Izzy Yereshevsky is one
of the great portraits in
bootstrap American lore.
He came from a land much
admired from Moscow and
the 26th floor, Ukraine.
Two initials, he once ex-
plained, sound responsible.
His I & Y cigar store at
49th and Seventh Avenue
closed only for atonement.
I ran into a spunky cheeky
capitalist over the week-
end, back from 3 years in
Paris, of no acquaintance
with Liebling. I expected
our inheritors to be brash,
but au moindre to acquire
a regard for their own ash.
Izzy stays open because of
the night-club trade and he
gets the night-club trade
because he stays open.
A.J. Liebling
The Jollity Building
Broadway Storekeeper
1938
The Library of America
The Sweet Science
and Other Writings
Literary Classics, 2009©
No comments:
Post a Comment