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.


 
 

THE SOCIALLY AWKWARD
BOYS CLUB

by Bert Stratton

The Intakes, a boys club, was a throwback to a Depression-era, settlement-house group. The Intakes met at the Mayfield Road JCC, a successor institution to the Depression-era Council Education Alliance. The Intakes’ purpose was to keep teenage boys off the streets, which wasn’t too hard because, in our case, we studied so hard we rarely went out.

The Intakes president had a regular excuse for not partying on Saturday night: “I’ve got too much homework.” One summer he got a grant to study the crystal structure of molecules at a university. He did his undergrad at MIT, then went on to med school.

The Intakes didn’t “intake” girls. We played poker, miniature golf, bowled and held meetings. Our advisor was a social worker from New York. He often called us schmucks, which we found endearing. We talked about where to spend our money, earned by selling salamis and Passover macaroons. Should we go to New York or Washington?

We rode the Hound to New York and visited the Statue of Liberty, saw Jeopardy live, and ate at Katz’s Deli. I bought Existentialism Versus Marxism in a Greenwich Village bookstore. I haven’t finished it yet.

The Intakes folded after twelfth grade. There are some other ancient-history Jewish boys clubs around town. I heard of one the other day, the Regals. They were from Kinsman. They were a generation older than my guys. The Regals are truly out of business.

intakes 1967

Intakes, 1967. Poker game.

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5 comments

1 Mark Schilling { 04.28.21 at 9:18 am }

I started reading this thinking it was another “fake profile.” You had a club to keep you off the streets, while I was running around the backwoods of Western PA, but I had a version of that striped shirt. At least half the males in my high school did.

2 Rev Don Friedman { 04.28.21 at 12:18 pm }

And the Intakes never took in a stripper? You could have made money!

3 David Korn { 04.28.21 at 4:01 pm }

You guys were stylin’! Look at that wide-striped shirt (on that guy who looks like Teddy), and that super-cool Madras snapbrim. And the advisor called you shmucks?!!! What did he know?

4 Kenneth Goldberg { 04.29.21 at 12:02 am }

That IS Teddy on the right, but how is he in a ’67 photograph and why is he wearing that silly tie? And finish that damn book already, Bert!

5 Bert Stratton { 05.09.21 at 11:34 am }

Edit:
Jeff Mossman Moss informs me . . .
“I personally know at least one member of the Regals who is very much still alive and well! Will Sukenik is a longtime friend of mine, he is 92 and still goes to work every day!”

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