Posted on 02/20/2021 5:43:42 PM PST by SamAdams76
And only now do I learn that the metal hoop that comes up from the back of the seat was not a "wheelie bar."
Also, I wonder how many kids actually used the hoop or the "wheelie bar" to actually "pop a wheelie."
sure did, long ago and far away...
I’ve lived in greater Forest Hills area for most of the time...when my son was born we bought an apartment in Richmond Hill North, but I’m divorced and live in Kew Gardens now..... I still go to ozone pizza on liberty Avenue and, of course, new park pizza on cross Bay boulevard.
Wow! Small world!
Ozone Pizza was down the block from John Adams, the high school I went to in the mid-70s. Didn’t go there very often because I usually would just go home after school, about a mile away. I did, however, around 2 or 3 years ago pass by the pizzeria, and was stunned to see that the same Italian family who owned it back in the 70s still did, some 40 plus years later! I didn’t know them at all, though. Just learned this by talking to what seemed to be a grandson who was working behind the counter. That neighborhood, over the past 30 or so years, has totally changed, from largely Italian to mostly Guyanese (Indian).
Anyway, speaking of John Adams High School...
“After his father abandoned the family, young [Jackie] Gleason began hanging around with a local gang, hustling pool.[12] He attended P.S. 73 Elementary School in Brooklyn; John Adams High School in Queens; and Bushwick High School in Brooklyn. ...”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Gleason#Early_life
Yes, it’s all West Indian now. But at least they have children! Can’t stand all the childless hipster neighborhoods. No children, no warmth, no ethnic character.
All the hipsters come to Queens for good, inexpensive ethnic food. But it never crosses their mind that what makes these neighbourhoods ethnic is the fact that people are reproducing and preserving their culture through their kids.
Re: John Adams High School
Just now found this, on other JAHS alumni...
“Nick Santamaria, Mike Mincelli and Vinnie Narcardo, founding members of The Capris vocal group. Their most famous Doo Wop recording was “There’s a Moon Out Tonight”.”
This is especially interesting to me because I was a member of a garage band when I was in my teens and an organ player who later joined the group told us that his father had written the song “There’s A Moon Out Tonight” for the Capris.
However, they would have went there several years before I did, maybe even close to 10 years earlier. Gleason would have been even more long ago.
Other alumni...
Jimmy Breslin, acclaimed columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, the Daily News, the New York Journal American, Newsday, and other venues and author of numerous books. He is also the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. [1]
Steve Cangialosi, play-by-play voice of the New Jersey Devils on MSG Plus and the New York Red Bulls on the MSG Network.[9]
Mortimer Caplin, Internal Revenue Service commissioner, law professor and tax attorney
Jackie Gleason, American actor.
Keith Gottfried, former General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a senior official in the administration of President George W. Bush, is a 1983 graduate and the former Editor-in-Chief of the school’s newspaper, The Campus.[2][3]
Jack Lord (John Joseph Patrick Ryan), American actor, director and the star of the long-running TV show “Hawaii Five-O,” (the original version from the 1960s) [4].
Richard (Dick) Parsons, International business leader, former CEO of Time-Warner, Citi-Bank, General-Consul to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, Presidential Advisor.
Bernadette Peters, American actress
Jermaine Turner, American professional basketball player
Jason Wingreen, American actor who was the original voice of Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back.
Joseph Wiseman, American actor.
Nick Santamaria, Mike Mincelli and Vinnie Narcardo, founding members of The Capris vocal group. Their most famous Doo Wop recording was “There’s a Moon Out Tonight”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams_High_School_(Queens)#Notable_people
We are the same age. I had a blue Schwinn Stingray growing up. Luv that banana seat for the wheelies.
I think Cyndi Lauper was from that area as well.
And Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road in his mother’s house in Ozone Park.
Arlo Guthrie went to a school in Ozone Park, but lived in Howard Beach around the corner from John Gotti. Bob Dylan used to go there to visit Woody Guthrie when he first moved to New York. Arlo Guthrie’s mother was Jewish. His bar mitzvah teacher was Meir Kahane, the right wing Israeli politician who was assassinated in Manhattan in the 90’s.
The lead singer of Jay & The Americans, Jay Black, lived in Howard Beach and was actually good friends with mobster/murderer John Gotti. Gotti had his “Bergen Hunt & Fish” club in Ozone Park in the area where I hung out during the late 70s and 80s. Lots of stuff going on in that area during those years. Nowadays you’d be lucky to find a single Italian living there. And of course most were hard working, decent family people.
The bar and area where the real “Good fellas” crew hung out was within 6-7 blocks of where I lived in South Richmond Hill. They were in South Ozone Park. Our house was on the border of SOP and SRH. I probably ran into them on occasion back then at bars, etc. However, I never had had much respect for gangsters. Actually used to make fun of the kids of some of them that I knew, because they thought they were hot sh*t because of it.
Ironically, I’m now living in an apartment building just one block from where mobster Frank Costello lived and was nearly killed in 1957 by a then up and coming young mobster, Vinny ‘The Chin’ Gigante. I rather recently learned that, in addition to Costello, also living there around that time and earlier was Lucky Luciano, and Jewish mobsters, Meyer Lansky and Louis Lepke Buchalter. They were all in the same crew. Two blocks from me, and across the street from where they all lived, lived, until his sudden death in 1980, John Lennon. Both he and Costello were shot just outside their apartment buildings which were directly across the street from one another.
Yes, sort of. She went to Richmond Hill High School in northern Richmond Hill, which was on the complete other end of the Richmond Hill section from where we lived. Didn’t know her, or was in that area much.
Also from Richmond Hill was the late actor Dick Van Patten and his sister, also an actor/actress, Joyce Van Patten. She appeared on lots of popular TV shows, mostly during the 60s-80s. I only recall her being in 1 or 2 episodes of the Odd Couple, and a really funny scene from Columbo, with the late Peter Falk.
Speaking of that episode, check out this hilarious clip from it (linked below). She plays a nun at a homeless shelter.
Detective Columbo, in his his usual ‘bummy’ attire and appearance, enters the facility looking to question one of the residents as a possible witness in a murder case.
Misunderstanding At The Homeless Mission (4 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2yn0upRVxY
That color is what we used to call "no-sale green", though you'd have a better chance with a green "Baccaruda" than a green Dart.
Starring in it as the main murder suspect is, believe it or not, comedian Dick Van Dyke, who played the role seriously and very well. You would hardly believe he was the same guy from the popular comedy series.
(Dick Van Dyke, Dick Van Patten... strange coincidence I guess)
Maybe, but their "Mopar Green" was very popular, as was their "Plum Crazy" purple.
That’s not that bad a color. There are plenty worse varieties of green. But I certainly wouldn’t want it on my car either.
My late father, God love him, veteran of WW2, had a beloved Ford Maverick in one of the ugliest shades of green that I’ve ever seen. Wouldn’t even think of letting him know what I thought of it. Miss him a lot.
Yes, it’s all West Indian now. But at least they have children! Can’t stand all the childless hipster neighborhoods. No children, no warmth, no ethnic character.
I can't stand those nauseating millennial a-holes either. Most of course are democrats.
I always liked them. Far from my top choice of colors, but I think they looked nice on the Pontiacs at least, especially the '68 Grand Prix and LeMans...
Boy. 8-track in the car, sister buying an album, Big Boy lunch, back yard collapsible swimming pool AND a drive-in movie all in the same day.
These folks were RICH!
(I bet his mom even gave them Hi-C out of a can, and not watered-down Kool Aid like we had to drink!)
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