"bay ridge"

On a visit to Bay Ridge in June 2024, I got a photo of the Emphasis Diner on 4th Avenue and Bay Ridge Avenue (69th Street). It’s in a propitious…

We didn’t have air conditioning in our apartment growing up. Then again, heat and humidity spells didn’t last quite as long in my youth as they do now. That’s likely…

BORN and raised in Bay Ridge Brooklyn, me. And from the time Robert Moses dug a trench across the street from my house that wound up as the Gowanus Expressway,…

I consider myself fortunate to come from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and though I have been in Queens since 1993, a good 30 years now, I keep threatening to return. I…

WHEN The Retrologist‘s Rolando Pujol posted this photo of a shop called “Hot Bagels” I recognized it immediately, as I had passed it for many years while slouching down 86th…

THOUGH Brooklyn and Manhattan are largely bereft of alleys and dead ends (both boroughs have eradicated many of them in the name of urban renewal), some neighborhoods have more than…

SADLY the Narrows Coffee Shop closed in 2020, and I only had the pleasure of eating there once. At #10001 4th Avenue, it’s one of a handful of addresses in…

POLY Prep Country Day School has had its distinctive Georgian campus on 7th Avenue and 92nd Street since 1916. Its four-sided clock tower is a Bay Ridge landmark and can…

I lived in Bay Ridge from 1957-1993 and have always been an admirer of the woodcut Alpine Realty sign at 5th Avenue and 84th, a block away from my childhood…

FOR 8 years or so, from 1982-1990, I lived in a railroad-flat type apartment at #654 73rd Street, which until 1960 or so was smack in the middle of the…

A relatively new “ghost sign” can be found at 6408 Fort Hamilton Parkway, where there is still a painted ad for Rocco’s Famous Calamari. The Italian eatery was founded by…

I lived in Bay Ridge between 1957 and 1993; for those who usually don’t have to deal with people born in the 1950s, I am impossibly old now. I became…