60 Years Ago on W. 23rd St.; Author Recalls His Chelsea Nabe

Yup . . . that’s me . . . 60-plus years ago in front of my store on West 23rd Street. Between Sixth and Seventh avenues, in the heart of Chelsea, it was there that in the early 1960s I sold “high tech” equipment to the modern office: typewriters and adding machines!

It was my little kingdom and, oh, how I enjoyed interacting with the many fine writers who frequented my shop . . . and who wrote on my typewriters: Russell Baker, David Mamet, Herbert Gold, Susan Sontag and her partner, the photographer Annie Leibovitz. Janis Ian wrote her songs and John Patrick Shanley wrote Moonstruck. Journalists Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin banged out their columns . . . and I remember Mike Lupica’s wife buying him a refurbished antique typewriter for a birthday present. I would always delight in telling them all that my typewriters could win a Pulitzer prize . . . and one of the above did just that !! Oh, and did I mention that Rado and Ragni wrote Hair on an old IBM Model B electric?

And my shop was in the dead center of what was then my little universe. My old store . . . or even the very building it existed in . . . were no longer. Years later I stood and watched people walk by, realizing sadly that probably not even one of them knew or remembered what had been on this very spot. The majority of my adult life was spent here . . . and as they passed me . . . they didn’t know that I was that big guy with the beard in the little yellow typewriter shop.

I could not help thinking about how many times I had walked those very streets, those very sidewalks. Multiple times, every day, for 34 years. Thousands and thousands of times.

And I had kept looking at the faces . . . all the faces . . . wondering . . . and I guess hoping . . . that as has happened in the past . . . I would see a familiar one . . . that I would recognize someone . . . or that someone would recognize me.

But it was not to be. Too much time had passed. Too much time. I was an old man walking the streets of my youth and hoping to recapture some of it. But it was not to be.

That store . . . that street . . . it wasn’t just where I made a living . . . it was part of my identity.

I was . . . as a local newspaper once dubbed me . . . “The Typewriter Baron of 23rd Street!”

Wasn’t it Thomas Wolfe . . . who just happened to live at the Chelsea . . . who wrote . . . “You Can’t Go Home Again.” I guess he was right.

One block west was the Chelsea Hotel and the McBurney YMCA . . . facing each other just west of Seventh Avenue. And one block east was Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop on Fifth, and O’Brien’s poolroom just off Broadway and down a flight of stairs.

Going west, the list of those associated with the Chelsea Hotel reads like a Who’s Who of the worlds of literature and entertainment. Names like Wolfe, Clarke, Twain, Ginsberg, Thomas, Miller, Dylan, Kerouac, Cohen, Joplin, Mitchell, Hawke, Viva . . . and more, not to mention that Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen in room 100.

And the walls of the lobby were covered with works of other residents: Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Clyfford Still. Willem de Kooning . . . and I’d wander past them on my way to the hotel’s office, or for lunch or a drink at the bar at El Quixote, the restaurant adjacent to the lobby.

Directly across the street stood the McBurney YMCA . . . the very place immortalized by The Village People in their signature song. I was an every-morning regular at that wonderful place for more than 30 years, where federal judges and gangsters shared the steam room . . . and all of us morning people knew just who was who. Members included Ed Koch, Jerry Orbach . . . even Al Pacino made a few appearances. Woody Harrelson and Roy Jones Jr. occasionally joined the morning basketball game, and Bob Kerrey, governor, US Senator, and presidential hopeful, would run next to yours truly on the circular elevated track above the gym. He, running with a prosthetic leg, having been injured in Vietnam in an act of heroism that earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor.

And going east . . . On Fifth opposite the Flatiron Building was Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop. I’d sit near the back, and the counterman, a Hawaiian guy named Phil, would make me a sliced chicken sandwich with lettuce and mayo and slide it across the black marble countertop. The place was always filled with extroverted New Yorkers, and I remember once trading jokes with Buddy Hackett, who had stopped in with William B. Williams, a NY radio personality at the time.

And if I had an hour or so to kill, I’d walk across the street, and down a flight of stairs into O’Brien’s poolroom. Just off the corner of 23rd and Broadway, it was what an oldtime NY poolroom should be . . . with Tiffany lamps hanging over each table. And a game of three cushion for “five and time” would satisfy me, win or lose.

I guess I’m just an old man reminiscing about what used to be. Yet the memories seem incredibly clear . . . even though I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning !!

Harmon Rangell has been married to the same good woman for 63 years. He is a father, grandfather, retired businessman, writer, part-time musician, collector of bonsai trees, and self-described “Pool Room Junkie”. His novel Jake’s Tale is available at Amazon.com.

He can be reached at killebrew99@yahoo.com