Nose Man (1975); Gotham Center's revised "Big Apple" FAQ

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

NOSE MAN

   Fred Shapiro tackled my "nose"--with the full text NEW YORK TIMES!  That's the last place I would have looked, simply because I assumed that OED had already looked there!

   3 November 1975, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, "Houston gives 'em Bum's rush," pg. 62, col. 3:
   Culp became the nose man of Phillips' three-man front, which includes Defensive Ends Tody Smith and Elvin Bethea.

(I'm more of a leg man myself--ed.)

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GOTHAM CENTER'S BIG APPLE FAQ (continued)

   The Gotham Center has just changed its "Big Apple" FAQ.  The whores are no longer mentioned:

http://gothamcenter.org/faq.shtml
Why is New York called the "Big Apple"?

According Gerald Leonard Cohen's Origin of New York City's Nickname ‘The Big Apple' (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), while "apple" in American slang means "fellow" and "big apple" means "big shot," the first consistent use of the term to apply to New York City came in the 1920s. John J. Fitz Gerald, a horseracing reporter for the Morning Telegraph, used the term (in columns from 1921-1927) for "New York City racetracks," and that sense of it – the metropolitan thoroughbred racing circuit – entered general usage after 1928. Walter Winchell used it in a 1927 column to refer to Broadway ("Broadway is the Big Apple, the Main Stem, the goal of all ambition, the pot of gold at the end of a drab and somewhat colorless rainbow."). In the 1930s black jazz musicians applied the terms "the apple" or, less often, "the big apple" to Harlem or to the entire city, with overtones, again, of the ‘big time'. In 1937 a dance called "the big apple" was launched in an African-American nightclub called "Fat Sam's Big Apple," in Columbia, South Carolina, and became a short lived national craze. In 1971, Charles Gillett, then president of the New York Convention & Visitors Bureau, used the term as a name for New York City, in a marketing campaign, after which it won wide acceptance as a synonym for Gotham.


   "Big Apple" is a synonym for "Gotham."  Only the Gotham Center would say this.
   The Gotham Center teaches New York City history in the schools.  This FAQ is important to the GC.  It was just awarded two million dollars, as reported in today's newspapers:


http://www.gothamcenter.org/news/tahg2003.shtml
Teaching American History Grant in the News

New York Times - Metro Briefing
David M. Herszenhorn
December 18, 2003

MANHATTAN: GRANT FOR TEACHING CITY HISTORY The federal Department of Education has awarded $2 million to promote the teaching of New York City history, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and Michael Wallace, the director of City University's Gotham Center for New York City History, said yesterday. The money will be used to incorporate municipal history into existing social studies programs and to train teachers in summer institutes. It will also be used in an advanced fellows program and to hold a conference on history instruction for 750 teachers in 2005.

New York Post - FEDS BOO$T HISTORY CLASSES
CARL CAMPANILE
December 18, 2003

The federal government is giving city public schools a $2 million grant to train teachers so they can better teach kids about New York City and American history.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who wants to promote history as part of the city curriculum, announced the award at the City Hall Academy with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mike Wallace, co-author of "Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898."

New York Sun - New York Desk
Staff Reporter
Deccember 18, 2003

CITY SCHOOLS GET $2M HISTORY GRANT The federal government handed city schools an early Christmas gift yesterday: $2 million to spruce up history lessons.

The Teaching American History Grant--one of two in the country--was awarded to the Education Department, the Gotham Center for New York, and City University of New York. It will be dedicated to training hundreds of teachers in American and New York City history so they can create social studies lessons that fit into the demanding new reading program.

"We are going to show how crucial New York City has been to American history," said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein at City Hall Academy, a school where students attend two-week sessions on the Big Apple's history.


   The Big Apple's history.  Of this two million dollar grant I receive--well, I've never made anything.  I don't even receive a kind word.
   After the first dreadful FAQ was made, I walked into the Gotham Center offices.  I told them about Gerald Cohen's monograph and the entry in the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW YORK CITY (1995).  I copied John J. Fitz Gerald's 1924 and 1926 columns, where he explained that he'd gotten "the Big Apple" from black stablehands in New Orleans.  I told the Gotham Center that my work on this occurred after Cohen had published the book.
   I e-mailed Gerald Cohen that the revised FAQ is straight from the book, and that the stablehands' words were left out.  Cohen e-mailed the Gotham Center.  The Gotham Center requested this additional information--the same information I had walked into the office and personally handed to the Gotham Center to start this whole FAQ-revision thing off.
   Tomorrow, the growling etymologist heads back to the Triangle Factory, the 21st-century New York City government workplace without fire alarms, fire exits, or fresh air.  A person with the flu is going to sit a few inches away from me and sneeze in my face.
   If you ever think of doing a good deed in New York City, just kill yourself.