Roosevelt Island residents in a park on Roosevelt Island. When we got to the party, Al Madison and his Dixie Dance Kings were playing awayâonly this time the tune was âHas Anybody Seen My Girl?â People were waiting in line for
hot dogs, fried chicken, or a drink. They ate and drank two thousand hot dogs, thirty-five hundred pieces of chicken, eight hundred cups of Pepsi, eighteen hundred cans of Schlitz, one hundred and twenty bottles of New York State Gold Seal wine, and a case of champagneâall donated to the city.
â May 31, 1976
In Central Park
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Â
LINES: The Hospitality Industry Foundation of New York City, which was recently set up by a group of New York restaurateurs, sponsored a Saturday food festival in the Mall and Literary Walk area of Central Park, and never before have we seen so many New Yorkers in one place having so much fun. Seventy-two restaurants participated, each with a booth and each selling one or two dishes, sometimes brought over from the restaurant and sometimes prepared on the spot. The visitors ate all the food sold by the participating restaurants, watched musicians and other performers perform, strolled around, and were polite to one another. The police estimated that more than three hundred thousand men, women, and children were present. There were so many people at the festival that a lot of them had to stand in lines, sometimes up to forty-five minutes, just to pay five dollars for a book of twenty tickets that enabled them to buy servings of food ordinarily sold as spécialités de la maison at the participating restaurants.
Then there were long lines for the food. The line at the â21â Club booth (steak tartare) was about two blocks long. The line at Marvin Gardens (mussels marinière and tabouleh salad) was about three blocks long. The line at Beefsteak Charlieâs (slices of steak on a bun) was about four blocks long. There was a line at just about every food booth; and even to get a hot dog from a hot-dog vender who was not an official part of the food festival required waiting in line. No one seemed to mind.
We walked around, and here are some of the things we saw: a man juggling with cowbells and tambourines, a woman spinning a pie pan on a stick while doing somersaults, a man dressed in black doing magic tricks, a man dressed in black telling jokes about balloons, a clown, a mime, three flamenco dancers, a man playing an accordion, and a puppeteer. We met three boys collecting yogurt-cup tops at the Dannon Milk Products booth. They said that they had already collected seven thousand tops and that they hoped to have enough to be included in the Guinness Book of World Records . We stopped in at the Lost Children Area but didnât see any lost children. We saw six stout Spanish-speaking women with purple jumbo rollers in their hair relaxing under a tree. Near the end of the afternoon, we stopped by the bandshell, where various groups were performing. There was a rock group called Lance, and it was well received. There was a group called the West Side Singers, unaccompanied by any musical instrument. Its members looked like a Better Citizens Committee. They tuned up their voices by singing a few bars of âIâll Never
Fall in Love Again.â Then they sang all the way through âSpinning Wheel,â the old Blood, Sweat & Tears hit, with much vigor and in perfect harmony. By the end of it, they had lost a good many of the younger members of their audience.
â June 7, 1976
The Fourth
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Â
Report from our friend Jamaica Kincaid:
I love America and Americans, because my father, who was an Antiguan, and who had worked as a civilian carpenter on the American base in Antigua during the Second World War, used to tell me how funny and great Abbott and Costello were, how funny and great the âRoadâ pictures with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope were, and how funny and great and attractive and smart Americans in
hot dogs, fried chicken, or a drink. They ate and drank two thousand hot dogs, thirty-five hundred pieces of chicken, eight hundred cups of Pepsi, eighteen hundred cans of Schlitz, one hundred and twenty bottles of New York State Gold Seal wine, and a case of champagneâall donated to the city.
â May 31, 1976
In Central Park
Â
Â
LINES: The Hospitality Industry Foundation of New York City, which was recently set up by a group of New York restaurateurs, sponsored a Saturday food festival in the Mall and Literary Walk area of Central Park, and never before have we seen so many New Yorkers in one place having so much fun. Seventy-two restaurants participated, each with a booth and each selling one or two dishes, sometimes brought over from the restaurant and sometimes prepared on the spot. The visitors ate all the food sold by the participating restaurants, watched musicians and other performers perform, strolled around, and were polite to one another. The police estimated that more than three hundred thousand men, women, and children were present. There were so many people at the festival that a lot of them had to stand in lines, sometimes up to forty-five minutes, just to pay five dollars for a book of twenty tickets that enabled them to buy servings of food ordinarily sold as spécialités de la maison at the participating restaurants.
Then there were long lines for the food. The line at the â21â Club booth (steak tartare) was about two blocks long. The line at Marvin Gardens (mussels marinière and tabouleh salad) was about three blocks long. The line at Beefsteak Charlieâs (slices of steak on a bun) was about four blocks long. There was a line at just about every food booth; and even to get a hot dog from a hot-dog vender who was not an official part of the food festival required waiting in line. No one seemed to mind.
We walked around, and here are some of the things we saw: a man juggling with cowbells and tambourines, a woman spinning a pie pan on a stick while doing somersaults, a man dressed in black doing magic tricks, a man dressed in black telling jokes about balloons, a clown, a mime, three flamenco dancers, a man playing an accordion, and a puppeteer. We met three boys collecting yogurt-cup tops at the Dannon Milk Products booth. They said that they had already collected seven thousand tops and that they hoped to have enough to be included in the Guinness Book of World Records . We stopped in at the Lost Children Area but didnât see any lost children. We saw six stout Spanish-speaking women with purple jumbo rollers in their hair relaxing under a tree. Near the end of the afternoon, we stopped by the bandshell, where various groups were performing. There was a rock group called Lance, and it was well received. There was a group called the West Side Singers, unaccompanied by any musical instrument. Its members looked like a Better Citizens Committee. They tuned up their voices by singing a few bars of âIâll Never
Fall in Love Again.â Then they sang all the way through âSpinning Wheel,â the old Blood, Sweat & Tears hit, with much vigor and in perfect harmony. By the end of it, they had lost a good many of the younger members of their audience.
â June 7, 1976
The Fourth
Â
Â
Report from our friend Jamaica Kincaid:
I love America and Americans, because my father, who was an Antiguan, and who had worked as a civilian carpenter on the American base in Antigua during the Second World War, used to tell me how funny and great Abbott and Costello were, how funny and great the âRoadâ pictures with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope were, and how funny and great and attractive and smart Americans in
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