New York 33

Listen to New York 33, a 72-year-old man from Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 72

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/03/1945

PLACE OF BIRTH: Canarsie, Brooklyn, New York City

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: retired banker

EDUCATION: high school and military

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

When the subject was 17, he joined the Navy. His basic training was in Pensacola, Florida, and he spent two and a half years assigned to the Philippines. When he was 21, he moved back to New York, where he has lived the vast majority of his life.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Both of the speaker’s parents were raised in Canarsie, Brooklyn, as was he. The subject lived in Canarsie until he was 10 years old, then Coney Island until he was 17. After four years in the Navy, he moved back to Coney Island, spent one year in south-central Brooklyn (Gravesend), then two years in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. He spent most of the rest of his career in various parts of Long Island, New York, including Brentwood (five years), East Rockaway (one and a half years), and Oceanside (28 years). At the time of this recording, he had been retired and living in Lakewood, New Jersey, for four years.

During his banking career, he learned to “code switch” to what he considered to be “business professional” speech.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Deric McNish

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 20/06/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I guess what impacted me: I was in the business world. I wore a suit; I was working in the international-banking world. Merrill-Lynch-Pierce-Fenner-and-Smith. Oh, it was wonderful, and the wire room where we would get orders from the different branches and send them on to the traders to buy and sell stock. Sit at a keyboard, teletype, days before internet, you communicated through telex, teletech, and that’s what we did. That was my capacity.

Canarsie back then was very nice town, uh, close to the water with, um, a lot of open areas, empty lots where kids would play constantly when we, when we just call it lots it just, it just was that: trees and grass where you hang out with the guys, go in there, and be away from, uh, home as much as you can. The worst thing that you would hear was your mother calling you, say, it’s time to come in. Today where kids stick their faces into, into a screen and, uh, don’t know how to communicate. I was, was always out with the guys and playing.

Oh, we hung out; we hung out a lot — he was four years older than me, and he was, uh, my big brother; he looked out for me, and we, we would do similar things together. That’s a whole group of — we didn’t, again, it’s multiple groups of kids, not gangs today; it was just — kids used to hang out together and enjoy life, enjoy the outdoor world.

My first car was a 1962 Thunderbird, powder blue, used ‘cause I bought it in sixty- sixty-eight, sixty-nine. It would be a woman magnet, but I was driving, so women didn’t necessarily come by, and they liked the car — they didn’t necessarily like me because, I, I wasn’t a ladies man. But, nonetheless, it was a nice car. It was very expensive. It was a Ford, which I learned, came to know as, F-O-R-D, “Fix Or Repair Daily,” especially when you get a, you know, a used one, and, uh, I lent it to my brother and he blew the transmission, and I had to get rid of it.

Those are very sad times. My parents’ fortunes, however limited they were, went down and we were dispossessed, thrown out onto the street with our furniture, and, uh, the welfare department said, “Ah, we’ll get this place in Coney Island. We’ll take you in.” And they put us into a two-room apartment with a shared bathroom.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jason Dernay (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 20/10/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

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