Daily Blague

Kathleen's office is at Two Wall Street. In other words, it's on the corner of Broadway. Not the Broadway of Times Square and musicals, but the same street, just a lot father south. The Original Broadway, you might say.

She was walking out of the building the other night when two dogs yelped and yapped at her. Now, dogs are plentiful on Wall Street, but they're bipedal and primate. Spaniels are an aberration. Or at least they were until Wall Street became a residential boulevard. Nowadays, you can live (in the linen closet sense) in the former offices of US Trust or the Bank of New York.

The Bank of New York - I toiled there for quite a few summers in the late Sixties. Some other time, I'll tell you how. Tonight, all I can think of is two things. One's an acronym: BONY ("Bank of New York"). It is, apparently, a bad idea to say 'bony' these days. The bank, which has married up and taken over the stylish Irving Trust building at One Wall Street (right across the street from Kathleen's office!), clearly no longer knows how to be disliked.

(I certainly never heard 'bony' in my days. But then, nobody said "MoMA," either. "UNESCO" was our outer limit.)

All  this reminded me of an even better BONY story, one that you can count on, apparently, to drain all liveliness out of any BNY  bankers (the new acronym) whom you might be dealing with. All you have to say is this:

On his way to the duel with Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton told his team at the Bank of New York, "Don't do anything until I get back." And they haven't.

It still rankles, and with reason.