For the past week, I’ve been roaming the city taking in the vistas, places, buildings and people that make the Big Apple the capital of the 20th century.
Here’s my list of the 100 greatest civic treasures and pleasures of our town – New York, New York.
BREATHTAKING SIGHTS:
1. The majestic QE-2 gliding up the Hudson River to dock.
2. Belmont Racetrack at 6:30 a.m., when hoofbeats thunder down the backstretch, old trainers squint at their stopwatches and the ghosts of Secretariat and Bold Ruler prowl the winner’s circle.
3. Coney Island covered in winter snow.
4. Manhattan at night, from an airplane, when it shimmers – a diamond-covered iceberg.
5. The sudden view of the Manhattan skyline from the elevated N or 7 train as it climbs out of the Queensboro Plaza station.
6. Rockaway beach near Neponsit on a summer afternoon – more beautiful than Monte Carlo or Santa Monica.
7. The Christmas trees and decorations twinkling from every house in Brooklyn’s Dyker Heights.
8. Tulips blooming in May in the Bronx Botanical Garden.
9. The buzz around the Lincoln Center fountain before the curtain time.
10. The Cloisters – a haven of serenity.
11. The Statue of Liberty at night – it still gives chills to immigrants, tourists, and journalists who think they’ve seen it all.
SECRET TREASURES:
12. Dr. Michael Brescia, director of Calvary Hospital in The Bronx. His mission is to allow terminally ill cancer patients to die with dignity.
13. The Strand used bookstore on lower Broadway.
14. Free Shakespeare in Central Park – it starts its 44th year on June 14.
15. Rockit Scientist on Carmine Street – it has the best collection of hard-to-find CDs and clerks who know everything, from Jelly Roll to Pearl Jam.
16. The thousands of cops, firefighters and teachers who help people every day and never see their name in the newspaper.
17. Dr. Ram Kairam, director of pediatrics at Bronx Lebanon Hospital. He saves kids in one of America’s poorest communities.
18. Ann Douglas of Columbia University. She’s America’s most original cultural historian. Her book, ”Terrible Honesty,” published in 1995, is a masterpiece.
19. Willie’s Steakhouse on Westchester Avenue in The Bronx – a hangout for Latino artists and intellectuals, with live Latin jazz every Wednesday.
20. Richard Green, founder of the Crown Heights Youth Collective.
21. The outdoor Greenmarket in Union Square on Saturdays.
22. Ramon Jiminez, the only graudate of Harvard Law School who came back to the South Bronx – to make justice, not money.
23. City Island – a bit of Nantucket in The Bronx.
24. St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in the Mott Haven section of The Bronx – the burial ground of Lewis Morris, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and Gouverneur Morris, who wrote the preamble to the Constitution.
25. PS 372 in Brooklyn – the city’s only inclusion school – where special ed kids are in the same classes with mainstream kids. It’s the cutting edge in education and the way to save kids, rather than just warehouse them.
26. Louis Armstrong’s home in Corona, and his gravesite in Flushing.
27. Gerard Papa – this weekend marks the 25th anniversary of his Flames youth basketball league in Bensonhurst.
28. Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital’s emergency-room doctors and nurses, who regularly bring people back from the dead.
PLACES AND BUILDINGS:
29. The 700 community gardens. And The Rose (Bette Midler) who saved them.
30. The City University.
31. The 92nd Street Y.
32. The Joseph Papp Public Theatre.
33. The Staten Island ferry.
34. The Brooklyn Academy of Music
35. The Museum of the City of New York.
36. The Film Forum on Houston Street.
37. The Sullivan Street Bakery. Get there early.
38. The Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island.
39. Rocky Sullivan’s bar at Lex and 29th. Stay till last call.
40. The Woolworth Building opposite City Hall.
41. The pick-up basketball games at the West 4th Street playground.
42. Strawberry Fields in Central Park.
43. PS 1, the contemporary arts center in Long Island City.
44. Battery Park City.
45. The art deco lobby of the old Daily News building at 220 E. 42nd St. – the paper is gone, but the globe is still there.
46. Alley Pond Park in Douglaston, Queens – a festival of picnics, languages, and soccer games.
47. The jammed Manhattan-bound D train after a late-inning Yankee win.
SPORTS:
48. Allan (MD-BO)Houston
49. Joe Torre
50. Derek Jeter
51. Teresa Weatherspoon and Rebecca Lobo, of the New York Liberty.
52. David Cone
53. Tim McCarver
54. Mike Piazza
55. John Franco
56. Tino Martinez
57. Larry Johnson
58. The Great Gretzky
59. John McEnroe, the brat who became a brain.
GREAT STREETS:
60. Roosevelt Avenue in Queens – the most multi-cultural strip on earth.
61. Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. In 10 minutes you can walk from San Juan, to Warsaw, to the Hasidic 18th century, to the future represented by all the young artists drawn by cheap rents.
62. Arthur Avenue in The Bronx.
THE ARTS:
63. Robert DeNiro
64. Norman Mailer
65. Zoe Caldwell. She’s won four Tonys and took acting as far as it will go in ”Master Class.”
66. Tito Puente
67 & 68. Kevin Spacey and Willem Dafoe – actors, not movie stars.
69. Savion Glover.
70. John Leguizamo. The best street wit since the young Richard Pryor.
71. Paul Sorvino. He came out of Bensonhurst to make 80 films, including ‘Goodfellas” and ‘Nixon,” in which he played Kissinger to perfection. And like a real tough-tender New Yorker, he cried when his daughter won the Academy Award.
72. Frank McCourt. He writes like an angel. And he taught like an angel at Stuyvesant High.
73 & 74. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins
75. Jim Gandolfini. His Tony Soprano lives in the West Village and works in Queens.
76. Max Roach, still inventive in his 70s. He never got sucked into the drug world that killed Bird and Lady Day.
77. Spike Lee. His films capture New York.
78 & 79. Lou Reed and Paul Simon. Their songs express New York.
80. Nora Ephron, director, writer, wit.
LIVE MUSIC
81. SOBs on Varick Street – offering up Angela Bofill to Ziggy Marley.
82. The Bottom Line, where I first saw Springsteen on Aug. 14, 1975.
83. The Village Vanguard, where I first saw Miles Davis and Lenny Bruce 40 years ago.
84. The Blue Note on West 3rd Street, where I stood at the bar and heard B.B. King sing ‘The Thrill Is Gone” last summer. The space is intimate and the sound system splendid.
FOOD:
85. Russ and Daughters, for the nova and whitefish.
86. Peter Luger’s in Brooklyn, for the steak.
87. The Knickerbocker on University Place, for the steak and jazz trios.
88. Monte’s on Carroll Street in Brooklyn. Order the cheesecake and check out the picture of Ebbets Field on the wall, taken the day it opened in 1912.
89. Ballato’s on Houston Street.
90. Piccola Venezia in Astoria.
91. 40 Bowery in Chinatown
92. Villa Mosconi on McDougal Street.
PEOPLE:
93. Mary Jo White. The U.S. Attorney wins big cases (Gotti Junior and Francis Livoti) without letting her ego get in the way, or violating anybody’s rights.
94. Dennis Rivera. The voice of the voiceless who has been fighting for years to expand health care coverage for children.
95. Tony Bennett. America’s best popular singer comes from Astoria and does benefits for good causes.
96. David Remnick. He’s made the New Yorker better, adding substance and intelligence.
97 & 98. Hamill and Breslin. They’re our collective memory of what’s true in this era of the bogus.
99. Federal Court Judge Eugene Nickerson, an aristocrat of justice.
100. Harry Belafonte. He can bring people to their feet as a performer, and to their senses as a speaker and thinker.