Teaser Tuesday: Up in the Old Hotel

"A bossy, yellow-haired blonde named Mazie P. Gordon is a celebrity on the Bowery. In the nickel-a-drink saloons and in the all night restaurants which specialize in pig snouts and cabbage at a dime a platter, she is known by her first name."

Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell.

Mitchell's portrait of Mazie -- who owned a low-rent movie theater and ran the ticket window day in and day out for decades -- is one of many absorbing stories about the colorful characters he studied while working as a reporter for the New Yorker from the 1930s through the 1960s.

My friend Bob from the fabulous Art Scatter blog left this comment about Mitchell and this wonderful book:

This book is just great, great personal journalism, and it brings back the flavor of a New York that will never be again. Mitchell was a staff writer for The New Yorker who spent the last 20 years or so of his life going to the office faithfully every day -- the routine became a legend at the magazine -- but, after an extraordinarily prolific career, never wrote another word. He'd simply written himself out.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.