Thank you, cjdv, for getting us back on topic here !
Campus Place, around the corner from, and just north of, 3355 Fulton St. is named after Adelphi College, whose campus used to be there. Hence perhaps the name of Adelphi Theater.
Karl B grew up on Campus Place. I recommend we wait for him to provide more details.
After turning left (east) onto Atlantic from Euclid, the “eastbound Conduit maneuver” involved going one long block east to Crescent, right on Crescent to Liberty Ave, right onto Liberty, then a sharp left onto Conduit Blvd. eastbound. Phew ! If only Euclid had been two-way between Atlantic and Liberty !
Your weather forecast reminds me of George Carlin as the Hippy Dippy Weatherman :
Forecast for tonight : Dark ! Followed by gradual lightening towards morning !
I remember well those sharp turns of the Interboro through Cypress Hills, Mount Carmel and Mount Lebanon Cemeteries, and those signs in black block capital letters on a white ground :
SHARP CURVE
25 MILE LIMIT
KEEP IN LANE
and the double white line dividing the lanes. There would be at least one wreck or abandoned car on the shoulder right at one of the bridge abutments within the cemeteries.
“There were many times that the car in the left lane would realize that it was their exit, and cut in front of the car in the right lane. That would result in a very interesting "conversation” or possibly a race away from the traffic light on Cypress Hills St."
I remember that very well !
I don’t remember the Interboro being one lane in each direction. It is now two lanes per direction so far as I know.
How do you like where the eastbound Interboro goes under Queens Blvd. and suddenly turns as you’re plunged into darkness ?
My dad remembers bike riding on the Interboro from Bushwick to Kew Gardens before it was open to the public. He had fun doing so, but the rough unfinished pavement wore down his bicycle tires rapidly, which his dad complained about.
In my last(spring 1979)semester at Cooper Union, I re-designed the intersection of Cypress Avenue, Interboro Parkway and Vermont Place as a project for my transportation engineering course. My re-design was never officially adopted, of course, but the intersection pretty much looks like my re-design now, with all the sharp curves and tight radii, appropriate to the smaller, slower cars of the 1930’s and 1940’s, done away with and replaced by shallower, easier curves.
That’s generally true of most of the older motor parkways that have been rebuilt and renovated.
I was usually in in the right front seat, but I was never a demanding child, so my parents had no need to hide a Carvel stand from me !
On weekday nights summer 1967 I was a regular at the Carvel on the southeast corner of Myrtle Avenue and Madison St. I must have been there around July 4th, because I remember either cherry bombs or M-80’s going off, and briefly illuminating the fronts of the six-family houses on the northwest side of Madison St. between Myrtle and Cypress. That was DABOC’s home block (she’s been on the Ridgewood Theater page) and right across Madison from the northwest side of the Ridgewood Theater.
At my request, my dad took me and my mom for a ride on Cypress Hills Street, between Cypress and Cooper Avenues, in spring 1968, before it was widened, to satisfy my curiosity about what it looked like. I remember it as narrow, bumpy and in poor condition. I always remembered the part between Cypress Avenue and the Interboro and Jamaica Avenue as always being in good condition. I never took that bus ride with tree branches coming in the window that you described.
The B-18 bus only went on that southernmost part of Cypress Hills St. between Cypress and Jamaica Avenues.
As promised, Sunday afternoon on Labor Day Weekend 1967 my parents and I were taking a leisurely drive around Brooklyn on the Belt Parkway when we saw congestion and delays up ahead. So we exited the Belt at Rockaway Parkway and continued north to Rockaway Avenue to take what we at first thought would be a shortcut back to Ridgewood. No way ? It was a mess ! Hydrants open, gushing into the street, tires and balls rolling, and kids running, out into the street, blocking our way. It must have taken half an hour to an hour to get from one end of Rockaway Avenue to the other. When we finally got onto Eastern Parkway Extension and up to Bushwick Avenue it felt like we had gotten out of prison. Waiting for the light to turn green, I felt like we were a rocket poised on the launching pad, ready to take off. Green light ! Zoom ! Right on Bushwick Avenue, left onto Highland Blvd., Interboro, off at Cypress Avenue, back to Ridgewood.
You mention taking Conduit west to Cross Bay / Woodhaven, then north to Myrtle and west on Myrtle back to Ridgewood. We usually found it quicker back to Ridgewood to get on the westbound Interboro near Woodhaven and Myrtle, then off at Cypress Hills St. exit straight ahead onto Cypress Avenue.
Do you remember, and can you believe, that there was once NO TRAFFIC LIGHT at that busy intersection of Cypress Avenue and Vermont Place ? Even with that blind-cornered 45 degree turn of Cypress Avenue with the flashing yellow light just east of there ?
I know what you mean about that route to and from Long Island or Rockaway Beach. My family and I usually went Cypress Hills St. to Euclid, left on Atlantic because Euclid south of Atlantic was one way north, right on street one block east of Euclid, right on Liberty
Avenue, sharp left onto Conduit eastbound.
Coming back it was easier : across Liberty on Conduit to Euclid, straight up Euclid to Cypress Hills St., Cypress Avenue back to Ridgewood.
The doctor who delivered me (Joseph Berman) had his office at 25 Logan Street.
Force Tube Avenue is almost a straight line from the foot of Highland Blvd. at Jamaica Avenue to the western end of Conduit. Too bad it’s not wider, two-way and continuous !
Up next, Sunday of Labor Day Weekend 1967 : Stuck Inside Of Brownsville with the Open Hydrant Blues Again ! to paraphrase Bob Dylan !
My dad remembers taking a driving license road test on Miller Avenue.
He still talks about it.
I know Highland Blvd. well. Do you remember a cannon with a pyramid of cannon balls next to it on its north side, west of Vermont Place ?
Karl B. once had a similar experience coming down Snake Hill on Highland Blvd. towards Force Tube Avenue and the YMCA on his bike with a girl sitting on his handlebars. He stopped just in time to avoid colliding with Jamaica Avenue traffic. He never tried that stunt again.
I’m in Ridgewood every month on personal business. I’ll be going there this coming Monday. For my next trick … I want to visit Bushwick, with a friend, and photograph all the places my dad and I remember.
Yes, Karl B, thanks. My pleasure to have started this page for your Gem Theatre memories, and those of others.
Now, what can you tell us about the Embassy Theater that once stood at Fulton and Richmond Streets in Cypress Hills ? There’s already a page on this site for it.
Please also notice on this Gem Theater page a resumption of the B-13 vs. B-18 bus “issue” between lostmemory and myself, that we had discussed privately for awhile.
I played in Highland Park alot as a kid. My cousins and I played alot at “the fort” made of pink and brown brick, visible from the eastbound Interboro right before Cypress Avenue exit. I remember a baseball field near there on the west side of Vermont Place just south of the exit from the Interboro, a small parking lot, refreshment stand, and picnic area. West of that was a pond (really just a mudhole) in a “valley” with a stone bridge over it. Sometimes we joined my Uncle Joe at the tennis courts off of Jamaica Avenue.
I remember my mother warning me and my cousins about the tough black kids from Bushwick and East New York in Highland Park.
My parents used to walk around the Ridgewood Reservoir when they were dating from 1940 to 1945, and for years after they were married. Once I was born in 1955 they took me there. I have pictures of me there at about age three with my dad. In one photo I’m sitting on a bench and the view is east. To the left you can see the fence around the reservoir and on the horizon you can see the twin towers of Blessed Sacrament Church on Euclid Avenue just north of Fulton St.
I remember waiting for the B-18 bus back to Ridgewood with my dad on Cypress Avenue at Vermont Place, and having to stand on tiptoes to see over that low concrete cemetery wall topped with an iron fence.
On the opposite side of Cypress Avenue, at the stop for the B-18 bus heading east into Cypress Hills, where you can turn right on to Vermont Place, you can read the inscription on the mausoleum of W. C. Ritter, a warning from the dead to the living :
AS YOU ARE NOW, SO ONCE WERE WE.
AS WE ARE NOW, SO SHALL YOU BE.
The last really good walk I took around Highland Park was with my best friend on my 19th birthday in mid-November 1974. We also walked by and around that brick house by the exit from the eastbound Interboro to Cypress Hills St. I asked if it was the historic Schenck house. The man I spoke to didn’t know.
My friend and I returned there on a sunny Saturday in late April 1975 but quickly went east into Cypress Hills Cemetery and then on to Forest Park.
In summer 1981 I read in the Daily News about crime and parking problems in Highland Park. I last rode through there with my fiancee on St. Patrick’s Day 1991 en route from Rockville Centre to Ridgewood. I don’t know what Highland Park is like now, except from recent aerial photos that Ridgewood Reservoir is now dry and empty.
However, Force Tube Avenue in Cypress Hills, Conduit Blvd. and Aqueduct Race Track in Ozone Park / Howard Beach, Queens, all take their names from the Brooklyn water supply system that Ridgewood Reservoir was once connected to.
The B18 Cypress and Wyckoff Avenue bus from Ridgewood terminated at Crescent St. under the el between Fulton St. and Jamaica Avenue, but closer to Jamaica Ave. The B 13 bus also goes from Ridgewood to Cypress Hills but I am not sure of its route. I think my mother took it to Spring Creek once by mistake. Spring Creek is one of those Flatlands Bklyn tidal creeks on the northwestern shore of Jamaica Bay.
Thanks, LennyL., for confirming my memory of having seen it at the Ridgewood.
“Patton” and “M.A.S.H.” played on the same bill at many NYC theaters in 1970 and 1971. Ironic, as they were two completely different views of Americans at war.
I think I saw “Patton” in the Ridgewood Theatre in Sept. 1970.
“And when you put your fingers in that mess of goo that was your buddy’s face … the thing is not to die for your country. It’s to make the other poor sonuvabitch die for HIS country !”
A Hispanic friend of mine recounted to me in the early ‘80’s how scared he was in the '70’s getting off the IRT elevated at Pennsylvania and Livonia late at night to visit his older brother in East New York.
Bway, the last film I saw at the Ridgewood was “Hellraiser 3 : Hell On Earth”, a matinee on Saturday, September 12, 1992. I wanted to see “Godzilla” there in May 1998 but the schedule wasn’t right, so I saw it at the Plaza in Corona instead.
I’ve lost track of how many Friday the 13th movies there have been. I remember seeing the first at the Ridgewood on Tuesday June 17, 1980 in the balcony, with the main attraction the boxing match on closed circuit TV on the orchestra level. Seeing that beautiful, ornate elliptical balcony lobby brought back many memories.
The movie itself : when the girl cuts off Jason’s mom’s head, someone threw a half-empty bucket of popcorn up in the air as a joke, as if it were the head !
Seeing “The Howling” at the Ridgewood on the orchestra level on Friday March 13th 1981 with a full moon outside was scary.
I started switching from the Ridgewood to Forest Hills for movies in 1984, but would still go to the Ridgewood if time was tight, or if I didn’t feel like walking to Forest Hills.
It will be interesting if and when we meet face to face, perhaps to tour and photograph Bushwick, and perhaps remember having passed and seen each other in Ridgewood !
OttoBurger, it could have been both. I remember seeing “You Only Live Twice” at the Ridgewood in September 1967, and “A View To A Kill” at the Ridgewood Multiplex in May 1985. The only way to be sure is to check movie listings in newspaper archives. The New York Times might be the easiest to check.
StanS, your comment reminds me of something Mel Brooks was shown saying a few months ago on a Channel 13 program on Broadway musicals, namely, that what those musicals were selling was optimism, because there WAS no optimism in the Bronx, Brownsville, or Williamsburg, but your mention of “Imagine, moving from the drab lower east side to Legion Street, Brownsville—right in the shadow of this massive Loew’s! Grand Street never boasted this kind of theater.” reads like just the opposite, almost as if you had moved from “the drab lower east side” into Joy Itself ! Thanks for posting your comment !
My dad remembers a similar “celestial” ceiling at Loew’s Valencia in Jamaica, Queens. He also remembers a thriving, aggressive garment trade right out in the street on puscharts at Rockaway and Pitkin Avenues in Brownsville at about 1930. He and his mom would take the
Wilson Avenue trolley there from Bushwick, and he remembers clothiers grabbing at his mother’s sleeve before she’d even gotten off the trolley :
“New suit for the boy ?” This was a yearly ritual of a new suit for my dad for Easter.
“Take your hands off me, or I’ll go to your brother’s place down the street !”
Your same delusion of omniscience, arrogantly and offensively expressed, yet again, gave you away. Who did you think you were fooling ?
Keep the Ridgewood Folly Theater and your superior knowledge, and put them where … as a gentleman, I can’t tell you, but it’s dark, moist, in the center of your best end, and is as full of feces as you apparently are.
And please, get a life, and some professional help. You most sorely need both !
It’s the same delusion of omniscience, arrogantly and offensively expressed, all over again.
I agree, playtime is over. Problem is, I think there has to be an awfully big mess here, like the one “CrazyEddie” made about porking the remains of long-dead actresses up in the balcony of the RKO Madison, before the management wades in and cleans it up.
I second that motion, lostmemory. My only caution is to not “feed the troll”, i.e. ; do not empower Tom by throwing words, energy, time, emotion, etc. at him. Yes, br91975, we are all indeed fallible human beings, yet Tom seems to think he is not, and that is the problem.
I think he was on this site about a year ago as “RidgewoodBill”, star of the “Ridgewood Follies” at the theater of the same name.
Karl B. was born August 1, 1936.
It’s possible. Again, Karl B or perhaps Warren may be of help in this.
Thank you, cjdv, for getting us back on topic here !
Campus Place, around the corner from, and just north of, 3355 Fulton St. is named after Adelphi College, whose campus used to be there. Hence perhaps the name of Adelphi Theater.
Karl B grew up on Campus Place. I recommend we wait for him to provide more details.
After turning left (east) onto Atlantic from Euclid, the “eastbound Conduit maneuver” involved going one long block east to Crescent, right on Crescent to Liberty Ave, right onto Liberty, then a sharp left onto Conduit Blvd. eastbound. Phew ! If only Euclid had been two-way between Atlantic and Liberty !
Anyone know why it wasn’t ?
Your weather forecast reminds me of George Carlin as the Hippy Dippy Weatherman :
Forecast for tonight : Dark ! Followed by gradual lightening towards morning !
I remember well those sharp turns of the Interboro through Cypress Hills, Mount Carmel and Mount Lebanon Cemeteries, and those signs in black block capital letters on a white ground :
SHARP CURVE
25 MILE LIMIT
KEEP IN LANE
and the double white line dividing the lanes. There would be at least one wreck or abandoned car on the shoulder right at one of the bridge abutments within the cemeteries.
“There were many times that the car in the left lane would realize that it was their exit, and cut in front of the car in the right lane. That would result in a very interesting "conversation” or possibly a race away from the traffic light on Cypress Hills St."
I remember that very well !
I don’t remember the Interboro being one lane in each direction. It is now two lanes per direction so far as I know.
How do you like where the eastbound Interboro goes under Queens Blvd. and suddenly turns as you’re plunged into darkness ?
My dad remembers bike riding on the Interboro from Bushwick to Kew Gardens before it was open to the public. He had fun doing so, but the rough unfinished pavement wore down his bicycle tires rapidly, which his dad complained about.
In my last(spring 1979)semester at Cooper Union, I re-designed the intersection of Cypress Avenue, Interboro Parkway and Vermont Place as a project for my transportation engineering course. My re-design was never officially adopted, of course, but the intersection pretty much looks like my re-design now, with all the sharp curves and tight radii, appropriate to the smaller, slower cars of the 1930’s and 1940’s, done away with and replaced by shallower, easier curves.
That’s generally true of most of the older motor parkways that have been rebuilt and renovated.
I was usually in in the right front seat, but I was never a demanding child, so my parents had no need to hide a Carvel stand from me !
On weekday nights summer 1967 I was a regular at the Carvel on the southeast corner of Myrtle Avenue and Madison St. I must have been there around July 4th, because I remember either cherry bombs or M-80’s going off, and briefly illuminating the fronts of the six-family houses on the northwest side of Madison St. between Myrtle and Cypress. That was DABOC’s home block (she’s been on the Ridgewood Theater page) and right across Madison from the northwest side of the Ridgewood Theater.
At my request, my dad took me and my mom for a ride on Cypress Hills Street, between Cypress and Cooper Avenues, in spring 1968, before it was widened, to satisfy my curiosity about what it looked like. I remember it as narrow, bumpy and in poor condition. I always remembered the part between Cypress Avenue and the Interboro and Jamaica Avenue as always being in good condition. I never took that bus ride with tree branches coming in the window that you described.
The B-18 bus only went on that southernmost part of Cypress Hills St. between Cypress and Jamaica Avenues.
As promised, Sunday afternoon on Labor Day Weekend 1967 my parents and I were taking a leisurely drive around Brooklyn on the Belt Parkway when we saw congestion and delays up ahead. So we exited the Belt at Rockaway Parkway and continued north to Rockaway Avenue to take what we at first thought would be a shortcut back to Ridgewood. No way ? It was a mess ! Hydrants open, gushing into the street, tires and balls rolling, and kids running, out into the street, blocking our way. It must have taken half an hour to an hour to get from one end of Rockaway Avenue to the other. When we finally got onto Eastern Parkway Extension and up to Bushwick Avenue it felt like we had gotten out of prison. Waiting for the light to turn green, I felt like we were a rocket poised on the launching pad, ready to take off. Green light ! Zoom ! Right on Bushwick Avenue, left onto Highland Blvd., Interboro, off at Cypress Avenue, back to Ridgewood.
You mention taking Conduit west to Cross Bay / Woodhaven, then north to Myrtle and west on Myrtle back to Ridgewood. We usually found it quicker back to Ridgewood to get on the westbound Interboro near Woodhaven and Myrtle, then off at Cypress Hills St. exit straight ahead onto Cypress Avenue.
Do you remember, and can you believe, that there was once NO TRAFFIC LIGHT at that busy intersection of Cypress Avenue and Vermont Place ? Even with that blind-cornered 45 degree turn of Cypress Avenue with the flashing yellow light just east of there ?
Unlike me, Karl B has MANY B-13 bus memories !
I remember the White Castle but not the Carvel.
I know what you mean about that route to and from Long Island or Rockaway Beach. My family and I usually went Cypress Hills St. to Euclid, left on Atlantic because Euclid south of Atlantic was one way north, right on street one block east of Euclid, right on Liberty
Avenue, sharp left onto Conduit eastbound.
Coming back it was easier : across Liberty on Conduit to Euclid, straight up Euclid to Cypress Hills St., Cypress Avenue back to Ridgewood.
The doctor who delivered me (Joseph Berman) had his office at 25 Logan Street.
Force Tube Avenue is almost a straight line from the foot of Highland Blvd. at Jamaica Avenue to the western end of Conduit. Too bad it’s not wider, two-way and continuous !
Up next, Sunday of Labor Day Weekend 1967 : Stuck Inside Of Brownsville with the Open Hydrant Blues Again ! to paraphrase Bob Dylan !
My dad remembers taking a driving license road test on Miller Avenue.
He still talks about it.
I know Highland Blvd. well. Do you remember a cannon with a pyramid of cannon balls next to it on its north side, west of Vermont Place ?
Karl B. once had a similar experience coming down Snake Hill on Highland Blvd. towards Force Tube Avenue and the YMCA on his bike with a girl sitting on his handlebars. He stopped just in time to avoid colliding with Jamaica Avenue traffic. He never tried that stunt again.
I’m in Ridgewood every month on personal business. I’ll be going there this coming Monday. For my next trick … I want to visit Bushwick, with a friend, and photograph all the places my dad and I remember.
Yes, Karl B, thanks. My pleasure to have started this page for your Gem Theatre memories, and those of others.
Now, what can you tell us about the Embassy Theater that once stood at Fulton and Richmond Streets in Cypress Hills ? There’s already a page on this site for it.
Please also notice on this Gem Theater page a resumption of the B-13 vs. B-18 bus “issue” between lostmemory and myself, that we had discussed privately for awhile.
I played in Highland Park alot as a kid. My cousins and I played alot at “the fort” made of pink and brown brick, visible from the eastbound Interboro right before Cypress Avenue exit. I remember a baseball field near there on the west side of Vermont Place just south of the exit from the Interboro, a small parking lot, refreshment stand, and picnic area. West of that was a pond (really just a mudhole) in a “valley” with a stone bridge over it. Sometimes we joined my Uncle Joe at the tennis courts off of Jamaica Avenue.
I remember my mother warning me and my cousins about the tough black kids from Bushwick and East New York in Highland Park.
My parents used to walk around the Ridgewood Reservoir when they were dating from 1940 to 1945, and for years after they were married. Once I was born in 1955 they took me there. I have pictures of me there at about age three with my dad. In one photo I’m sitting on a bench and the view is east. To the left you can see the fence around the reservoir and on the horizon you can see the twin towers of Blessed Sacrament Church on Euclid Avenue just north of Fulton St.
I remember waiting for the B-18 bus back to Ridgewood with my dad on Cypress Avenue at Vermont Place, and having to stand on tiptoes to see over that low concrete cemetery wall topped with an iron fence.
On the opposite side of Cypress Avenue, at the stop for the B-18 bus heading east into Cypress Hills, where you can turn right on to Vermont Place, you can read the inscription on the mausoleum of W. C. Ritter, a warning from the dead to the living :
AS YOU ARE NOW, SO ONCE WERE WE.
AS WE ARE NOW, SO SHALL YOU BE.
The last really good walk I took around Highland Park was with my best friend on my 19th birthday in mid-November 1974. We also walked by and around that brick house by the exit from the eastbound Interboro to Cypress Hills St. I asked if it was the historic Schenck house. The man I spoke to didn’t know.
My friend and I returned there on a sunny Saturday in late April 1975 but quickly went east into Cypress Hills Cemetery and then on to Forest Park.
In summer 1981 I read in the Daily News about crime and parking problems in Highland Park. I last rode through there with my fiancee on St. Patrick’s Day 1991 en route from Rockville Centre to Ridgewood. I don’t know what Highland Park is like now, except from recent aerial photos that Ridgewood Reservoir is now dry and empty.
However, Force Tube Avenue in Cypress Hills, Conduit Blvd. and Aqueduct Race Track in Ozone Park / Howard Beach, Queens, all take their names from the Brooklyn water supply system that Ridgewood Reservoir was once connected to.
There most certainly is. I think I last rode it on Saturday September 5, 1992. It only runs twice an hour, so the schedules posted for it help alot.
The B18 Cypress and Wyckoff Avenue bus from Ridgewood terminated at Crescent St. under the el between Fulton St. and Jamaica Avenue, but closer to Jamaica Ave. The B 13 bus also goes from Ridgewood to Cypress Hills but I am not sure of its route. I think my mother took it to Spring Creek once by mistake. Spring Creek is one of those Flatlands Bklyn tidal creeks on the northwestern shore of Jamaica Bay.
East of Crescent, on one of those all-too-few blocks of Fulton Street that never had an el over them !
The nearby Embassy was under the el !
Thanks, LennyL., for confirming my memory of having seen it at the Ridgewood.
“Patton” and “M.A.S.H.” played on the same bill at many NYC theaters in 1970 and 1971. Ironic, as they were two completely different views of Americans at war.
I don’t think “Patton” was shown at both the Ridgewood and the Madison at the same time. Perhaps my memory is off a bit.
Do you now know “Patton” by heart as a result ?
I think I saw “Patton” in the Ridgewood Theatre in Sept. 1970.
“And when you put your fingers in that mess of goo that was your buddy’s face … the thing is not to die for your country. It’s to make the other poor sonuvabitch die for HIS country !”
Albeit in a somewhat different form as a five-plex.
I can imagine that today it would be hell, yes !
A Hispanic friend of mine recounted to me in the early ‘80’s how scared he was in the '70’s getting off the IRT elevated at Pennsylvania and Livonia late at night to visit his older brother in East New York.
Bway, the last film I saw at the Ridgewood was “Hellraiser 3 : Hell On Earth”, a matinee on Saturday, September 12, 1992. I wanted to see “Godzilla” there in May 1998 but the schedule wasn’t right, so I saw it at the Plaza in Corona instead.
I’ve lost track of how many Friday the 13th movies there have been. I remember seeing the first at the Ridgewood on Tuesday June 17, 1980 in the balcony, with the main attraction the boxing match on closed circuit TV on the orchestra level. Seeing that beautiful, ornate elliptical balcony lobby brought back many memories.
The movie itself : when the girl cuts off Jason’s mom’s head, someone threw a half-empty bucket of popcorn up in the air as a joke, as if it were the head !
Seeing “The Howling” at the Ridgewood on the orchestra level on Friday March 13th 1981 with a full moon outside was scary.
I started switching from the Ridgewood to Forest Hills for movies in 1984, but would still go to the Ridgewood if time was tight, or if I didn’t feel like walking to Forest Hills.
It will be interesting if and when we meet face to face, perhaps to tour and photograph Bushwick, and perhaps remember having passed and seen each other in Ridgewood !
OttoBurger, it could have been both. I remember seeing “You Only Live Twice” at the Ridgewood in September 1967, and “A View To A Kill” at the Ridgewood Multiplex in May 1985. The only way to be sure is to check movie listings in newspaper archives. The New York Times might be the easiest to check.
StanS, your comment reminds me of something Mel Brooks was shown saying a few months ago on a Channel 13 program on Broadway musicals, namely, that what those musicals were selling was optimism, because there WAS no optimism in the Bronx, Brownsville, or Williamsburg, but your mention of “Imagine, moving from the drab lower east side to Legion Street, Brownsville—right in the shadow of this massive Loew’s! Grand Street never boasted this kind of theater.” reads like just the opposite, almost as if you had moved from “the drab lower east side” into Joy Itself ! Thanks for posting your comment !
My dad remembers a similar “celestial” ceiling at Loew’s Valencia in Jamaica, Queens. He also remembers a thriving, aggressive garment trade right out in the street on puscharts at Rockaway and Pitkin Avenues in Brownsville at about 1930. He and his mom would take the
Wilson Avenue trolley there from Bushwick, and he remembers clothiers grabbing at his mother’s sleeve before she’d even gotten off the trolley :
“New suit for the boy ?” This was a yearly ritual of a new suit for my dad for Easter.
“Take your hands off me, or I’ll go to your brother’s place down the street !”
To put it mildly, Charles Van Bibber, YES !
The only light there would come from either a flashlight, laporoscope, colonoscope, or fiber optics.
“A curse without a cause does not alight.”
Your same delusion of omniscience, arrogantly and offensively expressed, yet again, gave you away. Who did you think you were fooling ?
Keep the Ridgewood Folly Theater and your superior knowledge, and put them where … as a gentleman, I can’t tell you, but it’s dark, moist, in the center of your best end, and is as full of feces as you apparently are.
And please, get a life, and some professional help. You most sorely need both !
It’s the same delusion of omniscience, arrogantly and offensively expressed, all over again.
I agree, playtime is over. Problem is, I think there has to be an awfully big mess here, like the one “CrazyEddie” made about porking the remains of long-dead actresses up in the balcony of the RKO Madison, before the management wades in and cleans it up.
I second that motion, lostmemory. My only caution is to not “feed the troll”, i.e. ; do not empower Tom by throwing words, energy, time, emotion, etc. at him. Yes, br91975, we are all indeed fallible human beings, yet Tom seems to think he is not, and that is the problem.
I think he was on this site about a year ago as “RidgewoodBill”, star of the “Ridgewood Follies” at the theater of the same name.