Mike Vogel

Mike Vogel has New York City in his bones.

When he was 8 years old, he rode the NYC subways for fun, going to Coney Island and the beach with his rowdy Brooklyn pals. In his early twenties, Vogel married and taught 6th grade in Brooklyn's East New York section, which he says included some wonderful kids and not so wonderful stitches from breaking up classroom brawls.

At 30, Vogel "flipped out," got divorced, quit teaching, moved to Manhattan and went into stand up comedy, transitioning from the classroom to smoke-filled clubs with heckling drunks. He performed song parodies at Dangerfield's and also wrote jokes for Rodney.

Vogel started writing plays, and had two produced off-Broadway, the latest at the Lion Theater on Theatre Row ("Senior Moment", now retitled 'Second Chance")

In 2006, he wrote an opinion piece for the NY Daily News about changing NY neighborhood names ("Rambo is to Dumbo as NoHo is to SoHo") and since then has written about 300 columns for Newsday, amNY, The NY Daily News and other publications. An editor told Vogel his writer's voice IS New York City. He takes that as a great compliment.