A Trip Down the Actual Tin Pan Alley

Tin Pan Alley isn't just a style of music; originally it was a real place. A move is on to preserve the historical strip; I covered a special event they held for Chelsea Now. Read the story here. 

Robert Lamont performed Tin Pan Alley classics

Some of the great songs of the early 20th century were published in these buildings

A former bawdy house. It was said that if you could make the whores cry, you'd have a hit song. 

David Freeland, author of "Automats, Taxi Dancers, and Vaudeville" leads a tour 

Staten Island and Snug Harbor Cultural Center

I've been to Staten Island a few times but almost always just to see the Staten Island Yankees, which is only a few dozen yards from the ferry terminal. I'd also been to the Snug Harbor Cultural Center years ago, but took the bus that time. 

Since it was walking distance from the ferry, my son and I decided to hoof it there yesterday. Big mistake. Not only is it not a pleasant walk (the view along the way is as industrial as it gets) but Staten Island proves to be wilderness country populated with hostile tribes of stereotypical Staten Islanders. NEVER leave the stockade. A school bus flew past us -- a bunch of high school kids called us "queers". Two fat men in front of a cocktail bar eyeballed us as we passed their lawn chairs as though we were in Alabama. They were like, "Who are you? We never seen YOU before!" And when we finally got to Snug Harbor, that, too was hilarious. The people at the museum seemed very confused and unsettled by the fact that they had gotten visitors. It was one of those things where you walk in the door and the entire staff seems to have gotten summoned by a secret signal, so they crawl out of their hiding spaces to come and gawk at you. "I dunno, they said they wanted to visit the museum. Whattaya want I should do with 'em, Chief?" "Let 'em go, Rocco. They can't say they weren't warned." I'm like, "Uh, this place IS in all the guidebooks. We're the only foolish fuckers who ever did this?" All in all, our experience of Staten Island proved to be kind of like Vietnam in "Apocalypse Now" -- Never Get Out of the Boat. 

At any rate we went with an agenda -- I believe an ancestor of mine may have been one of the inmates at the Old Sailor's Home that used to be there and may be buried there, so I wanted to have a look around. Once you got there, it was quite lovely. 

Hasidic man contemplates Statue of Liberty from Ferry Terminal at South Ferry

Note compass theme in floorboard pattern

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