City Boy: Yorkville, My Hometown

"City Boy: Yorkville, My Hometown" is Thomas Pryor's love letter to street life in the 1960s working class neighborhood, Yorkville. Devil Dogs were a nickel, Spaldeens flew, and the capture game, Ringalario, let boys put their arms around girls for the first time. Nuns slugged you for humming baseball’s beer jingles in class. And, like other fathers, Tommy’s took him to saloons and no one thought it was strange. It's a bittersweet portrait of family and life that echoes TV’s “The Wonder Years”--just add in taverns, subways and Checker cabs. Pryor recounts our neighborhood history back to 1896 when his immigrant family arrive at 1403 Avenue A and begin burrowing into their unfamiliar warren.

Thomas Pryor's work has appeared in The New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and other periodicals. His memoir, “I Hate the Dallas Cowboys--tales of a scrappy New York boyhood,” was published in 2014 (YBK). Pryor’s blog: "Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts," was chosen by The NY Times for their Blog Roll in 2008.  Pryor's passion is preserving the history of Yorkville through storytelling, writing and photography. His play about the neighborhood, “City Boy,” is coming back.

Yorkville Library