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