The Early Years
As far back as I remember, baseball and basketball played a major role in my development. With Ebbits Field a short car ride from my house, Dad and I would think nothing of eating dinner, hunting for a parking space near the stadium (as I recollect there were no lots) and walking five or six blocks to watch the Dodgers play. And we saw the greats: Duke, PeeWee, Campy, Gil (we used to bowl at his Lanes — among the first to have automatic pinsetters. I also remember bowling at College Lanes, where you put a helmet on, went up on the wall behind the lanes, and cleared and set the pins yourself, and then put the ball back in the ball return at the bowler end of the alley.
I remember hearing about Campy’s accident and seeing pictures of the car in the morning paper. It was traumatic for a seven year old to see one of his favorite players, with one of the widest homerun wedges of anyone other than Babe Ruth in AllStar Baseball. LINK
A year later, in February of 1959 dad and I went out to the local luncheonette and on the newsstand was the story of The Day the Music Died. I was precocious musically because on East 28th Street, I was the oldest male child on a block where all the girls were 2 years older than me, so I was listening to music, and watching Bandstand after school, and playing house (and I was always the husband) with them. I am still in contact with many of my classmates from elementary school. The Mom was usually Fran Baron, who remains a Facebook friend still.
One of the interesting stories about that crash, was told to me by Dion DiMucci, of Dion and the Belmonts. He was invited to fly with them, and considered the cost of the ticket to fly privately to their next destination, rather than the bus ride through the winter storm in the midwest was an extra $25. When he weighed the fact that his parents’ rent, in the Bronx was less than that per month, he opted to not be a brat, and took the bus. He too, remains a Facebook friend, and is still performing in his mid to late eighties. Many people don’t know that he had the top blues album in the US in 2020 and 2021. I had the good fortune of an invite to see him at the Borgata in Atlantic City right before he turned 85. LINK
It was after the 1957 season, the Dodgers moved out to LA. My grandpa was an electrical engineer and inventor, and so the two of us built a Heathkit short wave radio with which I could pull in the LA Dodgers games on ear plugs, going to bed at night. I never did get to the Polo Grounds, and soon Willie Mays was gone too, and I was too young to get on a bus and go into “The City.” The Bronx and Yankee Stadium became a father/son trip, about an hour plus on the subway.
The New York baseball announcers were at the top of their class. Mel Allen, Red Barber, and of course, Phil Rizzuto. I think one of the things that made my relationship with the Late Marvin Aday (aka Meatloaf) stronger was my love of the use of Rizzuto’s voice on Paradise by the Dashboard Light. This is a link to the rock video (with apologies that the video does not coordinate well with Rizzuto’s monologue about Meat trying to get into Carla’s pants on prom night. LINK the portion I reference begins at 3:35. I had the privilege of meeting with Carla after her female lead in We Will Rock You, many years ago, at the Paris Hotel in Vegas.
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As I grew from there, and my parents allowed me to explore the city more, I got to do stuff with my guys Irv, Stu, Bart, Jeff and girls Carol, Suzi, Debbie, Shelly, Bev, Michelle, many of whom I’m lucky enough to still have contact with.
We thought nothing of placing a junior set of golf clubs across the handlebars of our bikes, and riding across to Far Rockaway (about 10 miles) to play chip and put, or putting the girl on the handlebars and riding them to a house party for some one on one exploration.
The only golf course in Brooklyn was Dyker Beach, and it was the most worn out golf course I had ever played, but it was all we had. Only 2 bus rides away, and then a four hour wait once we signed in! In 1964, the Verrazano Bridge was completed, and if we took 3 busses, and then walked about a mile with our clubs, we would be at Silver Lake, on Staten Island, where there were no waits and the fairways and greens were like real golf courses.
1964 was around the time the Mets opened Shea Stadium in Queens, only about an hour away by subway. We had a team, but it wasn’t much to root for, although Willie ended his days playing ball there. On Fathers’ Day, with my dad, his dad, and my two brothers we got to see a perfect game tossed by Jim Bunning of the Phillies.
My individual radius of acceptable travel became larger. We would go to Madison Square Garden for the Rangers, the Knicks, and the NIT college basketball tournament. We would also go to the East Village for folk rock shows, and then Bill Graham opened the Filmore East!
The subway and busses were 15 cents. So was a slice of pizza! And who knew then were were eating the best pizza in the biggest city in the world. Of course, the sign, made famous by Welcome Back Kotter, saying Welcome to the Biggest City in the World, which we had never seen until the V Bridge was completed and we were riding the bus past it.
We loved the Knicks, and their long-time announcer Marv Albert whose voice my middle brother tried to emulate, and get into broadcasting. He never broke that ceiling, and Marv, despite his cross-dressing embarrassment, was black-listed only for a short period of time. I never understood that kind of forgiveness. I guess it was a harbinger of what DEI tried to bring to the nation.
While in college, I worked as a taxi driver out of a garage near Brooklyn College. It paid really well. The hours were tough and knowing where the shortcuts were took a bit of time. The working conditions were horrible. The taxi’s in severe disrepair were given to the summer replacements. I had a day with no brakes, a day with no oil, and a day waiting for a tow truck to show up, until another driver from my garage offered to push me over the Brooklyn Bridge and down Flatbush Avenue until we got to the garage, and were fired for the damage we had done to the front end of his, and the rear end of my taxi.
I was going to college in upstate New York and saw what life was like on the other side of the Hudson. I had a friend who belonged to a country club on the Jersey side of Staten Island, I played my college golf at the Saratoga Spa Course, and was one of the reasons I never returned to Brooklyn despite my father wanting me to go into his dental practice when I got out of dental school at Penn.
Working in my own office, in a small town of 6,000 people where a freight train came through about six time a day, a block from my office turned me into a calmer person. I couldn’t stand going back to NYC to visit. The traffic that people put up with is horrendous. My driving became necessarily aggressive once I got out of the tunnel into Manhattan.
I was in a taxi several years ago, returning home to South Jersey from a documentary whose production I was involved in, and was showing at a small theater in the East Village. Traffic, going north on 6th Avenue (the Avenue of the Americas) was confounded by bicycles riding south, down 6th and I had a bus to catch at the Port Authority Building.
I mention all these issues because I don’t even want to think about how dangerous I think living in NYC is about to become.
Think about all the things that will deteriorate further! Do you think Broadway will survive? How about Rockefeller Center and the Christmas Tree, and the Rockettes? Where will you walk your dog? Will you clean up after your dog, or with a leash in one hand and mace or a dagger or a revolver in the other, HOW YOU GONNA DO DAT?
WOODY ALLEN SAW THE CITY BEST, BEFORE THE DETERIORATION OF LIFE AS WE KNEW IT
I have a cousin whose work companion for the NYPD is a bomb sniffing dog. I think what Mamdani needs to convince himself the police are necessary if for that dog to get a bad case of the sniffles.
Thanks to Dr. Robert Malone for the memes and to many people who sent me the AI Sinatra with the new lyrics to New York, New York LINK
It’s amazing, the use of the asterisks above remind me of the days when I used to have to change Covid to cvid, and vaccine to jab to try to stay away from censors. But this shows there’s worry about pro-Commie censors scaring people! This city is done and the country will profit from it as businesses are forced into Florida and Texas.
And maybe offering Soros a penthouse apartment there so he can savor his masterpiece of financial malfeasance.
In closing, I leave you with sadness in my heart. I don’t think my father felt this compelled to write about Krystalnacht in Dresden which occurred months after he and his family escaped. I leave you with MY masterpiece, Krystalnacht and Survival, from my store, on ETSY.
