I remember you well, in the St. George Hotel

By the time I moved to Brooklyn the St. George Hotel was a wreck, a former SRO. In the basement the once mighty salt water pool had been sliced up. The pool I swam barely longer than a bathtub, upstairs my husband worked out on the basketball court. There he played against Earl the Pearl who had already had two hip replacements. Still it was a magic moment. Yet once it had been a great hotel, frequented by the rich, famous and infamous. The saying was, 'it had seen better days.' Now that New York has been transformed into a place that I find myself misremembering, or not even knowing, I think fondly of those better days. They were the ones I lived myself; who remembers the New Yorker bookstore? Or the real Thalia where I saw A Hard Day's Night? Or the pizza places that served by the slice right next door, the best damn pizza in New York to a twelve year old who was in love, yes in love with John.