7/31/20

Friday and Devin is so worried about his job. The economy is in trouble. Everything is changing....

“Lunch” “That's what I'd call my biography if I wrote it” is what I always say when I give my rap. 'cause I always had great lunches.... Starting with my first job at age 21. In Wall Street as an actuary trainee. I just got my math degree from a Philidelphia Main Line college. My courses were all theoritical math which isn't much good to an actuarial trainee, which is all statistics. I had caluclus & differential equations thru sophmore year. But then no statistics – no applied math. Statistics is the opposite of fancy Topology or Modern Algebra so it was an uphill battle preparing for the next acturallial exam while doing the computations of a retirement actuary for large companies. But lunch saved the day. Because for $5.00 you could have a prix-fixed lunch from around the corner of Johnson & Higgins at 63 Wall Street, a block away was Delmonico's. $5.00 got a well prepared 3 course lunch. NYC was a big step up from Philadelphia. And so Lunch became the theme of my work life. As I moved from Wall Street back and forth to Academia my work day was centered around lunch.

Mornings were spend contacting lunch-mates & planning the lunches. Near Wall Street we had, of course, Delmonico's & a few famous fish restaurants near the docks and the South Street Seaport Museum on the East River. And later around NYU you had the Village with 2 good restaurants on each block. Or walk to the East Village with trendy restaurants opening everyday and Polish Town on the East Side & you could walk to Chinatown with its 3500 restaurants.

So a quick timeline first to take you thru the neighborhoods where I ate lunch. Philly and college. Philly only had one good restaurant (Bookbinder's), except additionally, for Italian South Philly & its good food. Then the young grad in NYC (Wall Street) & then Long Island for grad school and back to the city to teach and after that, at age 30, 3 years in Ithica and then back to NYC & the Village (NYU).