Paul LaRosa's Blog
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...
September 3, 2009
I noted with interest this week the 40th anniversary of the day the NYC buses stopped making change for its riders. Before August 31st 1969, you could still board a bus, and come face to face with a driver who not only drove the bus but who had a little change maker at the ready. The fare was 20 cents and if you gave the driver a dollar, he'd give you back 80 cents. Amazing.
But the main reason I remember this rather useless anniversary is that it coincided with the first rock concert I ever atte
August 30, 2009
This may sound kind of funny but I have a complaint about the NY Times' "Complaint Box" column running in Sunday's (8/30) new Metropolitan section. First off, it's yet another rant from a woman about how no one gave her a subway seat when she was pregnant. Fair enough, even though it seems to me The Times runs the same story rather frequently.
But my real complaint has to do the author's (Lynn Harris) specific complaint that, of all the people who did give up their seat to her, never was it a "wh
August 27, 2009
You would think that a woman whose husband sells fried fish and fried Twix, Snickers, and Mars bars for a living would not have a problem with a couple of small independent vendors selling her child an 'icy' at a playground. Well, in Park Slope, you'd be wrong.
A controversy has erupted in my fair nabe after Vicki Sell, mother of a 3-year-old, complained in a NY Times article about the ice vendors circling a playground and daring to try to sell her darling daughter (gasp!) a fruit-flavored icy du
August 23, 2009
How many times a day is this phrase repeated over and over in NYC? And it's often said with a tinge of moral judgment, as in "you better not take a bag buddy or global warning? It's all on you."
But I understand, and I also do my best to try and carry canvas bags to the supermarket, the farmer's market, wherever so as not to add to the zillions of plastic bags sitting in our garbage dumps. I can be PC when I choose, or when I think there might be a point to it.
Pretty much everyone in my Park Slop
August 19, 2009
Now you may be wondering — as this woman apparently is — what the hell is the High Line? Well, it's NYC's newest tourist attraction and it's deceptively simple….which is why it works so well.
The High Line is an abandoned freight trestle that stands about two stories above ground on the lower west side of NYC, from Gansevoort Street to W. 20th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. Truly, it's not much. You climb up a staircase and walk along…an abandoned railroad trestle. But something abo
