Author: ruhlwrite

One thing has to be perfectly clear at the start: Joan Murphy doesn’t have much to say. So she’s set the kitchen table for tea. And she’s made some of her banana nut bread so things won’t be a total loss. Joan, a stoic, sensible woman with Wonder Bread-white hair, fiery blue eyes and a throaty Midwestern accent that’s as broad as a wheat field, isn’t used to sitting, but she can stand sitting in the wingback chair for this short stretch. Heck, she’ll even…

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Tina Sacramone takes a piece of yellow-ruled paper out of her handbag and places it on the table. 4 cups of potatoes, cut in cubes 2 cups of water 2 cloves of garlic, chopped 2 pieces of parsley, chopped Put everything in a pot, cover it and cook for a half hour. “That’s the first recipe I ever made,” she says. “I still remember it.” You’ll see Tina at Trattoria L ‘Incontro. Tina, 74, can be forgiven for having to write it down because she made that simple…

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She wanted to get off of her feet. That’s why Suzi Winson went up in the air. On the flying trapeze. It really was as simple and as complicated as that. At that time, a dozen years ago, Suzi had a successful career as a dancer; she didn’t know that her trial trapeze tricks would lead her to found Circus Warehouse, the only professional school in New York that teaches the greatest-show-on-earth aerial arts. Suzi, the girl in the golden goggles, is a spunky sprite with a perky platinum…

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It’s an ordinary white garage door, but when Lady Pink rolls it up, the eyes, surprisingly, are assaulted by a kaleidoscope of color. In this space, which was built to house two cars, Lady Pink, The Grandmother of Graffiti, makes her studio. Lady Pink, of course, is her artistic name. The name she was born with? It’s irrelevant — you wouldn’t ask Cher this question or expect Madonna to answer to anything other than the M word. “My friends call me Pink,” she says.…

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George Phillips is at the counter strumming an acoustic guitar. He’s sounding out its sound. In a back room, a piano student is scaling the scales. Up and down, down and up it goes like an aural escalator to nowhere. A young man walks in to buy some guitar strings, and George rushes to the other counter to ring up the sale. George, a fire hydrant with Einstein’s frizzled hair, is the owner of Astoria Music, but it’s more fitting to call him a one-man band because ever since he…

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