...don't forget to share with your readers! The epicureans among us would appreciate it.

I grew up in yorkville in the '60's and '70s...

PS 158 tho

not to presume your age.... but do you also remember the Rupert's brewery?

The earthy/sweet smell of the hops emanating from there is fixed in my childhood memory.

I haven't stopped by orwashers in a long time... for the life of me, I cannot think of any gustatory let alone rational reason for discontinuing those salt sticks...

ethanernest@yahoo.com

a great piece of memoir, history, and news -- all in perfect alignment with the HTWW mandate. sweet.

Unfortunately, many old New York things are being swept away by the tide of mercantilism.

Wandering down Avenue A, there are five new banks outlets there.

The Second Avenue Deli is gone, surviving Abe Lebewohl by not so many years, replaced by a... bank.

Even on Fifth Avenue, all the unique independents are replaced one-by-one by national chains: Disney, Banana Republic, the NBA.

The hard-working shopkeepers and dwellers in Manhattan don't see anything from this massive increase in property values -- in fact, they pay dearly for it every day. All the money goes into the hands of a few speculators.

Goggling "Hungarian salt sticks" comes up with a number of recipes. This one is from The Hungarian Heritage Review and appears quite authentic: http://www.culinary.org/collector/chef_louis/abl/hhr.pdf/feb_1989_2.pdf

what a find! thanks leslie. of course, that appears to be a recipe for making small salt-stick rolls, and not the GIANT saltstick, but one must start somewhere!

Andrew, didn't we go to PS 183? (My vague memory is that by the time I was in college, the school had moved - PS 183 (Stevenson) is on 66th street now; my memory was that it was on 71st between 1st and 2nd Ave when we were in grade school there.) I still have the class picture from 5th or 6th grade in a box at home... keep the payments coming. ;-) Or perhaps my memory is wrong, and PS 190 was merged into PS 183 at some point after we left? (The current PS 190 is in Brooklyn.)

While I didn't know that bakery, I do miss the local pizza places, real thin-crust pizza and 'heroes' (roughly equivalent to grinders in Philly parlance, hot grinders in CT terms). Last time I was in the old neighborhood was Nov 2001 (had to stop at Sotheby's to pick up a sword I bought, and drove past my old apt. building).

PS 183 was the elementary school I went to from kindergarten through 3rd grade Randall. I'm pretty near positive PS 190 on 82nds street between first and second was where I went to fourth-sixth.

This New York Times article,

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE2D61F3AF930A15754C0A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

describes a PS 190 on 82nd street, as of 1989...

Memory is a funny thing; I was mistaking my old street address with the school number (hey, it has been about 32 years). 82nd was the street I was thinking about. Turns out it's now the Manhattan New School (PS 290).

You can see a really good view of it by going to:

http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&q=ps+290&near=Manhattan,+New+York&fb=1&cid=0,0,9444750428690698372&ll=40.775226,-73.953398&spn=0.00128,0.002511&t=h&z=19&om=1&layer=c&cbll=40.77519,-73.953394

and using Street View.

I think I thought it had closed because at some point (1977? 1979?) it was boarded up when I went by because of what looked like a fire. (Assuming my memory is ok this time.)

Guys like our little Tribeca-boy Mr. Cohen are what is meant by the term "knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing." Hopefully Yuppie-boy will go the way of most yuppie businessmen - down the tubes.