... Recommend this page to a friend.

Thank you for all the fond Brooklyn memories. Growing up in the fifties was a wonderful time but we were also a very ambitious lot of kids as I remember the twenty or so raffish urchins who lived on my block —Bay 23rd street. We were a mix of Italian and Jewish so we spanned the ethnic divide. I came across a quote from a Brooklyn writer who said that ‘Brooklyn gave us everything we needed to get out.” There’s some truth to that since I’m writing from Sydney, Australia.

I’ve spent a good deal of time regaling my son with the wonderful tales of growing up in Brooklyn and have taken him back with me many times. However, when I waxed eloquent about the monstrous waves at Rockaway and Jones beach, when we visited there he laughed having surfed the Australian coast on long and short and body boards. These waves are pathetic, he joked. We went and had a few hot dogs at Nathan’s and watched the inaugural game at the baseball stadium the day it opened with parades up and down the street. Not quite Ebbets field but a good finish.

But let me ask a point about Italian cuisine in Brooklyn. It’s my view that the pizza was, if not invented there, at least became a marketable item in Brooklyn. At first we could only get ‘abietz’, as it was pronounced, by going to a local restaurant (mine was on the corner of Benson and 20th avenue across from the DeLuxe theatre) ordering a pie (or abietz) and waiting twenty minutes for the hot pie to come out of the oven and then walk home as quickly as possible.

In 1956 after a summer working as a busboy in a girl’s camp (yes, the ideal job) I came back to Brooklyn and all anyone could talk about was the new store on 86th street where you could buy the pie by the slice and it was called pizza. The place is still there after probably a 100 different owners and the rest is history.

Another point on history; it wasn’t Murray the K who started the rock n roll shows at the Brooklyn Paramount but Alan Freed, the original rhythm and blues disk jockey out of Detroit who coined the phrase after he lost the ‘moondog’ tag that he used in Detroit radio. Moondog was a real person who dressed in Viking clothing, wandered the City and composed some interesting music. But Alan Freed became the doyenne of rock 'n roll and fronted the shows at the Paramount in ’56 and ’57.

I went to Brooklyn Tech just down the street from the Paramount and we knew when the shows were coming. Imagine the front band for these shows was Count Basie with Joe Williams singing and some great sidemen. Murray Kaufman was still playing dance bands on WNEW and didn’t become a rock d/j (Murray the K) until the Beatles descended on radio and he cornered them on their first trip to NY in 1963.

The other omission is the ubiquitous Brooklyn pool hall. There were two kinds that I remember. One was the serious pool hall where real gamblers and would-be gangsters hung out. These were usually off-limits to kids who weren’t absolute experts at the game (my cousin Louie was a shark who when he found his calling started wearing suits at the age of sixteen!) and the high school pool hall where kids came to swear and ‘play for time.’ These places were usually male only and a refuge from the home where language was monitored. An older guy usually owned or presided over the kids and kept them in order. It certainly beat watching television or playing computer games. There were three pool halls on 86th street between 20th and Bay Parkway.

Last year I connected with a friend from the old neighborhood who I hadn’t seen in 45 years and we had a drink together in Grant Park under the pavilion and reminisced about growing up on Bay 23rd street. We agreed that it was like living in a small town—we knew everyone and felt completely safe on our street. In retrospect it was a wonderful beginning to any child’s journey into the wider world.

Howard Gelman, PO Box 813, Glebe, NSW, 2037, Australia

I'm sure you know that to immediately return to the page you came from, you have only to click the "Back" button on your browser. Well, I'm not that sure you knew that; that's why I'm telling it to you.

Any corrections? ... ... you be my guest.

All right, here's the way ... Old Brooklyn Used To Look ... some years ago, 1920?
Now for the history buffs ... Coney History 1609-1880 ... very humble beginnings.
And if that's too much ... Brooklyn - a Quick History ... for those in a hurry.
Great, here you can see an ... 1879 Map of Coney Island ... where everything was.
All right, here's the way ... Coney Island Hotels ... used to look years ago.
Remember when a ... View from Brooklyn ... looked like this?
Look, old Coney Island's ... Beach & Boardwalk ... used to looked like this.
And now, just for fun, only ... Old Brooklynites ... could possibly understand.
And a Brooklynese letter - Brooklynese ... from Bill Gates himself.
And what do we have here - The Cyclone ... known all over the world.
Theyod say, "Hey, I'll kick you to Canarsie" ... that's what they used to say.
And a brief history of ... Brooklyn Baseball ... "take me out to the..."
And a special recipe for ... Brooklyn's Egg Cream ... remember that taste?
Oh yeah, lest we forget - Brooklyn Now - The Modern Way - you will recognize it.
We'll return to the ... Navigator ... our contents page.