PORTFOLIO TWO:
PROSPECT HEIGHTS
It doesn't have to be a big thing that you do.
George's / The Usual, 637 Vanderbilt Avenue
I really like this place. Besides the fact that you see different people, you just hear people talking, joshing around. . . . It's a very mixed crowd in here, race, sex, age. You see people from all different backgrounds. You see cops come in here, you see Sanitation, you see park police, plumbers, accountants, politicians, and you hear people talking trash . . . it's funny! Mike gives the place its life, ’cause he'll talk to anybody and he'll talk crap with anybody!
Here in New York . . . America . . . you have this whole thing about being somebody and being somebody of a certain level, the doctor, the lawyer, the Wall Street whatever. . . . And you have people here who have a life, they run a luncheonette, and they make people happy, and they know they make people happy. They like it? They come back. They don't like it? They don't come back. It appeals to me very viscerally.
It makes me realize, yeah, you need some money, but you don't need to be chasing, just chasing a dollar to the exemption of everything else. And it doesn't have to be a big thing that you do . . .
I feel that they love it, and that makes me like it also. If I'm in a bad mood and I come in here, I walk out in a better mood. It's just the place. It's comfortable, you know?
At one of the first annual Conrad McRae basketball tournaments,
