A touching, amusing, and engagingly unique Philadelphia story.
A collection of breezy, upbeat essays recall a man’s two years as a secret resident of Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium.
It began as a “distraction” to amuse Garvey’s friends during the Covid-19 isolation. An essay here, an essay there, until a cohort pointed out that he had written 40,000 words. It was time, the author decided, to turn this short story project into a full-fledged memoir about his adventures living in an unused concession booth under the slope of the 300-level seats in left field at the Vet. In the mid-1970s, Garvey was close to coming apart at the seams: “I was the person in my extended family dancing to music nobody else could hear.” He was a Vietnam War Special Forces veteran who had just finished college while working the night shift at Westinghouse. Now, mentally and emotionally exhausted, he became a part-time cashier supervisor for the parking lots at the Vet sports complex, working for his cousin. This led to his reluctantly agreeing to assume full management of the lots. The job brought with it a steady paycheck, an office in the stadium, and the key to a nondescript side-door entrance. In early October 1979, during the chaos of two major city and stadium events, he slept in the Vet’s temporary storage room he had arranged for a former Eagles tight end he befriended. In a bold move, Garvey rearranged the furniture, added some accoutrements, and settled in until the end of 1981. Team sports enthusiasts will especially enjoy the play-by-plays of Phillies and Eagles games and envy the friendships the author formed with some noted players. But readers need not recognize the names on the score card to become immersed in Garvey’s edgy, bad-boy irreverent, sometimes soulful prose. He describes nights sitting alone in the top row of the empty stadium: “Meditating at times like this, drove me inside myself to where my deepest meanings were.” Interspersed are grand exploits, such as his mind-bending, high-speed, roller-skating escapade around the Vet’s concrete circular loops, “alive with the night, reveling in one of the greatest views of The City of Brotherly Love that ever existed.”
A touching, amusing, and engagingly unique Philadelphia story.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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