"Downtown Paterson is a nostalgic
picture book with a few things to say . . .

Affectionate and nostalgic treatment generally characterizes Arcadia Publishing's Images of America, a series of largely pictures-with-captions books on U.S. towns and cities, usually compiled by local writers and historians. Both elements are present in 'Downtown Paterson,' edited by journalist/poet June Avignone, and collaborators, but there are somber hues in the picture of the 'Old Silk City' that emerges."

 ~William Gordon, Newark Star Ledger

Plato of Polyester Dares to Inquire
First-rate vaudeville lives on in the revealing parodies of Paterson native Floyd Vivino, star of the Uncle Floyd Show. The television and nightclub clown is shown here expounding upon his hypothesis of how more than anything the Almighty Air-Conditioner changed urban America at a crucial time in history. In the old days, the theory goes, city folks would hang out on their front stoops, then they went inside to keep cool and just watch the boobtube. Growing up in my old neighborhood on Sherman Avenue men might be playing cards on hot nights at Cesare Battisti's or Joe Vocatura, a shoemaker who had a club," recalls Uncle Floyd. "One guy outside might say, 'Hey kid, here's a quarter, go get a soda or a lemon ice, bring me back one.'" Then, in the 1960's, came those chilling ads in papers like the Paterson News with the big letters AIR-CONDITIONING, dripping with cartoon icicles and the movie's name underneath it in small letters. "The movie wasn't the thing anymore, staying inside, off the streets, that's what mattered," says this Plato of Polyester, "More people these days are watching the world, not living it, knowing it." So there, you have it folks: Air-conditioning and Isolation. Perfect together?
(Photo: Jennifer Brown, Courtesy North Jersey Herald&News.)

© 1999 June Avignone
Last modified December 12, 1999

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