There are photos taken from across the street where I grew up, on the roof of the old 17 East 96th Street, and from my roof at 50 East, of two different U.S. presidents, FDR and Reagan, driving west in their motorcades. On Park Avenue one block away, when W was in town, they'd have to seal all the mailboxes shut so that no one would place an IED in one and blow him up. Clinton used to raise money down the street toward the park--as does Obama now--in a townhouse around the corner from a co-op on 97th and Fifth where Sidney Poitier got rejected by the mostly white co-op board because he was black. Clinton's Secret Service men would buy slices of pizza in the Greek-run restaurant below my apartment. They got hungry, just like anyone else would.

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