But the blood from the pulsating heart of New York's 8,000,000 doesn't pump only into the main arteries.
There are some 1,500 licensed cabarets in the city and some 20,000 saloons. These are scattered over all five boroughs. In many localities, especially those inhabited by foreign racial groups, miniature Broadways have sprung up, reminiscent of main drags in foreign countries.
Clustered around Third Avenue and 86th Street in the heart of Yorkville, is the German section. Here there are dozens of beer halls, with waiters in native costume and fat, funny Brünnhilde sopranos singing Viennese waltzes and Bavarian seidel-songs.
Before Hitler, Yorkville was a fad. Prohibition was only an English word, untranslatable. The "Hoboken steam beer" was potent, spiked with ether before your eyes by the waiter with an eye-dropper. One visitor asked, "Hey—where's the operation that goes with this?"
We used to call the people we saw there "gemütlich," which means homey, and talk about their quaint costumes and customs and placid way of life.
Later—when lists of Nazis were released—we saw many of these stolid heinies on record. Though outwardly all Yankee light and love, the district is still a hotbed of Nazi fanaticism, though you hear few talk about it, even after a dozen beers.
The younger generation, of course, is solidly American and resentful of the old folks' European ways.
Other but smaller German sections abound throughout the city, notably in the Bronx and in Queens. In the latter borough were some of the most rabid pro-Nazis in the country. Here some of the German spies who landed from a submarine during the war were sheltered.
Many Lutheran churches in the Bronx and Queens conduct all their religious services in the German tongue.