Readers Report
Park Slope is my Brooklyn (from 1969 to 1994). I grew up on Second Street between Eighth Ave. and Prospect Park West. After I graduated from College (Brooklyn College), I left Brooklyn to travel across the country. I lived on the West Coast for three years. After travelling around and seeing many parts of the US, one thing that I can say is that there is no place like Brooklyn. No food comes close to what you can get in Brooklyn, my friends! My Brooklyn is Pino's Pizza on Seventh Ave. "Hey lemme get a slice !" If you ask for a slice in any pizza place in the West, they ask, "a slice of what?"
My Brooklyn is going to Prospect Park with Adele's ( a youth group in Park Slope) and playing soccer, rugby, and kick the can . . . skateboarding down Second Street all day. Wiffle Ball on the street when you had to stop playing because a car was coming down the block. "Off the Point" with Spauldings. St Saviours Elementary School, where my rebellion with the nuns almost got me thrown out. "Sewer to sewer" football was always the game, especially on Thanksgiving and Christmas no matter how cold it was. Halloween, where you had to keep an eye out for all the crazies with eggs and shaving cream. My Brooklyn is Junior's cheesecake with strawberries, the best in the world! Purity Diner at 4 a.m. for cheeseburgers and fries after having too many beers in the city that night. And last but not least, New Year's Eve fireworks in Prospect Park where everybody from the beggars to the classy dressed couples come to ring in the New Year.
Many of my friends including myself moved away from Park Slope because it got very expensive for young singles to live there, but our parents all live there and the memories of my youth come back whenever the gang comes together to get a slice of Pino's Pizza. I love ya Brooklyn!
27 November 1997
My Brooklyn is a place filled with hope and culture.
28 November 1997
My Brooklyn is the "64 World's Fair," singing Beatles' songs with Regina Pacis classmates on the bus . . . walking to Rispoli's pastry shop every night for Italian ices, while listening to the newly-formed WNEW-FM on our transistor radios . . . buying new school shoes at Miles Shoes on 18th Avenue . . . how about polka-dotted bell-bottom pants from Clark's also on 18th Avenue and 66th Street . . . Buffalo shoes from Morris (yup, 18th Avenue) . . . cutting class at N.U.H.S. and sipping egg creams at Chookies.....or maybe, hopping the B Train for Coney Island.
Here's one: August 20th 1965, accompanied by friends and classmates from Our Lady of Guadalupe, walked to the Walker Theater to see the Dave Clark 5 . . . just a bunch of pseudo-Beatlemaniacs were we screaming, not allowing Clay Cole to get a word in. . . .
I'm very fortunate. I still hear from and see many of those special people who made my Brooklyn, the Best Brooklyn ever.
P.S. Anyone from Our Lady of Guadalupe Class of 1967 and N.U.H.S. '71, please contact me for some reunion news.
PEACE
5 December 1997
Charlotte Russes from the bakery on Franklin Avenue around the corner from P.S. 241; playing on the coal pile behind the Brooklyn Museum; sleigh riding (belly wopping) down the snow covered coal pile behind the Brooklyn Museum; Sue Barton books at the library; Carolyn Dale Snediker and August Huell Seaman too. If anyone has found August Huell Seaman books please let us know; Sinclair bakery; Luccullus; Ben & Sol; $1.25 chinese lunch upstairs near Kenmore movie down Eastern Parkway; the old Loehmann's with the statue of the lady that pointed and the men who stared; Chinese handball and Russian handball and potsy and punch ball and I declare war and green gym suits with bloomers and middy blouses and red ties and waterlillies floating on the stream and glow little glow worm and I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree. From those to whom much is given, much is expected.
6 December 1997
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