Queensbridge memories

There's a guy at my garage who lived in Queensbridge around the same time I did and his memory is a much stronger faculty than is mine. He remembers the names of lots of people, their personality traits -  and we're talking 55 - 60 years ago. As he talked I remembered more things good bad and indifferent.

Bad: The names of the three guys who cornered me in the school yard, the name and face of the guy who delivered the kick to my balls. The name, face and words of School guidance counselor Miss Gajar as I was writhing on the ground: "You shouldn't do that on school grounds,"

"Fucking with Hotlips." Hotlips was the uniformed but unarmed guy who tried to enforce stuff like "Keep Off The Grass." It was later that the Housing Police were formed and later still that they were fully merged into NYPD.

The Buggy Beacon movie house - Tarzan, Three Stooges movies and Warner Brother cartoons. Paying to get in and then opening the exit door for cohorts, Hassling the movie matron who tried to eject non paying audiences. Going to see Elvis in Jailhhouse Rock with my mom.

Rock throwing battles with rival buildings, (Fun). The abortive tunnel I planned with the brothers Peter abd Alfred Michelle during a phase when they were not tormenting me.

http://pleasedontvomitinthetaxi.blogspot.com/2013/02/jewboy-of-queensbridge.html

Technology is amazing, and Thomas Friedman is a jerk.

I'm going to be sixty-seven years old on April 21.

I just was on a video call with some of my wife's  extended family members in Venezuela. Stuff like this blows my mind, let me tell you why.



When I was a kid in Queensbridge my mom got a party line telephone with our neighbor and almost aunt Carrie Sawinski. Later, on my seventh birthday we got the first television on the block as far as I knew. Kids from all over Queensbridge come to our "house" (yes people in projects call our apartments our "houses") to see the miraculous screen, I don't remember the first TV show we saw. Sometimes this scene seems to be the foggiest dream. Other times it seems like yesterday, even if I can't remember what we watched on the TV on my seventh birthday, sixty years ago. .

Now a flat broke taxi driver in the General Grant Houses can video chat with his remote in laws in a small town in Venezuela, not rich people at all, either.

Thomas Friedman says the world is flat. He is a jerk, but it is incredibly small, isn't it?

Jewboy of Queensbridge

Queensbridge- 21...

Buy This at Allposters.com
I lived in Queensbridge projects between the ages of five years old and thirteen years old, then we moved up Twenty-First Street to Ravenswood projects. I lived there for the years between my thirteenth and eighteenth birthdays. I was bar mitzvahed at Adath Israel, a modern Orthodox synagogue that moved up Twenty-First  Street from Queensbridge to Ravenswood almost exactly when my family did.

You don't meet a Jew every day who grew up in Queensbridge. I have posted some stuff about those years but I want to put those posts all together, and frankly with this title that includes the word "Jewboy" I expect some people will stumble upon these stories and appreciate them, or maybe hate them.

Technology is amazing, and Thomas Friedman is a jerk.

Please Don't Vomit In the Taxi: More about Roger (Cohen) and me.

Feb 08, 2013

Queensbridge was and is reputedly this very dangerous and very black place.Now, thee was an incident when my bedroom window was shot out one night and my sister and I were unhurt by the flying glass (a miracle of a sort ...

http://pleasedontvomitinthetaxi.blogspot.com/

Please Don't Vomit In the Taxi: Camp Clearpool, Carmel, New York ...

23 hours ago

There still were "white" and even Jewish families living in Queensbridge, not many but some of us were still there. Some of the kids were members of the Boys' Club which was located on 21st Street up past Broadway.

http://pleasedontvomitinthetaxi.blogspot.com/

Please Don't Vomit In the Taxi: I knew Adolf Hitler

Jan 21, 2013

We lived at 40-08 Twelfth Street, apartment 1D in Queensbridge and I think it was one or two floors above us that the Mittel's had their suite, two apartments cojoined to accomodate their numbers. My mom always warned me ...

http://pleasedontvomitinthetaxi.blogspot.com/

Please Don't Vomit In the Taxi: Eugene Weixel for Mayor?

Feb 20, 2013

Growing up in Queensbridge also counts for some chops I would say, as does my constant residence in this city over 66 years, at one time or other in each and every borough. No one loves New York City more passionately ...

http://pleasedontvomitinthetaxi.blogspot.com/

Please Don't Vomit In the Taxi: I knew Adolf Hitler

Jan 21, 2013

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/...es+No+Handicap Names Son for Hitler, But Sees No Handicap New York Times (1857-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Feb 9, 1943. pg. 14, 1 pgs. Document types: article. ISSN/ISBN: ...

http://pleasedontvomitinthetaxi.blogspot.com/

Camp Clearpool, Carmel, New York, summer of 1957

What a strange two weeks they were.
There still were "white" and even Jewish families living in Queensbridge, not many but some of us were still there. Some of the kids were members of the Boys' Club which was located on 21st Street up past Broadway. That's around where Long Island City and Astoria meet. I went there a few times but I really did not like the place much, They had a nice swimming pool but I vaguely remember seeing fights break out the two or three times I went there and I decided I would pass this service up.

The Boys' Club of New York ran a summer camp for us poor kids up in Carmel, New York. My parents sent me there in the summer of my twelfth year, me quite willing to go too.  The camp ran two week "trips".

I remember how I was a bit confused because I was the only kid from my block on this trip although the "colored kids" I knew all had signed up as well. When I got to the camp I saw that there were no "colored kids" at all. I had hoped to spend the two weeks hanging with my friends, especially Larry and Ronnie Gardner, but they were not on this trip.

There were only a few of us white boys from Queensbridge at the camp, the rest came from what were then white working class neighborhoods of Chelsea and Clinton in Manhattan.

Now this is going back over fifty years and I surely do not remember every hour or every day I was there. What I do remember is my counselor called "Bino"slapping me probably every day and calling me "Jew boy" and "Jew o". He loved asking me "so, how are things in the Mecca?" Another white boy from Queensbridge was this little Italian kid whose name I con't remember. He had a facial tick, always wincing. His mom had got him into some program to treat this and it was actually getting lessened. Bino, though, found the tick amusing and liked to smack this little kid around as well.

Then there was the fat little Jewish kid from Chelsea. He got it the worse I think, He was christened "Mister kosher" by Bino.

Bino and his junior counselor (whose name I do not recall) loved to have us boys dance naked around a campfire with our penises facing towards the flames. As I recall Bino was pretty impressed with mine. He even told another camper that Jew boy has a really big one and this praise came to me second hand.

All campers were expected to write out a postcard every day telling their parents that things were great. Every day at lunch they'd call one or other of the kids to take back his postcard and write a "better" one.


As my "trip's" boys got on the bus home a busload of dark skinned boys were already lined up to go to their assigned bunks.  I saw Larry and Ronnie and we acknowledged each other with glances.

The Boys Club is of course very fortunate that those wee not litigious times like we live in now. My parents and the little Italian kids mother went to the Boys; Club office with us and were satisfied to be blown off by whomever it was whose job was to blow off such complaints.

And that's the story of Camp Clearpool. My mom told me that she thought Bino was Ukrainian and that they all hate Jews. Of course Bino had a few other issues, as I've indicated, but it was much later in reading Israel Shahak and even Israel Shamir who I think is a brilliant hustler who often tells the truth. that I got a much clearer picture of some of the things that must have been in Bino's mind. Not that I forgive him, I don't but after all those years it was helpful to learn that the Ukrainians actually had quite some legitimate grievances with the Jews.

More about Roger (Cohen) and me.

I wanted to make a couple of things clear: Yes, when I was a kid I took a few beatings for being Jewish, and for being son of commies who wouldn't declare their loyalty to ammurrika, and of course these two motivations overlapped. And well it ought have, as anyone who reads Vivian Gornick's Romance of American Communism would have to agree.

This post from yesterday,

Roger Cohen of the New York Times says it all in a few ill chosen words  

turned out to be about me as much as about Roger and his "Israel First" orientation. And I posted links regarding my parents battle against the Loyalty Oath which back in those days people had to sign and swear to to obtain various government services, including the privilege (and I regard it as a privilege) to live in publicly subsidized housing like we did in Queensbridge.

Search Results

1. Queensbridge, Queens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensbridge,_Queens

   The Queensbridge Housing Projects, the largest of Queens' twenty-six developments, is located between Vernon Boulevard (which runs along the East River) ...
   

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3. Queensbridge Projects? (apartments, crime, how much) - City-Data Forum

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   Aug 22, 2010 – Did anyone here grow up in or near those projects? With so many Hip Hop people being from there it's become a well known housing project ...
4. The 7 Most Infamous U.S. Public Housing Projects | Breaking News ...

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   Sep 29, 2011 – Like many of the infamous housing projects, Queensbridge was the home to a host of notable hip-hop artists (Nas, Marley Marl, MC Shan, ...

Queensbridge was and is reputedly this very dangerous and very black place. Now, there was an incident when my bedroom window was shot out one night and my sister and I were unhurt by the flying glass (a miracle of a sort I guess) and we saw what looked like two black men running away from our building. It's my supposition that they were paid to do this and had not much thought about who we were or why they were paid to do this. 

In my day-to-day life my friends were the black kids, my frennemies the white, as these would alternately behave like friends and get into their God killer thing that left me perplexed. When they got into that mode the black kids would stand up in front of me and prevent me from being harmed. That's the way it was most often.

So, when I tell Roger Cohen to shut the fuck up with his "Israel Israel Israel war war war" shtick I have some moral authority to do so but I will let you in on a big secret here: So do you!      .   

I knew Adolf Hitler

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/...es+No+Handicap Names Son for Hitler, But Sees No Handicap New York Times (1857-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Feb 9, 1943. pg. 14, 1 pgs Document types: article ISSN/ISBN: 03624331 Text Word Count 198 Document URL: Abstract (Document Summary) There's another baby, the seventh in nine years, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Mittel, at 27-37 First Street, Astoria, Queens, and he has been named Adolf Hitler. 88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 I remember Adolf from when I was a boy. Now he was also known as "Teddy" because after the uproar Mr. Mittel changed the name from Adolf Hitler to Theodore Roosevelt, but he was always Adolf to me. We lived at 40-08 Twelfth Street, apartment 1D in Queensbridge and I think it was one or two floors above us that the Mittel's had their suite, two apartments cojoined to accomodate their numbers. My mom always warned me to stay away from Teddy, because he was sick and his dad had named him Adolf Hitler. I remember an image (we're talking fifty plus years now) of one of Teddy's sisters standing on the staircase, pregnant. I remember asking my mom how that could be if the girl wasn't married and my mom saying a very shocking thing about Mr. Mittel. I have a recollection of being pinned against the mailboxes in the building entrance by Adolf, his bony fingers around my neck, his face red his eyes bulging and me struggling to break free, then someone coming and pulling him off of me. I don't recall what precipitated the attempted strangulation but I do remember that terrifying few moments. Story had it that Adolf killed a candy store man near Ravenswood Projects and got caught. I don't know if he was executed or not. I remember his dad always walking around Queensbridge with a bunch of fancy cameras strapped around his shoulders. His dad reminded me then of a fatter version of Bathless Groggins. Yep, I knew Adolf Hitler.