You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Brighton Beach.”
Brighton Beach 1963 Facing the back of our apartment is the alley. Street games spill over into it, and we like to make up new ones: “Bet you can’t hit the wire with the ball.” Sometimes the super yells at us. There are broken bottles and smells from garbage cans. But the alley is our backyard— private, hidden from grown-up eyes. [...]
The Brighton Jubilee was a street fair started by a local Brighton Beach neighborhood association in the mid-1970s. At the time the neighborhood needed a good promotional effort — if not a friendly slap on the back— because it was, in many ways, a depressing craphole. Unlike today’s New York City street fairs, which are cookie cutter and filled with the same vendors [...]
It was 1978. Or 1979. I was 10 or 11 years old. I’m a little vague on the exact year, but I was definitely aware of the fact I was too old to be riding my Big Wheel around the block. Catching myself in the reflection of the windows of Speedway Drugs, as I scooted by, I realized I looked [...]
In the fall of 1980, The Empire Strikes Back had already come out and while I was getting tired of my Star Wars action figures, I really, really, really wanted a Millennium Falcon spaceship playset. It was huge, cool and could fit my 3.75” action figures without issue. But at $29.99 it was expensive for a 12 year old kid with a meager $2 [...]
If you want to call me a cool kid, please do. You see, back in 1975 when I was seven years old , I visited Tribeca for the first time…with my mom and dad. We didn’t go to the Mudd Club or Artists Space or anything like that; instead we went to a factory just south of Canal Street. One Saturday [...]
I have no idea where Bill came from, but one spring, sometime in the late 1970s, he showed up and started hanging out every day on our Ocean Parkway block in Brighton Beach. He was a white guy with a red haired, frizzy Jewfro, and he wore a denim jacket. Bill would stand out there on the block all day [...]
“If I had a dollar for every dead Subaru battery, I would be a millionaire”, the roadside assistance man tells me in a tone that is both wishful and annoyed. "Since Subaru started manufacturing their own batteries, people keep on calling. If it’s not recharged frequently, the battery will run out of juice, especially in the winter. Keep the engine [...]
