New York City has a reputation as a business capital. Mark J. Bitter, a guitar business executive, said in 2015:
“The family ownership decided to sell it, and the old saying is, ‘If you don’t have a business in New York, you don’t have any business being in New York.’”
“If you don’t have a business in New York, you don’t have any business being in New York” does not appear in other print citations, but possibly exists as an unwritten, informal adage. American author James M. Cain (1892-1977) once said something somewhat similar from a literary perspective:
“If you can’t write like New York, you have no business living in New York and making New York the locale of your stories.”
Tom Clark
SUNDAY, 17 MARCH 2013
James M. Cain: The Love Rack, The Hay Truck and The Tunnel of Love
(...)
James M. Cain on The Postman
CAIN
One personal reason for being pleased at being in California was that I couldn’t seem to write about New York. Those funny New York taxi drivers weren’t funny to me. I couldn’t manage the New York idiom. If you can’t write like New York, you have no business living in New York and making New York the locale of your stories. There would be a falsity to it. When I got out to California, I found the people there spoke my lingo. They use a little better grammar in California than they do in Maryland, but what was even better for me was the roughneck who uses fairly good grammar. I found by putting the story in his mouth it wasn’t so knobby and gnarled for the reader. It would kind of go along . . . easy reading. So, suddenly, out there in California I began writing in the local idiom. Everything broke for me.
The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
Charleston CEO gets in tune with his inner rock star
John McDermott @byjohnmcdermott
Sep 6 2015 8:00 am
Mark J. Bitter, a guitar business executive, shares a common bond with the golf commentator who can’t break 100.
(...)
“The family ownership decided to sell it, and the old saying is, ‘If you don’t have a business in New York, you don’t have any business being in New York,’” he said.
Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.
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Above, Big Apple Corner at 54th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Google Maps. Stolen and missing, 2021-2024.
Above, John J. Fitz Gerald, from the Aug. 15, 1931, Binghamton (NY) Press, pg. 14.
Listen to Robert Emmerich introduce "The Big Apple," a hit song from 1937. Music written by Bob and performed by Tommy Dorsey's Clambake Seven with Bob on piano. Lyrics written by Buddy Bernier and sung by Edythe Wright. Audio provided by Dorothy Emmerich.
Also listen to a 1937 "The Big Apple" song by Ozzie Nelson and his Orchestra. See a 1929 photo of John J. Fitz Gerald and a 1931 photo of John J. Fitz Gerald.
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