When he was 8 years old, Mike Vogel rode the NYC subways for fun, going to Coney Island and the beach with his rowdy Brooklyn pals. In his early 20s, Vogel married and taught sixth grade in Brooklyn's East New York/Brownsville 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 standup comedy, performing 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 NYC's Theatre Row ("Senior Moment", now "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, 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.