My Manhattan

Editor’s Note: The Chicago-born Mandy Patinkin is probably best known to fans of the small screen as the passionately arrogant physician Dr. Jeffrey Geiger on the CBS television drama "Chicago Hope." Prior to being cast on the Emmy Award-winning show, however, Patinkin had already made his distinctive mark in virtually every major sector of the entertainment field. He first captured theatrical notice playing opposite Patti LuPone in the 1979 Broadway megahit "Evita," for which he nabbed a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. He continued blazing a trail on the Great White Way in such Broadway hits as " Sunday in the Park with George," "Falsettos," and his own one-man show, "Mamaloshen." On the big screen, Patinkin’s credits include "The Princess Bride," which was directed by Rob Reiner; and "Yentl" with Barbra Streisand. Most recently, Patinkin has been delighting junior moviegoers as the evil ruler of Grouchland in "Elmo in Grouchland," which was released this past fall.

Patinkin has also performed in concert halls in New York, Canada and London, singing the songs of such composers as Stephen Sondheim, Rogers and Hammerstein, and Randy Newman. Currently, Patinkin can be seen in the Broadway musical "The Wild Party" at the Virginia Theatre.

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, but have lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan since 1972. I came to New York to go to the Juilliard School. I was living with about five other kids in this one apartment. About one month after I moved in, my mother decided to visit me. I knew she would freak out when she saw the place—toilet in the kitchen, cockroaches everywhere, you get the picture. Well, just before she came, I found a new roommate and a new apartment. When my mom arrived, I said, "Mom, I want you to see the new apartment before you see where I’m living now." We go over to the new place, and ring the doorbell about 20 times. Finally, the girl, Susan, who was living there, said from behind the closed door, " What do you want?" I said, "Susan, it’s me. I want to show my mother the new apartment." She says, "Oh, my God." She manages to open the door and there she is: Her hands are tied together with an electric cord, her feet are tied together with a necktie. A big German shepherd is on the floor asleep, and this guy, who looks like a typical Hell’s Angel—massive beard, dressed all in leather—is lying on the floor, also tied up in electric cords and neckties. She said, "Oh, my God, we were just robbed." My mother, who is standing there in her mink coat, her purse loaded with traveler’s checks, now decides to start untying the guy on the floor who is muttering every curse word imaginable. It soon becomes clear that the guy she is untying is a drug dealer. So now my mother decides to start lecturing this guy and is telling him, "Don’t you know drugs are no good for you? That’s how you got in this trouble in the first place." But the guy is just very concerned that the robber is going to come back which starts getting my mother very concerned and she suddenly wants to just go, and I am just very concerned that she gets to see the kitchen before we leave.

About two years later, I left Juilliard and realized I had better get a job as a waiter to have some kind of steady income. I walked into Fiorello’s across the street from Lincoln Center and the manager said, "We don’t need waiters, we need moussers." "What’s a mousser?" I asked. He explained what I had to do: "You have to stand on the island between Fiorello’s and Lincoln Center and pass out chocolate mousse and say, ‘Stop by and have a nice Italian meal at Fiorello’s.’"

And so I started the job. I walked out to the island in the pouring rain with my mousses and two little old ladies who saw me walked inside and started screaming to the manager, "How dare you have these young people stand outside in the pouring rain!" The manager wound up calling me back in and said, "Well, we also need a busboy—have you ever bussed?" I said, "No problem." I figured I would just pretend I was foreign and didn’t speak any English so that they wouldn’t keep asking me to get the waiter.

The next day, though, I was back to moussing and decided it was so humiliating that I would rent a Bullwinkle the Moose costume to hide in. The owner actually loved the idea, and a television newscaster was going to come film it: I was all ready to do it, when a friend of mine called me up from the Baltimore Center Stage Children’s Touring Theatre with a job. So that was the end of my moussing career.

I love going to Fiorello’s though; that’s my sort of place. I am pretty much anchored on the Upper West Side between 71st and 90th streets. When I met my wife she lived in the village, at Carmine and Bedford, and I told her I didn’t know where that was. I dragged her uptown but she still wants to go back to the Village.

I love the restaurants around here. One of my favorites is Docks on 90th Street. And Barney Greengrass—I’ve had a charge account there for as long as I can remember. There is only one charge account you need in New York City and that is for Barney Greengrass. The son of Barney is one of the greatest card magicians in New York and I never go in there without asking him to please do some magic tricks for our guests. My kids love it more than anything: the best nova, bagels and atmosphere around. The other places we live at, restaurantwise, are Ollie’s and Ruby Foo’s. We also go to Boulevard when they have "pig-out night." Domino’s on Columbus Avenue has great thin-crust pizza. We all love Thai food, too, and there are Thai restaurants all over the Upper West Side. And of course, as typical New Yorkers, we also tend to order in a lot.

Amsterdam Billiards is a great place for me to take my sons Gideon and Isaac. My kids are also movie addicts: For movie theatres, our favorites are the theatres at 84th Street and the Sony Theatre at 68th Street—the chairs are so comfortable and it is so luxurious in there. Until they were 13 years old, my wife also took our sons to every museum in New York City about 100,000 times each, except for the American Museum of Natural History: She took them there about a million times.

If we are lucky enough to get tickets to a Knicks game, we’ll do that. But my wife and I also just like walking the dogs and being with the kids. We also all have bikes and are major bike riders all over Central Park.

What I have discovered as a transplanted New Yorker is that this is a city of the friendliest people I have ever met. New Yorkers bump into each other constantly, as opposed to other cities where people live in their cars and you never meet other human beings. You are constantly face-to-face with humanity here, which is why it is the best melting pot in the world.

I also realize how incredible this city is from my children’s perspective. When kids live in the suburbs, they are dependent on adults for transportation. In this town, when kids become 11 or 12, they are completely independent. Their bikes can take them anywhere. As a result, there is a tremendous sophistication that New York kids have because they are not isolated and live with all kinds of humanity. We walk down the street and we never pass a homeless person without our kids insisting we give them something. My wife saw this young boy helping an old man into a taxi recently, and after a few moments she realized that the boy helping the old man was our son.

At one point when our kids were younger, we talked to them about moving to Connecticut or New Jersey. They said, "What are you talking about?" And we said, "Well, we would all have lots more space, it might be nicer for you." And they said incredulously, "You mean leave New York?" That’s when I realized how incredible this place is for them—and for us.