My Story

Spring Break 1995: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones Have the Pictures to Prove It

This is the story of four boys from Queens making their way to Cancun, Mexico for Spring Break in the 1990s. With a legal drinking age of 18, going south of the border was the only viable destination.

Thanks to an old school travel agency, the kind where you sit on the other side of a desk from a human being and plan a trip, we were able to make our booking and pay in installments. Without the “layaway” option, that $600 trip would have never been a reality.

Every other week, I would stop by Empress Travel in Bayside to drop off an envelope filled with cash. All told, I probably had to work over 100 hours to pay for the trip. But as we all learn, the sacrifice to make “forever” memories are always worth it.

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Ariel Rider Rideal Review – One of the Best Electric Bikes Under $1,000

By Drew Rosen 6 Comments

Ariel Rider Rideal high-step bike in black.

With working-from-home days for the masses winding down, I knew it was time to up my bicycle commuting game.

I’ve biked back-and-forth to the office a handful of times a year. But given the advancements in the electric bike category, including hill-flattening PAS systems and more affordable entry points, there is no excuse for me NOT to make an e-bike my primary mode of transportation back-and-forth to work.

However, I was unprepared for the number of lightweight electric bike choices currently on the market.

I quickly found myself spiraling down a rabbit hole, and indecision paralysis set in. What started as an innocent hunt for a solid bike turned into a quest for perfection. My budget ballooned from a $1,000 e-bike to $5,000. I became consumed with torque sensors vs. cadence sensors. I obsessed over bike classes and weight. Honestly, there was a time when I spent as much time watching Court Rye on ElectricBikeReview.com than with my kid!

I needed to break out of the rut. I had taken enough test drives and done enough reading. So armed with all of the data I collected over several months, I did what any logical human being would do: I bought a bike that didn’t have a single review available on the Web.

The Ariel Rider Rideal

And it is easily one of the best electric bikes under $1,000.

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Tom Petty’s “Walls” Paved the Way for the 1996 New York Yankees Championship

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

Sports and superstitious rituals go together like baseball and chicken.

Well, that’s true if you ask Hall of Famer Wade Boggs, who correlated his hitting success to chowing down on pre-game chicken.

And that’s not even the strangest sports ritual.

We can pick apart Wayne Gretzky’s baby powdered hockey stick, Jason Giambi’s golden thong, and Moises Alou’s “pee hands.” But today, we are here to talk about how I single-handily helped the New York Yankees win their 23rd world championship after an 18-year dry spell back in 1996.

OK, OK. I didn’t help the Yanks win alone.

My sister helped.

Tom Petty helped, too.

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Kmart Radio Network: The Soundtrack of Minimum Wage

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

As a Kmart employee back in the 90s, I spent many days and nights having my ears infiltrated by the Kmart Radio Network.

It was never a smooth transition from Bryan Adams, “Everything I Do” to an ad for two-ply paper towels. There was no easy way to shift from the Muzak version of “Always” by Atlantic Starr into “Save with Layway!”

But that was the Kmart way.

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Mother Love Bone’s “Chloe Dancer” Is Always With Me

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

Almost 30 years later, and the opening piano notes of “Chloe Dancer / Crown of Thorns” still give me chills.

While most songs ebb and flow from the playlist of my life, Mother Love Bone remains a constant. When you find a song that still give you the feels decades later, whisking you away to another time, another place, you hold on–tightly.

No band better bridges the 80s heavy metal era with the emergence of 90s grunge than Sub Pop rejects Mother Love Bone. MLB’s frontman, Andrew Wood, was a fucking legend, and in life and death, a pioneer.

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Big Head Todd and the Kidney Stone Attack

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

It wasn’t exactly a tsunami of pain, more like incessant ripples of water washing over me, eroding my sense of control, one small wave at a time.

It was a kidney stone attack.

If you’ve had one before, you’re feeling a great deal of pity for your humble author. If you’re fortunate to have never experienced the excruciating hell of a foreign substance rattling against an organ, I hope you never do.

I was standing at the console of one of our on-air studios at 1633 Broadway, prepping another 90s-heavy VH1 music block to beam up to a satellite and back down to the car radios of people willing to pay a monthly charge.

It was a regular Friday afternoon…until it wasn’t.

My stomach roiled. My chest heaved.

There was an uncontrollable force within me, contorting my body, contracting muscles I never knew I had. How could I be feeling hot and cold at once? Is this what a cloud feels like during a thunderstorm?

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