A Man on the Street

This will be a quick post; after all, I didn't know where I was going to go when I decided yesterday to take a walk down E. 10th Street from Avenue A and Tompkins Square. I'm a friendly sort of guy.

"Hello! How are you?" I asked the man sitting in the chair, in front of the Chinese Laundry, right across the street from the Boys Club. It was Philip C. LaLumia, 84, Co-Chairman of the A-1 East Tenth Street Block Association. He was born on E. 13th Street, across the street from 509, where Lucky Luciano lived. Oh, boy, this could be a long chat ....

But I did see Sal Anthony walk by - "Hi Sal," Philip said. "He got out of the restaurant," on Irving Place; some of you may remember it, "but the next fellow can't get his restaurant going because he now has to put all sorts of legal improvements into it, like handicapped accessible, bathrooms and everything. Too expensive." Philip has a lot of that knowledge. "Sal was grandfathered, so when that law was enacted he didn't have to do that."

You see, it's this kind of stuff you'll learn about from the "man sitting there, over there," on virtually any street. After all, Philip worked at the Boys Club for over 40 years:

"And the chairman of the board then " - all I remember is that it's not now - "squandered all that money on a basketball court at that wonderful wilderness camp the Club had in Jersey; he had it made so good, he had bleachers put up - and the town then said he had to "by law" put a parking lot in - and it all went the - "

There may be more ... but, I now know Philip - A.K.A. Philippo - who's "always there, they set out the chair for me, for my lunch - it's even delivered -" and I'll see him again ... I'm sure there are more installments to come!