High life
Those were the days
Taki
ANew York ril in the Big Bagel is baseball, when hope springs eternal for every fan and play- er as the 162-game season gets under way. Once upon a yesterday, I was a Yankee fan, when the Bronx Bombers had Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Billy Martin in the line-up, and were owned by Dan Topping, a gent, whose brother Bob was married to Lana Turner.
Back then, baseball was brimming at the seams with heroes, mostly white farm boys who played their hearts out for peanuts, tipped their caps when rounding the bases and stood erect when the Star-spangled Banner was played or when meeting a per- son of the opposite sex.
No longer. Now it's Paul Simon time, as in 'Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.' Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin are no longer with us, Joe Di will never see 80 again, Yogi is hardly stirring and the Yan- kees are owned by a vulgarian whose brother — if he has one — would have the sex life he deserves if it was only with the pick-pockets in Yankee Stadium.
Baseball and the sound of the crack of the bat are not the only things that are gone from the Bagel. There are the dim 1940s night spots, with their upholstered leather booths, zebra stripes and all, their elegant clientele and impeccable Italian head waiters; the glamour and the fabulous women, the jaunty and decorous working class, the famously wisecracking taxi- drivers; the men in fedoras and business suits sitting in the bleachers in Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, the Norman Rockwell lingo, as in 'Swell', 'Scram', or 'Step on it'. This was an Anglo-Saxon city with lotsa Italians thrown in for flavour.
There were eight major daily newspa- pers, and Walter Winchell and Cholly Knickerbocker, there was El Morocco, the Stork Club, Jack and Charlie's 21, Toots Shor's and naughty weekends at the Wal- dorf Astoria. Men wore dinner-jackets for the theatre on Broadway, and white tie for the April in Paris ball. Harlem was safe and sporting types went up there after hours. The Bronx was one big garden and Brook- lyn — not Israel — was home to the Jews.
Well, now we have mid-town theme restaurants, built on memorabilia and pic- tures of, in oversized trainers, backwards- worn baseball caps and 'leisure wear', hang out outside round the clock, using the F- word as an adjective, a verb and a noun. There are Aids benefits galore, with Calvin Klein, David Geffen and Madonna doing the honours. Some overpriced restaurants even require jackets, not for aesthetic rea- sons, but in order to keep the Nike-wearing baseball caps out.
The taxis are worse than the theme restaurants. The only person who rides in them in comfort is Robert Reich, the Draft Dodger's budget director who is a dwarf, although Toulouse-Lautrec also would have liked them. One needs to speak Swahili or Urdu to be understood, although at times patois French will do. Times Square is no more.
Mind you, there's still Elaine's and Mor- timer's and Le Circle and some nice old Wasps one can still get drunk with and not feel soiled the next day, but the once-gentle city is no more. The Great Society pro- grammes did it in, and the coup de grace was delivered by Mario (the dago) Cuomo, a man whose soul I hope rots in hell.
Exactly 40 years ago I took my friend Aleko Goulandris to El Morocco in order to repay years of hospitality. I had a sur- prise in store for him. He was a diehard Yankee fan and I had Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin join us for dinner. Alek almost dropped his cookies when they sat down with us. They were very polite and very `It's a BSE awareness ribbon.' funny. Forty years later I wouldn't have their successors at my table because the F- word gets monotonous after a while. And neither Aleko nor I like to dine with men who wear baseball caps indoors.
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