Once a mainstay of the Tin Pan Alley music scene, Colony is now the last man standing, and it shows. The creaky drawers and scarred slide-top cases of CDs; rows of faded, autographed celebrity head-shots; and bins of retro concert posters are all hallmarks of a business that still has one foot squarely in the past. Just like back then, the mainstay of the store is sheet music; scores and fake books take up the majority of the space, covering everything from Broadway shows to be-bop. There are also racks of showtune/soundtrack CDs, contemporary rock and reggae albums, and boxed-sets of classic vocalists like Bing Crosby and Sinatra. If you can’t find what you’re looking for among the substantial inventory, take heart—the motto of the “musicologist” staff is, “You hum the tune, we tell you the title.” (text via NYMag)
I could probably live in this place. My kind of joint.
‘Best Game Ever’ Broadcast Found in Bing Crosby’s Wine Cellar
How a near pristine, black-and-white reel of the entire television broadcast of the deciding game of the 1960 World Series — long believed to be lost forever — came to rest in the dry and cool wine cellar of Bing Crosby’s home near San Francisco is not a mystery to those who knew him.
Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates he was too nervous to watch the Series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio.
“He said, ‘I can’t stay in the country,’ ” his widow, Kathryn Crosby, said. “ ‘I’ll jinx everybody.’ ”
He knew he would want to watch the game later — if his Pirates won — so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby’s home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9. It is considered one of the greatest games ever played.
Continue reading… NYTimes
