Growing Up In NYC Memories

[mack]

A lot of us grew up in NYC or the suburbs.  We had - the subway, White Castle, NYC pizza, DJs Cousin Brucie and Dan Ingram, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, schools called PS 5 or some number, stickball, Coney Island, the Worlds Fair, Horn and Hardart automat restaurants, E J Korvette, the real Macys, Central Park, the Bronx Zoo, Flatbush, the Cross Bronx Expressway and the BQE, A&Ps, Nathans hot dawgs, cabs, kinishes, real bagels, Wetsons, SI Ferry, Time Square, Rockaway Beach Playland, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, Yankee Stadium, the Amazin Mets, the NY Giants when they played in NY, Broadway Joe, the Rangers, the Knicks, skyscrapers, tenaments, apartment buildings, bungalows, 15 cent parking meters, $5 parking tickets, Transit Police, Housing Police, green-black-white NYPD cars and red FDNY trucks. 

Bungalow Bar ice cream:


    Sometimes we would get Bungalow Bar and Good Humor the same day.  It was nice to have an extra 10 cent in your pocket.


Kiddie rides - truck and music:


    It was a great 3 minute ride.

 

[manhattan]

mack, I can ell this is going to be another of those great threads.  Thanks for getting it started.

 

[mack]

Riding the subway - 15 cents - you can go anywhere - ride all day.

Small tokens only 15 cents

 

[mack]

1960s NYC subways:

 

[mack]

15 cents gets you to the Worlds Fair



Shea Stadium too. 

Anyone remember the Polo Grounds - the Amazin Mets first season?

 

[raybrag]

Tom Seaver, Marvelous Marv Throneberry, and, of course, the immortal Gil Hodges (may Walter O'Malley rot in hell forever for moving 'Dem Bums).

 

[raybrag]

October 5, 1955 . . . the Dodgers FINALLY beat the Yankees to win their first World Series . . .

 

[mack]

The perfect game

 

[STAjo]

NY Mets Mgr. (Former NY Yankee) Casey Stengel in Post-Game Press Conference once asked:

Can't anyone here play this game ?!!

He also told Reporters about another Mets Player: Yeah - that's a hard-workin' 24 Year-Old kid right there ... & if he keeps
at it, ... Next year he'll be 25..    ???  :-\      8)

 

[STAjo]

The perfect game

Don Larsen & Yogi Berra !

#8's Famous Philosophic Observation's include: 'It Ain't Over 'til It's Over' and 'Nobody goes there anymore -
It's too crowded.. .  :

 

[manhattan]

mack, there's one thing you might want to reconsider:  in the days you're talking about there were actually very few "yellow cabs".  Most were multi-colored and each company had its own colors, usually in different combinations.  Cabs also had flagged meters and I think I remember the flag drop being $.20 with $.05 increments.  The rooflights were glass and had just the word "TAXI" on front and back.  Having the medallion number didn't come along until the late '60's, I'd guess.  On a side note, I'm curious why Bloomberg's TLC allowed the cab companies to no longer have the fare structure on the vehicle doors.

Also, there were the green-and-buff colored Fifth Avenue Coach Company buses, some of which were double-deckers into the late 1950's and the bronze traffic-light poles with a statue (I think it was the Greek god Mercury) on top which lined Fifth Avenue.  Some of the older buses had emergency exits on the driver's side, opposite the rear exit. 

Fifth Avenue had two-way traffic as did Sixth, Broadway and Lexington; the other avenues had been converted to one-way at some point before the '50's and those remaining two-ways were changed during Mike Quill's transit strike in the '60's (1966?), during which he was held in the Civil Jail in the upper-30's between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.

Cops carried wooden (oak?) nightsticks, billy clubs, come-along bracelets and flashlights among their equipment and they wore brass ten-buttoned greatcoats on foot posts during the cold months and brass ten-buttoned high-collared tunics during those months when they "had a seat".  Their summer blouses had brass buttons, and the buttons on coats and blouses had the City seal.  The footposts made their "rings" from the green call boxes mounted on lightpoles or on the sides of buildings.

It wouldn't be unusual to see coal trucks making deliveries into the late '50's and ice trucks were still around.  Both residential (and some commercial buildings) had awnings on their south-facing windows and liquor stores had amber-tinted transparent shades in their front windows to diffuse the strong sunlight which could otherwise cause the display bottles to crack.  School children used bus passes printed on heavy-stock paper and some could do a very passable job of counterfeiting them for others who had theirs confiscated by bus drivers or subway token booth clerks, some of whom got real kicks from harassing school kids.  And some of the school kids deserved more than simple harassment.  Subway conductors looked way cool when they stood on the narrow steps between cars where the door controls were located.

Woolworth's and Lamstons had lunch counters or you could go to Bickford's, Whelan's or hundreds of other places for lunch or a soda.  While you were eating you could read the News, the Mirror, the Post, the Trib, the Times, the Journal-American or other dailies. 

 

[raybrag]

Woolworth's and Lamstons had lunch counters or you could go to Bickford's, Whelan's or hundreds of other places for lunch or a soda. 

If you were really uptown, you could go to the Horn & Hardart Automat, throw in a few coins after making your choice, and retrieve it from behnd the little glass window.

 

[raybrag]

Going  WAY back, you coud have eaten at my great-grandfather's place, Braguglia's Cafe & Restaurant, at 7 Broadway.  (It closed in 1931, a victim of the Depression).

 

[manhattan]

RE:  "If you were really uptown, you could go to the Horn & Hardart Automat, throw in a few coins after making your choice, and retrieve it from behnd the little glass window."

And it was also cool to watch them open the back door of the slot and refill the tray.  The Automat was also the place where some of us - er, I mean some of the other kids - found out how much fun it was to unscrew the tops of the salt, pepper and sugar shakers and watch people's reactions when they got a plateful of salt or pepper or a full cup of sugar in their coffee. 

 

[raybrag]

I mean some of the other kids - found out how much fun it was to unscrew the tops of the salt, pepper and sugar shakers and watch people's reactions when they got a plateful of salt or pepper or a full cup of sugar in their coffee.

If you really had a LOT of time, you'd go from table to table with an old paper bag, put all of the salt in your bag, fill the salt shakers with sugar, then the sugar shakers with salt.  Trick was to get all this done without being caught.

 

[memory master]

Manhattan, the "come-along bracelets" that you referred to were called "nippers."

 

[mack]

We had egg creams at our soda fountains -  milk and soda water, vanilla or chocolate syrup - no eggs.

 

[guitarman314]

    Most old NYC buses were made by GM, Flexible and some bus lines on the Lower East Side had Mack coaches. Many were standard shift, no power steering and the bus driver had to make change and hand out transfer slips that came with the transfer info (eg: Line "A" transfer to line "B") already printed on them.

 

[68jk09]

There was also an Automat down near the Wall St area....Cops nightsticks were made of Cocobolo wood a tropical hardwood.....the El trains on the Myrtle Av El still had straw seats into the late '60s ...when the line was torn down in '69 it was because the older cars were no longer available & newer cars did not fit thru the stations between Myrtle Av & Jay St.....Egg Creams are still available but the price is now much much higher.....how about a "3 cents plain" a small glass filled w/seltzer........a "gill" (pronounced jill) was a smal container of handpacked ice cream  like about a quarter of a Pint & cost 15 cents......a pizza slice was 15 cents & so was a Kinish......a Pilsner glass of Beer was 15 cents & so was a Pilsner glass of soft vanilla ice cream w/chocolate or strawberry syrup .......a pack of cigarettes in a vending machine cost 24 cents a pack  the manufacturer placed a penny change inside the cellophane wrapper & you put a quarter in the machine & got a pack w/the penny change inside......"loosie" cigarettes were a penny a piece....a tiny local candy store (Rubys) that sold 'loosies" has now morphed into an International corporation dealing in costumes & run by the Son & Daughter of Rueben "Ruby" Beige.....it is called "Ruby's Costume Co.http://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&site=&source=hp&q=rubies+costumes&oq=ruby%27s+costume&gs_l=hp.1.0.0i10l10.31619.40731.0.45737.14.14.0.0.0.0.191.1931.0j14.14.0....0...1c.1.54.hp..0.14.1927.iYsxKDM7oPE 

 

[johnd248]

Anybody remember Schrafft's restaurant on Flatbush Avenue in Flatbush?