Yes I’m Jewish and lived in several largely Jewish neighborhoods from the time I was born during WW2 till my parents and sister moved out to Baltimore County for a safer school for her.
Re Barry Levinson. Here’s a few tidbits about my distant relationship with him.
Met him at the world premier of “Liberty Heights”, a not very good film though it did catch some of the flavor of anti-Semitism in the 50’s (Hampden and Hamilton, mainly).
I used to good to schools at Liberty Heights and Garrison, #64 Elementary, Garrison Jr. HS, Beth Tefilah synagogue, etc.) In fact, Levinson and I went to Beth Tefilah but he was older so I never really met him (and he lived in the real Forest Park area west of Forest Park Avenue.
The film “Diner” was based on the real diner at Reisterstown and Rogers Avenue, where the older “City” guys (classes of 1959 or so) ate, while we early 60’s City guys ate at Ameche’s Drive In up the road. Also ate at Mandel and Ballow’s great delicatesson restaurant. I went to school with their nephew Steve Mandel.
One of the characters in the movie Diner was “Boogie”, played by Mickey Rouke. I knew the real “Boogie”, Boogie Weinglass, who played on City’s basketball team. He was a wild as projected in the movie. I think that poor, beautiful blond “Gloria” is still blushing, or did she actually like what he said to her on the bus home from City/Eastern?
The actor who played “Bagels” in Diner is Michael Tucker, a very distant cousin of mine, and we played football together for the Lancers Boys Club as well as went to Garrison and City.
Knockos’ pool-hall really did exist at Ayredale and Liberty Heights Avenues, just below Garrison Avenue.
I saw some of the old 50’s cars used in the movie “Tin Men” lined up near the city jail in between takes. Like a museum on wheels.
In the movie “Liberty Heights”, they merged Meadowbrook swimming pool with Milford Mill pool/quarry for the anti-segregation protest scene (really happened at Milford but films at Meadowbrook).
In it, you can see the young lead actor swinging on a pulley cable line that actually went from a 25 ft platform out over the quarry. You dropped off before the cable got too low to the water and swam to a nearby wooden raft or back to the walking ramp.
When this scene came up in the premier, and the actor grabbed the pulley rope, I said out loud, “I broke that rope”, not knowing that Levinson was sitting a couple rows behind me.
A girl I was with jumped at the rope about a half second after I did and it snapped the rope. I said “Oh shit” as it snapped and I fell to the water below, but when I emerged with the rope in my hand, those watching applauded me.
Then I quickly looked around and found my friend was safe, not hitting any of the rocks under the platform. We all had a good laugh. Wish I had saved the knotted end of that rope.
PS: I also was on the Buddy Dean Show twice as a student guest. It was fun to be on tv and actually dance with a national singer, Linda Scott.
A lot of what you see in the movie “Hairspray” by Baltimore film-producer John Waters, was accurate about the desegration efforts there, esp. against “Black Thursday”.
Life was a lot simpler in those days, and a lot more peaceful until 1968 when Nancy Pelosi’s ahole brother Mayor Tommy D’Alessandro III sold out white businessmen/women, esp. the Jewish owners of small businesses, to the black rioters after the death of Dr. King.
That marked the moment Baltimore began its continuing slide into the cesspool of crime and Democrat corruption and cronyism.
Yes, Mayor Schaeffer was a great guy and tried his best to save the city, but he was undercut and betrayed all through his two terms. My mother was on one of his cultural commissions and could talk to him whenever she needed to.
The last of the oldtime Democrat gentlemen.
Now I almost never go back to Baltimore. Hard to find a decent deli except on Lombard Street (I’m not impressed with Attman’s at all. I knew grandpa Attman and Seymour, his son, before and after he got his ears fixed).
As for the Harbor, it is nice and my family enjoyed shows at Pier 6, the USS Torsk sub (I was also on the USS Pike back in the late 50’s when it was in harbor), and the USS Constellation. Today we would never go down there for many reasons, physical health problems being a key one. Safety is another.
It was a great city while I was growing up, but there has been so much leftist-liberal damage done to it that it will take two generations of concentrated effort to bring it back to even a 2nd rate city.
I do miss Price’s hamburgers, boatload of fries, and their incredible strawberry milkshakes.
As for Chinese food, when to school with Benny Dur’s daughter May Ling (a lovely young girl) who, I think took over his restaurant on Reisterstown Road and Jimmy Wu’s, the good Chinese restaurant downtown on Charles? below North Avenue.
For chocolate eclairs and Napoleons, it was Nat’s and Leon’s on North Avenue. None better. Also had Stone’s and Silver’s bakeries down on Lombard Street and Garrison Ave between Forest Park Ave and Liberty Heights. Best Danish in town.
So much for a “back to the past” trip down memory lane. At least I have some good photos to show my kids and grandchildren.
Signing off singing “The Way It Was” and “Those Were the Days”.
Thanks!