Paul LaRosa's Blog
October 11, 2009
Yes, I know we all live in a technological land where we're tethered to our cell phones, blackberrys and iPhones at all times and I acknowledge that it's not for everyone. I truly admire those who opt out on principal but what I can't stand are those who opt out because of….laziness, stupidity? It's hard to figure what it is but some people just can't get the hang of email.
A friend has a boss who insists my friend deliver a paper copy of every email sent. Recently, he asked his boss by email ...
October 8, 2009
It's hardly a unique insight that the French as a people are much thinner than their American counterparts, both men and women alike. But it's one thing to make that observation in a vacuum and quite another to see it in person as I did when I was in Paris all last week.
There is something monumentally unfair about the situation because the French love to eat and have plenty of great food at their fingertips. And they relish it (no pun intended). It's not at all unusual to see a young...
September 29, 2009
Now you might think someone who wrote a book with the words "Craigslist Killer" in the title would be a bit leery of using Craigslist…but not me. In fact, I just traded my house in Brooklyn for an apartment in Paris and so here we are. So far, so good. There was an apartment at the address the other couple gave us.
It is full of light and in a great area and has everything we need. As for the couple staying in our house, they tell us they're fairly normal but the week is only halfway over s...
September 24, 2009
New Yorkers are a pretty smart lot so I ask myself: why can't they figure out how to get in and out of a subway car, something they are forced to do thousands of times in their lifetimes? I take the subway every day and every day it's the same thing. There are different categories of people who just insist on gumming up the works.
I'll break them into three categories, three groups of subway commuters who drive me insane:
The Silent Sentries — These are the macho guys and precious gals who...
September 21, 2009
Okay so it's probably not correct to categorize art as either good or bad but there is like and dislike and recently two new pieces in the subways, which I ride every single day, caught my eye.
The first is the piece above called "Whirls and Twirls" by artist Sol LeWitt. It's at the base of the Columbus Avenue/59th Street station after you come down the stairs near that fake above-ground Unisphere (I love when I see tourists taking photos of this faux Donald Trump ((is that redundant?)...
September 16, 2009
The other day, I went to pick up a gun so of course I traveled down to the ultra chic neighborhood of SoHo, not far from the lower Broadway outlet of Bloomingdale's. Really.
This was surprising on several levels. First, that I even needed a gun. It was a real gun but it was "modified" so it would only shoot blanks. I needed it for a television shoot I was involved with.
New York gun laws being as restrictive as they are, no one is allowed to even handle a gun in NYC until you apply for a...
September 14, 2009
My new book "Seven Days of Rage" about the Craigslist Killer case comes out on Tuesday so tonight I visited a Barnes and Noble store to see if my book had arrived. It had but it was placed in the True Crime section. I hate that.
Because the True Crime section is usually relegated to the farthest corner of the store from which casual readers have been known to disappear, I was forced to act.
I want my book to be on one of those high-end tables at the front of the store. So with a little...
September 11, 2009
With my new book "Seven Days of Rage" coming out Tuesday, September 15th, the same day as Dan Brown's follow-up to "The DaVinci Code," I knew I had a marketing problem. So I thought to myself, what would Don Draper do? So, at least in my dreams, I went to see dapper Don of AMC's "Mad Men" fame.
Draper ushered me into his office at Sterling, Cooper, and walked over to his bar.
"What are you drinking?" he asked.
"It's 10 in the morning, Don."
He looked at me with a slight smile on his face. Then p...
September 9, 2009
But not really. I'm talking about Pete Coutros, a reporter I worked with at the Daily News in the 1970's. Coutros died this week at the age of 86, having spent a lifetime in newspapers, specifically The News and the NY Post.
Maybe it's because I just finished reading "Water for Elephants," the bestselling novel about circus life, but the more I think about my early days at The News (I worked there from 1975 until 1991), the more it reminds me of a circus. And back then, I was the new kid in...
September 7, 2009
So my wife and I took off for Philadelphia this weekend and had a great time even though, when I began to think about it, we did pretty much the same thing we do every weekend in Brooklyn.
We ate at a really charming breakfast place called Sabrina's; in Brooklyn, we eat at a really charming breakfast place called Dizzy's or the restaurant Applewood.
We took a bike ride along the Schuylkill River (pronounced for some reason Skoo-Kill or something like that); in Brooklyn, we take bike rides in...
