Burke Versus The Bronx -from a previous post-updated with a picture

The first thing that you so when you move to NYC is to get the subway or train schedule.This is your Bible, and you must learn how to read it and memorize it. If you do not take this lesson to heart, you are in very deep do-do.Why? you ask. Because if you don't, you might just take the wrong train and end up in the Bedford-Styvesant section of Brooklyn. Believe me, you do not want to end up there as I did one night.This is the mean section whose streets produced such people as Mike Tyson.

In the South Bronx, you want to know the "D" train, for it is the one in front of Yankee Stadium that gets you from the Bronx to mid-town Manhattan.Riding the D train can be a great adventure, and it is not for the weak of heart.Just waiting for it in the station is not for those who scare easily.Many commuters have been the victims of a fun game they play there. It is called"push the innocents down to the tracks in front of an incoming train"Great fun,isn't it?
I will write more later about riding the trains in the Bronx,but for now I will return to something more familiar to you, Burke.

Yes, Burke, where trains were once as important there as they are in the Bronx today.Bronx has a history of violence on their trains, and so does Burke, but Burke had something that the Bronx does not have, and that was a train that ran right though the lobby of a hotel.Yes, the famous Tiger Hotel,comes complete with dining,rooms,a bakery, and its own train.And New York thinks it is sophisticated!New York has the Waldorf, but Burke had the Tiger, or as it was fondly called by the locals"The Beanery"

Imagine this, if you can,and is hard for those of us who never saw it, a three story hotel with 150 sleeping rooms in Burke,Idaho. I have spent most of my adult working years managing or working in all capacities in hotels from Seattle to LasVegas. I have seen many room patterns, numerous lobbies geared for the soothing of the guest's weary bones and spirits, by I never worked a property that had these wonderful amenities. For through the lobby of the Tiger Hotel flowed a creek, a road, and a railroad track for the Northern Pacific Railroad!My, how I would loved to have written the brochure for that hotel!

So, you see, the Bronx and Burke not that all different.The trains of Burke were the sites of some of the most violent days in Western lore, and the trains in the Bronx were the scenes of some of the most disgusting murders.NYC has some of the most renowned hotels in the world, but none can match the history of the Tiger Hotel in Burke.My father stayed there as a young man in Burke, and paid a whopping $30.00 a month, and that included delicious meals.




 Here is a picture of the Tiger in 1954, after it was already shuttered and ready for demolition.

Next-the people who rode the trains in Burke versus the people on the D train in the Bronx.