Monthly Archives: June 2023

GHOULS OF PERE LA CHAISE by Peter Nolan Smith

The 1980s were thirty years in the past from the 2010s and when I told stories at the 169 Bar, my young listeners suspected that I was lying about jumping off the Quincy Quarries cliffs or nearly making love with Darryl Hannah in Jamaica or watching bears eat garbage at a Maine dump. Sometimes I […]

BETTER LUCKY THAN GOOD by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in 1990 a greasy nor-easter ruined Columbus Day weekend for New York. I shut my windows for the first time in months and dressed to leave my apartment for breakfast at the Veselka Diner on 2nd Avenue. The shoes and jacket seemed unnaturally heavy after a season of shorts and sandals. Luckily Global Warming […]

LOST BY THE EIGHT BALL by Peter Nolan Smith

None of the cops from the 9th Precinct were happy about the closing of the basement bar next to their station house in the summer of 1980. Even fewer were excited by its re-opening as a French bistro. Evelyn?s Bistro was another sign that the East Village was giving way to a new crowd. Not […]

June 21, 1990 – Paris – Journal Entry

Rainy day in Paris. A great title for my sixth novel, which I will be writing when I’m 110. Spook Jacobs sent my lease renewal for 256 East 10th Street along with letters from the past five months of my travels; two from AJ, one from Sharon who has come out of rehab, from Nina […]

Summer Times Blues

Today was the official summer solstice for the northern hemisphere. The day lasted almost sixteen hours in New York and the sun never set in Murmansk, Russia. I woke well before the dawn and went to sleep far past sunset, as the Earth polar cap tipped toward the nearest star 93 million miles away from […]