Author Archives: Peter

Open City declared Peter Nolan Smith an underground punk legend of the 1970s East Village. The New England native spent many years as a nightclub doorman in New York, Paris, London, and Hamburg. The constant traveler has lived for long periods of time in Europe and the Far East. After a forced retirement from the Schmatta trade in Thailand, Peter Nolan Smith returned to New York to work in the international diamond trade. At summer’s end he resumed the life of a writer. The world’s leading leisureologist is currently based in Sri Racha, Thailand, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and Luxembourg City. He has no address.

Good at Something – 2024

January 10, 2025 – 12:50 pm

A proficiency in billiards is the sign of a misspent youth. – attributed to Herbert Spencer, English philosopher after losing 50-0 to a pool shark. Back room at the 169 Bar 2024 I can hold my own only because I’m lucky with the eight-ball.

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LOST BY THE EIGHT BALL by Peter Nolan Smith

January 10, 2025 – 4:05 am

From 2013 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 […]

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Friends in Our City

January 9, 2025 – 11:14 am

After COVID struck, the city closed everything. Mazin and I wandered the shorelines of Manhattan and Brooklyn drinking wine in the desolation of uncertainty. Counting the stars. It was our city. One night we sat at a Williamsburg park on the East River. Across lived his sister and he called her to illuminate the Christmas […]

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Batten Kill Railroad – 2020

January 8, 2025 – 2:31 pm

Dec 28, 2020 Greenwich, New York is a small village north of Troy. The farming community lays atop a ridge east the the Hudson River and the traffic along Route 29 consists mostly logging trucks and pick-ups. A rebel flag hung for the house next to the fire station. This was Trump Country, even though […]

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FAMOUS FOR NEVER – A STORY OF FAME AND UNFORTUNE – 2025

January 7, 2025 – 11:29 am

Rome wasn’t burnt in a day. – James Steele New York City teetered toward bankruptcy during America’s economic stagnation of the mid-70s and on Oct. 29, 1975 the Daily News splashed the headline FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD, after the president refused to bailout New York. The mayor slashed every department’s budget to the bone […]

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