Diana Ross and Michael Jackson in Sydney Lumet’s Wizard of Oz
New York magazine’s Jennifer Vineyard spoke to Joan Rivers last year and earlier this year about her childhood in, and favorite parts of, New York. (I swear, as I’m typing this, just now Elton’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road comes on iTunes. Read on and you’ll see why tears welling in my eyes…)
“We were right off of Eastern Parkway, which was all leafy and green. Everybody knew everybody. It was a terrific place. You could ride your bike. You were totally safe… But New York was the magic city. New York was where you took the subway in and you came out and you were either in Times Square or you were on Fifth Avenue. New York was Oz. All I wanted to do was get out of Brooklyn and get into Oz. All I wanted to do was find that Emerald Road, the Emerald City, the Yellow Brick Road. That’s all I wanted.
New York has so many opportunities. You want to be an artist, it’s there. You want to go into publishing, it’s there. You want to do fashion, it’s there. New York gives a child choices; it’s not a one-horse town. It’s not like Houston: You go into oil, or you don’t go into anything. Life is an adventure, and New York is the place to have it. I tape Fashion Police in Los Angeles, and I’m on the red eye home Friday nights because I want the weekend in New York.
This is my ideal day. Saturday morning: I love to get up to go to a museum. I always take a taxi, and only open the door into the bike lane. Because I love to see how many Citi Bike riders I can pick off. I love to spend mornings at MoMA, where I eat M&Ms and I sneeze on Jackson Pollocks, just to see who can tell.
On the more straightforward side: Cemetery tours are fascinating. One, I get to see my friends, but two, for example, and usually they give you tours, Brooklyn’s Green-Wood cemetery alone, they have Louis Comfort Tiffany buried there, Henry Steinway is buried there, Boss Tweed is buried there, Samuel Morse is buried there, and Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune. It’s amazing, when you go back and see who lived in our city, and who decided to be buried in our city.
And I love walking my dogs in New York, because I like making citizen’s arrests of people who don’t pick up. Oh, I am so on to them. I’m bending over and picking it up — so should you.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m never bored in this city.”
To read the rest go to New York magazine.
The post We’ll Miss Her: Joan Rivers Tribute To New York appeared first on World of Wonder.