I live in a New York City neighborhood that is VERY top-heavy with immigrants from the Caribbean with a very high rate of welfare recipients...still they are immigrants with cars. It's amazing how many people in this neighborhood have cars, even though cars in NYC are expensive (taxes, insurance, gas, garage) and the need for a car in Manhattan is neglible. Most people get by perfectly fine with public transit and the occasional taxi. CAR ALARMS: As I type this, another car alarm has started to BLARE it's shrill, non-stop beeping just under my window. It will go on for quite awhile because the owners may be able to afford a car in New York City, but they don't have the common sense to go to a mechanic and get the alarm adjusted for city streets. An alarm in your suburban driveway is OK...it will truly get your attention if somebody is trying to pilfer your car. But in the streets of New York City, it barely gets any attention, except scowls of pedestrians wishing the car we...

From my dear friend Peggy- Peggy was reminiscing with another friend and longtime Harlem resident Raymond Lewis about Sylvia Woods, owner of SYLVIA’S of Harlem, who died this week. Peggy: In addition to mourning, I will also be quietly chuckling as I remember hilarious stories about "The Queen of Soul Food," which left me in stitches. I told Raymond about the time Sylvia told me that she used to open the restaurant an hour before the posted time in order to feed the local drug pushers, so that they would leave her customers alone. ("I've paid my dues,” she said.) Then there was the time a desperate young mother came into the restaurant with four emaciated children and Sylvia fed them for free and then sat down with them and prayed. I recalled how locals used to come in, weighed down with black plastic bags of “hot” goods, and try and sell them, not only at the entrance, but also in the dining rooms. No night went by when you weren't accosted by a vendor...

The Upper Westside of Manhattan is one of New York City’s premiere residential neighborhoods and is literally “teeming” with celebrities. Historically, after the creation of Central Park, the East side developed into an “old money” neighborhood of big mansions and elegant townhouses: Astors, Whitneys, Vanderbilts and such, while the Westside real estate market languished amid sparse development prolonged by the Panic of 1873. The neighborhood finally began establishing itself as the first grand “apartment building district” in the U.S. with buildings such as The Dakota, the Prasada, the Ansonia, etc. in the 1880s, the gay ‘90’s and early 1900s. Eastsiders thumbed their noses at the Upper West, saying “no one important will EVER live over there!” Early Westsiders included theatre people (horrors!), famous musicians, sports celebrities and immigrants who had actually worked hard to make their fortunes. Today Central Park West has celebs including Madonna, Baryshkinov, Donna Karan, Mar...