Thanks so much for posting this, KenRoe. I’ll show this to my father. His mother used to buy and read “The Chat”. It was delivered by trucks originating from Weirfield Street at Broadway in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.
My father’s mother remembered farms in Brooklyn and Queens, from about 1901 to 1920.
My dad remembers the “Richmond Hill trolley” as the predecessor of the B and Q-55 Myrtle Avenue bus, and still talks about it as his favorite type of trolley car.
For what it’s worth, the Ridgewood Theater was listed as being in Queens in the New York Daily News of Saturday, June 17, 2006.
Thanks for the link, BrooklynJim. I remember it well. I used to “live” on nycsubway.org and related sites the way I now “live” on Cinema Treasures.
I remember the fare going from 15 to 20 cents in summer 1966, and discussing it with family at New World Inn Chinese restaurant, right by the Myrtle el stairs on the south side of Myrtle just west of Wyckoff, and just across Myrtle from the Ridgewood Diner. You could almost climb through a window into a booth in that Chinese restaurant from the el stairs.
I remember worrying that a 5 cent fare increase would be an unendurable financial hardship for my family, and wonderinf where we would get the extra money needed.
The New World Inn took the place of Ridgewood Gardens Chinese Restaurant, just east of the RKO Madison Theatre, after the latter burned right before Christmas 1965. I remember it well. The B-55 bus I was taking home from school at Myrtle and Wyckoff was re-routed right up my home street, Cornelia Street.
I also remember well the Rockaways double fare, that long train ride from Ridgewood to the Rockaways, and my dad calling the trains that went to Jay St. “the wooden trains”, and the ones over the Williamsburg Bridge to Chambers St. “the steel trains”.
I also remember TWU boss Mike Quill telling some judge he could “drop dead in his black robes”. I think it was unusually warm in January 1966, which made me think the transit strike was later, in May or June.
The words “commuter” and “mediator” became indelibly etched in my mind from the WMCA radio coverage of that January 1966 transit strike. I remember feeling relieved that the strike was over, hearing Canarsie Line trains running under Wyckoff Avenue once again, walking home from St. Brigid’s School.
My grandfather stubbornly walking home from work over the Brooklyn Bridge during the January 1966 strike was the beginning of the end for him, heart and health-wise.
Welcome, Wasu ! Thanks for posting your experience here. I have heard from others about how magical the Valencia Theatre was. We could very much use someone here of your age and experience. I hope you enjoy, and continue to contribute to, this site.
You might be of particular help to some of us younger members who are trying to probe and figure out the past, such as the Ridgewood Follies Theater, or the Gem or Embassy Theaters in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn.
As you are about my father’s age, I would appreciate any help you may have to offer about the Bushwick, Bklyn theaters he remembers attending, such as the Decatur, the Monroe, and larger movie houses like the RKO Bushwick, Loews Gates, and the Colonial.
I started watching “Bell, Book and Candle” once on “The Late Show”. I vaguely remember Jimmy Stewart dancing through the street and using his magic to turn streetlights on and off.
Wow ! Que sera sera ! Doris Mae Kapplehoff from someplace in Ohio !
I’m curious where that old abandoned IRT station platform near Canal Street is. I used to be heavily into the nycsubway.org website. Bway was, too, and probably still is.
Yeah, Willard and Ben live, not to mention the 1984 film, “C.H.U.D.” (Cannabilistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers) partly filmed in and around the Chambers St. station.
I remember those late dates from my single days, and those nearly deserted platforms and once an hour trains, in “The After Hours”.
It probably does, mrbillyc. I’ll check myself, if I think of it, the next time I go by there. Wow ! All us ex-Ridgewoodites returning to our old ‘hood !
BklynJim, thanks for your answer on where you were, 2/9/64. I was at home with my parents watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Never knew that about Canadian EMI vs. US Capitol LP.
83rd St. a block below Myrtle ? You must mean north of Myrtle, because Forest Park and Jackie Robinson Pkwy are south of Myrtle at 83rd St.
My first time to Film Forum in NYC, mid-August 1987, I badly needed some escape, so I saw their triple feature of “Quatermass”, the rarely seen “Quatermass 2”, and 1967’s “Five Million Years To Earth”, about that Martian spaceship in the London tube station.
BklynJim, I remember Zacherle hosting Chiller Theater in the spring of 1970, mocking films like “Killers From Space”, that really mocked themselves, by inserting a shot of a page with “2 + 2 = 5” scrawled on it, in the scene where the bug-eyed alien zombies are showing the Peter Graves character some physics equations.
I first saw “Teenage Frankenstein” on the ABC 4:30 movie. It was called “The Big Show”. CBS, NBC and WOR also had 4:30 movies. The CBS 4:30 movie was called “The Early Show”.
I’m glad you remember all those old movies on TV. There was also “The Late Late Show” and Schaefer Award Theater on Saturday night.
The Chiller Theater opening I first remember was a montage of clips from the films they showed, like “Plan 9”, “Attack Of The Fifty Foot Woman”, “The Gorilla”, “Killers From Space”, backed with godawful scary music I couldn’t begin to mimic. The six-fingered hand came later, about 1970.
Whit Bissell even more ubiquitous than John Agar?!? Or John Carradine?!? Not at all ! I couldn’t begin to guess !
I bowled at the Glenwood at age 10 ½ in spring 1966 with my parents.
Yes, frankie, and another good one was something like :
“Men ? Vere are dey ? Bring dem here !”
Bochino ! Bochino !
Dahling ….
Thanks, Warren.
Thanks so much for posting this, KenRoe. I’ll show this to my father. His mother used to buy and read “The Chat”. It was delivered by trucks originating from Weirfield Street at Broadway in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.
My father’s mother remembered farms in Brooklyn and Queens, from about 1901 to 1920.
My dad remembers the “Richmond Hill trolley” as the predecessor of the B and Q-55 Myrtle Avenue bus, and still talks about it as his favorite type of trolley car.
For what it’s worth, the Ridgewood Theater was listed as being in Queens in the New York Daily News of Saturday, June 17, 2006.
Thanks, BklynJim !
BklynJim, it works more often than not, I’ve found.
Heilige Schiese = Holy Shit !
It’s fun to be fluent in all the nicer words !
Thanks for the link, BrooklynJim. I remember it well. I used to “live” on nycsubway.org and related sites the way I now “live” on Cinema Treasures.
I remember the fare going from 15 to 20 cents in summer 1966, and discussing it with family at New World Inn Chinese restaurant, right by the Myrtle el stairs on the south side of Myrtle just west of Wyckoff, and just across Myrtle from the Ridgewood Diner. You could almost climb through a window into a booth in that Chinese restaurant from the el stairs.
I remember worrying that a 5 cent fare increase would be an unendurable financial hardship for my family, and wonderinf where we would get the extra money needed.
The New World Inn took the place of Ridgewood Gardens Chinese Restaurant, just east of the RKO Madison Theatre, after the latter burned right before Christmas 1965. I remember it well. The B-55 bus I was taking home from school at Myrtle and Wyckoff was re-routed right up my home street, Cornelia Street.
I also remember well the Rockaways double fare, that long train ride from Ridgewood to the Rockaways, and my dad calling the trains that went to Jay St. “the wooden trains”, and the ones over the Williamsburg Bridge to Chambers St. “the steel trains”.
I also remember TWU boss Mike Quill telling some judge he could “drop dead in his black robes”. I think it was unusually warm in January 1966, which made me think the transit strike was later, in May or June.
The words “commuter” and “mediator” became indelibly etched in my mind from the WMCA radio coverage of that January 1966 transit strike. I remember feeling relieved that the strike was over, hearing Canarsie Line trains running under Wyckoff Avenue once again, walking home from St. Brigid’s School.
My grandfather stubbornly walking home from work over the Brooklyn Bridge during the January 1966 strike was the beginning of the end for him, heart and health-wise.
Ah, BklynJim, you’re like me, quite a wit !
A rent of $ 1700 per month was recently asked for a recently renovated apartment at Wilson Avenue and Cooper St. in Bushwick.
Welcome, Wasu ! Thanks for posting your experience here. I have heard from others about how magical the Valencia Theatre was. We could very much use someone here of your age and experience. I hope you enjoy, and continue to contribute to, this site.
You might be of particular help to some of us younger members who are trying to probe and figure out the past, such as the Ridgewood Follies Theater, or the Gem or Embassy Theaters in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn.
As you are about my father’s age, I would appreciate any help you may have to offer about the Bushwick, Bklyn theaters he remembers attending, such as the Decatur, the Monroe, and larger movie houses like the RKO Bushwick, Loews Gates, and the Colonial.
I started watching “Bell, Book and Candle” once on “The Late Show”. I vaguely remember Jimmy Stewart dancing through the street and using his magic to turn streetlights on and off.
Wow ! Que sera sera ! Doris Mae Kapplehoff from someplace in Ohio !
I’m curious where that old abandoned IRT station platform near Canal Street is. I used to be heavily into the nycsubway.org website. Bway was, too, and probably still is.
Yeah, Willard and Ben live, not to mention the 1984 film, “C.H.U.D.” (Cannabilistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers) partly filmed in and around the Chambers St. station.
I remember those late dates from my single days, and those nearly deserted platforms and once an hour trains, in “The After Hours”.
BrooklynJim, you mean, you don’t have an e-mail address, or, you don’t have mine ? You’re most welcome to the invite.
How about Kim Novak in Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” ?
Thanks, Warren.
“If Debbie had lived in the park or on the parkway, we would’ve frozen off a few parts of our joint anatomy in February!”
Yes, perhaps those very parts that were stimulated most pleasurably !
Sadly, all too many people in NYC now do live in boxes on the street, and in freezing weather, too !
“I think I know of a few NYC subway stations that could also creep us all out.”
It was “Hobbs End” station in the film.
Creep us out ?
Like Chambers Street in lower Manhattan. It always reminds me of Piranesi’s etchings of huge, ancient, fantastic-looking ruins.
BrooklynJim, I invite you to e-mail me privately, should you wish to continue our dialogue about films.
Great photo, Ed Solero. Thanks !
Maybe the cockroaches are now the landlords, similar to Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”.
Nor I. But I’m not sure I could afford to live there again.
I think my dad and I ate in that Chock Full O' Nuts, near the left edge of the image, in spring 1968.
It probably does, mrbillyc. I’ll check myself, if I think of it, the next time I go by there. Wow ! All us ex-Ridgewoodites returning to our old ‘hood !
BklynJim, thanks for your answer on where you were, 2/9/64. I was at home with my parents watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Never knew that about Canadian EMI vs. US Capitol LP.
83rd St. a block below Myrtle ? You must mean north of Myrtle, because Forest Park and Jackie Robinson Pkwy are south of Myrtle at 83rd St.
My first time to Film Forum in NYC, mid-August 1987, I badly needed some escape, so I saw their triple feature of “Quatermass”, the rarely seen “Quatermass 2”, and 1967’s “Five Million Years To Earth”, about that Martian spaceship in the London tube station.
My favorite line from “Quatermass 2” was :
“Those pipes are filled with human pulp !”
BklynJim, I remember Zacherle hosting Chiller Theater in the spring of 1970, mocking films like “Killers From Space”, that really mocked themselves, by inserting a shot of a page with “2 + 2 = 5” scrawled on it, in the scene where the bug-eyed alien zombies are showing the Peter Graves character some physics equations.
Sort of a pre “Mystery Science Theatre 3000”.
Thanks, BklynJim. My condolences to you on the death of your son.
I first saw “Teenage Frankenstein” on the ABC 4:30 movie. It was called “The Big Show”. CBS, NBC and WOR also had 4:30 movies. The CBS 4:30 movie was called “The Early Show”.
EdSolero, I’m glad it’s your favorite.
I’m glad you remember all those old movies on TV. There was also “The Late Late Show” and Schaefer Award Theater on Saturday night.
The Chiller Theater opening I first remember was a montage of clips from the films they showed, like “Plan 9”, “Attack Of The Fifty Foot Woman”, “The Gorilla”, “Killers From Space”, backed with godawful scary music I couldn’t begin to mimic. The six-fingered hand came later, about 1970.
Whit Bissell even more ubiquitous than John Agar?!? Or John Carradine?!? Not at all ! I couldn’t begin to guess !