sidewalk alumni
n.pl.— «He was talking in somewhat awed tones of the game he had seen the day before at the Polo Grounds—the one between the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears.…As one of the sidewalk alumni who was sitting just behind where we were sitting said, “That’s the best ‘gool’ line stand I ever saw.”» —“With Malice Toward None” by W.J. Lee Hartford Courant (Connecticut) Oct. 25, 1939. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Carl in Sebastopol, California, was reminded of his childhood on New York’s Lower East Side while ready Harry Golden’s book For 2 Cents Plain (Amazon), the title referring to how customers ordered a plain glass of seltzer. For a little...
The edge of the Grand Canyon. A remote mountaintop. A medieval cathedral. Some places are so mystical you feel like you’re close to another dimension of space and time. There’s a term for such locales: thin places. And: did you ever go...