Three Minutes on a Park Bench with: Jerry Eimbinder

Patch blogger Jerry Eimbinder can tell you about the greatest places to eat around here.

But he spent most of his career as a writer and editor in the middle of the exploding semiconductor industry—and is now writing a book about that heady time.

Consider my interest piqued.

Patch: What's your morning routine?

Jerry: Mornings begin with the muting of the volume control on my computer and the checking of scores of night ballgames on ESPN. Don't want to hear recaps of the games. Just want to know results, don't care about highlights either. Coffee with a dash of milk comes next. I'll prepare breakfast myself or head for El Dorado West in Tarrytown, a diner open 24 hours a day, for scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, home fries, buttered toast, grapefruit juice and coffee. 

P: What do you do for a living? And what's best about your job?

J: I'm picking up speed on a nonfiction book about my experiences and adventures covering the amazing growth of the semiconductor industry as an editor at a McGraw-Hill magazine called Electronics and also at a couple of its competitors. A good thing about this is rediscovering old friends and acquaintances. Also blog for Patch.

P: What's the hardest?

J: Hard to cope with is finding out that people I knew when i was covering Silicon Valley and the semiconductor industry have died.

P: How long have you lived here?

J: Arrived in Tarrytown 12 years ago. Before that I lived in Brooklyn, Long Island (Melville), and New Jersey (West Orange and Somerville ) and briefly in Miami, Florida and Sunnyvale, California.

P: What's your favorite thing about living here?

J: Covering restaurants, entertainment and authors for Patch and The Hudson Independent. My favorite story is about the 25 ghosts that haunt Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown.

P: If you had to arrange a secret meeting here, where would you have it?

J: My first choice would be Demeter's Tavern & Sports Bar in Tarrytown while eating a delicious thin-sliced, roast beef sandwich. During the summertime, my choices would be the back, hidden patios of Harper's in Dobbs Ferry or Il Sorriso in Irvington or the rooftop lounge at Red Hat on the River.

P: Tell us something about yourself that most of your neighbors don't know.

J: That I founded and ran many conferences, seminars and conventions in the U.S.A. and overseas including the world's first electronic games conference. Also started successful magazines in many fields.

P: When you want a really indulgent snack here, where do you go and what do you get?

J: Croque Madames (an open-face, ham-and-gruyere sandwich with sauce mornay and a fried egg) at Saint George in Hastings-on-Hudson or a personal pizza (fig or prosciutto/sunnyside egg) at Il Sorriso in Irvington.

P: What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

J: The best advice I ever received came from a professor when I was an engineering senior at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Do you remember the scene in the 1967 movie "The Graduate," when Mr. McGuire (Walter Brooke) says to Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman): "I just want to say one word to you, are you listening?" Benjamin replies, "Yes, I am."  "Plastics,"  Mr. McGuire advises. The year before the movie came out, an engineering professor advised my class, "If I was in your place, I would bet on the transistor; it could obsolete the vacuum tube and revolutionize electronics."

P: What are you doing after this interview?

J: Working on my book about being a magazine editor and covering the early days of the semiconductor industry.


Nominate someone from your community for the Patch Park Bench interview. Send suggestions to kathleen@patch.com or lanning.taliaferro@patch.com