Author: ruhlwrite

Miss Marie makes her grand entrance on Broadway (Astoria’s not Manhattan’s). Miss Marie is a singer/songwriter. When she’s a block from the subway corner, she stops, adjusts her eyeglasses and starts crooning her anthem, “Where the Boys Are.” The sweetheart song, from the award-winning 1960 teen rom-com of the same name, was sung in the film by the then-23-year-old Connie Francis. In the six decades since, Miss Marie, who is 90, has made it her own. Her son, Elvis impersonator…

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There is an art to breathing life into a balloon. Hampton Keith Bishop selects one of the 600,000 unblown balloons that are hanging on the wall in a rainbow of color. Hampton started HKBalloons NYC at the end of 2015. It happens to be a pretty pearl lemon chiffon hue. He attaches it to a precision air inflator, the black box that can be carefully calibrated to release .1 to 9.9 seconds of air in a single instance. He sets the buttons — .5 of a second, 1 second, 1.5 seconds –…

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With Charlie Brown, his large, lovable black lab leading the way, Mike-171 heads toward his museum. Mike-171 and Charlie Brown. A big guy with close-cropped reddish hair and bright blue eyes, Mike-171 climbs the front steps of his fourth-floor walkup at a cardio-pumping clip. “It’s better than going to the gym,” he says, pausing only long enough to point out the art along the way. Mike-171 grew up in Washington Heights. In the entry, there are a pair of landscapes in gilded…

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The muscle man with the booming voice, shaved head and neon blue eyes who calls himself Sick Walt is pacing up and down the dining room of his apartment like a lion trying to break out of a zoo cage. He doesn’t like sitting still, never has, that’s something all his high school teachers could have told you. Sick Walt is a singer and so much more. A big buy with an even bigger smile, Sick Walt has a no-holds-barred, rollicking laugh that makes you want to crack up, too. He’s a…

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Caitlin Diana Doyle, the sovereign of 17 syllables, wonders whether she’ll be able to conjure up enough words for a casual conversation. Caitlin is the author of Urban Haiku. You see, she’s used to curating her remarks to create hilarious haiku sound bites about the city. What was your first reaction when you moved to Manhattan? “welcome to New York: your pizza slice is larger than your apartment” That’s how Caitlin, a model-tall woman with eyes the color of cream-less…

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