The Luna Park Gazette

This all started with Frank Sinatra. I’m sure a lot of stories start this way, given the Chairman of the Board’s incredible impact on modern music. God knows how many people are walking this earth because their parents heard a Sinatra song, stopped being strangers in the night, and got down to the dooby-dooby-doo. Frank’s rendition of “Nothing but the Best” is my theme song for 2023 and I still give that tune a listen when I’m feeling low. Lately, I’ve been interested in a Sinatra song that starts low and goes even lower. It’s called “ Nobody Wins ” and it’s from Sinatra’s 1973 album Ol’ Blue Eyes is Back , which he recorded after coming out of his brief retirement two years earlier. Other songs on the album include “Send in the Clowns”, “You Will be My Music” and “Let Me Try Again.” “Nobody Wins” is a slow and mournful account of couple calling it quits. To be honest, it took me a while to connect with this song, since it’s so somber, and I could perfectly understand w

Whenever I’m anywhere near 75th Street and Fifth Avenue, I like to stop off at the Lincoln Savings Bank. This fabulous old building is now a Chase branch, but it will always be the Lincoln to me because my mother used to work there many years ago selling Savings Bank Life Insurance. Her desk was near the front door, and I used to drop in on her from time to time and shoot the breeze. The place is sacred ground to me, so when I go there, I like to stand at the spot where her desk used to be and say a prayer. That intersection became a crime scene last week—one of several throughout my neighborhood when a man with a history of mental illness struck at least 8 people with a U-Haul van. Ye YiJie, who moved to this country from China 18 years ago, was killed outside the Lincoln Savings Bank. A father of three teenagers, he was the only victim to die. I first learned about the rampage when my phone lit up with a bulletin about an attack in Brooklyn. I was frightened, but I re

In 1968, Herb Alpert had his first number one hit with “This Guy’s in Love with You.” I was 11 years old at the time and, according to my auntie, I was convinced the song was actually call “The Sky’s in Love with You.” “You were disappointed when you found out the real title,” she said. For the record, I have no memory of this, and while I may have been disappointed, I was surprised when my aunt told me on Friday that the song had been written by Burt Bacharach, who had just died at 94 years old. Bacharach, along with Hal David, wrote the soundtrack for a generation and since his death I keep discovering more of his songs. When I was growing up it seemed like every other week Dionne Warwick was climbing the charts with on their hits, like “Walk on By,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” Dionne Warwick also recorded a song from the show Promises, Promises , “I'll Never Fall in Love Again”, which Bacharach and David wrote when the producer

The connection isn’t obvious, but I can see it, nonetheless. Back in my sophomore year of high school Shirley Jackson’s riveting short story “The Lottery” was required reading. First published in The New Yorker on June 26, 1948—the same day the Berlin Airlift began--“The Lottery” takes place in what initially seems like a typical small town where the people are gathering for an event of some kind. “ The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny ,” the story begins, “ with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day .” This clear and sunny day quickly takes a horrific turn, however, as the townspeople conduct a bizarre and bloody ritual that involves stoning one of their neighbors to death. I remember being so disturbed when I read the final lines of “The Lottery”—and I’m not the only one. The story caused such a stir that The New Yorker was inundated with hate mail and many people cancelled their subscriptions. The Union of South Africa-where stoning was legal at the time—