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.


 
 

BEANS

by Bert Stratton

 
I was staying at a Yucatecan restaurant called Zazil Ha. I didn’t know what “Zazil Ha” meant. (It’s the name of a 16th-century Mayan princess.) I was staying there a while, not just for dinner. I lived above the restaurant for six weeks, eating beans, beans, and more beans. I was 18. I didn’t really like beans. I didn’t like Mexican food, period. I went to KFC on occasion and lived off oatmeal and Pan Bimbo. Mexico City, 1968, the summer after I graduated high school.

I missed the shootings at the national university, and I missed the Olympics. But I caught Pan Bimbo, which is white bread. I lived with three college boys from Wisconsin and Minnesota who called me “a stop,” which meant I supposedly stopped them from getting laid.

I took a course, History of Mexico, at the Universidad Ibero-Americana. I got a couple credit hours at Michigan for that.

I still like KFC. I haven’t had any lately, but when I’m in hospice care I want some KFC. (And I like Mexican food now.)

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4 comments

1 Ken Goldberg { 02.15.23 at 9:04 am }

I’ll try to recall that request when it comes to your hospice care period.

2 David Korn { 02.15.23 at 9:11 am }

Try Rancho Gordo. It will make a bean lover out of you.

3 Stephen Mumford { 02.15.23 at 12:03 pm }

I’ll bite: was it true, and if not, why did the Midwesterners believe you prevented them from getting laid??

4 Bert Stratton { 02.15.23 at 12:50 pm }

To Stephen Mumford:
‘Cuz I was a high school boy and not too sophisticated. I went with the college boys to Acapulco for a weekend, and they said I scared away the college girls.

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