Stumblin' Along 6/2 '24
I Had Some Help
I Had Some Help
- City Reliquary Museum
- Ancient Rome
- Bronx Zoo ‘90 (Episode II)
- YouTube Rabbithole
Alright @YouTheReader,
Today’s tune on this Summer Sunday Stumblin’ Along is I Had Some Help by Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen. It is currently the #1 song at the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
The premise of this tune appears to be about Post Malone and Morgan Wallen being down bad so they linked up to make a hit. This is Post Malone’s 6th #1 hit and Morgan Wallen’s 2nd.
Week to Week Notes has nominted this as a Song of the Summer ‘24 contestant. I could certainly use your help with other new song recommendations this summer, so share anytime.
For the 2nd Summer in a row, Week to Week Notes will have a Song of the Summer vote. The criteria with Song of the Summer is simple. It can be any genre or any artist, it just needs to be within the calendar year. Ideally, we get at least 8 of them (but 16 would be cooler), make a bracket, and have a vote by Labor Day weekend. Since it’s the start of June, I figure there is plenty of weekends to do at least 1 new song per week. People forget that Luke Combs’ Where The Wild Things Are won out last year, nice respectable underrated tune for an inaugural winner.
Jeez, this Morgan Wallen verse just makes you wanna chuck a chair off a rooftop bar in Nashville.*
*Week to Week Notes does not promote or condone the act of chucking chairs off Nashville bars.*
It’s catchy, you’ll get to decide if it is the song of the summer by the end of summer.
On to some Stumblin’ Along History…
Quite a few Sundays ago, somehow in my drunken stupor, I Stumbled Along to The City Reliquary in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The museum filled with cool New York City history is open on Saturdays and Sundays from Noon to 6 PM. For a $10 visit, you can see a ton of cool relics from The City. This week's Stumblin’ Along on Week to Week Notes features another piece on an assortment of things on one of their displays.
Underneath the Knicks and Yanks beer was a cloth rag from The Savoy Hilton New York Hotel. Week to Week Notes hasn’t done a random Note on an NYC Building in a while so here’s one…
The original Savoy Hotel was located on 5th Ave & E 59th St. It overlooked the South East corner of Central Park in Manhattan. The origins of a Savoy Hotel date back to the 1890s, when it’s neighbor, Cornellius Vanderbilt, had himself a mansion next to Central Park. In 1890, the Plaza Hotel was erected down the block and the New York Supreme Court Jusitce named P. Henry Dugro decided he wanted to compete with the Plaza Hotel. So, he hired Ralph S. Townsend, an architect, to design a rival hotel. In 1892, Dugro spent over $2 million on construction, decoration, and furnishing of his newly built original Savoy hotel.
As you can see, the ballroom at the original Savoy Hotel was quite elegant. Within it’s first year of being open, the 2 new hotels on 5th Ave made the neighborhood popping. As the Record and Guide would state, “Fifty-ninth street, east of 5th avenue, is fast changing its character. Private houses are being altered, one, two and three at a time, into stores and offices…The Hotel Savoy and the Plaza Hotel have brought a mass of people to the vicinity, who must be catered to by nearby establishments.” The Savoy Hotel was a popular spot, which drew the interest of guests such as John Jay. Not the founding father John Jay who was the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, but his grandson. John Jay, the grandson, was a lawyer (shocker) who also served as a diplomat for President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1870s, moved into the Savoy Hotel in 1893. Although it was an elegant hotel with state of the art equipment for it’s time, the Savoy Hotel would catch fire on March 31, 1894. While John Jay was able to escape the blazes, it made him gravely ill. He passed away in his room at Savoy Hotel just over a month later. The conditions, plus the fact that he got run over by a cab outside Grand Central Station in 1890 were just too much.
(Source: Daytonian in Manhattan)
After competing with the Savoy Hotel for nearly 3 decades, the owner of the Plaza Hotel, Harry S. Black, decided to buy it’s competition. He would demolish the original Savoy Hotel and build The Savoy Plaza Hotel was built back in the 1920s and was opened on October 1, 1927. It was 33 stories high and designed by the architect group called McKim, Mead & White. Harry S. Black not only owned the Plaza Hotel and the Savoy Plaza Hotel, but also the Flat Iron Building as well. Black was an alleged bootlegger during the Prohibition and was considered the “world’s greatest landladord” of the 20th century for his construction of these famous buildings. Once Week to Week Notes eventually dives into the Flat Iron Building, we’ll look more into this fella.
(Source: The Real Deal)
The Savoy Plaza Hotel was home to more famous Americans of their day such as Adolph Zukor, the founder of Paramount Pictures had the penthouse for many years. After 30 years of existence, the Savoy Plaza Hotel would get bought by the Hilton Hotels. The Hilton Hotels were founded by Conrad N. Hilton, otherwise known as the great-grandfather to Paris Hilton. Once Conrad Hilton got his stake in the Savoy Plaza Hotel he decided to name it the Savoy Hilton Hotel in 1958. 4 years after the purchase, Conrad Hilton & Co flipped the Savoy Hilton Hotel to another real estate developer who then once more renamed it The Savoy Plaza. Therefore, the item at the City Reliquary must have been made sometime between 1958 and 1962. The Savoy-Whatever-You-Want-To-Call-It Hotel would remain open for the 1964 New York World’s Fair before being demolished in 1965. General Motors would purchase the land, demolish the iconic hotel, and then build the General Motors Building in it’s place.
(Source: The New York Preservation Archive Project)
Not for nothing, but I think General Motors royally blew it, more of a fan of the Savoy’s Beaux-Arts architectural look. Each thier own…
This Week’s Bit on The Roman Empire
This week your quick bit on The Roman Empire brought to you by Week to Week Notes featuring Ancient Rome: The Exhibition in New York is on the Roman Assault Ram.
The Roman Assault Ram was used by the Roman legions to breach fortified city walls and gates of their enemies. The picture above is just one of many different designed rams. They were constructed of long, strong beams that could be moved or dragged around by soldiers.
To add a bit more of bite to the beam, the Romans would cover the head with metal, usually iron or bronze. The shape of the metal would be formed like a ram’s head, which is why these assault rams were also referred as battering rams.
Some of these batter rams were even more complex like the one pictured above. In order to protect Roman soldiers from flying objects thrown their way as they would breach the gates of enemy cities, these complex structures had wooden scaffolds that formed a shed on wheels. The soldiers would be protected while being able to move the batter ram from within the shed. Oftentimes, they would also use animal skins on the roof to prevent fire. The ramming beam would hang from a rope, which made things easier for the soldiers to swing it back and forth to batter down walls. These were important during the days of castles.
Last week there was a recap on Episode 1: Courgars in the Clubhouse on the new Peacock docuseries about the Bronx Zoo 90s. Finally sat down for Episode 2 called The Money’s Gone, if you haven’t seen it yet, everything below is a spoil….
- Episode 2 of this series about crime, chaos, and baseball kicks off with Chaz Easterly opening up about her relationship with Mel Hall. She and high school classmate went to a Yankees vs Red Sox game. They had seats along the Right Field line and asked Hall to throw them a ball, the typical fan interaction. After the game, Chaz Easterly sent a letter addressed to Yankee Stadium asking for a Mel Hall autograph. About a week later he called her house repeatedly. She didn’t think it was actually him that was calling her so Hall said during the game that night he would tap on home plate 3 times so she would know it’s him. Her family then went to the game, Hall giving them tickets. Hall then started showed up at their family house, took them out to dinner, and while on their way to the arcade said he “Was going to marry” Chaz Easterly once she turned 18. It gets even worse, Hall would eventually end up moving into their family’s house and they went to prom together. Chaz would end up going to every game and even sat in the family section where the other players wives + girlfriends would sit. They cut back present day with Mel Hall in prison and he has zero remorse. “Everybody knew but nobody did anything” was the quote that stuck out.
- The documentary then shifts more back into baseball. They briefly touch on how despite the Yankees’ immense struggles during the 1990 struggles, it was the same spring that they drafted Andy Pettitte in the 22nd Round and Jorge Posada in the 24th Round. Eariler in 1990, the Yankees scouts had also signed Mariano Rivera with a $2,500 signing bonus. After taking a look at the rest of their 1990 MLB Draft class, they also drafted other future MLB outfielders such as Carl Everett, Ricky Ledee, and Shane Spencer.
- Michael Kay recalls after games he would see Bucky Dent defeated and say, “Jeez oh Pete, I don’t know what to do?” This sort of behavior would drive George Steinnbrenner up the wall. In the Boss’ defense, who the hell says “Jeez oh Pete”, I’ve never heard that saying once. Steinnbrenner would fire Bucky Dent on June 6th, 1990, while the Yankees were playing the Boston Red Sox up in Fenway. Dent had famously hit the clutch homer in the 1 game playoff against the Sox in 1978, so this really was a gut punch to get fired there. Steinbrenner had told the press that the Yankees play was unacceptable. “We’re off to the worst start to a season in 65 years.” I had no idea that the 1925 Yanks, a team with Babe Ruth and Lou Gerhig was bad, but in fact the 1925 Yankees went 69-85.
- To replace Bucky Dent, the Yankees named Stump Merrill as their new manager. These are Joel Sherman of the New York Posts words, not mine, “Stump Merrill was called Stump because he was short, bald, and heavy. He was a good baseball guy, but not a good communicator.”
- On June 22, 1990, Nelson Mandela had a full capacity crowd at Yankee Stadium where he proudly stated, “I am a Yankee.” That’s pretty cool, didn’t know that happened!
- Around the time where Mandela was packing Yankees Stadium, the Yanks were on a road trip in Chicago. They played the White Sox on a sunny day at Comisky Park. SP Andy Hawkins took a no-hitter into the 8th inning when 3B Mike Blowers committed an error on a grounder. Then Jim Leyritz, who hadn’t played OF since Little League, dropped a can of corn because of the sun. The next batter would hit another lazy fly ball to Jesse Barfield in RF and he would drop the ball too. Somehow the 1990 Yankees lost 4-0 in a game where their pitcher threw a no-hitter. As Buck Showalter, who was 3rd Base Coach for the team, put it, “I have been trying to forget a lot about that team.”
- One of the rare highlights of the season came when football star RB Bo Jackson of the Royals faced Deion Sanders and the Yankees at the Stadium. Bo Jackson hit 3 homers in their game, however, Sanders did have the most exciting play of the game - an inside the park home run just out of the reach of Bo Knows. Pretty cool, but the Yanks still lost the game.
- The rest of the 2nd episode is about Howie Spira and George Steinnbrenner. In 1980, Spira studied broadcast journalism and worked as a “stringer”, or freelance journalist. Thru connections I’m assuming with NYU (the school he was attending), Spira would meet Dave Winfield and somehow became Winfield’s publicist. He also alleges that he was the publicist for Dave Winfield’s foundation. During this time in the 1980s, Howie Spira was also a gambling addict who owed millions to all 5 crime families of New York. Spira once received a loan from Winfield for $15k, but had to pay it back with interest which came out to $18.5k. In the documentary, Spira calls Winfield “a lying, prick, bastard” to which the documentary does a good job panning to Suzyn Waldman stating Winfield is the best.
