About 2 years ago I took a trip to Brooklyn to check out the places I remember from when I was a kid, as I had not been back to the borough in roughly 20 years (plus, I was seeing a concert at the Barclay's Center). I was able to stop in the same bakery that made the cake for my Holy Communion, and while there ordered a loaf of prosciutt…
About 2 years ago I took a trip to Brooklyn to check out the places I remember from when I was a kid, as I had not been back to the borough in roughly 20 years (plus, I was seeing a concert at the Barclay's Center). I was able to stop in the same bakery that made the cake for my Holy Communion, and while there ordered a loaf of prosciutto bread, which I have never seen anywhere outside of NY. I walked past my old apartment and my old school while munching on my bread, and it was easy to trick myself into a bit of nostalgia.
Then I was visiting a neat little stationery shop (the kind that absolutely did not exist in 1990) and asked the young clerk if she knew of any places to get a good bialy, and she had no idea what I was talking about. That was a good reality check. New York is different now, but it's a city that always changes. The Ramones don't play at CBGB's, kids don't play stickball in the street, immigrants don't come pouring in through Ellis Island, black people don't live in Seneca Village (because it was razed to become Central Park), there are no farms in the Bronx, etc.
Cherish the memories, but don't try to recreate them. The past has passed. The Mets don't play at Shea anymore.
I remember a good friend of mine in Brooklyn telling me the day he realized that the kids on his block, where he'd lived his whole life (we were ~23, in ~'95.) didn't play stickball anymore. We neither of us could grasp it. Our dads played stickball. This kid played it. Why wouldn't kids now? He'd figured he was one link in a long chain, not the last link. It was sad. (It is shocking how much NYC has changed, and how some things are still around but have become the theme-park version of themselves. Prime example being McSorleys, which used to be a goddamn nightmare you could either embrace or avoid, depending on your interest in hanging out in 1895; it's now depressingly clean and welcoming, with smiling bartenders and tourists in polo shirts and their kids running around with the toys they were allowed to bring.)
A lot of New York has been sanitized, for sure, and while it's nice not to get knifed in Times Square, you still need some of that grit. There was a time when New York's theme song wasn't by a pretty young blonde girl named Taylor.
When I was last in town, I was surprised to see Wonderland (the card and toy store) still standing only a few blocks away from where Anthony Faucci grew up. I assumed that Wonderland was a shop that would've been eaten up a long time ago, but I guess that area of Brooklyn is too far away from Manhattan to be attractive for most transplants (or it's simply easier to kick out poor black people from Crown Heights than white people from Dyker Heights, some of whom still have mob connections).
On my last day in the city after 30 years, I went to take a look at Astor Place, where thieves used to sell burgled junk on the sidewalks. The only thing I recognized was the subway station and the cube.
About 2 years ago I took a trip to Brooklyn to check out the places I remember from when I was a kid, as I had not been back to the borough in roughly 20 years (plus, I was seeing a concert at the Barclay's Center). I was able to stop in the same bakery that made the cake for my Holy Communion, and while there ordered a loaf of prosciutto bread, which I have never seen anywhere outside of NY. I walked past my old apartment and my old school while munching on my bread, and it was easy to trick myself into a bit of nostalgia.
Then I was visiting a neat little stationery shop (the kind that absolutely did not exist in 1990) and asked the young clerk if she knew of any places to get a good bialy, and she had no idea what I was talking about. That was a good reality check. New York is different now, but it's a city that always changes. The Ramones don't play at CBGB's, kids don't play stickball in the street, immigrants don't come pouring in through Ellis Island, black people don't live in Seneca Village (because it was razed to become Central Park), there are no farms in the Bronx, etc.
Cherish the memories, but don't try to recreate them. The past has passed. The Mets don't play at Shea anymore.
I remember a good friend of mine in Brooklyn telling me the day he realized that the kids on his block, where he'd lived his whole life (we were ~23, in ~'95.) didn't play stickball anymore. We neither of us could grasp it. Our dads played stickball. This kid played it. Why wouldn't kids now? He'd figured he was one link in a long chain, not the last link. It was sad. (It is shocking how much NYC has changed, and how some things are still around but have become the theme-park version of themselves. Prime example being McSorleys, which used to be a goddamn nightmare you could either embrace or avoid, depending on your interest in hanging out in 1895; it's now depressingly clean and welcoming, with smiling bartenders and tourists in polo shirts and their kids running around with the toys they were allowed to bring.)
A lot of New York has been sanitized, for sure, and while it's nice not to get knifed in Times Square, you still need some of that grit. There was a time when New York's theme song wasn't by a pretty young blonde girl named Taylor.
When I was last in town, I was surprised to see Wonderland (the card and toy store) still standing only a few blocks away from where Anthony Faucci grew up. I assumed that Wonderland was a shop that would've been eaten up a long time ago, but I guess that area of Brooklyn is too far away from Manhattan to be attractive for most transplants (or it's simply easier to kick out poor black people from Crown Heights than white people from Dyker Heights, some of whom still have mob connections).
On my last day in the city after 30 years, I went to take a look at Astor Place, where thieves used to sell burgled junk on the sidewalks. The only thing I recognized was the subway station and the cube.
No one selling old crap on the sidewalk around the cube?
No, just skateboarding tourists.