Day and Night

During the day, the older generation rules the roost, while Teresa and Catherine attend to their duties and the men are all out at work. But come nighttime, things get a little transgressive and the younger set takes over to dance, gossip, and booze it up.

Every proper establishment is well-lit, but the in-between spaces—the stairs to the dance hall, inside the parked cars, under a bar awning, or beneath the Grand Concourse—are all dim. And dim is the place to be if you're going to try to have a little fun.

"It's getting late," Clara says again and again, but the lights on Arthur Avenue are bright as the sun. It isn't until Marty and Clara are in the pitch-black of his family home that he dares draw close to her, trying for a kiss.

The nighttime is indeed the right time… but in The Big Apple, you have to look a little harder to find a dim corner to smooch in.