| Issue #49, March 16, 2007 |
When In Manhattan
Dead City
with Oliver Peterson
I’m very disappointed in all of you. Not one person wrote in to answer my count the Scorsese titles contest. That means I either have no readers, that you don’t like games, or just can’t get motivated to write an e-mail. Well, I guess the prize goes to Colleen Peterson, my wife and the only participant. The grand total was 18 films – 17 if you want to argue about Italianamerican, which I wrote as Italian-American – and Colleen guessed 16 of them. So there you go, honey. You’re the winner and your name has now been published. Woop-dee-do! Okay, that was a bust. I doubt we’ll see any more contests here. To add insult to injury, it was reported last Thursday (March 8) in The New York Times that Captain America, also known as Steve Rogers was shot and killed by a sniper on the steps of a Manhattan courthouse. As of press time the courthouse where the Sentinel of Liberty was felled is not known. America is in mourning. Take a moment of silence and pray for another fallen hero that found his demise in the city that never sleeps.
Manhattan Island has played host to the Grim Reaper for millions over the centuries, but some deaths are more notable than others. The first stop on our mini tour of New York deaths is Sparks Steak House at 210 East 46th Street between Second & Third Avenues in Midtown. Brothers Pat and Mike Cetta founded the famous eatery in 1966. It was originally located on East 18th Street, but the current location, since 1977, gained notoriety after the infamous Gambino Family Mafia boss, Paul Castellano, and an associate were killed outside the restaurant in 1985. The ambitious mobster John Gotti had invited Castellano to Sparks under the pretense of working out differences, but it was a ruse to eliminate the venerable boss and take control of the Gambino syndicate. Castellano’s murder and Gotti’s subsequent reign heralded a new era of mob activities. The place where he died is worth a look. If you have the stomach to eat meat and think about murder, it also happens to be a good spot for a steak.
Probably the most famous New York murder was that of the late, great John Lennon. At 10:50 p.m. on December 8th, 1980, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon, one of the founders of the Beatles, in front of the historic Dakota apartment building on the northwest corner of 72nd and Central Park West. Constructed in 1884, the building is a gorgeous piece of architecture and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Chapman caught Lennon returning with his wife Yoko Ono after supervising some studio work on West 44th. As Ono stepped inside the Dakota, Chapman called out to the now lone musician and shot him with four hollow point rounds from a Charter Arms .38 revolver. John Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital (10th Ave. and 59th) where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:15 p.m. The blood loss from his pierced aorta was too great. Chapman didn’t run from the scene. He was arrested after dropping the gun, sitting on the sidewalk and calmly waiting for the police to arrive. Chapman had a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, a tape recorder and ten cassettes with over 14 hours of Beatles tunes on him. As the reports of John Lennon’s death spread, people gathered in front of the hospital and the Dakota to mourn and pray. If you visit the Dakota today, you can cross the street to Strawberry Fields, a Central Park memorial garden and pray to our contemporary Saint of Peace just blocks from where his life was taken.
Perhaps I’ll touch on this again and we can add to our list of macabre destinations in the Big Apple. If anyone can discover the courthouse where Captain America was killed I would be thrilled to know. It’s quite possible that Marvel Comics was not that specific and though the issue (Captain America #25) dropped on March 7th, it’s not easy to find on newsstands. So far I’m out of luck. Maybe a kind reader will mail it to the Dan’s office addressed to me? Somehow I doubt snail mail will garner more enthusiasm than e-mail – for which you had zero. A guy can dream.
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