Their Chinatown
Dear Diary:
When I was growing up on the Upper East Side in the 1960s and ’70s, Manhattan’s Chinatown was a faraway place offering highly exotic food.
American palates had by then had a couple of decades to get used to what we called “Chinese food,” but for many people, my family included, spare ribs, egg rolls and chicken chow mein were the outer limit of what we were brave enough to order.
Every few weeks, we would pile into the convertible and head to Chinatown. There, we ate only and always at a restaurant called Lin’s Garden. In time, I came to realize that every uptown family had “their” Chinese restaurant.
When I moved to South Street Seaport in 2024, the first thing I did was time the walk to Chinatown: 11 minutes.
With such variety nearby, I decided to eat in every Chinatown restaurant, and for the past two years I’ve been working my way through a spreadsheet of nearly 200, from hole-in-the-wall dumpling shops to dim sum palaces.
It’s an illogical project, given my still very American palate and inability to eat spicy food. But I want to resist the temptation to return, Lin’s Garden-style, only to familiar places.
New York City, consumed as it is by its own forward motion, will always decline to respect our individual nostalgias, so it’s up to us to do the remembering. Lin’s Garden is long gone, but recently I unearthed the address, 53 Bayard Street.
Now, when I’m on the block, I make a point of looking inside, and into the back corner where the four of us — my parents, my sister and me — once adventurously ate those spare ribs and egg rolls, so far from the Upper East Side.
Today, the restaurant is called Yunnan Rice Noodle House, and it’s No. 65 on my Chinatown spreadsheet. I’ll get to it eventually.
— Jean Hanff Korelitz
Ms. Korelitz is a writer. Her most recent book is “The Sequel.”
Coney Island in Mind
Dear Diary:
My daughter returned home to New York from college in Michigan for summer break. Her three roommates came along for a weeklong stay.
Sitting around the kitchen table one morning, they were eagerly planning things to do in the city. They mentioned a nightclub.
“There’s a really good diner around the corner for afterward,” I said.
Marisa, born and raised in Michigan, looked confused.
“Diner?” she said. “What do you mean ‘diner?’”
“Huh?” I replied. “What do you mean?”
“What’s a diner?”
“What?”
Marisa’s eyes darted around to the other Michigan girls. They also looked confused.
I was confused too.
“It’s a casual restaurant, open 24 hours,” I said. “You can get breakfast any time, burgers, fries. You sit in a booth.”
“Oh,” Marisa said. “You mean a Coney Island.”
“What?” I said.
“Yeah,” Marisa said. “In Michigan, we call those Coney Islands.”
“Why?!”
“I don’t know. That’s just what they’re called.”
This annoyed me. You can’t just name stuff in other states after our New York City icons without our New York City permission, right? I mean, who approved this?
I needed to get to the bottom of this ridiculousness, and I learned that, yes, diners in Michigan are called Coney Islands.
Apparently, Greek immigrants who came through Ellis Island on their way to Michigan sampled Coney Island hot dogs and liked them so much they named the restaurants they eventually opened after them: Lafayette Coney Island, Jackson Coney Island, American Coney Island and on and on, all over Michigan.
These hard-working immigrants were paying homage to our famous hot dogs. There’s no boardwalk, no ocean, no roller coasters — just a lot of love for a Brooklyn icon.
— Darlene Rodriguez
Ms. Rodriguez is a co-anchor of “Today in New York” on WNBC.
On the Radio
Dear Diary:
My first time in New York City was in 1993, a life-changing year for me. I was from Atlanta and had real pride in my home town. But the saying “If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere” has always been a thing, and at that point in my life I wanted to make it.
I was 17, still in high school and part of a girl group called Xscape. We were starting our careers, excited to see the world, excited to have hit records. To get those hit records, we were told we had to be accepted in New York City.
Jermaine Dupri had signed us to his label; our first single, “Just Kickin’ It,” was being released; and the label had decided that we should go to New York first to promote it.
As a group, LaTocha, Tamika, Tiny and I were excited to make the trip. I knew nothing about New York except what I had seen in movies and on TV.
The thing that stood out to me was the Manhattan traffic. So many cars, so many taxis, so many bike riders. And nobody cared about lanes.
The four of us were split between two cars. As we were riding, the radio was set to Hot 97, I believe, one of the hottest radio stations in the country at the time.
“Just Kickin’ It” came on. We screamed and had the two cars ride side-by-side with the windows down so we could scream to one another to make sure we all heard the song playing.
It was our first time hearing our song on the radio, and it happened in New York City before our hometown stations even started playing it.
It was like being welcomed with a warm hug.
— Kandi Burruss
Ms. Burruss, who appeared on “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” is a singer, songwriter and actor.
New School Pitch
Dear Diary:
I was being interviewed for the British publication The Spectator. We settled into a communal table in the lobby of the Marlton Hotel on Eighth Street because my apartment was undergoing some renovation.
My interlocutor, Anne Margaret Daniel, is a literary scholar who was extremely knowledgeable about my work and about American literature in general, and the conversation was lively.
I couldn’t help noticing that a gentleman at the table seemed to be paying attention, and it occurred to me that we might be annoying him. But he didn’t say anything until we were wrapping up.
At that point, he introduced himself and said it was an honor to meet me, which made me only slightly uncomfortable, and that he was a writer himself.
Ms. Daniel and I had finished the interview by talking about my experiences in Hollywood. The gentleman who had just introduced himself said that his family had been involved in the early days of motion pictures and that he was a descendant of an early movie star named Blanche Walsh.
He said he was planning to name a projected humanistic studies center for her and hoped the New School would finance it to the tune of $100 million.
Ms. Daniel, who teaches at the New School, raised her eyebrows when she heard this.
“I suspect that before the New School would give $100 million for the humanities these days,” she said, “the whole campus would collapse and sink into the Greenwich Village mud like the House of Usher into the tarn.”
Nonetheless, we wished him success in his venture before exiting onto the chilly street.
— Jay McInerney
Mr. McInerney is a writer. His most recent book is “See You on the Other Side.”
Hardcore Fan
Dear Diary:
It wasn’t until I lived in the city that I realized how dedicated New Yorkers are to their teams.
When I moved here, I lived in a fourth-floor apartment. I arranged the living room so that my television was positioned on the side wall so that you could look directly into the room and see it while my couch remained hidden.
On the fourth floor, you’re not completely removed from what’s happening outside. You hear the rattle of a fire truck’s suspension as it plows through a pothole. You hear the one defiant wheel rattling on someone’s hand truck or laundry cart.
I also remember once hearing someone yell, “You know what you did. You better not come back over here,” with expletives added in the usual places.
It wasn’t evident to me just how clearly someone could see my TV until one night I had the Yankees game on. I’m a Cubs fan, but I love baseball above all and can watch pretty much any team any night.
It was a close game, but I did what I sometimes do: record the rest to watch in the morning while getting ready for work.
I had just picked up the remote to peruse what else was on when I heard a man’s voice from outside.
“There’s no way,” he said, interjecting the same expletive, then adding: “Turn it back to the game please.”
I didn’t even go to the window to see who had barked this command. I simply complied. Whatever was going on in that man’s life, watching Yankees games from a TV four floors up was his only peaceful moment of the day.
Also, I’m pretty sure he was the guy I heard yell, “You know what you did.” The last thing I want is that guy coming for me.
— Roy Wood Jr.
Mr. Wood is a comedian, actor and writer. He is the host of CNN’s “Have I Got News for You.”
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