"I'm talking now of Times Square, in the heart of the Fifties, my Times Square, shimmying in all its gaudy glory, where first I made my mark on this world. The Times Square of pinball palaces and shady dance clubs, of the grand old Sheraton-Astor and the fleabag junky haunts what surrounded it, of the Broadway theaters where never I set foot and the Roxy Burlesque, with its second-rate strippers playing to a third rate crowd, where certainly I did. I'm talking of knife fights over college girls at the White Rose, of hot dogs at Nedick's, of high stakes pool at Ames Billiards, of the neon marketplace with its counterfeit suits and chest expanders, its little brown bottles of Spanish Fly. High heels and low brims, angry taunts and pearl-handled switchblades, jazz fiends looking for green, Benzedrine addicts looking for God, humped yellow taxis and Motogram headlines and politicians strutting and whores strumpeting and Satchmo trumpeting. Fleas pulling chariots, three headed cows, rubberneckers and pickpockets, street corner preachers, married suburban men looking for orgies and finding them, oh yes, with bad boys in tight tight jeans. Charlie Parker is blowing wild and incomprehensible at Birdland, Dizzy is blowing up them cheeks at the Onyx. The Criterion is showing The Desperate Hours, the Lyric is showing Killer’s Kiss. The PepsiCola sign, the Canadian Club sign, the Admiral Television sign, the Hit Parade Cigarette sign with its slogan, "The Tobacco, the Tip, and the Taste!" Call for Phillip Morris. The Warner is showing "Search for Paradise,” and missy, let me tell you, I emerged from that tunnel motherless and broke, with nothing to go back to but loss and nothing to go forward to but a forlorn hope, and I found my paradise, right there, in Times Square." - MITE