Under a different pseudonym I submitted several manuscripts to Alfred Hitchcock Murder Mysteries, Ellery Queen Mysteries, and others.

My friends and colleagues proofread them for me and thought they were excellent. One is a retired professor and Chess Master (not a Grandmaster, but one level below). The others were book afficionados or bridge players -- no TV heads.

The editors threatened that if AI was used to write the material, those authors would be permanently banned.

I, a reader of Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Damon Runyan, P.G. Wodehouse, G.K. Chesterton, John Steinbeck etc, obviously wouldn't need AI to write anything, as someone on drudge.com once idiotically accused me of.

"Ba-bye!" to that guy. That's another story.

Anyway, none of my manuscripts were published -- and some of them were stories with my cloned version of Columbo, only changing his name to avoid copyright problems, but with all of his idiosyncracies, sloppy appearance, awkward mannerisms, and genius crime-solving techniques.

No AI whatsoever.

I even informed the editors that I would donate the humble proceeds to animal shelters in Connecticut or elsewhere as I am retired and don't need the geld.

Zilch.

So, I self-published and my friends, family, and bridge circle got to enjoy my non-AI creative juices.

NYC had wonderful bookstores and magazine specialists, all gone now thanks to Amazon.com and the rise of electronic entertainment.

Work schedules began compressing people's lesiure time, so TV and movies replaced reading the originals.

And our public library system was superbly funded.

We would spend hours at the main branch on 42nd Street, reading, playing chess, then munch on hot dogs and pretzels from the street vendors.

Good mustard.

One of the characters in a short story I wrote is a janitor employed at that colossal bibliotheque.

In Bisbee, AZ, I came across the "One Book Bookstore":

One book is sold.

I may still have a copy in storage.

The proprietor spent time with customers relating to us the myths (or debunking the myths) of the Old Southwest.

For example, we learned that sheriffs posted signs warning people to leave their six-shooters outside town limits or surrender them (and get a receipt).

"Calamity Jane" was thusly named because she was a fireship.

And last century, the SI ferry was a refuge for the homeless or poor people with nowhere to go. Passengers weren't all shooed off when the ferry pulled in on either side. For one token (I think it was), my friends and I would spend a day going back and forth a few times, getting the wind into our urban faces.

We would eat at a pizzeria right next to the SI ferry dock. Two bucks = two slices of pizza and a small orange or grape drink.

That's the pizzeria, but I don't recall the double doors.

And decades later my friend buried his mother at the free Jewish cemetery a few miles south of there.

None of us could have possibly thought that.

At the old Queensboro Plaza subway station (westbound, 7, N, and R lines), walking up the stairs and through a "building" before the walkway and toll-stile, there was a tailor in a kiosk who sold belts, shoes, ties, scarves, gloves, cufflinks, stylus pens, umbrellas, and he sharpened knives (not switchblades) and he mended clothing and altered suits. He was able to make enough money to survive NYC rents for years.

And next to him was a pizzeria. Two slices of pizza and a cup of Joe was the gumshoe lunch.

The spectrum of SW Asian food ranges from the polar ends of Sri Lanka to Afghanistan, then everything else in-between.

Most spicy is further south.

The Sri Lankan cuisine I've enjoyed used a darker, or smoked, curry.

If Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) says Staten Island hosts one of the best Sri Lankan restaurants, believe him.

Where the restaurant would get fresh non-farm grown fish I don't know, because a Sri Lankan specialty is smoked sprats, four to six inches long and delicious.

BTW: Yup, we're about the same age and now I remember the double doors at the port. Tiled white floors and swinging wooden doors?

In SI there was also a huge disco right near the Outerbridge Crossing, but I can't remember the name. One word, I think. And a mobster worked out of that auto shop underneath the Bayonne Bridge last century.