Category Archives: Street Lifestyle

I can definitely relate…

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I can definitely relate to the “search for the roller skate key” scenario! There were five of us at home (not counting my mother), so we never knew who had it last or where they put it. I loved skating so much on the Lower East Side that I did it well into my adult years when I moved to Brooklyn at the Empire Roller Skating Rink and the Park Circle Roller Skating Rink, dancing to the music on my skates! I think I stopped going when I was around 35. Don’t ask me about roller blades — I put those things on once a few years ago — one ankle went in, the other went out — I took them off and haven’t been skating since. – webdiva

My first kiss was NOT particularly…

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My first kiss was NOT particularly pleasant but it was memorable. I think I was about thirteen or fourteen years old. This guy from the neighborhood who was about my age was always making racy comments around me, which I pretty much ignored. Late one summer night, I was walking home after hanging out with my friends and ran into the guy. He walked up to me, asked me if I’d ever been kissed and before I could reply, planted his lips on mine and stuck his yucky, sloppy tongue halfway down my throat. And then he walked away. At the time I thought, “if this is what kissing is about, I’m NEVER getting married!” We never mentioned it after that and I haven’t seen him in yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeears…… – webdiva

Hmmm… You know…

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Hmmm… You know what? I think I said “Mr. Frostee” when I MEANT “Mr. Softee”. And, no, I didn’t know about the green bottles… I only remember blue. And YES, I remember the “chocolate cake Good Humors”! Wow..that takes me back.. I had a DOVE bar the other day and I remember thinking, “This is pretty darn good, but there’s just too much of it!” 🙂 🙂 And I remember the shaved ice and cherry syrup — I LOVED that as a kid. I also remember guys pushing carts full of “homemade” ices that my mother would never let me buy. She said they made the ices in their bathtubs at home! 🙂 🙂 – webdiva

My brothers John and Tim…

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My brothers John and Tim and I always played stickball in our native Canarsie, the center of Brooklyn and the world, to us. Charlie Stella always bragged about his ability to consistently whack a two sewer hit and was usually willing to back up the brag with a bet in which the loser had to spring for a slice of pizza and an Italian Ices at Joe’s Pizzeria. Now and then errant balls would hit cars and windows which would lead to the local beat cop ambling along. He’d collect our sticks and break them in half in the very sewer in which Charlie’s best shots would bounce off of. We would then resort to stoop ball, until we got our hands on more broomsticks and black tape. There wasn’t a house on our block that contained a broom that was more than two feet long!

Flipping baseball cards…

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Flipping baseball cards was one of many gambling games played in Far Rockaway, N.Y. The others being marbles and tops. We had two variations: 1. Closest to a wall – Standing a determined distance from a wall, each player would flip a card frisbi-like with a flick of the wrist towards the wall. The winner would be the closest card to the wall. A leaner (leaning against the wall) would beat a card laying flat on the ground touching the wall. If two card were touching the wall laying flat on the ground, the top one won. If two cards were leaners, the most vertical card won. The winner kept all of the card in play. The big dilemma was that crisp new cards flipped best, but who wanted to lose a crisp new card? 2. Flipping Heads or Tails – By swinging your arm in an upwards motion and releasing the card just as the arm started up, the card would overturn and land on the ground either heads up or down. There were alternate ways of flipping the card, but this one was by far the most popular and effective. The goal was to meet the pre-negociated arrangement. Sometimes it would be simply to match the number of heads and tails. Sometimes it would be to match the exact order and number of heads and tails (ie; 6 heads, 1 tail, 3 heads). The number of cards could be 1 to whatever. Of course, if the matcher met the challenge, he kept all of the cards. As with the flipping dilemma, the crappier cards that you didn’t care about were more difficult to control. Gottem, needem was the universal language for trading.

In Far Rockaway, N.Y., we…

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In Far Rockaway, N.Y., we used to play a sadistic top game we called “crack-top”. A circle would be drawn on a smooth surface, like a shuffleboard court. Each player would place a top in the circle. The tops in the circle would have the standard ball-bearing type tip. The playing tops, however, would have a sharpened, spear-like tip. Sometimes the playing tops would be regular tops with the ball bearing removed and a nail placed point out in its place. The idea of the game was to knock tops out of the circle with the player knocking the top out, keeping the top. Of course, the real goal of the game was to split someones top wide open.

What a find! I was always…

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What a find! I was always interested in collecting baseball cards because I had some from my older brother, and loved baseball. Back in about 1970 or 71, the official “hobby” of collectibles was still quite young. I was starting to buy cards from dealers. By today’s standards they were quite cheap. Cards like Jackie Robinson or Willie Mays from 1956 sold for $6 or $7, as shown in publications like The Trader Speaks. My friend David and I, also a collector cards, heard of a sale in Brooklyn. We lived in eastern Queens, so we understood this would be a long ride. We decided to take the bus and train and each brought a couple of hundred bucks, hoping we’d get “lucky.” When we got out of the train, we realized were in a pretty tough section of Bedford Stuyvesant (2 Black Panther Storefronts within the couple of blocks from the train). David was black, and I’m white and though we both had a fairly good street sense, we realized we were a bit out of our element. At 16 between the long ride, train transfers and different neighborhood, it felt like a long way from home. We went to the home of a guy named Ronald Moore, an early collector. Ronald was both friendly and very knowledgeable about the collectibles. He showed us his collectible items and early hobby publications “The Sports Hobbyist” (circa ’60, ’61). Ronald had to leave town, and in order to raise some cash was doing a big “fire sale.” He had stacks of excellent condition Topps baseball cards from 1957-1962, doubles and triples of Mays, Mantle, Clemente, Kaline. Oh Wow! Hobby-heaven. We walked out of there, each of us carrying 2 or 3 shopping bags of cards. David and I were both able to make nearly full sets of cards for those years, with plenty of doubles to spare. It was only years later that I realized what a “find” this was. This provided the base for my collection as well as a nice economic cushion, which helped me for example, to pay moving costs into different NYC apartments.