Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

FANCY DANCING

by Bert Stratton

My childhood friend Chap attended ballroom dance classes at the Alcazar Hotel. He had to wear white gloves. Chap’s dad worked for the Plain Dealer in home delivery, and his mom had been a professional banjo player. She was a realtor. Chap became “Chuck” in adulthood (he was always legally “Charles”) and got a job at the racetrack. He usually drove Corvettes. He liked to take the front plate off his Vettes to mess with the cops.

Chuck played quality trumpet in a soul band and was a flashy dresser. Lots of leather. He wanted to be Italian but wasn’t. He knew some racehorse owners at the track and eventually owned a horse or two. Also, he went to Bowling Green for a while, but college wasn’t his thing.

I haven’t seen Chap since 1992. I’d like to. He owes me $50 ($91 in today’s dollars). I advanced him the $50 for a meat tray for the wake of a mutual friend.

Nobody, except Chuck, in our neighborhood went to dance lessons, let alone the Alcazar — white gloves, tea and cookies. That program was called Mrs. Baltzer’s Dancing School. I found the name on the internet. Can you blame Chuck for rebelling and buying racehorses?

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Here’s my op-ed from the Monday Wall Street Journal, “Landlords Have Bills Too.”

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1 comment

1 Ken Goldberg { 09.30.20 at 1:05 pm }

Of the kids I knew my high school years in Rochester, many Jewish kids went the dance class (usually sixth and seventh grade – in coordination with big year for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs) at Temple B’rith Kodesh (still on Gibbs Street), taught by my cousin Sylvia Applebaum and accompanied on piano by her husband Ted Appelbaum (also later my piano instructor). Gentile kids attended Miss Enid Botsford’s Botsford School of Dance, located way out on East Avenue in Pittsford. I find it still exists, now in Penfield, and that makes me feel good.

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