<p>St. Albans and Springfield Gardens. I didn’t know people from those neighborhoods while I was growing up but I came to know them while working in the City years later. Shrink-you know how it is, growing up in NYC your neighborhood was the world.
I have to say that one of my dearest friends, as an adult working in the City, was from St. Albans. I greatly enjoyed working with her and am still in contact with her after all these many 20 plus years.<br>
Egg creams, penny candy, hoola hoops -curlers and Patty Duke! (anyone remember the seltzer man?) What a happy time it all was!
Do you think our children also know of happy times? I think they do but for them, a new generation, hoola hoops and spaldeens, and simple chalk and roller skates have evolved into more intricate things. Doesn’t mean it is bad. Soon, they will have their own memories to share.
I think I might take a day off to stay at home to watch old tv shows and sip an egg cream and then later in the day, go out to buy a spaldeen-any guess at how much that little pink ball costs today? I don’t know myself, but when I find out, I’ll fill you all in.
And, Quopoe, thanks for reminding me of Boris and Natasha-shades of the Cold War on TV-but it was fun!</p>
<p>Just spent a weekend with childhood friends sharing our memories of the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1950’s and 60’s. Our classmates were fromevery part of the world-our HS is around the corner from the tenement museum, home of the pushcarts which we remembered so well. Allen Ginsburg and Peter Orlovsky hung out in Thompson Square park, our after school hangout. St. Marks Church started showing Andy Warhol movies. The Bread and Puppet Theatre, Living Theatre and Catholic Worker were all big presences in the neighborhood. Our parents lamented the “beatnikers” and their influence on us. A group of us cut school to participate in the “First World Wide General Strike for Peace” held in front of the UN in 1962. Pete Seeger sang at the rally. Our parents found out and then lamented the “communists” influencing us. None of us realized how unusual our neighborhood and experiences were until we were alot older. During our last reunion we walked the streets we used to know so well(we’ve all moved from NY long ago). Found them clogged with double decker tourist buses and signs for condos. Amazing. We were dazed.</p>
<p>Hi shrinkrap,</p>
<p>I grew up in Sunnyside -had friends in St.Albans at Andrew Jackson HS.</p>
<p>Yes, we had a seltzer man. I saved a couple of syphon bottles from his last visit as nostalgia items.</p>
<p>Do kids still get off from school for “Brooklyn-Queens Day”? And the greatest thing about Queens in the 60s was going to the World’s Fair in Flushing!</p>
<p>“And the greatest thing about Queens in the 60s was going to the World’s Fair in Flushing!”</p>
<p>My dad “dropped off” my mom and us kids there regularly.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap-
I spent a lot of time at the '63 NY World’s Fair. Loved the GE carousel of progress! How about Freedomland? Did you go there?? It is now co-op city 
I loved Freedomland-- we used to eat that the Chun King in the Chinatown section all the time!</p>
<p>The Lower East Side-David Peel anyone???
Those were my High School and late teen years. Great neighborhood and it has indeed changed. It went from housing immigrants (as many neighborhoods were ) to hip and now ultra hip. I envy you spending your childhood there. An old friend of mine was with Bread and Puppet, been trying to track her down for 30 years-sure do miss her.
It is touristy now as are most neighborhoods but Little India on East 6th has never been better in my opinion.
Could there be anything better than to have been raised in NYC?<br>
Hey, Lower East Side, what about the Gem Spa??? Egg Cream delights!
Catholic Worker is still on East 1st. Passed by the storefront and said a few hellos just a month or two ago.</p>
<p>“Shrinkrap-
I spent a lot of time at the '63 NY World’s Fair. Loved the GE carousel of progress! How about Freedomland? Did you go there??”</p>
<p>I was 5 or 6 years old; I only remember the “legends” I was told, like my brother routinely getting lost and we’d leave him at the lost kid place for awhile…and “It’s A Small World” .I remember it a lot more after the Worlds Fair was gone…like the skating rink. Flushing Meadows, right?.</p>
<p>Here’s a Queens Worlds Fair video</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.archive.org/details/ToTheFairA[/url]”>To The Fair (Pt 1) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive;
<p>Cute video, Shrinkrap (tho I will have to go back to watch the whole thing). And somehow I got the year '63 in my head (it was '65). I also remember going to opening day of Shea stadium (I was in 5th grade). The Commissioner of Schools for our city sat right behind us- I thought I was going to go to jail for playing hookey! My teacher promised to give us no homework very time the Mets won that year. I think it happened once.</p>
<p>Great video.</p>
<p>Anybody remember Dick, Jane, Spot and Puff? I learned to read at PS19, on 11th Street and 1st Ave. in Manhattan. At least half of my classmates weren’t born in the US, and certainly none of us ever had any idea what it was like to have a single family house let alone a yard. See Spot run? Where to? If landlords allowed us to have a dog, would it run down to 10th st and get killed in traffic? Those readers with this strange family and neighborhood were as confusing as heck to us. Now if only Dick and Jane played pootsie or knew when they went out they had to “play in front of the window” until the chorus of mothers shouted out “dinnertime” every evening, we would have understood.</p>
<p>Just browsing through this thread and saw the reference to Captain Kangaroo. I was able to create a ringtone of the show theme music and I hear it 25 times a day every time my daughter calls me. Happy memories. I even showed S video clips of the Captain and Mr. Greenjeans on YouTube. (He thinks I’m nuts, of course)</p>
<p>Will have to check out youtube! Thanks!</p>
<p>And the World’s Fair-- I was little, so only remember snippets. I do remember being frightened of the “animatron” people was it a GE exhibit?), and my poor mother having to wait with me outside…
I also remember watching glassblowers that seemed just amazing at the time. Think my sister still has a little glass horse that was made there…</p>
<p>Here’s the scoop on the GE animatron Carousel of Progress, first used at the '64-65 NY Worlds fair, and later at Disneyland <a href=“http://www.yesterland.com/progress.html[/url]”>http://www.yesterland.com/progress.html</a>
<a href=“CarouselOfProgress.com is available at DomainMarket.com. Call 888-694-6735”>CarouselOfProgress.com is available at DomainMarket.com. Call 888-694-6735;
<p>Here’s some more trivia. Did anyone remember that the first person to play Clarabelle the clown on Howdy Doody was Bob Keeshan, who then became Captain Kangaroo?</p>
<p>These are great links - am going to forward them to my sister. What an amazing amount of money effort and technology must have gone into producing the world’s fairs.</p>
<p>And wasn’t Bob Keeshan also a naval or army hero?</p>
<p>This is fun. Our family moved from Brooklyn to LI when I was growing up, but the neighborhood kids still played ball in the streets until dark. The spaldeen is a pink Spalding ball. Here’s the explanation of the name:</p>
<p>“Why “spaldeen?” The name is a corruption of the pronunciation of “Spalding,” probably colored by the New York City dialect. The moniker became so popular that even Spalding now markets it under that name. Anyone who actually calls a spaldeen a “Spalding Hi-Bounce Ball”… well, we just feel sad for these folks.” </p>
<p>And this website describes a lot of the games that we played with it: <a href=“http://www.streetplay.com/thegames/haveaball.htm[/url]”>www.streetplay.com/thegames/haveaball.htm</a></p>
<p>I loved Sandy Becker and once entered a contest the show was having. I was absolutely sure that I would win the prize (a doll I think). One day I got a phone call and the voice said “This is Sandy Becker” and told me I had won the contest. I was so excited, I was in heaven, not just because I had won, but I had actually talked to Sandy Becker. Later (years later) I realized my mother had one of my uncles call and pretend to be Sandy Becker, and she bought me the doll.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Urban legend. Bob Keeshan was born in 1927, a little too late for WW2. He did join the marines, though.</p>
<p>I loved the Carousel of Progress. It was especially nice on hot days when you were running low on tickets. Kinda like an e ticket for free.</p>
<p>E tickets!! I still had a book or 2 of original Disney tickets (probably minus the E tickets)… somewhere. I wonder what they are worth to some collecter?</p>
<p>2mch2sn-
Great story! My brother won something from Treflich’s pet store in the Bronx-- and be picked a mean-spirited blue parakeet that pecked at everyone. </p>
<p>Anyone remember sun cameras? You put them out in the sun, with the item you wanted “photographed” under the film and the sun “developed” the picture. How about the miniature items in shells that opened up when you put them in water? And sea monkeys, and those multicolored crystal things that grew in water, and along the same lines… rock candy. How about those ■■■■■■ with the long orange hair? I could go on and on… Wow, we hd fun, didn’t we… even withoug electronics? Nightly games of capture the flag in the neighborhood. Good times.</p>
<p>Correction-- Trefflich’s petstore was in downtown Manhattan, on land that was ultimately bought up to build the world trade center <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Trefflich[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Trefflich</a> Trefflich imported a lot of exotic animals from Africa, and was the source of some of the chimps used in early space travel. Also supplied the chimp J. Fred Muggs (who was on the Today show). Interesting history.</p>