A big white sight-seeing 'bus lurched around the corner into De Lacey Street, downtown New York. The 'bus was of the juggernaut type which, for some unknown reason, is in its idle hours allowed to monopolize the parking space along the traffic-jammed curbs of the Times Square section of the metropolis. With two or three fat ladies armed with tabloid newspapers—professional "'bus sitters"—planted in them for decoys, these elephantine joy wagons wait patiently until the leather-lunged barkers and mammoth sidewalk signs succeed in filling their leathern depths with gaping out-of-town visitors. Then they set forth on drab, jolty tours of Chinatown and rumble through the wilds of Brooklyn out to Coney Island, a jehu with a megaphone rasping out the points of interest.
The big white 'bus had been touring Chinatown and the moiling ant-like activity of the Bowery—dirty streets teeming with people of many nations, push carts, trucks, yelling children. Turning the corner into De Lacey Street was like passing into another world. For here, miraculously, was left a bit of the old New York. A clean, comparatively quiet street lined with the small meat shops, grocery stores, candy emporiums and notion salesrooms of solid Irish and German citizens. A single car track traced its way through the cobble stones.
