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.


 
 

MY FIRST DATE

I went out once in high school. It was a fix up, courtesy of my parents. I took out Barbara E. to see Cool Hand Luke at the Vogue and then on to Manner’s Big Boy at Van Aken for shakes. My parents knew her parents. I didn’t see her again, although we went to Michigan together, but I never saw her or said hi to her on the Diag, or anything at all.

How could you say no to this guy?

Bert “Pancho” Stratton, 1967

A couple years ago I was playing tennis in Cleveland, and I saw her father, who is in his 90s. I knew him from my nursing home gigs. Next to him was a young woman (age 66!) in a ski jacket. She was watching the oldsters play doubles. These oldsters were talking to the woman about a nor’easter in Boston. I knew Barbara had moved to Boston after college because I had Googled her. It was her.

I told my tennis partner that Barbara was the first girl I had dated. He didn’t care. He wanted to play tennis. But I stopped everything and said to her, “We went out on a date in high school. I’m Bert Stratton.”

“Really?” she said. I reminded her about Cool Hand Luke and the shakes. Really? “I do remember the name Stratton, though,” she said.

OK.

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3 comments

1 Mark Schilling { 09.20.18 at 9:29 am }

“Really?” I would have prayed for a hole to open under my feet so I could sink to the center of the earth. Reminding a 66-year-old woman of a failed date she had at 16 is never a good idea. I have my own story in that line, but later…

2 Michael Madorsky { 09.20.18 at 11:05 pm }

Ouch, that had to hurt.
Hey great to see you and Jack today. Enjoy your weekend in Brooklyn. Very exciting.

3 Ken Goldberg { 09.21.18 at 9:39 am }

I’m guessing it wasn’t this elderly lady’s first date…. My first “city” date (i.e. not counting overnight camp girlfriends) became my main high school girlfriend. She is a retired physician and a Facebook Friend.

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