Work and other sins : life in New York City and thereabouts
"Whether writing about a racetrack gambler, a firefighter with a broken heart, or a pair of bickering brothers and their Coney Island bar, LeDuff takes a reader into the lives of his subjects to explore their fears, faults, and fantasies as well as their own small niches of the globe. In doing so, he has expanded the jurisdiction of the news story from competent reports on political campaigns and budget bills to include the love lives of B-rate gangsters and the moral qualms of unapologetic drunks. He has tackled race, class, sex, death, work, and alcohol as topics, to name a few." "Work and Other Sins is a paean to the real New York - not the candied Big Apple of the movies or the flashy neon metropolis of ad campaigns. Here is a book that proves the guy on the bar stool has just as much to say about life as the stiff in the suit."--Jacket
Anecdotes
xviii, 357 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
9781594200021, 1594200025
52471387
Good-bye to Mr. Hello and good-bye
The Michelangelo of the hard sell
Mother's day? Florist love and love it not
He's no Bob Dole, but he's still a celebrity
A mohawk trail to the skyline
"Rasputins"
Gravediggers' gallows (what else?) humor
How time goes by on the west forty-third stree
Where Sinatra fills your ears, if not your eyes
A bleaker santa's-eye view
A barber's soothing aria
Harlem noturne for a still-beautiful chorus girl
Where is King Kong when a bulb goes out?
Stray throughts at 1,454 feet
Hauling the debris, and darker burdens
A night shift to numb the body and soul
Hard hats and soft hands at the ground zero bar
Hard work in hostile suburbs
Brooklyn poles and Jews rafashion old world ties
Last days of the baymen
Springtime for the harbor police
The man to see for raccoon pie
So it's a lighthouse. Now leave me alone
At a slaughter house, some things never die
At this bar, everything is on the table
Schlitz on draft
A bar on rails
Smile for the camera
A beer hall with homegrown Czech Nostalgia
The harbor light stays on
The lights are bright, the hours always happy
Stars, stripes and insults
No ferns, please
A real fireman's bar
How diplomats drown the sorrows of the world
A steak pub missing a contral ingredient: steak
Join the navy and see the light
Looking for Mr. Dreamy
A life off the books
Manners, morals and money at a room salon
Never trust a man who kisses his own fingers
The life of the party
Shimmering beauty in a sweltering city
A Valentine's story: take out your handkerchiefs
If glasses are half full, wallets are half empty
A merry, if pensive, old soul at just the right bar
Big shoes to fill with wine and whiskey
Wheels of fire, beards of gray
"The saloon priest"
Geeks and freaks
Absolute dunleavy
The roar of the beer suds, the small of the fish
An actor awash in ambition and merlot
Frankie and Johnnie, together again
A tasteful mix of blood, beer and dirty pictures
The piers, a blind man and an old seaman's eyes
Fifteen minutes of fame where black is the color
The pair of bickering brothers who made Coney Island hot
"Hero" label lifts a life
Society's throwaways, with booze and attitude
Saluting the fourth
Her queens days will become moscow nights
A jazz rhapsody turned sour
Saturday night fever: the life
Dot-com fever followed by bout of dot-com chill
Runaway girl
Sinners and victims of domestic hell
You can't buy a thrill
The exchange rate behind bars
The hustling life
What's a few bloodstains? It's an apartment!
The Shantytown of the he-shes
Raffle to benefit a charity close to his heart
The way to live? With your feet on the table
Fame stinks
The gambler
Dave Fontana's legacy
The empty coffin
The first holiday
A jacket, an I.D
Star without a script
Hero fatigue
A lonely son
The champ
A lifetime of lifeguarding
Landing jabs to pay bills
Borrowing mailer's car, and other ring tales
Free swinger on the Hudson
In the stadium's shadow, waiting for the opener
A telescopic lens on a baseball legend
Diamonds aren't forever
Nickel and dime and quartered to death
Elks (clubs) becoming extinct
Before the was dumbo, there was Pedro's
Bridge of sighs
When those dancing days were over
Latin lovers with free advice
Homeless but not helpless by the Harlem River
A mentor shares a secret that really wasn't
The quantum leaps of a pretty nice mind
Compilation of articles originally published in the New York times