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 cha…
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).
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).