I’m not sure exactly when i clipped this out of a magazine—must be The New Yorker, though god knows how I ended up with a copy of that during the poverty years. It so perfectly encapsulates my desperate, ineffectual attempts at living my life that I stuck it on the wall of a half-dozen addresses. Chronic skin problems, an absolute shit diet, and a Travis Bickle diary entry that shows exactly what I was basing my hopes on: Publishers Clearing House.

De Robertis Pasticcheria and Pete's Spice around the corner from me on First. The pastry shop stood at this location for 110 years, closing in 2014; I loved the rum babàs and the sfogliatellas. I worked for three days selling bulk grain at Pete's Spice until I was told to go home and “practice my arithmetic.” I think the murals are by Arnie Charnick, who also did locally famous murals at Vselka's.

This old Ukranian place made the transition to the cleaned-up, high-rent contemporary East Village without breaking a sweat.

Stromboli's on the corner of First and St. Marks, my favorite pizza place. The sauce was a little sweet. I walked through a crowd of pot dealers on my corner every time I went to pick up my pepperoni, sausage, and black olive pie.

My first abode in NYC was at Third Avenue and 12th Street; Disco Donut was at the corner of Third and 14th. Remembered now as the place Travis took Iris in Taxi Driver, until it closed in '85 it was a decent and cheap restaurant that used to be on every other corner in downtown NYC. If my failing memory has any validity at all it was the first place I ever had "disco fries," New York's discount version of poutine.

I almost starved to death working for Campus Coach Lines. I told them weeks in advance that there was going to be a night I couldn't work—I had tickets for The Pretenders at the Palladium and Fran had come up from Cincinnati. I ended up having to leave the concert early and they still didn't give me another shift for weeks. I decided I knew the city well enough to get a taxi license, a ridiculously easy task to accomplish. The test was a joke; in addition, if you were sponsored by a fleet, you passed. I started working for Dover Cab in the West Village at Hudson and Charles. I began to wait around with the other drivers in a shape-up every night; after an hour or so I'd get my cab.