Liebling

It's the birthday of A.J. (Abbott Joseph) Liebling, (books by this author) born in New York City (1904), a staff writer for The New Yorker whose favorite subjects were journalism, food, and boxing. But he also wrote about seal trainers at the circus, his nostalgia for speakeasies, Greco-Roman wrestlers, aquariums, hat-check concession stands, cigar stores, coon dogs, race cars, and the most populous city block in the United States, which in 1937 was located between Seventh and Lenox avenues and 142nd and 143rd streets in Harlem, with a population of 3,823 residents. Liebling wrote, "[The block] covers 150,000 square feet, and this means that the average density of population is 1,000 to the acre. If all the people of the United States were moved equally close together, they would fit in about half the area of the City of New York, leaving a couple of boroughs vacant for parking space."
A. J. Liebling said, "Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience."