Hipster

On a recent trip to New York City to visit my daughter Abby, I visited the book store in the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. The building is down the street from Katz deli. Yep, that’s the one immortalized by Meg Ryan in the movie when Harry Met Sally.

Peering at the museum’s book stacks while waiting for my tour, one title caught my eye among the stacks about immigrant and labor history. ” St. Mark’s Place: the hippest street in New York.” I whipped out my iPhone and snapped a photo of the book cover.

It was a mystery. I was the nerdiest kid ever to graduate from Joliet Central High School, so how I did I wind up living on the hippest street in America? When I was a freshman, my idea of a fun Saturday afternoon was reading The Brothers Karamazov and eating Twinkies.

After the tour, I met up with Abby, who was holed up in a coffeehouse cramming for final exams. Walking back to the subway, we headed to McSorleys, the iconic East Village bar where the sawdust covers the darkened wood floor and the only choice is light or dark beer poured into two pint glasses. Would that every choice in life were so easy.

On the way back to Abby’s apartment, we stopped in front of my old apartment on St. Mark’s where Abby took a photo of me. For $125 apiece, my roommate Lois and I got to live on the city’s hippest street when St. Marks Bathhouse was open for business and Dojos restaurant offered a darts game along with sushi.

Afterward we took the M train back to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where my daughter lives on Second Street in the city’s hippest neighborhood.