Bruce Apar’s Blog

I survived The Sixties, including a trip to the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the fin de decennie happening at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York, that became a cultural totem 40 years ago this August, half-a-million backsides stuck in mud and loving it. (Those “three days of peace and music” August 15-17, aka “An Aquarian Exposition,” seem to have lost a measure of mystique and luster since the fin de siecle, not unlike John F. Kennedy’s presidential legacy, which loses loft, it seems, with each successive generation. The Woodstock anniversary approaches more with fizzle than fireworks.)

Surviving the decade of The Sixties is a simple, unremarkable fact, yet yokels like me wear it as if a badge of honor. My excuse: You just had to be there to understand why a large cohort of Baby Boomers who lived through that decade will always deem it complicated and remarkable.

In less than a year from now, I’ll embark on another 60s adventure. This time, though, I’m not in mere survival mode. That’s too simple and unremarkable. I won’t accept anything less than thriving in my 60s.

So far, so good. For starters, this is one of those rare years I actually kept my Number One New Year’s resolution, triptych-style: Lose weight. Get fit. Stay healthy.

Since we sang auld lang syne to usher in ‘09, I shed 20 pounds (with 15-20 more to go) by shedding virtually all the starch and sugar foods I crave, along with shedding my aversion to inhabiting the gym to pump iron as well as heart muscle.

It occurs to me only at this very instant of writing that possibly the added motivation that made all the difference in my newfound regimen and outlook is a subsconscious wake-up call reminding me this is the last year I’ll ever know as a fiftysomething. (“Countdown to 60!” Read the blog, coming soon to a screen near, or on, you.)

With my own Age of 60s looming like a cumulo-nimbus cloud, the Age of 50s by contrast takes on a rather fluffy, cirrusy feel. Born in the ‘50s, through force of will, I seek a destiny to be born again, even as I exit the Age of 50s.

Call it auto-hypnosis (my euphemism for self-delusion), but from where I sit up these days, it’s forgivable, if not downright mandatory, to think of sixty as sexy, if only because the alternative is so deflating, it’s enough to make me not only sad, but sag.

American architect Louis Sullivan really was on to something in his versified credo published in 1896 that culminated with, “That form ever follows function. This is the law.” Not only does the human form benefit from the functional discipline imposed on it through a fitness regimen; so does mental form benefit: Energy, focus and clarity come to the fore from head to toe.

Besides, you know what they say: 60 is the new 50 (they don’t say that? well, if you have any respect — and empathy — for elders, you’ll humor me here). My fervent hope is that in the next 10 months, advances in health care and medical research will mean that by my next birthday, 60 will be the new 49 – dare I hope for 48?

Just call me the curious case of Bruce Button. Yeah, baby! With any luck, by the time I’m 69, that’ll be the new 19. Just in time for me to attend the 50th Anniversary Commemorative Concert of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. Maybe this time, they’ll have chairs. Rockin’ chairs.

He rocks in the tree-top all a day long
Hoppin’ and a-boppin’ and a-singin’ the song
All the little birds on J-Bird St.
Love to hear the robin goin’ tweet tweet tweet

[Chorus]
Rockin’ robin (tweet tweet tweet)
Rockin’ robin (tweet tweet tweet)
Oh rockin’ robin well you really gonna rock tonight

Little did Bobby Day realize back in the day when he sang those lyrics by Jimmie Thomas and Leon Rene that “tweet tweet tweet” would come rockin’ back full force a half-century later in the form of digital craze du jour Twitter, where each 140-character- maximum message is called a “tweet.”

Microblogging web tool Twitter has six million registered users, a population projected to triple in 2010. Another moldy oldie that comes to mind Twitterwise is Eric Burdon and The Animals’ “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”

Those not in the know presume Twitter is just about people who are voyeurs, exhibitionists, egotists, or all the above, wiling away their time to let their “followers” know every move they make, every breath they take.

As with many technologies through the years, initial applications that quickly generate a wide base of users end up bearing little resemblance to productive and innovative uses that evolve. Suffice it to say we’ve come a long way since X-rated movies helped sell quite a few (million) VCRs in the 1980s. So it is with Twitter. Don’t judge it by such profound communiques as “@Rockinrobin is tweeting a tweet on Twitter. TTFN.”

Rather, Twitter has been used to make a marriage proposal, to “textualize” the kicking of an unborn baby, to send back a Martian message about “water ice,” to break the news of a plane crash and an earthquake, to make a job offer, and to possibly prevent a suicide, for which actress Demi Moore is credited. Those are courtesy of Ben Parr’s “10 Most Extraordinary Twitter Updates” on Mashable.com.

Here at North County News online community, NCNLocal, we’ve added a Twitter “badge” to our homepage. Our Sports Editor Isaac Cass is a pioneer in using Twitter to transmit by-the-basket play-by-play highschool game updates, fed to our website for anyone to view. We’re also using Twitter to post teasers at NCNLocal of what’s coming in the next issue. If you’re on Twitter, we welcome your tweets about what is happening in your life or in your neighborhood, and may use your tweet in the paper or online if it is of interest to enough others in our audience.

And yet … and yet … whither the devaluation of our cultural currency? American Idol. Sarah Boyle. Need I say more. No one denies some of these people are talented, but there is no proportion to the praise. It’s indiscriminate.

The answer is evident: people who entomb themselves in an electronic womb don’t get out much anymore, so what may be by sensible standards “talented” is distorted in the digital domain to a dumbed-up, trumped-up “genius.” If you spot any geniuses on “American Idol,” Twitter me so I can titter back at ya.

Where our frame of reference once was the 360-degree dimensions of everyday life’s length, width, and depth, it increasingly is measured in the two dimensions of diagonal inches and video resolution. Our thirst for instant gratification and addiction to mainlining digital streams has exacted more than a pound of flesh.

“We had faces then,” says Gloria Swanson as faded star Norma Desmond in iconic Hollywood classic “Sunset Boulevard.”

Now, we have screens.

Politicians like to press the flesh, slang for shaking hands, and perhaps applicable as well for back slapping (as opposed to back stabbing, an occupational hazard of political life). I make reference to press-fleshing in my Talking Points column in this week’s print edition of North County News (Feb. 18, page 8).

There’s another kind of press that politicians do, otherwise known as media, like us.  At this past week’s annual meeting of the Association of Towns of New York State, I participated in a panel presentation titled, “Getting the Word Out — A Primer on Public Relations for the Municipal Official.” A more apt title would have substituted “Press” for “Public,” but then again, I never met a sentence I didn’t feel obliged to edit.

The session was arranged by a trade association named Free Community Papers of New York, of which our parent company Chase Media Group’s president, Carla Chase, is the current president, in her role as publisher of Yorktown PennySaver, this newspaper’s sister periodical.

As with most conferences, there were concurrent tracks of seminars, with track titles such as Supervisors and Town Boards, Fiscal and Personnel Management, and Basic Planning and Zoning, as well as tracks dedicated to positions such as Town Clerks, Justices and Tax Receivers and Collectors.

With 16 tracks to choose from, and ours categorized under Topics of General Interest, we weren’t sure how many of the nearly 100 seats in the New York Hilton meeting room assigned to us would be filled. To our gratified surprise, it turned out to be a very popular, standing-room-only session. Among the attendees was Putnam Valley Supervisor Bob Tendy.  I also bumped into Cortlandt Town Board member Ann Lindau in the corridor, but she was on her way to a panel on Energy Efficiency and Your Town.

Tag teaming with Dan Alexander, owner of a chain of upstate New York and Vermont newsweeklies, I offered some “Inside Baseball” anecdotes about how newspapers work and the best way for those in the audience to work with them.

The 50 minutes flew by. One recommendation I never got around to making is not to send emails with all the information contained in an attachment and no clue about the contents emdedded in an email. It’s discouraging how many communications professionals don’t make effective use of emails. Media workers receive a hefty volume of emails every day. Requiring the recipient to open an attachment in each email to discover what it’s about is neither a friendly nor effective way to get your message read and acted on. All it takes is embedding a synopsis of the attachment, or copying-and-pasting the headline and first graph, into the body of the email.

During the Q-and-A period, the elected officials in the room expressed emphatic concern — and in a couple of cases outright disgust — with newspapers that not only tolerate but enable anonymous blogs, where the posters are nasty as you please and hurl epithets and personal attacks at their targets. Such blogs are the refuge of recluses who don’t have the nerve to identify themselves.  I agreed such media organizations are to be criticized for leaving up that ilk of post when made aware of it.

My advice to those complaining about the nasties was to ignore them, because part of the nameless nobodies’ endgame is to bait people. Not responding to the lunatic fringe helps keep them where they belong — in the margins of society, where they can do the least harm.

It was not quite like anything I remember seeing at a wake. As I was about to take leave of the afternoon viewing of Yorktown college sophomore Laura Treanor at Clark Funeral Home on Route 202 in Yorktown Heights on Wednesday,  Jan. 28, the attention of mourners was directed to a lectern that had just been placed at the front of the room by the funeral director. He then introduced Dr. Francisco Montano as Laura’s doctor.

The good doctor, who is a pediatrician with specialties in allergy and immunology, said he has known the Treanor family for 20 years, harking back to when both he and they resided in The Bronx. He had known Laura since she was days old.  The physician spoke very softly, in an accent born in South America, saying he always had a special affection for the family, in no small part because they are “very caring.”

Perhaps employing some hyperbole, he said that because of all the crying Laura did when she was being inoculated as a five-year-old, it warned off patients in his waiting room and ultimately “decimated my practice.”

Then, “I left The Bronx, moving here, and some part of me was left behind, including the Treanor family. My heart beat faster when I saw the Treanor family in Yorktown.”

He spoke of how, “coming from a good family,” he knew Laura “was going to be a good kid.” That is an understatement. As anyone who knew her will attest, she turned out to be good as gold.

“As she grew,” he continued, “she became more mature. We had good conversations and I saw her writing good things” in local newspapers, including North County News.

Most poignantly, he talked about how he prescribed paternalistic advice to the Laura who was headed to college about what she should know about living independently of her family in the rarefied air of campus life. Dr. Montano said he had a good feeling when he left the room because he knew Mr. & Mrs. Treanor would back up his solicitous concern and follow through in supporting Laura’s adjustment to a new existence.

He then addressed remarks to Laura’s siblings Kevin, a college freshman, and Margaret, on the verge of teenhood. “This is a very difficult time in your life. I’m still your pediatrician.” He added that while he’s on call all this week, they should not hesitate contacting him if so moved.

Turning to their parents, he said, “I’m not your doctor. I know you’re going to keep an eye on your children. Please let me help you.

“Laura was really a great person., with all the things she did around the community. At the university, she wrote a series of articles,” including a piece on the war in Iraq that the doctor found enlightening and erudite.

He went on to say how happy she was, being part of a religious Catholic family, to have seen the Pope when he visited Washington, D.C., where she attended George Washington University.

“I think it might help the family to think about all the good things she did, but it’s not going to be easy. I want to give the Treanor family all the articles she wrote at college. Whenever you feel you want to look at them, it’s one way of keeping in touch with someone you love so much.”

When I paid my respects to Laura’s parents, her father, Patrick, knowing we too belonged to the world’s most exclusive club nobody wants to join — parents losing children –  asked, “Does it get easier?”

It’s a rite-of-passage question every parent newly cursed by the affliction feels compelled to ask. I hesitated, not wanting to be a messenger of discouragement to people who already had more to bear than any parent deserves, but also not wanting to be insincere in saying things will be fine down the road. Such a bottomless, endless loss never becomes acceptable. It never should.

“You just have to live with it,” was all the unhelpful counsel I could offer these parents of three children who now confront the horror of knowing they’ll never again be able to touch or talk to one of them.

“The healthcare delivery system is a disaster.” That’s the raw assessment of Joel Seligman, CEO of Northern Westchester Hospital, the newly expansive institution in Mt. Kisco blazing paths on several fronts, especially patient-centered care.
I spent a fascinating 90 minutes with the affable and enthused administrator last week in his office, where he detailed a host of initiatives under way at his institution to constantly improve healthcare delivery.
Stacked against a wall were poster-size renderings and schematics of new and improved spaces and services being built out at the medical center.
Under the umbrella of its Cancer Treatment & Wellness Center, recently opened on campus are The Women’s Imaging Center for breast imaging, The Laurie Bass Sklaver Infusion Center for state-of-the-art chemotherapy, and The Breast Institute at NWH, committed to care for “health and emotional well-being.” (For a video tour of these areas, see the NCN-TV button on homepage of NCNLocal.com).
The next centerpiece of construction is the Emergency Room, which already has undergone a dramatic transformation in terms of patient satisfaction. Seligman said its rating in that category has taken a quantum leap from being the lowest in the hospital (about 70% satisfaction) to one of the highest (in the high 90s). One result of involving stakeholders like the Yorktown Volunteer Ambulance Corps in the evaluation process is a new room off the ER entrance that EMS workers use to write reports and perform other tasks.
With the expansion starting in February 2009, the new ER is scheduled to be completed in late 2010, with 25 private rooms and lounge areas for family members. Special considerations include rapid treatment, pediatrics, psychiatric services and the elderly.
The current ER handles almost 30,000 visits annually, with the future unit, with 2-1/2 times the square footage (15,000 compared with current 6,000) able to accommodate 40,000 visits a year.
Seligman and staff are particularly proud of NWH’s being only one of five Designated Planetree Patient-Centered Hospitals in the U.S. and 150 in the world. The program is named for “the tree that Hippocrates sat under to teach the very first medical students in ancient Greece,” according to the Planetree website (planetree.org).
Some noteworthy examples of the program include trained therapy dogs that climb into beds with patients, including one in labor who requested the canine companion and an impromptu patient wedding ceremony assisted by the medical staff, which is encouraged to improvise to be more responsive to patients.
The hospital has taken to describing these as “Planetree moments.” It is all about “Putting the patient in charge,” said Seligman, and collecting a catalog of best practices that become standard operating procedure for the hospital. “Patients like coming here for their treatment,” he added.
Another new wrinkle on the way is “room service” meals that can be ordered by patients at individual times rather than delivered at times preset by the hospital.
The CEO clearly was proud of the sophisticated IT infrastructure used by the NWH, dubbed MediTech, which is part of the Stolaris Network, named for the parent company that also owns White Plains, Lawrence and Phelps hospitals.
It is a order entry system built for “the most advanced patient safety” by totally controlling dosages administered to patients through bedside medication verification. It prevents prescriptions being given to the wrong patient or mistaken dosages that can prove dangerous.
The medications are dispensed in single-dose packages and barcoded so they can be “wanded,” along with the patient’s wristband, to verify it is the exact right dose at the right time for the right patient.
All of this is a testament to the hospital’s rising star under the expert supervision of CEO Joel Seligman.

It’s a stretch to compare a mugger with the type of able-bodied motorist who thinks nothing of pulling into a parking space clearly designated only for drivers with disabled parking permits. Or is it?

Muggers and disabled-permit violators share some obvious traits: 1) desperate; 2) morally bankrupt; 3) crazy lazy; 4) weak in thought and deed; 5) insensitive; 6) self-absorbed; 7) disregard the law; need counseling; 9) need to perform community service; 10) need to gratify themselves through illegitimate actions.

It’s somehow satisfying that I keep encountering more people who, like me, are repelled by parking space muggers and some even will mouthe off to the violators. It would be a better world in this particular way if more people called out the non-diasbled who selfishly plant their vehicles — even if for a minute — in a spot they don’t need.

I’m not advocating that anybody put themselves in harm’s way by poking a finger in the chest of a lineman-size driver who emerges from a car misparked in a handicap spot. But those of us who don’t let people like that get away with their shenaningns find various ways to duly shame the culprits into at least perhaps thinking twice about making the same move next time:

1) “Boy, you sure move around well for somebody who needs to park in a disabled spot.”

2) “Hey, can you tell me where I go to get one of those parking permits that I don’t need either.”

3) Pull up in back of the person’s car and say, “I’ll be out of your way in a minute. I just need to write down your plate number to give to the police.”

4) “Can you sign a petition for the town to add disabled parking spots since they seem to be in short supply thanks to people like you who abuse them?”

5) “Excuse me, you might know the answer to my question: How much is the fine when you get a summons for illegally parking in a handicapped space?”

6) But the most appropriate salutation with which to greet these jokers is: “Be thankful you don’t qualify for a handicap permit.”

I was sitting with some people the other night talking about just this phenomenon — or outrage — and sure enough a couple days later witnessed a very healthy-walking middle-age woman exit Circuit City in Cortlandt and get in to her luxury car parked alongside the entrance in a handicap spot.

I didn’t bother to check if she had a permit, but even that is not proof of need. It’s not only non-permit-holders who slink their way in to the spots that need to be chastised publicly; it’s people who use a family member’s permit to cop a space they don’t need. Look around you: gee, you think society at large needs more excuses not to get routine exercise like walking a few more steps from a space that’s not right next to a store entrance?

They also could hold a Lazy Persons Convention in the parking lot of the Yorktown Post Office, where it’s not unusual to see people who get around with no problem at all pull into the handicap spot. Who can blame them, with the next available space at least five or six feet to the left. It’s an obvious hardship to have to trudge on hard pavement for that distance, especially when the weather is 60 degrees and sunny.

I’ve been known to heatedly double back towards the car, point emphatically to the handicap sign and shout, “Where’s your permit?!” Some people sheepishly look at you and drive away. Some understandably get defensive and respond as if they are in the right and you are wrong.

“Who are you?” the perpetrator might ask. “Oh,” I muse, “just some crazy person who thinks disabled spaces actually are meant only for those who truly need them to compensate for a compromised quality of life. I don’t know what got into me. Please don’t report me to the authorities.” Usually, they don’t.

Nostalgia is over-rated. Baby boomers riding off into the sunset years can be big babies, period. Sure, we can reminisce about how great it was when we’d sneak a transistor radio earphone (one earpiece, please, stereo sound and Walkmans didn’t exist) in class to listen to day games of the World Series.

That’s fun to talk about now, but there’s no question World Series games played in prime time at night are more theatrical. They also, not so coincidentally, generate a lot more revenue for team owners and players and Major League Baseball and TV networks. Gordon Gekko was right — greed is good!

But wait a minute. Not so fast. The current edition of the fall classic is fighting the elements as much as the American and National leagues’ champions are fighting each other. As if it’s not bad enough that the same greed that has given us an all-night-game Series since who-remembers-when-without-stopping-to-Google-the answer also has given us a World Series that turned the sublime balmy weather of autumn into the absurd nickname earned by Derek Jeter — Mr. November! — now we have a series that is seemingly endless after only four games and has substituted a meteorologist for an umpire.

Why is it that football games are played under any conditions while the national pastime turns tail at the sight of a few frozen drops of rain or just heavy rain? I’ll pass along the answer as soon as Commissioner Bud Selig returns my text message.

In the meantime, I’m sort of long in the tooth — if you don’t remember Yankee 1B Moose Skowron and 2B Bobby Richardson and 3B Andy Carey and pitchers Ryne Duren or Bob Turley, trust that I’m older than you — and I gotta say that the closure of this WS was the weirdest and most anti-climactic I’ve ever seen.

Among other things, it’s not every day that the deciding game of the World Series lasts less than three innings. Technically, it was 8-1/2 innngs, spanning three nights mind you, but it seemed like two mini-games and the audience got seriously short-changed on the back end.

Just keep extending that postseason, Commissioner Selig, and pretty soon, the Series will be played during the NFL playoffs and take about a month to finish, with time off for bad weather. Good going!

Okay, so impeach me, because that admittedly is a trick headline.

Let me explain. 7-Eleven is where I buy my coffee on the way to work.
There is a variety of brews that are hot and fresh and flavorful, it’s fast in-and-out, owner Ahmed Bash is always a friendly and talkative host, and you’re bound to see somewhere you know. What more do you need.

When I saw the red McCain and blue Obama cups that 7-Eleven hauled out to capitalize on election season, my guess was they weren’t popular with customers. Would a worker want to advertise a Presidential preference in front of the boss, who might be rooting for the other guy (or gal)? Shows how much (or little) I know.

Bash told me the cups are selling very well. At the convenience-store chain nationwide, he reported, Obama cups outsell McCain cups 60%-40%.

In Yorktown, though, McCain’s not so down in his cups: they runneth over Obama’s by about a 5% margin.

A couple miles up the road, as the crow flies, the students at Yorktown High School voted in a mock election that gave Obama a landslide margin of 66.8%, or 656 votes out of a total of 982 students and faculty polled by The Voice, the school’s award-winning paper (that is printed by our sister company, Chase Press).

The paper did a great job of breaking down the vote by grade and by class according to teacher. Sophomores gave Obama the smallest percentage, at 63.7%, while Staff ballots gave him the widest gap, at 72.7%.

One teacher’s classes nearly split the vote, with Obama garnering 60 votes to McCain’s 57, while in another teacher’s classes, McCain attraccted only 10 votes out of a total of 70.

Most surprising, considering the sky-high profile of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the paper did not break out votes by gender.

I’ve heard a few mutterings lately about the proliferation of fundraisers in our area that take the form of golf tournaments. (Full disclosure: my family’s own Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation contributes to the glut with its annual Columbus Day Golf Classic, this year (Oct. 13) at Mohansic Golf Course).

In this year’s economy, attendance at some of the tournaments is down even as entry fees continue to climb, a function of how much the course or club is charging the charity and how much profit the charity wants to clear on each player.

One of the best run tournaments I’ve been to is the DeVito Foundation’s annual event, just held at The Canyon Club in Armonk on Sept. 18. Anthony DeVito and brother John do a splendid and classy job, and it shows in the turnout of 110 golfers, including Yorktown Supervisor Don Peters, County Legislator Michael Kaplowitz, Yorktown’s unofficial lawyer laureate and past Supervisor Al Cappellini, restaurateur Dave Paganelli, Atlantic Appliance proprietor Rich Leahy, Yortown Planning Dept. head John Tegeder, Planning Commission chair Dave Klaus, Outback Steakhouse exec Ron Duckstein, NetbizCom exec Tom Jacobs, Club Fit’s Bill Beck and James Stropoli, and more.

It was a gorgeous day to be out on the links and the Canyon course is no walk in the park, but a lot of fun nonetheless.

(To Be Continued)

We all know about the economy, if for no other reason than the so-called Mainstream Media keeps telling us how grim it is, with occasional lapses into irrational optimism, or so it would seem. (For the record, North County News is not Mainstream Media. Main Street Media is more like it.)

Make no mistake. There are businesses around here that are suffering right now, and we hope they get relief as soon as possible.

At the same time, others are opening businesses. Our Business Beat section in the North County News issue of September 10 reports on newly opened Peekskill Brewery. It’s always encouraging to see local commerce reinvent itself, and not just because it supports the structural integrity of the tax base. even if it is one enterprise at a time. In Yorktown, there are several examples, we’re pleased to report.

At Yorktown’s monthly Chamber of Commerce networking mixer on Monday, September 8, expansively hosted by Roxanne Innerfield of Joe Visconti of RGI Properties, with barbecue catered lip-smackingly by Colonial Terrace, John Chiazzese was introduced as a new Chamber member. He’s just opened Throggs Neck Jewelers in Underhill Plaza, home of Chamber members like Party Celebrations, Mimi’s, Country Florist and State Farm Insurance. John and family’s flagship location is on Tremont Avenue in The Bronx, and many locals are devoted customers of his brother Rosario’s barbershop in The Triangle.

Up the road from Chase Media Group headquarters on Front Street is another retail arrival, aptly named Up Front, A Clothing Boutique for Men & Women. On Commerce Street in the strip mall across from that omnipresent coffee chain is Southside Inn, a tavern and eatery at the former site of Coachlight Inn. We expect to report on its opening very soon.

Another place starting to cause a buzz is Miracles Bar & Grill in Brookside Park on Kear Street. It is situated just below Murphy’s Restaurant (on Route 118), and a stone’s throw in the other direction from Finnegan’s, both of which have developed very loyal followings, particularly among the younger crowd. Around the corner on Underhill is The Heights, a popular bistro for those who prefer the quieter, more leisurely taste of nouvele cuisine.

A recent evening en route home from our Front Street offices, I noticed that Miracles was fully lit inside, the first time I glimpsed its furnishings, so I pulled in the parking lot and moseyed over to the entrance, which faces the rear of the parking lot, looking toward Underhill Avenue.

Inside was a handsomely well-done, blonde-wood decor and two guys who are rarin’ to go: Miracles proprietors Jimmy Bobolakis, owner of Brookside Park, the commercial building that houses the restaurant, and Nick Halampalakis, the 32-year-old managing partner raised by a family of chefs, and who attended the famed Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park.

Projecting a smart ambience that’s at once classy, cool and casual, Miracles fills the two spaces once inhabited by Italian gourmet deli A Taste of Italy and Maria’s Restaurant, which for a very short time after closing turned into Viansa Restaurant. Both spaces have been vacant for an extended period, but sometime in October, Miracles should be open for business, according to the two partners. Once their liquor license is in hand, they will seek town board approval of a cabaret license for live music performances. We can’t imagine why the town board would not approve it. Both Murphy’s and The Heights on occasion offer live music, and Yorktown still has a long way to go to emulate the rich cultural offerings of nearby music mecca Peekskill.

Nick, whose affable, enthusiastic personality is well suited to working the front of the house, as he intends to do, describes his menu as more upscale than comparable establishments, but also reasonably priced, with a range of entrees anywhere from $13, say for a salad, to $60, for a surf-and-turf of filet mignon and lobster tail.

He and his partner Jimmy emphasize all provisions will be purchased and delivered daily to the kitchen, which is impressively spacious and, to my eye, state-of-the-art. A see-through portal in the main dining area will afford patrons full view of food preparation in the kitchen.

Upon entering the 175-seat restaurant, there is a bar and booths, with a flat screen TV perched above what seemed like every booth. There also are giant screens above the bar and in the main dining room.

The partners are aiming for a somewhat different mix of customers than frequent the neighboring tavern restaurants, noting their concept is to recreate the good-time dining-and-music milieu popularized in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Let the kids have their hangouts, they seem to be saying. Miracles is aiming for a client base that skews older, populated by mature adults and families. In the evenings when music is scheduled, Nick says he hopes to keep the kitchen open until 11:00 p.m.

If it sounds like he and Jimmy are trying to import a Manhattanesque night-out to the North County, at suburban prices, I say, bring it on! It’s about time. I’m there. And I know a lot of others who will be too.