The Waterbury Democrat., 1933-08-24
F IN Nn H NEW |
 H YORK
Rr PAuL HARRIsON

By PAUL HARRISON New York.-The gypsy trioes that make their winter quarters m New York have remained through the summer in greater numbers than ever before. This IS party because the fortune-telling busi- mess has remained good. (There is an old Romany axiom to the ef- feet that the less money a super stitious man has, the more anxious he is to spend it to be told that he's going to get rich). Another reason is that the kidnaping- epi- demic has made gypsies less well come than ever in the hinterland. where they're looked on by many as potential child-snatchers.
 Since horse-trading has gone out of style, the Romany men, when they do anything at all. swap automobiles. One habit the gyp- sies haven't abandoned Is staying close to earth. The always rent basement or ground floor store rooms, partition these off with gay draperies, and hang out weather beaten signs suggesting that you Learn Thy Future" The men stay out of sight, somewhere, and the women sit in the doorways, at tracting patrons. Some of the wo- men, bangled, earringed and wear ing a half dozen or more flowing skirts. are quite beautiful. But sidewalk Lotharios have learned that it isn't healthy to tell them so.
 Although such establishments are scattered pretty much all over town, most of the gypsies live in the Balkan quarter on the lower east side, around Avenue A, Grand and Broome streets. Some of the biggest automobiles in town are to be seen, in that squalid district. many of them belonging to the gypsies themselves, others to wealthy women who go there for fortune readings.
 Bigwig "Gypsies''
 Not long ago the word was noised around the Romany Ghetto that 8 2,O00-acre estate up in the Catskills had been set aside as a sanctuary for gypsies. It was 8 place called the Gypsy Trail Club, ran the rumor, with streams and forests and hills, with places for camping and tribal council fires Worth an investigation, anyway, so half 8 dozen families piled into their cars, together with children, dogs, guitars, tents, shawls and skillets. Sure enough. up near Carmel, N. r., they found a series of Gypsy Trail signs with encouraging arrows. At twilight they drove into wooded place that would delight any wild and I.ef, kled through the trees, and Bal around Architect Wiley Cor bett heard, and so did Philip Le Boutillier, and A. Andrew Rein
 heart, the architect, and Louis Gates, the copper magnate, and Frank Hawkes. and Bernt Balchen and lot of other men you've read about. Some of them went down from the clubhouse to explain the situation to the unbidden guesst. and for awhile 1t was almost nip and tuck whether the gypsies or the Gypsy Trail members would vacate the estate.
 The Gypsy Trail Club, 1t might be explained, is private camp for bigwigs.
 Odd COde-ExemptiOn '
 Meanderings: The factory that prints these MIRA stickers you see everywhere isn't working under the MIRA code. MT Sidney Hollaender, president of the label company, signed the agreement, then had to ask exemption from it because or- ders started coming in for lots of several million each-and he couldn't hire enough skilled opera tors .. Con Conrad, of Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood, discovered Jackie Cooper. Years ago the youngsters mother was Conrad's secretary, and he begged her to try to get Jackie into the movies Needy artists have hit on the idea of renting their pictures, at 5 per cent of the sale price 8 month, to people who want to impress their guests Tillie Losch, the dancer who has the loveliest hands in the world, is fond of recalling that she first danced to a hurdy-gurdy in the streets of Vienna ;. Shy John Jacob Astor, 3rd, had a party plan- ned for his twenty-first birthday, but fled to the White mountains with an aunt when publicity and pictures threatened to mark his inheritance of part of the old Astor fortune At table of literary lunchers at the Algonquin the other day, H. L. Mencken, Rex Beach and J. P. McEvoy made scurrilous remarks about mystery -story writ CTS in general. Irwin Cobb sat there quietly and took it. He has | first done his first mystery f1Ove1