PARKED outside #167 Concord Street in Brooklyn is owner Frank Didik’s car, a hybrid gasoline/electric powered vehicle called the Didik Long Ranger designed in the mid-1980s. It’s 96 inches long, 65 inches wide and 56 inches high and can comfortably seat three people. It can travel about 70-100 miles per charge, but the gasoline engine can power it only to a top speed of 30 MPH. It also contains solar panels to assist in charging the batteries. Didik, who has owned 167 Concord since 1985, took an earlier Citicar, manufactured by Sebring-Vanguard, and modified it; he also designed the Didik Sun Shark, a solar-powered motorcycle, and the Didik Duplexity, a foldable scooter that rides three people. With the government now pushing heavily for electric cars, can this alternative to the expensive Tesla make a comeback?
Didik has, of course, removed the batteries.
#167 Concord Street is a tiny, two-story frame dwelling with two dormers. The house is among the oldest in the neighborhood. According some sources it was built in 1762 (others say 1901), while the land it is built on was deeded in 1674; the land was in Dutch hands until the 1770s, when English names began appearing on the records. It is surrounded by a stone wall dating to about 1820. The house is rumored to have participated in the Underground Railroad in the pre-Civil war era.
This is a section of Brooklyn squeezed between Downtown on the south and DUMBO on the north that has never seemed to acquire a neighborhood name that stuck, and I find “Downtown Brooklyn” to also be rather awkward. Somebody promote some real names!
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8/8/23