Ride the Toboggan at Grossinger's in the Catskills!

...and enjoy our snowy, cold, freezing, chilling weather here in the Northeast.  Only a few more weeks until Spring!

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!

Last Pool Parties of Summer

Already it's starting to feel a little bit cooler here in Connecticut.  The summer weather will be over soon. But let's celebrate the last of the good weather at the pool parties at the Concord Resort and the Pines, both in the Catskills, circa 1960's!

The "Flagship" of Holiday Inns

This Holiday Inn on 57th St. in New York City is advertised as the "flagship" of Holiday Inns, but I'm not sure why.  Sure, it's got a lot of rooms, and it's in the biggest city where "The World's Innkeeper" has inns, but I don't think it was that awesome.

I'm including the card as a tip 'o the hat to a best friend from high school, with whom I made a trip to NYC for the first time in 1980.  We had a great time, leaving on a 3:00am Greyhound bus from Portland, ME, for the long weekend.  After a few years, we drifted apart, but managed to reconnect last weekend for dinner after about 30 years.  Somewhat disappointed in ourselves for letting so much time slip by, I think we'll keep in better touch now!

It's still there today as a Holiday Inn, and the buildings that were there on either side are still there, although they didn't show up in the idealized postcard illustration above!

Guess Who Turned 100?

Grand Central Station in New York City, that's who!  On February 1.

Visit their 100th birthday website here:

http://www.grandcentralterminal.com/centennial/learn.cfm

Pool Party!

Come with me to the Catskills for a Pool Party!

The top card is from the Hotel Zeiger in Fallsburg, NY.  The back of this card advertises "Best in entertainment -- sports -- accommodations and cuisine.  Dietary laws observed.  Beautiful Aquacade Pool and Sun Deck."  This resort later became the Eldorado, then the Palms.  Some say it then became a religious bungalow colony, but for the most part it's abandoned.

The middle card is from the Concord Hotel in Kiamesha Lake, NY.  At its peak, it had 1,500 rooms and was one of the larger hotels in the Catskills.  For sad pictures of this resort in ruins, use this link: http://www.uer.ca/~bratchny/catskills/12530/.  As of recently, however, Concord owner Louis Cappelli has been negotiating with the casino company Mohegan Sun to revive his defunct luxury hotel and racino plan on the site of the one-time jewel of Catskill resorts.  Let's see what the future brings!

The bottom card is from the Raleigh Hotel, in South Fallsburg, NY, another Catskill classic.  This one is still in business, focusing on Orthodox Jewish clientele.  Surprise!