Time Travelers: Journey to Jackson Heights

Yesterday my wife and I got into our blue time machine — ok, it’s a Subaru, but whatever — and hurtled back 40 years.

We drove 15 miles to Jackson Heights, a lovely bedroom community in Queens, NY.

Ah, the old sod. We lived there from 1977 to 1985. We were kids.

35-25 77th Street #A16 in Jackson Heights, NY Photo 6
The Berkeley. We lived there when we were in our late 20s-early 30s. We felt exiled from our friends in Manhattan. Brooklyn wasn’t “a thing” yet. Now, Jackson Heights is “happening” — and priced accordingly.

We bit the bullet and moved to a lovely Jackson Heights “junior four” from our one bedroom on West 21st Street, because our Manhattan landlord jacked our rent to a lofty $275 a month.

We hated it there back in the bad old days of rampant NYC crime. It was affordable, but dull, and not particularly safe. Plus, all our friends lived in “the city”. In the late seventies, Brooklyn was still a dicey backwater. We figured we’d save money for a few years, and move back to where most of our friends lived. We figured wrong.

We lived in Jackson Heights at the time of Son of Sam, and so we called our apartment building (“The Berkeley”) The Berkowitz. My wife would wrap her red hoodie around her head when we walked back to our apartment at night. Why? “It’s my Son of Sam helmet,” she’d explain to perplexed guests.

There were shell casings on the glass-strewn courts where I played pick-up b-ball. There were cocaine gang shoot-’em-ups. There was gay-bashing.

Our apartment was gorgeous (sunken living room, roomy eat-in kitchen, so many closets that many were just empty). Our block was leafy. But it wasn’t “the city”.

One day the super plopped a document at our doorstep. It was a red-herring. I was a kid and had no idea what that meant. But I soon understood it was our ticket out of Jackson Heights. A few years later we flipped the apartment and moved to Park Slope, which was, as they say, “on the come.” It was 1985. The crack epidemic was just around the corner. But we survived and the neighborhood thrived, to the point where it became the butt of jokes, a place where tykes were allowed to run amok in restaurants, boutiques, and even bars.

But I digress.

Only one thing tied us to Jackson Heights over the ensuing years: our safety deposit box at Queens Community Bank on Northern Boulevard. They kept “our family jewels” (actually just “important papers”) because no Brooklyn bank near us had a vault.

From time to time, we pulled important family papers out of the vault. There was hardly anything left in our runty Box 141. Fast forward forty years. I received a letter from the bank. It was sold. The bank was scheduled for renovation. I was asked to remove the remaining contents of my box.

Hence the time machine back to our youth.

Ronni atop Blue Thunder, across the street from The Berkowitz. She was 32.

We drove around the old sod. There stood The Berkowitz. It was beautifully maintained, as ever. But New York City is all about change, and this neighborhood had changes aplenty. All for the better.

I thought about the old sod in recent years, whenever I read of the morgue trucks that backed up Elmhurst General, just blocks from our door. Jackson Heights was ravaged by Covid. The Grim Reaper had a field day. But our sense was the neighborhood turned the corner.

The Arepa Lady (who started her business with a cart under the Roosevelt Avenue EL trestles) had a real retail space right around the corner from The Berkowitz! A cool espresso shop replaced the crummy one-chair barber just down the street. The old basketball courts with Mobius strips for rims were transformed into a kiddie-park green-space that was a wonderland for tykes. A French bakery rivalling anything on Rue Saint-Honore sold masterful macarons.

There was a Greenstreets, bikes-and-pedestrians-only initiative on 34th Avenue! And restaurants galore!

Back in the day, my wife and I would repair to the Mark Twain Diner on Northern Boulevard for standard chee-burgee fare. It was a bit down-at-the-heels, but affordable and nearby. Now? It’s the Jax Inn Diner, and we’re here to report that it was hopping and VERY good.

We ate our breakfast and, for a brief moment, we were in our late twenties again. It was a time of crazy parties and lots of laughter, for the lion’s share of our lives lie ahead. We worked hard, and played hard.

We left Jackson Heights in 1985 and began our quarter-century Brooklyn residency. We had long, rewarding careers, got out of the NYC-native’s provincial mindset, and thrived in a much wider world. Our co-workers and clients were, indeed, some of the best and brightest. We raised our son in a glorious neighborhood.

But yesterday, forty years on, we were back to a time when we had to take a step down in order to get ahead. We thought about those days, equal parts struggle and hope, as we paid the check at the Jax Inn, got back in our time machine-slash-Subaru, drove down Northern Boulevard to 69th Street, turned right onto on the BQE, and headed home. But it won’t be long before we’re back, because I have a hankering for the roast chicken at Pio Pio on Northern Boulevard and 85th Street. And maybe some dumplings at Phayul on 74th Street, and….and…

After a few hours in the time machine, we left the Jackson Heights we left forty years ago, and headed home. HOME!

Retailers I Have Loved

Once, I loved so many of them. Retailers! I’m talking stores, here!

Retailers! Stores! I’ve loved so many, I’ve lost count. But now, they’re gone.

“To all the stores I’ve loved before
I traveled in and out your doors
I’m glad they came along
I dedicate this song (I dedicate this song)
To all the stores I’ve loved before.”

Ah, Rabsons. On the north side of 57th Street, across from Scandinavian Ski, and the upstairs hair salon where I sat patiently waiting for an apprentice stylist to cut my hair for free (for I was un hombre pobre once upon a time). Rabsons had the finest stereo equipment, and knowledgeable staff. There, I bought BIC cassette players, Thorens turntables, KLH speakers. It was a major step up from Lafayette’s, where I got my start in stereo component equipment.

Joe’s Army Navy...le sigh!!! My Fordham Road favorite! Once I started working at the NYPL on Marion Avenue as a 15-year old, I was rolling in dough, for I made $1/hour as a page. I bought my own shirts, jeans, Li’l Abner work boots, and sweatshirts at Joe’s. I spent hours in front of their windows near Jerome Avenue, planning my next purchases before buying new screens for my pipe at the cigar store on the corner. It was never the same for me, though, after the big fire. Although my dad bought fire-sale sneakers there for $1/pair, and wore them even though they smelled like ashes.

Ah, Joe’s…I miss you so! Taken with my Konica Auto S2 one snowy night around 1970.

Eagle Provisions…be still, my foolish heart. This palace of Polish provisions gave me so much. Kielbasa. Kabonosy. Zywiec beer!!! Chrusciki! How many shirts did I ruin with your powdered sugar goodness? Where the grandpa would rub the buzz cut of my three year old son as I wheeled the kid around the narrow aisles of this Brooklyn mainstay on Fifth Avenue @18th Street. The family sold the building and I hear it’s now a condo. With an acai bar on the ground floor. WTAF!!!! Jaka szkoda, indeed. What a shame!

Eagle Provisions was where I shopped every Saturday with my little kid, when I was a young dad. Now there is an acai bar in this space, and condos above. WTF is acai, anyway?

Uptown, it’s Alexander’s! I saved the best for last. Alexander’s was where I bought my recorded music, as a teen. Albums stamped “C” were $2.99. D’s were $3.49. E’s (usually double albums) were $3.99. The record department was in the basement. I entered through the 190th Street doors, heavy glass barriers to the world o’retail within. There was a certain solemnity to entering this sacred space. The vestibule had a scent of carpet off-gas. Or, maybe they piped in oxygen to energize the customer experience, as they do in Vegas casinos. For music, though, this was the place, along with Spinning Disc, Music Makers, and Cousin’s (where I got my German-made K55; another story for another day). George Farkas, Brooklyn native, opened this particular store in 1933. All the stores were closed by ’92.

Alexander’s was more of an activity than a store. I’d walk through it virtually every day, walking home from work at the NYPL, through the store, and out the 190th Street doors up to my apartment house west of University Avenue.

I’ve loved many stores. These are but a few. Now, stores are quaint. Streets are blocked with UPS, FedX, Amazon, Fresh Direct, and Pea Pod trucks — and so many more. The goods come to you. Get them, return them, get new ones, return those…it’s as regular as the tides.

Feh!

“The winds of change are always blowing (blowing)
And ev’ry time I tried to stay (try to stay)
The winds of change continued blowing
And they just carried me a way (carried me away)”