Today, as Stephanie was going to the city to hang out with her parents, and I was at home preparing for a clown gig at the Yonkers Public Library (part of the Andrus Yonkers' Children's Day), stephanie calls me, and says "NPR. 820. Listen now." and hung up the phone. I scrambled to turn the computer to 820 am (http://www.wnyc.org) and start listening in. At first I thought I missed it-- they were talking about Hoboken. Come to find out, they were doing a big compare and contrast of Yonkers and Hoboken, and cities that are near the city but still their own thing. They talked a lot about young couples homesteading and renovating old houses (HELLO, HERE WE ARE!) and also about Peter X. Kelley's X20 restaurant, which we described earlier in the blog at some point. One of the interesting things is that they said that downtown Yonkers (which is the fourth largest city in New York State, and the largest in Westchester, and a quarter mile or less from our house) doesn't have any commercial chains in the downtown. No Barnes and Noble, No Gap, no Home Depot, no Starbucks, no Staples, no Taco Bell, no nothing. All of Yonkers large chains are on the outside of Yonkers (on Route 100, or at the Cross-County Mall) Downtown is ripe for development. And when there is a place to buy a book in downtown Yonkers, that's when the government guys will know that they have achieved a level of success. Anyway, you can listen to all 12 minutes of the story courtesy of NPR: Yonkers on NPR And the end of the broadcast, they play Ella singing the "I'll take Manhattan" song, and there's a verse about Yonkers! (she was a Yonkerite! A Yonkersian. A Yonk. Let's face it.. Ella was yonked, man!) "We`ll go to Yonkers, Where true love conquers In the wilds And starve together, dear, in Childs" Looks like this blog has a new theme song!