Two Sides of the Family--One Building

My father and my mother's baby brother, my uncle. This uncle was active in early commercial animation on TV. He participated in the Muriel cigar commercial and the cuckoo clock opening on the Howdy Doody Show. When he moved to the north Bronx, my grandmother complained that he was living in the country. When he moved to the suburbs, Grandma was hysterical. "He's living in the wilderness."

Wonder where in northern Italy.... (me, always curious)

loving these pix!

everything about The Concourse fascinates me

I realized recently that quite a bit of the New York-focused fiction I read is set on The Concourse. Several recently set in Roberta's early years there, a couple of others set in the 1970's when the neighbourhood was changing dramatically.

Love love the pix.

That Roberta. A kid with a bit of a personality.

In Boulevard of Dreams, Constance Rosenblum noted that Horace Ginsbern, one of the chief architects of buildings along the Grand Concourse in the thirties, was an inveterate gambler, like many successful Jewish businessmen of his era. Some of the elegant high-rise apartment buildings were homes to high stakes card games and fly-by-night casinos.

Rosenblum also introduces us to one of the West Bronx neighborhood bookies of the forties and fifties, Joey Hacken, who operated out of the Bickford's coffee shop at 188th Street and the Grand Concourse. He was better known to the regulars as Joey Jalop because of the junk heap that he drove. He was the son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants although some assumed he was Italian. He was no flashy sharp-dresser but a short dumpy guy who usually could be found in a sports shirt covered by a shabby overcoat in cold weather. He sat at his table surrounded by young apprentices with heads for sports statistics and math. He would buy them pie and soda as he discussed the art of handicapping a sports event, sort of a modern day rabbi. A decade later he would be implicated in a game fixing scheme that involved one of his neighborhood acolytes, Jack Molinas, who had become a professional basketball player. The scandal almost brought down the sport of basketball.

Bickford's was a popular low cost coffee shop chain with outlets throughout the city. It dated back to the 1920s and was popular with night owls because of its late hours.

A quick summary of ookiness. My father was mugged--thrown to the ground by seven young men with knives out. They got eleven dollars. His brother, my dear uncle, was mugged twice in the same week by the same people. I guess they learned his schedule. The two boy cousins on the ground floor of the building: one was thrown to the ground and robbed; the other was stabbed. Word is he resisted. And moi? I was attacked in the stairwell of our building. Rape attempted. I escaped.

I called the police at least once a week. Hearing people screaming for help. People in our building were tied up and gagged while their apartments were looted. One night, I heard strange shouting from the park across the street. Gang war. The last straw: I was having dinner with my family. We heard someone shout, "Stop or I'll shoot." Then we heard shots.

Being chased from my home and a place that I loved made me angry. I haven't fully gotten over it yet.

Not such a tough cookie. Just very cautious, still. Very aware of my surroundings.