not about puffery or trend but about withholding personal judgment and informing the masses.
“People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news,” he said.
In Tummler, Liebling wrote about a scam artist, Hymie Katz. Just naming the piece “Tummler,” he portrays Katz from the point of view of the people who revered him. A tumbler is someone who is proactive in their profession, engaging others in an inspiring way. By all means, Katz employed people but they paid him to work for his clubs.
Liebling allowed Katz’s actions to speak for itself instead of telling readers that he should be condemned as a scammer. He detailed the process in which Katz funded his projects and made away with the profits.
“The investment of his own money, according to Hymie’s code, would be unethical.”
Liebling’s writing style is what I imagine his own speaking voice to sound like. He said things like, “many buildings between Longacre Square and Sixth Avenue had a joint on every floor.” He also made up names for people such as “Johnny Attorney,” a habit that got him fired at The New York Times.
His point of view does come into his writing when he said that “Hymie always enjoyed bouncing people in a nice way” and then wrote about how he would punch a heckler with a roll of quarters and toss them where police could find them.
In Liebling’s New York, it is not so easy to rent property and manage a club. There are not many “joints” that cover building floors unless codes and regulations are followed. With the present economy, it is not easy to get people to pay you for work unless you enter the human trafficking business.
Liebling’s writing is amusing and that voice has not changed in New York today. What has changed is that media has become a lot about business instead of informing the people.
Joe Gould
Joe Gould’s writing style is descriptive without overwriting. However, feature article writing is not exclusively in narrative voice.
Professor Sea Gull (1942) has a lot of details but profiling includes research beyond an interview. If Mitchell had asked to read the Oral History before forming a relationship with him, he would not have been surprised to find that the History never materialized.
His 1942 profile includes purposefully outdated language. He gave his opinion about Gould’s mission to document history.
“The Oral History is…an omnium-gatherum of bushwa, gab, palaver, hogwash…” he went on.
He conveys Gould’s character originally with amusement. He highlights Gould’s Harvard wit as a contrast to his erratic behavior and appearance. He described Gould’s behavior in the winter where he would layer his shirt with newspapers.
“I only use The Times,” he said. “I’m snobbish.”
Mitchell’s observations portray Gould as a phenomenon but in Joe Gould’s Secret (1964), he writes about him with an air of sympathy. He uses some of the same quotes he used in the first profile, including himself in the scenarios. Instead of saying that Gould drowns his eggs in ketchup, he says that he was there with him at the diner and was blamed for emptying the ketchup bottles.
He did this so that he could show his motive for waiting to tell Gould’s secret that the Oral History was not what he claimed it was. He formed a relationship with him at that point. Gould’s mission was to compile all the “informal history” there was. Mitchell captured that mission and exposed it as a mask he preferred Professor Sea Gull to keep on.
A.J. Liebling’s New York Block
In “Beginning With The Undertaker” Liebling describes the local hangout as the funeral parlor. This doesn’t really apply to present day New York. If someone today were to go hangout with the undertaker, they would be ridiculed. A passerby would probably snag a picture of them going inside a funeral parlor late at night, like how the policeman stopped by Liebling’s undertaker after his shift, and post it on the Internet for all to see.
As crazy as hanging out with the undertaker sounds, there is a root of today’s New York in his story–if the undertaker is viewed like “Mayor Rizzo.” I believe this to be Liebling’s intention. The idea of a communal hotspot on a New York City block is what Liebling really expresses. My Grandmother’s block in Queens had a similar hangout spot/block mayor. This was my Grandmother’s stoop, and she was the block mayor. She would sit out on her stoop with a cushion, waiting for her neighbors to stop by. Kids would say “hello,” the older couples on the block would bring chairs and sit for a while, and even the mailman would hang around for a chat.
Even as time passes and things change, Liebling’s New York block still exists.
A ‘Sweet’ New Approach to Social Media
Flappers, Hoovervilles, the New Deal, British Invasion, Nixon, “yuppies,” boy bands, and the Internet. Few people or places have been around to witness the changes, trends, and events of the past ninety years. But on the corner of 72nd Road and Metropolitan Avenue, in Forest Hills, an ice cream shop’s workers have scooped cones and topped sundaes for nearly a century.
Eddie’s Sweet Shop, established in the early 1920s, truly enjoys longevity. Few small businesses exhibit such permanency without advertising, something Eddie’s avoided—at least until recently.
“We’ve been lucky,” Vito Citrano, owner of Eddie’s Sweet Shop, said. “I really have great customers.” Citrano, the proprietor of Eddie’s for the past nine years, only recalls business being poor when his father purchased the sweet shop in 1968. Vito’s father, Joe Citrano, hammered his days away in a shoe factory and worked at Eddie’s six nights a week. The son said about his father, “He eventually made the decision to leave the factory where he made money… to work in the store where he wasn’t making any money.”
Over the course of forty-five years of Citrano-family ownership, summer nights of lonely wooden bar stools turned into nights without room to stand. Thousands, possibly millions, of customers have enjoyed lip-smacking sundaes, shakes, and old-fashioned ice cream sodas, brimming with foam. Whether it’s the taste of the homemade products or admiration for the marble counter and decorative woodwork, even on cold winter nights, patrons pack the store.
Most businesses achieving this level of success advertise their products and services, but not Eddie’s Sweet Shop. Up until 2009, the Citranos, like their store, did things the old-fashioned way. “My father and I really have relied on word-of-mouth [for advertising],” Citrano said. Contrary to his traditional business tactics, four years ago, Citrano created a Facebook page for Eddie’s Sweet Shop. The page soared to nearly nine thousand “likes.”
Other frozen yogurt and ice cream shops have ventured into social media advertising, but none of them have experienced the same level of success as Eddie’s Sweet Shop. Twist It Top It, a Queens based frozen yogurt chain, has only four hundred likes on Facebook. The infamous ice cream franchise, Carvel, has thirty-five thousand likes on Facebook but has five hundred locations and sells products in over eight thousand stores. Eddie’s has just one location, and their products are exclusive. The sweet shop’s owner commented, “I don’t care about being compared to those guys. I hope they stay in business forever and make a ton of money. I mean that sincerely.”
The primary purpose of the Eddie’s Facebook page isn’t to promote the business, rather; it exists for loyal customers. “They know about specials before we even advertise them in the store,” Citrano said. When special summer flavors, peach and blueberry, first came in this past June, the Facebook fans were the first to know. They’ll also be the first to know about pumpkin ice cream pies this fall.
Delighted by the response to his business’ Facebook page, Citrano admits having nothing to do with it. “The Eddie’s fan page is run totally by my workers.” Citrano employs a small crew of no more than ten people, most of them teenagers.
Citrano allows his young workers to run with their social media ideas. About a year ago, the workers attempted to start an Instagram account for the sweet shop, but it didn’t generate as much interest as the Facebook page. “We tried to get it off-the-ground, especially since there is a running hash tag on Instagram for the store, but it never took off,” one worker said.
One of the most successful Eddie’s Facebook-related ideas came from the store manager, Sean Donovan. As a result of a conversation with Donovan, a customer, known as “Customer Dave,” agreed to collaborate a weekly ice cream suggestion for Facebook. “Customer Dave’s Pick of the Week” posts include a picture and caption of the loyal patron’s concoction.
“An average post, like ‘Pick of the Week,’ gets seen by at least 3,000 people within a day, sometimes hours,” Donovan exclaimed. Besides acting as store manager, the twenty-five year old serves as an Eddie’s Facebook page administrator. His duties include posting messages from the owner and staying on top of customer comments. Unlike most Facebook business pages, the Eddie’s page tries to “like” all customer comments, so people know their ideas are read and appreciated.
“The page is really a way I try to give back,” Citrano said. The owner doesn’t forget what makes it all possible even after years in the business. “I have great workers… People I served as kids are now coming in with their children. That’s loyalty.” He added, “The Facebook page is a small way I can try to give back to them… I love my customers.”
Security camrea brings loyality–
Security used to be a problem–
Have any other issues sparked for Queens Deli Owner
By: Crystal Simbudyal
Dark hair, brown eyes, tan skin and determination describe the appearance and the personality of a man moving into the United States from Yemin, a Middle Eastern country. He found the adjustment to be difficult– trying to assimilate to another culture, and learning the language, the customs, and the values of the people. So, Yahxa Alkebsi, the owner of Gamil Mini Market, a deli located in Queens Village on 217th Street between Hillside and Jamaica Avenues, decided to become his own boss.
Several years ago, in an interview, Alkebsi spoke of problems that concerned him: Having to shoo away mobs of kids looking for trouble on the weekdays after long hours in school, and dealing with a landlord who continually wants to raise the rent.
Three years later, he no longer has to deal with security issues. Alkebsi feels more confident running his store with the cameras always running. Customers have noticed and commented on them ever so often.
Alkebsi has a lot on his plate from the start of his day toright before closing time. “You get what you give; for good customers you become friendly, and when you see a tough guy, be the tough guy. It shows them whose boss,” said Alkebsi.
Gamil Mini Market’s products range from baby pampers, snacks, white tees, drinks, and vegetables –a wide variety for an everyday shopper on the go.
He owns five other stores in the New York region. They are located in Queens Village, Jamaica, Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn. All stores are family run.
“I still share this store, with my brother and my son. They are a very big help to business and I enjoy their company when it’s down time,” said Alkebsi.
Since he has to compete with many other stores in just a mile radius, Alkebsi maintains great prices for his customers to encourage them to keep coming back. “The old people come in for milk and eggs. The young people come in for cigarettes, cold or hot sandwiches, snacks, and drinks. They are the ones who help drive the business. I give back to them with merchandising. It’s the prices that keeps our customers happy,” said Alkebsi.
“I am the competition. You just can’t beat my prices,” says Alkebsi. Providing good service and always being friendly results in positive reactions from his customers.
“I sometimes face conflicts with teenagers; they hang out outside my store and make trouble. Sometimes, they want to buy cigarettes but I refuse to sell them anything,” said Alkebsi. The morning always brings business, from 7am to 7:30am. Then, right after school lets out, usually around 2:00pm, customers start rolling in. Alkebsi is grateful when school is in session from September into June. “In the summer business is slow. After August, its picks up in the morning and gets slow in the afternoon,” said Alkebsi.
The small crowds of teenagers and adults, in their mid-twenties and thirties are Gamil mini market’s best customers. Older adults prefer to go to Key Food around the corner to shop in bigger quantities.
“My family and friends have shopped there plenty of times. Gamil is a cool guy, always friendly and about his business,” remarked customer, Kageel Mendonca.
Alkebsi’s store is known to be the bogie spot, another word for cigarette. Many customers go in and out to purchase cigarettes. Sometimes, Alkebsi, allows his customers to buy items on credit. “Customers don’t always come back and pay but they come back and buy stuff.” One might think, this is a disadvantage for business but Alkebsi says this this is a way of “gaining loyal customers”.
“Soda, daily sandwiches and cigarettes is what brings a lot of my customers around and that’s fine with me,” said Alkebsi.
Alkebsi continues to run his business as a friendly environment. The same customers come in on an everyday basis and word travels by word-of-mouth, allowing Alkebsi to build more relationships with new customers.
Loyalty is everything in this man’s store. “It has made me famous and reasonable, said Alkebsi, laughing.
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Apology for Breathing, A.J Liebling
I am amused by Liebling’s style of writing. He critiques New York City as if it’s nobody’s business. I think that this piece works in many areas because of the way Liebling introduces his topics and explains what he wants to say. “New York women are the most beautiful in the world. They have their teeth straightened in early youth… The climate is extremely healthy”. I noticed that he doesn’t say the people were healthy but later states that, “the average life expectancy is so high that one of our morning newspapers specializes in interviewing people a hundred years old and upward.” (18). This is valid because the life expectancy for New York City has increased causing people to have to delay their retiring age to 65+ and even though some people are past the expected age that they can retire they refuse to stop working. This is New York City in the year 2013.
“It is a distinction for a child in New York to be the brightest on one block, he acquires no exaggerated idea of his own relative intelligence.” (18). This is true because people push their kids to achieve all they can. New York City is made up of more immigrants and parents who are trying to make ends meet and want to give their children a better education so that they won’t have to struggle as much as them. This made a lot of sense to me when reading it because this ideas of, a “dream” for a brighter future still exists today.
Liebling also says, “It takes a real one to keep renewing itself until the past is perennially forgotten.” For some reason this doesn’t work for me in this piece because is statement reminded me of having a specific memory. For instance, 9/11 occurred a few years ago but it is still a topic that will keep a presence in our history. I don’t think that it would take “a real one” to forget such a tragic event but a real one to remember. I guess what he’s saying is that because of all our revolutions that we “New Yorkers” prefer to discuss the most recent.
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