On more than a few occasions, over the last decade, Flaming Pablum has been saddled with the descriptor, “nostalgic,” and rarely has it been intended as a complement. While I’ll assert that the blog is, was and will continue to be topically open-ended, I will cop to the fact that a vast swathe of its content does focus on my native New York City’s past and, more specifically, my past in it.
That said, I wouldn’t say I’m guilty of being indiscriminately nostalgic about it. To the contrary, I’d say I’m quite precisely focused on very specific areas of interest. To wit, you’re never going to find an entry herein about great lost handball courts of Manhattan or top five favorite lost sports bars of the Upper West Side because, frankly, I simply don’t give one good goddamn about either of those subjects.
To that end, I’m relatively certain some readers tire of my ponderously self-involved posts, but that’s kind of my way in. If the entity I’m considering writing about doesn’t resonate with me or my personal experience –- regardless of however credibly “New Yorky” it very well may be -- I probably won’t end up posting it. Put simply, if you’re looking for posts about “Seinfeld” or A-Rod or HOT 97, you’re shit out of luck, because I SIMPLY DON’T CARE ABOUT THAT RIDICULOUS CRAP!
But for unrepentant fans of New York City nostalgia who are sick of the above stipulations and/or simply sick of me, I have excellent news for you. I recently stumbled upon an similarly inclined Tumblr called -- WAIT FOR IT -- NYC Nostalgia, which serves up regular lashings of old images of the NYC of yore (“New York City before its gentrification” is its sole tagline) without all the fuss of personal associations or laborious anecdotes.
To represent same, I purloined the nice CBGB shot up top. I originally felt a bit off-sides doing so, but then noticed that NYC Nostalgia’s chief compiler swiped one of my own photos about five months ago, without any credit. True to example, he is a bit fast and loose with his sourcing, but in a rather pointed post on that subject, he asserted that those hung up on such things need to remember that it’s just a Tumblr site and not the Shroud of Goddamn Turin. Lord knows I'm no stranger to appropriating the odd photo without a credit.
Fair enough. I’m thankful that he’s aggregating all these pics. Yes, some you’ll have almost certainly spotted before, but there are indeed several that speak to my own afore-alluded interests that I’d never laid eyes on.
Go check it out here. Tell’em Flaming Pablum sent’cha.
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