New York City - A View Through Images & Personal Memories

I grew up in NYC.

I still have the distinctive accent despite living in several states, Europe and Canada. My grammar school was on the lower east side and the high school I graduated from was around the corner from the NY Chapter of the Hell's Angels MC. I passed my drivers test under the Brooklyn Bridge and even managed to parallel park without hitting the curb. I went to Art & Design even though I got accepted to Stuyvesant HS. Soon I found myself enrolled in the GSP program at NYU but dropped after three semesters to pursue a cliched starving artist life playing dingy dark clubs with various metal bands. Fortunately, I got to be on stage at the infamous CBGB's before the eminent closing.

I learned how to swim at McBurney YMCA (Sid & Nancy) on west 14th and used to collect Dr. Strange comics at the old Forbidden Planet. Not that new version with more imported crap than actual collectible comics. I studied with Sifu Wing Hong Yip in Chinatown, the original Dragon Style Kung Fu school on Bayard Street as well as Grand Master Alan Lee's Wu-Su on west 27th street. I can still remember those grueling training sessions. Running in place for 30+ minutes, knees up and down several flights of stairs holding concrete cinder blocks, all during a blistering NYC summer heat wave.

I took guitar lessons from a Berklee graduate ( No, the other one, for music) off the Bowery. He shared a small cozy loft with a french artist and aspiring female photographer. I eventually studied classical guitar from a Jewish maestro who rented a shared apartment on Astor Place which was owned by an absentee Polish family but managed by a Puerto Rican ex-boxer from Caguas. He used to rave about Felix Trinidad and his wife cooked some damn good bacalao.

As the years past and life took me in different directions, ending up in Florida, Ottawa, Canada, Utrecht the Netherlands, Iceland and even El Paso, Texas............I can still understand why I kept my original 212 number which is now grafted to mobile phone.

I guess some things never change.