KING ARTHUR DISCOUNTS, RIDGEWOOD

I have always held a fascination for Myrtle Avenue that goes all the way back to 1965. That’s the year my mother and I set off on foot for several blocks east from Flatbush Avenue. I have forgotten my mother’s purpose, and we were each in uncharted territory. The Myrtle Avenue El was still there in Brooklyn, and I of course noticed the Dwarf lampposts beneath the big iron. I seem to recall “My Boy Lollipop,” by Millie Small, a big hit that year, blaring from a radio somewhere. It’s my only experience with the El, though it and I coexisted for 12 years. I think we got a bus back to familiar territory in downtown Brooklyn and never got on the el.

Flash forward to 1992. For some reason, that year I was lurching around in Ridgewood a few years before I conceived of Forgotten NY and started exploring neighborhoods other than my own, Bay Ridge at the time. I stopped into a Robbins Men’s and Boys on Myrtle and purchased a zip-up black and maroon cold weather jacket with a fleece lining that I still have. I have replaced the lining and the zipper and still use it during extended cold snaps. As climate change tightens its grip, I’ve had to use that jacket less and less as it stays mostly in the 40s all winter in NYC now.

In 2011, I walked the full length of Myrtle Avenue from Jay Street in downtown Brooklyn east to Jamaica Avenue. In quickly-changing New York City, 13 years is the equal of 25. I may have to walk Myrtle again to relate the changes.

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One thing I found at the Dawn of FNY in 1999 is still there, this ad at 56-37 Myrtle just east of the WWI memorial at Cypress and Cornelia. Shown above is a 1980s tax photo depicting the store itself which is long gone. after perhaps 50 years the blue, white and gold colors of the ad are still vivid despite facing full sun much of the time. Like Alice’s Restaurant, you could pretty much get anything you wanted at King Arthur’s, which has joined Robbins Mens and Boys in the NYC store graveyard.

But my black and maroon zip-up jacket remembers.

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7/10/24