Requiem for the Irrepressible ‘Mayor’ of West 83rd Street

Many blocks in New York City have their own local neighborhood fixture who inevitably gains the unofficial title of mayor and can sometimes give an otherwise anonymous street the feel of a small town.

On the westernmost block of 83rd Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, that title went to the irrepressible Glenn Coleman.

Coleman lived in a six-story apartment building on the block, between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive, and could often be found on its stoop smoking his Marlboro reds and sipping on a Bacardi and Coke.

Peter Seidman recalled moving in several years ago and immediately being welcomed by Coleman.

“He said, ‘I’m Glenn — I’m the mayor of the building and the whole block, just so you know,'” Seidman recalled.

Coleman was the block’s greeter, its town crier and the de facto recruiter for the West 83rd Street Block Association, said its president, Gail Dubov.

So when Coleman died abruptly of a heart attack on June 1, two days after his 52nd birthday, flowers immediately began appearing on his stoop.

Within a day, $2,000 was raised among neighbors for a commemorative plaque to be put on his favorite bench, along Riverside Drive overlooking the block.

Coleman made it his business to introduce himself to every local resident, whether adult, child or canine. If you lost a relative or lost your job, Coleman whipped up a great Italian meal and brought it over.

He insisted on introductions among the many busy careerists on the block with little time or inclination to socialize. For their children’s birthdays, he tied flowers to the block’s trees.

On Thursday night, several dozen neighbors crowded around Coleman’s stoop for a memorial. They tied flowers to the trees and set up a small table with a spread of snacks and cocktails and a ceremonial pack of Marlboro reds in the middle.

Bacardi and Coke would not be the preferred drink in this crowd. But they were poured and widely consumed in the mayor’s honor, as neighbor after neighbor took the stoop to speak.

Dubov called the gathering “a real New York moment” and said Coleman “raised the confidence level of all the women” on the block by constantly assuring them that they looked gorgeous and that their hair looked fabulous.

“He was a flamboyant, friendly gay man,” Dubov said. “Glenn embodied New York at its very best.”

Coleman kept little about himself private, certainly not his unusual living arrangement. He cohabitated with two male companions — Michelangelo Diaz, 59, and Gene Josol, 61 — in a harmonious triangular relationship in one of the last rentals in a now expensive co-op building. Coleman jokingly called himself Auntie Glenda, and often delivered local gossip with comic exaggeration and zany expressions like: “Call me crazy, call me Glenn,” recalled Molly Wise, the chairwoman of the co-op board for Coleman’s building.

Neighbors trusted him with the keys to their apartments for plant- and pet-sitting and the keys to their cars, to keep them parked legally during the twice-a-week street-cleaning regulations, said Seidman, who called Coleman “the most gregarious, over-the-top, generous person I ever met.”

Diaz and Josol said they had already been a couple for 15 years when they met Coleman 17 years ago at a nightclub in the Cherry Grove neighborhood of Fire Island, a popular gay vacation spot.

“We picked him up by the pool at the Ice Palace,” said Diaz, a retired travel agent. “We called him over, and the rest is just history.”

“He joined our relationship and it all worked wonderfully,” he said. “Things got bigger and better.”

Coleman worked as a school custodian in Deer Park, and for years split his time between Manhattan and Long Island before finally moving into the Manhattan apartment full-time several years ago, and commuting to his custodian job.

Since then, “He met more people on this block than most people do in their entire lifetime,” Diaz said.

“For him, it was a dream come true, to move into New York City,” Diaz said. “He said, ‘I can’t believe I finally live in Manhattan. I can go outside and there are people to talk to.'”

Diaz said he was shocked to find Coleman dead in bed, one morning a week ago. Coleman’s sister, Lois Recca, said their family had a history of heart disease, and that her brother’s health was not helped by his penchant for partying and his omnivorous diet. Coleman did not come out in public as a gay man until his 30s, she said.

“Being gay in the suburbs wasn’t too wonderful,” she said. “But on Fire Island, and in the city, he could be himself.”

After a wake on Long Island, Coleman’s body was left for cremation, she said. His ashes will likely be sprinkled around West 83rd Street and in Cherry Grove, where he would help emcee the traditional July 4 procession of drag queens known as the “Invasion of The Pines.”

Dubov told the mourning crowd on Thursday that Coleman’s life was a lesson for the block: slow down and appreciate each other more — “Be more Glenn-ish.”

Karen Oguma, a retired ballet dancer, agreed.

“He’d be so happy we’re all talking to each other,” she said, “because most of us only talked to him.”

Mary Kathryn Monday, an opera singer who lived next door to Coleman, said he loved overhearing her daily vocal exercises.

From his stoop, she led the block in a rendition of “Amazing Grace,” as the sun dipped into the tree line of Riverside Park behind the favorite bench of the mayor of West 83rd Street.