been reading: Downtown: My Manhattan by Pete Hamill

I read this book in anticipation of last weekend's trip. In it, Hamill combines personal anecdotes from his life in New York with an account of the place's history. The result is a well-written walk through the streets, and the centuries, of the city.

Hamill's focus is downtown Manhattan, where he has worked and lived for most of his life. But he also writes much about midtown, particularly when sharing stories from the past, and he touches briefly on the city's other boroughs as well.

I found it a delightful book to read, but then I am completely enamored with its subject. Truly, reading Hamill's tales only made me more so. I also learned many interesting tidbits, some of which I probably should already have known, like the fact that Times Square is named after The New York Times. (It was called Longacre Square until the NYT offices moved there in the early 1900s, and then it was renamed for the newspaper. Similarly, Herald Square is named after the New York Herald.)

Throughout, Hamill discusses the constant changing of the city and the nostalgia that each generation of residents feels for the New York of yesterday. He also repeatedly points out, throughout the city's history, the combination of cultures and ideas that creates what he calls the New York "alloy."

Hamill's life in Manhattan is deserving of a book all its own. He has known so many influential thinkers - Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, and Norman Mailer, to name a few. In the city he's stumbled upon live performances by Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Carmen MacRae, and Billie Holiday. He mentions these names in a way that is both unsurprised and marveling, as if he simultaneously expects to encounter such greatness and yet still can't believe his luck. His attitude towards the city itself is much the same. He has walked every street and examined every block of downtown Manhattan. It is his home, and he knows it better than most. And yet its history and beauty still take his breath away.