At the unusual intersection of 6th Avenue and 66th Street in Bay Ridge, a couple of doors from the Antenna King, sat an important part of my boyhood and young manhood, Karl Droge Ice Cream. A visit there was always de rigueur after a catch with the old man in Lief Ericson Square, which was just across 66th Street. Never an adventurer, I was always one for the soft vanilla cup or cone and besides, when I was a kid, chocolate syrup was always vomited back up anyway, so I stayed away from it till my system could handle it.
Droge hung in there well into the 1980s and perhaps even the 1990s (I moved from Bay Ridge to Flushing in 1993) so it was often a stop for me after hours of mad bike pedaling from Bay Ridge to the far reaches of Brooklyn and Queens. That cold ice cream went down great in the thermonuclear heat of a New York summer.
Another Bay Ridge icon, Zeke’s Roast Beef, was at 8th Avenue and 66th Street for many years. It just went out of business again after a few years on 3rd Avenue.
photo: Brooklyn Historical Society
Anyone remember Karl Droge? kevinjudewalsh@gmail.com
10/19/16