The Tramp Chair

At just over 5' 4" high and 2' wide, this is not a comfortable contraption. It was designed by Sanford J. Baker (1838-1905), a blacksmith from Oakland, Maine, sometime in the late 1800s. Reports variously state that Baker constructed 3 to 13 of his iron cages.  They were used to lock up "tramps," the old-school definition being male vagrants and "hobos" who were found wandering around town begging, sleeping in public places, or catching free rides on freight cars to move on to the next place.

The postcard above shows one of the chairs on the grounds of the Samoset Hotel, in Rockland, Maine, along with a caption describing the purpose of these devices.  Click on the image to read the caption.

The Tramp Chair was patented by Sanford Baker, and news of its creation reached across the country.  In the May 21, 1899 edition of the Los Angeles Herald, an article written by the inventor was published.  The article is a fascinating look at bias, discrimination and treatment of the destitute in 1899.  Here is a transcript:

IN TERROR Of THE TRAMP CHAIR The Inventor of a Remarkable Instrument Extinguishing the Wandering Willie Tribe Describes Its Successful Working in His Native Place

Apart from the professionalist humorist, who finds the tramp an Inexhaustible subject for jokes, no one has the slightest use for the hobos who infest our country roads and beg or steal for a living.  It Is good news, therefore, that a means has been found for squelching the pest. A worthy citizen has invented what he calls a tramp chair, which he claims is a never failing remedy for the hobo trouble. A picture of the chair Is shown accompanying the article that follows, which was written by the Inventor, especially for this newspaper.

Oakland, Me., May 10.—(Special Correspondence to The Herald.) The genus tramp has become an extinct animal in this locality since the adoption by tho town authorities of the tramp chair, of which I am the proud inventor. My pride is, I think, a pardonable one, for I live in a town that for years suffered abominably from the hobo nuisance; the Wandering Willie fraternity at times, in fact, became an unmitigated and dangerous evil and drove us to adopt extreme measures or be at the mercy of the vagabond loafer. Inspired with a desire to find means of freeing from this nuisance the community in which I was most interested I set my wits to work and evolved the tramp chair, which I will describe.

It is simply a strongly built cage in the form of a chair on wheels. It is so constructed that the occupant must remain perfectly quiet in a sitting position. A shelf is placed near the top for food and the contrivance can be handed about from place to place at will. The chief peculiarity of the chair lies in its door. When used as a method of punishment the culprit is obliged to enter it and sit down. The door, which is so constructed, that it follows the lines of the chair, is then closed and locked and the victim is confined as firmly as though he were glued to the seat. Another peculiar thing about the chair is that when the door is locked he cannot draw his feet up or move any part of his body enough to obtain rest. The chair resembles some of the ancient instruments of torture used by the Inquisition, in being only moderately formidable as to appearance, but a terror to those who are forced to spend only a few hours within its confines.

When I first introduced the chair to my surprised townspeople attempt after attempt was made to induce someone to sit in the chair as an experiment, but no one seemed to be willing to go back far enough in Puritanic days to allow himself to become a subject. As a last resort, to show its workings, by the assistance of a $5 bill I persuaded one man to enter the chair and remain there for two and a half hours. The victim remained in the chair for the length of time agreed, but at the end of his penance grasped the money with such alacrity that it was shown he considered he had earned the reward many times over.

Through the experiment it was shown that I had substantiated one of my claims that no man could remain in the chair for any length of time and when he was out of the chair say that he had been thoroughly comfortable or that he would be willing to repeat the experiment, even with a money consideration as the reward for the time he had spent doing nothing.

That suggestion of doing nothing is one of the strong points of the tramp chair idea, for the true hobo spends his life in studying new ways and means of accomplishing that greatest desire of his lazy soul—absolute inaction. To be wheeled about, in a chair like a big baby seems to him to be the acme of slothful ease. He steps in for his first ride in the chair with alacrity, finds it not unpleasant for the first ten minutes, then begins to feel uncomfortable, gets cramped and finds his bones aching, and before the end of an hour's ride he is yelling murder and dynamite and promising all kinds of reformation if only he can get out. When his punishment is over and he is finally released the tramp makes a bee line for the open country and thenceforth comes nowhere near the town that chairs its tramp guests through the streets. I hope some day to get the Maine legislature to adopt the tramp chair punishment for use throughout the state. It is a sure cure in every case.

Two tramp chairs have been in the Oakland lockup for some time. In proof of their usefulness I quote two reports, one from Augusta, a neighboring town, and one from Oakland. On February 3, 1890, the following report was printed in Augusta: "City Marshal Morse gave a nightly lodging to 275 wanderers during the month of January, thirty having been sheltered on a single night." The Oakland report for February 1, 1899, says: "A tramp was given lodging in the lockup Sunday night. Oakland has been quite free from tramps this winter, this being the first that has asked for lodging for several months."

Just think of the difference; 275 tramps in one short month in Augusta, and only one here in Oakland, where the tramp chair was invented and kept on exhibition in our lockup for tramps to look It looks as though the chair had surely got the beat of the tramps.

In a number of cases reliable men have told me that tramps inquired in their hearing what town this was, and on being told that it was Oakland said: "What! Is this where the tramp chair is?" The bystander told them it was. "Well, then," answered the tramp, "we will not stop here," and went on.

Our lawmakers have racked their brains for the last fifteen years to make laws that would drive the tramp from Maine, but everything except the tramp chair has proved a failure. I will pay any man or woman $100 if they will produce one tramp that I cannot cure of tramping if I can have control of the case. The tramp chair is the only thing ever invented by mortal man that a tramp ever feared. Not even powder and ball, for two can play at that game, and with the chair only one.

A tramp is a man traveling, pretending to be looking for work and praying to God all the time that he may never find any. As long as the tramp is looking for a job just invite him to sit in the chair instead of sawing wood to pay for food and lodging, two and one-half hours at a time, and see if he wants to repeat the experiment.

The tramp tax of the sixteen counties of Maine in the year 1898, according to the state report amounted to $64,508. Just think of the enormous expense to each county that has villages and has a large population. Nearly one-third of all our county tax is to pay the tramps' board for thirteen or fourteen weeks in jail every year. The jail is the tramps' home in winter. This has been proved by the county reports of two of our counties that have no jails—Piscataquis and Sagadahoc. They have no tramps in winter because they have no jails; consequently the tramps keep clear of these two counties in winter because they have no jails and goes to his winter home in some other county where the jailer smacks his chops at the sight of his powerful lever— the tramp—the man that the county towns to send to jail in hopes of getting rid of them, a few weeks, even at the enormous tax that must be levied on the taxpayer and must be paid in money. Isn't that a potent argument in favor of my tramp chair?

Anything more that I can do to aid the people in getting rid of tramps will be cheerfully done. SANFORD J. BAKER.

Reading the article, one can't help compare the attitude of Mr. Baker to the attitudes that exist today towards those who are below the radar, so to speak.  While there are always people who are unmotivated or unable to contribute to their own well-being or that of society, there are many more who are not satisfied with their position but have difficulty pulling it together and raising themselves up.  Mr. Baker painted with a very broad brush in 1899, as some do today.  But, I was elated to find this letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Herald, 3 days after the above article was published, by someone who wished to straighten him out:

Walter, thanks for speaking up!

The Willow Grove Diner Journey

This is one of my favorite diner postcards, as it shows the employees and customers in a relatively natural unposed scene.  It's a linen card of the the Willow Grove Diner, when it was in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.  It was at the intersection of Routes 611 and 263, a site now occupied by a Burger King.  According to the current owners, the diner was built in 1948 by the Fodero Dining Car Company and operated there until the early 1960's.  In 1963, new owners moved it to a vacant lot in New Jersey, but never re-opened it.

In 1996, a new owner came along -- a diner aficionado with a vision -- and he disassembled it piece by piece and shipped it to Bainbridge Island, Washington, a mere 2,800 miles away.  Re-opened as the Blue Water Diner, it was visited by Guy Fieri from the Food Network.  Since then, it has been also named the Big Star Diner and the Madison Diner, and its current owners continue to operate it in a spirit consistent with its long history and even longer journey.

Here's a shot of the exterior in its current location:

Lobster for Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to my followers!

At the first Thanksgiving, legend has it that lobster played a prominent role on the menu, prepared by the Native Americans and introduced to the pilgrims.  So, it's fitting that today's post features some restaurants that feature lobster on their menus.  Where shall we dine this Thursday?

This card is of the Lobster House, in Allendale, South Carolina.  

The back of the card says, "A Year 'Round Restaurant of Distinction.  Air-Conditioned.  You can always depend on really good food and service."  Except, I don't think that advice holds true any longer, judging by the current street view in Google Maps!

I guess we'll have to move on.  Let's try Eugene's Sea Food restaurant in the Hotel Juneau in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  They feature lobster prominently on their menu, and, according to the back of the card, it sounds like a great place: "Downtown overlooking the Lake.  Beautiful Juneau Park, Elks Club and one-half block from C. & N. W. Depot.  Rates with bath $1.75 and up; without bath less.  Convenient parking space.  Famous for sea food.  No larger variety anywhere.  Air conditioned dining rooms. Coffee Shop, Tavern and Lobby.  Recommended by Duncan Hines."

Well, Eugene's is out as well.  Mr. Eugene Trimberger sold the hotel in 1948 to another operater, and then it was razed in 1964 to make room for a new building.  

Are we out of luck?  We'll have to try Boone's Restaurant, in Portland, Maine.  Originally opened in 1898, Boone's was the originator of baked stuffed lobster.  Here's a great linen advertising card, featuring an over-sized crustacean and an anxious diner...

Recently renovated, Boone's is still going strong, over 100 years old.  So, have a happy thanksgiving, and now we know where to meet for some traditional Thanksgiving food!!

Model Dinosaurs

Well, I thought I would show a unique card this week -- a model Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is on display at Dinosaur Valley Bridge, in Alberta, Canada.

When I subsequently discovered that on Flickr there are 1,489 photographs (not postcards) of roadside dinosaurs, I cut my research short!  So, check those all other ones here. https://www.flickr.com/groups/roadsidedinosaurs/pool/
and enjoy!!

Crescent Gardens Ballroom, Revere Beach

Today's image is from the glory days of seaside amusement parks.  This one is from Revere Beach, Massachusetts, America's first public beach, where the Crescent Garden Ballroom and Theater once stood.  The facility was one of several similar places, including the Nautical Gardens and the Wonderland Ballroom.  The Crescent Gardens Ballroom was built in 1900, and later on all the famous big bands such as Duke Ellington's played there.  It also hosted a number of dance marathons that were big fads in the 1930's.

Similar to the demise of many seaside attractions, fire brought down the building in 1960, long after its heyday.  Here is one of the reports, from the Nashua, NH Telegraph newspaper, March 15, 1960.

Clicking on the images enlarges them.

On the Border

This week we're on the border....the border between Canada and the United States, that is!  We're in Edmundston, New Brunswick.  Edmundston boasts about 16,000 people, over 95% of  whom are francophone.  The city is right across the border from Madawaska, Maine, USA.  You can't get much further north than this in Maine (only a spot called Estcourt Station, ME is further north, by about 6 degrees of latitude).  Edmundston and Madawaska are tightly linked together by the paper industry -- they make paper pulp in a factory in Edmundston and then pipe the liquified pulp slurry through a mile-long high pressure pipeline across the border into Madawaska, where fine grade paper is made from the slurry.  

This postcard from the 50's/60's shows the Belair Restaurant in Edmundston, which apparently hosted folks at its laundromat as well as as in its dining room.   The back of the card boasted that its "Econowash" had 25 washers and 16 dryers, and they served "Food and Chinese Food."

Not letting go of a good location, the Belair is still there today on Google Earth, but it looks like you can only eat there, not do the wash!  I guess times have changed.

Tales of Urban Renewal

The Hotel Biltmore, formerly of Oklahoma City, OK, was built in 1932 at a cost of $4 million.  At the time, it was the tallest building in Oklahoma, standing at 33 stories.  An architectural achievement for its time, the art deco tower had over 600 rooms, 7 elevators, 5 telephone operators, 3 radio channels in every room, and its own ice plant producing 100 tons of ice daily.   The hotel was renovated in the 1960's, at a cost of $3 million, and renamed the Sheraton-Oklahoma, but its days were numbered.

Shortly after that, as in many urban centers, "white flight" began an out-migration to the suburbs, and the answer for fixing the city center was "urban renewal."  In Oklahoma City, big plans were made, with contributions by architect I.M. Pei, to rebuild a vast swath of downtown, creating a massive shopping mall called the "Galleria" and adding a huge convention center.  The idealistic plan (with a cool 1960's orchestral soundtrack) can be seen in a documentary on YouTube, consisting of Part 1 and Part 2.   If you hate what urban renewal did in many cities, you will love hating this video!  The film says "Like many cities, Oklahoma City is showing a disease called blight, which like a deadly mold is settling over downtown and killing it."  The answer?  Tear it all down!!

And that includes the Hotel Biltmore.  Originally, it was included in the new plan, and you can see it in the video Part 1 at 4:16.    But the Hotel, like other downtown businesses, started to fail financially, so it was thrown into the mix of tear downs.

Photo by PAUL B. SOUTHERLAND, the oklahoman archive

At the time of the demolition, in 1977,  it was the tallest steel-reinforced building in the world ever demolished with explosives. Nine hundred explosive charges were used in the building to bring it down.  After everything was demolished and torn down, few of the promises were kept, and only the parking garage for the "Galleria" was built, along with a large park called the Myriad Gardens.  Stagnation was the rule through the eighties and into the nineties, but after that improvements began to pick up, and things are in much better shape today, even with a recovery from the Timothy McVeigh bombing in 1995.  However, the old Hotel Biltmore is gone.  Although it's a story of Oklahoma City, maybe it's not "OK."




 

Fall

A nice foliage-oriented card to go with the beautiful scenery here in New England.  A bit saccharine for my tastes, and I'm not too keen on the boy loading his gun up, so I imagined that shortly after this card was made, the following epitaph appeared on a gravestone in the pet cemetery:

Here lies the bones of our pal Rover,
His days of hunting are now over.
Lesson learned, but now it's done
Don't let Johnny hold that gun!

 

Organ Time

Today we take a closer look at a postcard in my collection, postmarked 1945, with an intriguing handwritten message.  The postcard is a picture of Dr. Robert Leech Bedell, seated at the organ.  The description on the back of the postcard says that he belongs to A.S.C.A.P., the music publishing organization, and that he is an organist and composer.  It also lists "Recitals -- Church -- Instruction" as his interests.  He apparently used these cards as his stationery for short notes and business purposes, as there's an important message for the addressee, Mrs. Cora Conn Redic, on the other side. 

The message is: "Dear Mrs Redic, Have just corrected the 2nd proof on your "Grand Choeur" for the H. W. Gray Co.  Have asked them to send you a copy of the proof-sheet as a souvenir, to be framed with the title page showing your name at the top; where you can hang it in your home or in the room where the club meets.  Yours, Robert L Bedell."

Dr. Bedell was pretty easy to find out about -- he had published several organ works, one of which can be heard on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1tLekuSA6Y   (I suppose you could play it in the background while you read the rest of this post).  He was the organist and choirmaster of St. Anne's Episcopal Church and the Brooklyn, NY Institute of Arts and Sciences, and he was the organist of New York Radio Station WNYC, for whom he gave organ recitals from the Brooklyn Museum.  He wrote pieces for full orchestra, string orchestra, piano, varied instrumental combinations, and vocal numbers including anthems, sacred and secular solos. 

Mrs. Redic was a little more difficult to track down, but through the intertubes, and the clue on the postcard address of Winfield, Kansas, I found her -- she came to Winfield in 1917 to teach organ at the Winfield College of Music.  She taught there through the absorption of the school by Southwestern College and remained there for 20 years, continuing afterwards at St. Johns College where she taught through 1956.  Over the years her students numbered into the hundreds, and she made two trips to Paris to study at the Paris Conservatory with the famous organist Marcel Dupre.   

Mrs. Redic was also the "organ"-izer of the Southwestern Organ Club, documented in the 1944 Moundbuilder Yearbook (really, that was the name of their yearbook), and there's a picture of the club, as well as a picture of her in the faculty section:

(click for larger versions)

At this point, the trail of her organ work "Grand Choeur" is lost.  I can't find a record of it ever actually being published, or anything else by her, for that matter.  Maybe it only exists on that edited proof copy, corrected by Dr. Bedell...

We Want You On Our Team

But we are not really talking about our football team, even though the big game is on Sunday.

This  card is a reminder to come to church, sent to boys of Sunday School age in the 1960's.  To generate excitement about the starting day of Sunday School, churches used "Rally Day" cards and many other cards like the ones above as subtle reminders to show up, if you know what's good for you.

Here's one of the older variety, a gem from the early 1900's:

I've posted a few others in the past, quickly accessed here:  http://blogaboutpostcards.blogspot.com/search/label/Rally%20Days

So, let's raise our hands to Rally Day, lest they get rapped on the knuckles by a Sister!

Jay's Motel and Magic Wand

Here's a 1960's chrome card of Jay's Motel and Benny's Coffee Shop, in Elko, Nevada.  I especially like the Googie architecture sign out front, with the ovals framing the names of the establishments and the big "magic wand" with the starburst at the end.

Elko is called the "Heart of Northeastern Nevada," basically because there is nothing else there for miles around.  It's on the highway, though, so there were a number of motels like this one for the folks traveling between Salt Lake City and Reno.

Jay's is now a Budget Inn, and they went and lopped off the top of the top of the sign, halfway up.  Here's the proof:

I kind of like the older version better!

Here's the Church, Here's The Steeple

Some postcards have great messages on them, and the messages contain great mysteries.  The subject of this mystery is this card of Lewiston, Maine.  It's postmarked 1909, and it's mailed to Miss Helen Libby of Biddeford.  The message on the front is written by a man who worked on the steeple of the church in the picture.  The text reads: "I help build this steeple over last fall, way to the top of it.  Where the x is is the shop where I work."   You can see an "x" on a low brick building a few streets behind the church.   Additionally, the church steeple is marked with an "x" and labelled "180 ft." 

The mystery?  What church is this, is it still there, and does it have an interesting history?  That's what I set out to discover.

The first order of business is to locate the church.  There's no church that looks exactly like it using Google Earth, so maybe it no longer exists?  A clue to its location is the light colored building in the foreground.  I have other postcards of Lewiston, so I took a look and found several of a building with suspiciously similar porticos, and the same number of windows per floor between the cards.  This is the newest one, postmarked in 1960:

Although the chimneys seem to be gone, and there's a new cornice, these cards are of the same building.  And the building according to these cards is the DeWitt Hotel.  The chrome version above gives the address as 40 Pine Street.  Great, now all I have to do is go back to Google Earth and take a look at that address today.  And the answer is:  no DeWitt Hotel building and no Church on Pine Street:

There's a flat-roofed office building where the DeWitt was, and there's a parking lot and a nondescript building where the church was.  

So, what church was it, and what happened to it?  More internet research turned up interesting additional clues, and now that I had the street, I quickly discovered that it was the Pine St. Congregational Church.  It was built in 1866.  I also found this photograph below, which was captioned  "Maintenance on the Pine St Church Steeple," but I think this is earlier than 1909, because the building closer to us in this photograph looks older than the one with the mansard roof in the postcard above.  Another mystery for another day (or else I'll never complete this post)!

OK, when did the Pine St. Congregational Church disappear, and why?  After a lot more searching, I found the following one sentence in the "City Locals" section of the Lewiston Evening Journal, July 11, 1940.  Between an item about a city clerk testifying in a court case and an item about Mrs. Gauvin recuperating from an illness and now "out of danger," is our clue: "The Hub Wrecking Co. of Boston began yesterday the razing of the 75 year old Pine Street Congregational Church.  A First National Stores super market will be erected on the site."

The following day, the newspaper had this picture, but no other explanation.  The workmen were demolishing the very structure that our postcard sender helped to maintain over 30 years earlier.

In the Fall of 1940, the other shoe dropped with a full page ad in the newspaper announcing the opening of the new store:

More research uncovered several other facts about this address and the demise of the church.  A good source for church history, believe it or not, is information about the organs in churches, many of which are documented in several databases.  I learned the reason for the abandonment of the Pine St. Church building from one such database, here: http://www.quimbypipeorgans.com/completed/rebuilt/st-john-s-episcopal-church-2006.  It turns out that the reason for the demolition of the church was due to the merger of the church with the Universalist Church in town, becoming the Federated Church of Lewiston in a different location.

As for the organ, it was an E. & G. G. Hook, model Opus 326, installed in the church in 1866 and then electrified in 1923.  The website database.organsociety.org notes that the organ was saved and sold for $850 to a church in Biddeford, ME.  Now, it's in Quincy, Illinois. There will be a quiz.

 The story of this location does not end with the First National Super Market.  In 1958, they built a new one a half mile away, knocking down additional buildings to have parking for 200 cars.  And the old location?  Now, it's a very banal brick building, used by a youth social services agency, but with a "for lease" sign in the window.

Progress?  You be the judge!  Here's my attempt, through the magic of photoshop, to re-insert the old church over the current landscape, with the steeple proudly worked on by an anonymous postcard sender of 1909:

Ancient Equipment

Let's look in on the Statistical Department at the National Grange Mutual Liability and Fire Insurance Company.  Their office was in Keene, New Hampshire, and this card is from the 1930's or 40's.  These ladies are doing a fine job of data processing, with the assistance of a state of the art card sorting machine, which is probably an IBM Type 80 card sorter.  The purpose of this machine was to take a stack of what were once called "Hollerith cards," then called "IBM cards," and now called "antique bookmarks" and sort them into alphabetical or numerical order based on the holes punched in them.  The photograph above  is from the actual operator's manual from IBM.

In retrospect, the amazing thing about this machine is that it was entirely mechanical, but still could run through 450 cards per minute.  There were no transistors, no tubes, no circuit boards, no silicon -- just good old wheels, gears, brushes, levers, and a big 'ol motor that is visible on the bottom left side of the machine.  If you wanted to sort a stack of cards into order, and they had, let's say, a 5 digit number punched on them, you had to run the whole thing through the machine 5 times, once for each digit.  If you dropped some cards or messed up half way through, you had to start all over again.  That's all the machine did. It didn't punch the holes in the cards, it didn't add them up k-- it just sorted them.

Well into the 1980's stand alone card sorters (later models, of course) were still in use in computer centers everywhere, sorting checks, cards, deposit slips and more.  I got to run one while working in a computer center during the summer of 1979.  It was noisy, generated lots of dust, and every once in a while it sprayed the cards all over the place.  Old school computing at its best!

Mystery Hill, Irish Hills, MI

So, I'm supposed to have a post related to "Ireland, Irish, Wearin O' the Green, etc" because it's St. Patrick's Day this weekend.  But I don't have any St. Patrick's Day cards, so I'm reduced to posting this card for the Mystery Hill roadside attraction in IRISH HILLS, Michigan.  

Close enough.

At Mystery Hill, according to their website, "See many astonishing things that seem to defy the laws of nature. Here the law of gravity seems to have gone berserk and your sense of balance is entirely upset. Many theories have been offered such as earthquakes, magnetized mineral deposits, fallen meteorites, deflections of gravitational force and many others."  Of course, the actual theory is that the site is an optical illusion, but suspend your disbelief and enjoy!  And while you're there, visit the gift shop, where "unique rocks can be purchased by the bag."

For 12 minutes that you'll never get back, see this video tour of the place, half in English and half in Hindi, by a big fan.  It's worth viewing for the astounding enthusiasm of the tour guide alone.

Where you stayin' in Sochi?  I couldn't get over there, so I'm stayin' at the Olympic Motel in Eureka, California.  According to the back of this fine chrome card: "One of the Northwest California's newest and finest.  Free radio and TV in rooms.  Thermostatic controlled heat.  Carpets Wall to Wall. All tiled baths.  "Always a Rainbow of Color."  Mr. and Mrs. Fred Fredrickson, Managing Owners."

Streamline Time

It's been awhile since I posted a card featuring streamline architecture...so here you go.  The Beachcomber in Clearwater Beach, Florida is the place, and the menu is famous for the "Back-to-the-Farm Fried Chicken Dinner."  I wonder if that's a precursor to "farm-to-table" restaurants of today!

Hangover Cure

Have a rough New Year's Eve?  The Bird-in-Hand Restaurant features a "Hangover Breakfast" for only 50 cents.  It consists of Tomato Juice, Two Raw Eggs, Dry Toast, Black Coffee, Aspirin, and "Our Sympathy." Billed as being "For the Morning After the Night Before," I'm sure this menu item caught the attention of many a NYC partier back in the day.

The Bird-in-Hand Restaurant was located at 1659 Broadway, between 51st & 52 Streets.  It would have been fun to stop there after spending New Year's Eve in Times' Square for a late night breakfast!

Happy New Year to my regular readers and newcomers!