Used to Be
Used to be a literary bookstore on the next block with a winding wooden staircase, with tightly shelved science fiction paperbacks downstairs where I used to shoplift as an adolescent, with spasms of guilty joy, and never got caught.
Used to be an Italian cafe near Central Park that played opera, with red walls and fading pictures of opera stars everywhere, with a garden in back where John and Yoko used to go (they had a photo to prove it) and was one of my favorite places, although I never saw them there.
Used to be a Movie Theater over there, which held Woody Allen festivals and played Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight on Saturdays, where I used to go with my friend Pip who was pale, thin, asthmatic, and there was a floor show but we never dressed up in costumes for it.
Used to be gang of mostly Puerto Rican kids who sometimes menaced us and they followed me and my friends into the lobby one night where we had a stand off where I think one of them, the fat one, punched me lightly but then they fled.
Used to be our building on 89th and West End had an old doorman, Joe, who was really interested in Orson Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds’ and I found a record of it and leant it to him and we often discussed it.
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