[78-L] I'm Dickens, He's Fenster

[Steven C. Barr]

From: "David Breneman" <david_breneman at yahoo.com>
> --- On Fri, 2/18/11, Mark Bardenwerper <citrogsa at charter.net> wrote:
>> Later, Astin's monster father colleague, Fred Gwyn was in
>> Car 54, where are you?
>> Ooh-ooh-ooh!
> There's a holdup in The Bronx
> Brooklyn's broken out in fights
> There's a traffic jam in Harlem
> That's backed up to Jackson Heights...
> I had no idea, as a kid, what and where any of those
> places were, but "back in the day" everyone in the US
> was expected to know what East Coast place names
> referred to.  You just took it as a cultural tide
> that washed over you and assumed that there was some
> significance to those words; just as we, as denizens
> of the Tacoma area, accepted that the Seattle place
> names in "local" broadcasting meant something to
> people who lived closer to the studios.  It was 
> a world both familiar and strange.
> 
PARTICULARLY places in/around New York City...which
regarded itself (and STILL does...?!) as not only the most
important...but the ONLY worthwhile city in the USA (and
thus the world...all those other countries in places like Europe
were full of oddly-tinged folks who couldn't even speak
ENGLISH...?!) (THEIR opinions...not mine!)

Steven C. Barr