Category Archives: NEW YORK

Snow in Spring NYC 2010

March 22, 2025 – 10:58 am

JoJo, the security guard at the diamond exchange, was a betting man. He gambled the left-overs from his monthly NYPD pension on baseball, basketball, and football. His losses outweighed his wins. JoJo also wagered on odd parlays and on March 1st in 2010 I said that there wouldn’t be another snowstorm. Two days ago the […]

By Peter | Also posted in Bet On Crazy, Drinking, semi-fiction, weather | Tagged | Comments (0)

QUEEN OF THE PLAZA March 17 2009

March 17, 2025 – 7:46 am

St. Patrick’s Day promised to be another disaster for the Retail Collection of the Plaza Hotel. Hordes of green-clad spectators streamed down the escalator into the basement. Their eyes averted the luxury goods on offer, as their destination was the hotel’s public bathroom. Within the first hour I had given directions to the toilet over […]

By Peter | Also posted in 2000s, Bet On Crazy, ireland, semi-fiction | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

St. Valentine’s Day Massacre / BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

February 14, 2025 – 4:18 am

Every Valentine’s Day diamond dealers and jewelers on 47th Street anticipated a winter spending spree by lovers for their loved ones, but each year of the 21st Century the sales numbers dropped drastically, as the economic downturn cut into everyone’s surplus, but the rich. Valentine afternoon in February 2011 shoppers crammed the chocolatiers along 5th […]

By Peter | Also posted in Bet On Crazy, Diamonds, Love, semi-fiction | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

The Genius Of Bertell Ollman

February 9, 2025 – 2:36 pm

I’ve just gotten a job cataloguing the 10,0000-volume library of Professor Bertell Ollman, renowned Marxist scholar. The eighty-nine old has just retired from NYU. His loving son, Raoul Ollman has asked me to going through the books. I’m adapting the Evelyn Woods method of speed reading to the task. Search each book for a meaningful […]

By Peter | Also posted in revolution | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Staten Island Fog – Journal May 9, 1978

January 31, 2025 – 1:25 am

From May 9, 1978 Journal On the Staten Island Ferry The first time I’ve left Manhattan Since going to Boston On Christmas___ 11 AM I can’t see anything of Manhattan The fog furls over the ferry’s wake Across the Inner Harbor The rank smell of the sea Beyond the Verrazano Bridge. The gray water darker […]

By Peter | Also posted in Poetry | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)