if you know what this is

you once wore metal roller skates with adjustable clamps that gripped the sides of your PF flyers. Of course, you needed a key to get them on and off. 

Who would have guessed that something so benign and ubiquitous years ago would come to be this strange and vaguely sinister looking object? (Thanks, Terri, for the memory.)

#33--pay phones that worked

Another thing about the old days, people walking by a ringing payphone would answer it. This guy used to prank-call the pay phone outside his window on 2nd Ave and 30th Street. Note the SUV-free avenue and the price of a hot dog: $1.

32 things I miss about new york

Today's NY Times memorializes New York Past, citing gone-but-not-forgotten institutions like automats, subway tokens, the Dodgers and other things endemic to the city when I moved here in 1979, meaning to stay just a year or two. For some of us, New York is like those old Roach Motels (where bugs check in, but they don't check out.)

Other icons of Manhattan that I used to think were forever:

1. grafitti "art" on subways

2. The Mill Luncheonette and its sublime egg creams (the first time I had one, I wondered where was the egg)

3. checker cabs with jump seats that folded

4. John Lennon

5. Pan Am sign on the Met Life building where I used to work

6. Alphabet City--such a better name than the Lower East Side

7. selzer delivered in colored glass bottles in wooden crates (although I cancelled our service after it brought in roaches)

8. Not having to dial 212 when you called someone in the city. Phone numbers had letter code "exchanges" that told you where someone lived: MU meant Murray Hill, CH meant Chelsea. So you'd know if a prospective hook-up was GU (geographically undesirable)

9. Andy Warhol

10. Studio (nobody said 54)

11. Rumplemeyers

12. orange paper transfers for buses

13. phone booths where you could make a call on the street in peace

14. Gimbels (where I bought our dining room table at its going out of business sale)

15. used book stores

16. Claremont Stables

17. cabbies who spoke English

18. buying subway tokens (with cutout Y) at the newsstand

19. straps on the subway to help keep your balance

20. Woolworths (where my toddlers were entertained by the birds in cages long enough for me to shop)

21. Being able to leave your toddlers safely for a few minutes in the pet section of a Woolworth's

22. Tower Records

23. Columbia Bagels on 110th & Bway

24. Fulton Fish Market

25. Plaza Hotel where I used to take my daughters for tea and a look at the Eloise portrait

26. Breakfast with Santa at Lord + Taylor, before the store opened, when counters were covered with sheets.

27. Thalia Theater which screened movie classics on the UWS

28. Russian Tea Room (not that I went there more than twice, but liked hearing about it)

29. Maxwell's Plum (hangout for young creatives)

30. smoking cigarette billboards on Times Square

31. the skyline

32. The chatty subway conductor on the #1 who had a running commentary all the way to South Ferry. His sardonic announcements like "Do persuade yourself to join us. Allow the doors to close" put you in a good mood, even if was Monday, even if you were going to work.

A few things I do NOT wax nostalgic for:

1. "window washers" with dirty squeegees who used to attack your car when you came out of Lincoln Tunnel

2. being afraid to walk in Central Park after, say 4 pm

3. dueling shoulder-mounted boom boxes on the subway. Although some riders play their IPODs loud enough for me to want to reach across and thumb down the volume.

4. ugly old Bryant Park 

5. meetings in smoky offices

art credit: My Father in the Subway III, 1982 (oil on panel) by Max Ferguson

dead brands aren't dead if they live in your head

Interesting article on brand revival in the NY Times Magazine yesterday about a guy who acquires brands that are dead everywhere but in the consumer's mind, then sells them to companies who bring them back to life.

Paul Earle bought the brand name for a discontinued line of ibuprofen painkillers and sold it to CVS, which is why it's the only place you can still find ("Nupe it") Nuprin. And convinced drugstore.com to buy (and sell) Salon Selectives.

He recently acquired (America Show Us Your) Underalls and the game maker Coleco. And Brim, a coffee that hasn't been sold in twenty years, yet retains an astonishing 92 percent awareness in people over 25, thanks to millions General Foods spent on it in its heyday. Curiously, what people forget is that Brim was decaff, even though they remembered the tagline "Fill it to the rim with Brim."

"Consumers remember the kind of high-level essence of the brand. They tend to forget the product specifics," Earle says. Which is why dead brands can be brought back to life in entirely new incarnations. Like the staid company that once outfitted gentlemen for travel is now controversial teen fashion purveyor Abercrombie + Fitch.

As interesting to me as the article itself are the comments online urging the revival of brands I haven't thought of in years:

Lemon Up, a shampoo with a cap shaped like a real lemon.

1-2-3 which was a faux Bavarian dessert that settled into three layers as it jelled.

Heaven Sent fragrance.

Gleem toothpaste.

Agree shampoo--They're selling old, gummy bottles of it for $50 a pop on eBay.

Another memorably-named shampoo--Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific

O-So-Grape (softdrink from the 50s)

Sunshine cookies

Orowheat Bread

Pine Bros. Cough Drops

Lifebuoy

Spoolies (hair curlers)

Fluffo - a solid vegetable oil shortening like Crisco - it came in reusable decorator cans with plastic tops.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pudding Pies (originally made by Hostess)