Noto the Man

Bob Noto was a sweet old man who always dressed smartly. He wore Nike Air trainers for his walks and trendy-before-they-were-trendy, thick, black-rimmed glasses. He was in his eighties and was a true New Yorker: he’d lived there his whole life and knew the city inside out. He ran his one-bedroom apartment on West 69th between Broadway and Columbus Avenue as a B&B, and he took pity on me. The deal was that I could sleep in the main bedroom when there wasn’t anyone booked in, and when he had guests I could sleep with him in the attic. Imagine a massive kitchen-living room with a small mezzanine area above the kitchen — this was the ‘attic’. Bob and I would sleep up there, him on one side of a small wooden partition and me on the other, whilst our guest slept in the nice, cosy room below us.