I played for a team one of the cops coached, and we were in awe of him as much as if he’d been a Dodgers player.īut the 75th had other things on its mind as the 1960s ended - crime. The 75th Precinct, now one of the city’s most active in fighting crime, was a second home to many kids because of its Police Athletic League program. Some years ago, it became one of the first schools in America to have metal detectors because of all the weapons being brought in. And when I was old enough, it was another few blocks to Thomas Jefferson High School. When I was ready for junior high, I walked five blocks to my right to 149. “Now you can go to school,” he said with a big smile, and off I went. I’d sit in the barber chair he sprayed my hair, combed it. “Come in, let me comb your hair,” he’d say. Making a left turn from my house at 843 Sutter Avenue I’d walk four blocks to PS 158. In East New York you could walk to school from the time you were 6 or 7 years old. What do police defunders have to say to Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct? Tinn sitting outside with his radio - wearing a Yankees cap. And then, one day in 1951, when the Giants’ Bobby Thomson screwed the Dodgers out of the pennant in the ninth inning, I saw a very sober Mr. He’d sit with a portable radio in front of his Schenck Avenue apartment house, stomping his feet when things went well. Tinn - probably shortened from the European original. We knew the names of everyone, and everyone seemed to be a character. When Joe arrived, he’d find 20 or 30 cents left by people who had taken a bagel or two. Lawlessness? We were so innocent that the grocer, Joe Schlaff, had his bagels delivered in large brown bags in front of his store before it opened. A puddle of blood on the sidewalk outside an East New York deli after a shooting. Once in a while, a guy in a black Hopalong Cassidy outfit, astride a white horse, would come galloping down the street. ![]() I lived on the main street in my part of it, Sutter Avenue, a narrow corridor yet crammed with two-way traffic - city buses, horse-drawn wagons, even taxis. He was always waving an uncashed check he claimed someone gave him, and by the way, could you lend him $10 or $20 ’til he got to the bank to cash it?Įast New York throbbed with activity. ![]() Bernie passed through France on his way from Eastern Europe to the States after the Holocaust, hence his French connection. Three doors down from my two-family house, Bernie the “French Furrier” had his storefront shop. Vario was the character Paul Sorvino played (fictionalized) in the movie “Goodfellas.” For the privilege of working East New York he had to pay mobster boss Paul Vario a monthly piece of his income. She sold it to poor black customers who lived in another world, seven or eight blocks away.Īnd criminals? Why, my Uncle Sol was a bookie. The cast of characters still resonates.Ĭrime? Sure, if you consider that the old lady next door, who looked like my grandmother, used to make bathtub gin. I’m drawn back to those 1940s and 1950s days I came of age in this almost old-European Jewish ghetto. There’s even a TV series about this now-notorious place. East New York, that fabled sliver of Brooklyn, has had almost 50 shootings this year. It doesn’t seem possible, but I’m reading about my old neighborhood these days: the place I played punchball in the streets, walked home at 3 in the morning, knew the names of all the mom-and-pop-store owners. ‘Serial’ subject Adnan Syed’s murder conviction should be tossed: prosecutorsĪssailant hits teen with brick in unprovoked, daylight NYC attack: cops Why this longtime Democratic pol can’t support Hochul for governor - and endorses Zeldin Woman searching for lost dog finds remains of Ohio woman missing since 2017
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