Who loves you baby.....New York that is...!

We had a very tough day yesterday. We were out all day at a doctors office and it was like being in steerage in the Titanic. Then coming home a tractor tailer burst into flames and it took an hour and a half to get somewhere that should have taken fifteen minutes. What a shit storm.

We were both exhausted. We like to sit in the living room after dinner to wind down after the days activity to catch a couple of shows on Hulu. Without cable we tend to binge watch stuff. Recently we have been watching this Brit comedy/drama Atlantis that is pretty funny. But it only had two seasons so we didn't want to burn it off too quick. Luckily one of our favorites shows started a new season on Amazon Prime. Bosch.

This is the series based on the famous novels by Michael Connelly about Harry Bosch an LA detective. It revels in all the cliches. He's a rebel. Troubled. Listens to jazz. Fights with his bosses. All the usual bullshit you have seen a million times before. But it is really well done for the genre and I really recommend it.

So we start watching it and right off the bat the wife falls asleep because we were exhausted. Which means I have to shut if off. I can't keep watching it and have her miss it. This has happened before and it never works out well. So I turn it off and start flicking around. What do I find. Kojack.


Now you know I love to wallow in the past. Kojack was from my salad days in the 1970's when I first got long legs and started hanging out of the neighborhood. I put on Episode 1 Season 1. Now this wasn't the pilot which was a TV movie called the Marcus Nelson Murders as I recall. This was the first regularly scheduled episode. Staring Harvey Keitel of all people.

"Siege of Terror." Basically it was a hostage situation. After a botched armored car robbery a trio of hapless thieves are trapped in a Sporting Goods store. Which of course had tons of guns and rifles. In the end Kojack goes in without a gun and saves the day and gets them to surrender even though they had killed two cops. Dog Day afternoon with Shitzu's. In other words it was a big bag of bullshit.

But that was not what was wonderful about it. Like the mainstream media they got everything wrong. They set up the robbery as happening downtown near the Brooklyn Bridge. Kojack worked out of Manhattan South after all. But when the call comes through they give an address on Nostrand Avenue. Which is in Brooklyn. So this is written by some asshole who know nothing about New York. They obviously spent some money on location filming. They speed up and down blocks near the Seaport and the Bridge. South Street. Bridge Street. Past the entrance to the bridge. In old 1970's muscle cars. It was pretty funny. And ludicrous to the max. You can't have a high speed chase in the middle of the day in bumper to bumper traffic in downtown New York. It is just not believable. More so then than now because everybody and his sister double parked.

Anyhoo they eventually crash the car and run into the Sporting Goods Store. It is obviously the one on Nassau Street since the owner is an old Jewish dude with a Dr. Zorba haircut. I remember that store. I used to go there all the time. I would pick up stuff that we would use when we went camping. I just struck me  how different it is today. I would go in there and buy Coleman propane gas cannister and take it with me to school in Pace College. I would put it under my seat while I took an accounting class. Imagine doing that today? They would call Homeland Security and put you in Gitmo. But I thought nothing of it. I would come in with gas or an axe or a buck knife or a sleeping bag or whatever I had picked up there. Without a thought or a care in the world. Boy the world has changed.

It was just so interesting. How they were just off a bit. You see that store didn't have guns. Well check that. They had long guns. Rifles and shotguns. But no handguns. Even in those days they were very tough on guns. There was a gun store as I recall near Police Headquarters where the cops got their gats. But Models and Herman's Sporting Goods didn't stock Glocks if you know what I mean. Somebody who had no idea about New York wrote that episode.

Still I really enjoyed it. It was a blast from the past.

Of course the wife wakes up at the end. She says to me "I was in 2017 LA and then I wake up in 1970's New York. What the Hell is going on."

All I could say is "Who loves ya baby."