Me & the Nuke
Kiamesha Lake, New York (1959)

I was born in the Old Country -- Brooklyn, New York -- on May 16, 1958. My father Hyman, then 39, and my mother Shirley, then 34, had already had one child, my sister Gloria, three years prior. The four of us lived on Glenwood Road, in what was then a working class neighborhood of post-war immigrants and corner delis. Housecoated ladies poked out of tenement windows like absurd Laugh-In aspirants. Poking out, withdrawing to stir the soup and poking out again, these great "paned" women were the bedrock of a toddlerhood in which dads spent their days toiling in the far off land of Manhattan.

Easy Rider
Luna Park (Coney Island), Brooklyn (1964)

I missed my first family move, when I was four, as I developed tonsillitis and was recuperating from surgery at the home of relatives in Rockaway Beach, Queens. From ages four to ten we lived in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, where I developed a "skee ball" talent that, to this day, amazes friends and passersby alike. Ours was a ninth floor apartment in a then-new housing project called "Luna Park," after the great fin de siecle amusement center on whose grounds the five 20-story buildings sat. Life was locally focused, what with playgrounds on premises and elementary school across the street. For a thrill we'd head over to Nathan's to eat hot dogs (still the best!), to the boardwalk to ride the Parachute or the Wonder Wheel, or to the fishing pier to watch the old salts catch dinner (the fish were actually edible in those days). We practically lived on the beach in summers, and watched fireworks from a communal balcony every Tuesday night. It being Coney Island, even then, we had security guards patrolling the housing project, each with a personally trained German Shepherd attack dog. On occasion, a Shepherd would escape, at which point the putt-putt wagons would ride around megaphoning "Dog out! Dog out!" We'd run for shelter and in most cases, things would settle down within an hour once the animal was captured. Not so this one time when a friend of mine went inside but left a front door open. Presently, as he was leaning over a water fountain, a rather nasty dog took a rather nasty bite out of the lad's arse. Youch!

Canarsie Days
The Bar Mitzvah (1971); The first car (1970 Cougar, owned 1975-82);
The borough (1976); The estate (1969-79); The first real job (1974-79)

We moved again when I was in fifth grade, to Canarsie, a somewhat better neighborhood in Brooklyn. Here I spent my adolescence, in what was then a middle class Italian-Jewish alcove of souped up Camaros and slicked back hair (on males). It was a time of cowl neck shirts, Farrah Fawcett posters and "Saturday Night Fever." I was more the brainy type and musically quite out of the mainstream. I struggled to reconcile a need for academic success with a boredom at the simplistic political perspectives taught in public school, a need to be liked by the disco babes with an affinity for hard-drivin' punk rock, and a need to earn spending money with a tendency, at the Carvel ice cream "bakery" where I worked, to decorate "Cookie Puss" cakes with facial expressions that frightened the customers.

Grade A Meat (Part 1)
South Shore High School (1972-75)

Graduation from South Shore High School to Brooklyn College generated little improvement, particularly since all my friends had left for private universities and my inability to finance a similar move meant I had to make new friends from scratch once again. I majored in international political science with a double-minor in philosophy and psychology. I continued my whiz-kid ways with Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, blah, blah, blah, blah. The best I can say about all of this is that I survived.

Grade A Meat (Part 2)
Brooklyn College (1975-79)

A critical point in my life was when I moved to New Haven, Connecticut at age 21 to attend Yale Law School. I sought to escape my Brooklyn working class milieu, and I did so at Yale with a vengeance. It was a different world in the Ivy League, one of "Preppiedom," wealth and political activism. It was indeed exciting; I wish only that I hadn't missed much of it buried in the dusty stacks of the Law Library. But no matter; I made it through the three years, passed the Bar Exam and left for New York City.

Grade A Meat (Part 3)
Yale Law School (1979-82)

My first apartment, a studio in the East Village of Manhattan, was the stuff of real estate broker cocktail humor: Tiny in the extreme, with windows facing a brick wall across an alley (one window covered by a Vietnamese flag where the blinds had been stolen) and with a rent reflecting the extreme housing crunch of the early 1980's. My only solace was that the wall I faced was the rear of what was then the Second Avenue Theater, from which emanated blissful serenades daily (twice on Wednesdays). Despite the occasional inconveniences, I was thrilled to be there.

Blank Generation (1978-84)
Brooklyn, NY; New Haven, CT; New Haven, CT; New York, NY

My first "grown up" job began in 1982, at a corporate law firm in midtown Manhattan. I worked hours that most would consider cruel and inhuman. The first years of a New York law career are essentially an apprenticeship, and while I endured, I learned. I switched jobs in 1984, to a smaller firm that gave me more autonomy and allowed me to handle some interesting clients like museums, literary foundations and performing arts groups. I developed a bit of a specialty handling nuts-and-bolts legal and business matters for the kinds of people who detest such things. In 1986 I purchased an apartment in "Alphabet City" (Avenues A, B, C...) in Manhattan's East Village. I relied on exhaustion alone to keep me asleep through a street chorus of screaming pimps and howling junkies.

A Lawyer's Life
New York, NY (1985); Stamford, CT (1994); Westport, CT (2003)

By 1988, I was, it seems, burning out -- on New York, on work, on partying, on the Lower East Side, on everything. I decided to take some time off, and left in June to photograph lions on the Masai Mara in Kenya. The trip lasted until the fall of 1989 and ended up taking me through Africa, the Middle East and Europe, and around North America including Canada and Mexico (see "Travel" page for details). Eventually, I returned to civilization and, for a while, to my bachelor pad in New York. I started working at Group W Satellite Communications in 1989. In 1997, Group W merged with CBS and my company changed its name to "CBS Cable." I was Assistant General Counsel of CBS Cable until our office was shut down after CBS was bought out by Viacom, Inc. in late 2000. In 2001, I began working at a publicly-traded company that develops and licenses acoustics, noise cancellation and data transmission technologies. (See "Law & Business" page.) I moved to Stamford, Connecticut in 1991 and live there still. My parents sold my childhood home in 1995 and now live in central New Jersey. My sister is married to a man named Mark (how confusing!) and they have a young son Matthew. There is more to my life story (personal relationships, etc.), but I am choosing to go no further for now. Does any of this make sense???

Deja vu all over again
On the grounds of the New York World's Fair (1964 & 1997)

This is my life....

-- Brooklyn roots:

Brooklyn On Line
The Brooklyn Board (ex-Brooklynite bulletin board)
Coney Island USA
Coney Island History
Coney Island Scenes
Capt. Bob's Coney Island Page
Coney Island Interactive 1949 Map
Whirl-i-Gig (another Coney Island site)
Brooklyn Kid (Coney Island photo blog)
Laff In The Dark (Coney Island funhouses)
Astroland Amusement Park (in you-know-where)
New York 1964-65 World's Fair
Streetplay.com: The Games
Canarsie.com
Forgotten NY:  Canarsie
P.S. 115 Alumni Bulletin Board
Bildersee Junior High School Alumni Bulletin Board
Ruby the Knish Man (a Canarsie institution!)
Yahoo Metro NYC Public High Schools Index
South Shore High School
South Shore High School Alumni Bulletin Board
South Shore High School Alumni Registry
Carvel Ice Cream Corporation
Brooklyn College
Phi Beta Kappa Society
Brooklyn Bridge

-- Following the yellow brick road:

Yale Law School
New Haven, Connecticut directory

-- New York state of mind:

New York City (official)
New York State (official)
Gotham Gazette
City Search NYC
Yahoo New York (NYC index)
New York City Panix Reference
Museum of the City of New York
Off Off Off
Forgotten NY
New York Trash
New York Web Ring
New York Slanguage
New York Underground

-- Back to the future in Connecticut:

Stamford (official)
Stamford Area Guide
Stamford Advocate newspaper
Connecticut (official)
Connecticut Seek
Connecticut History Online
Fairfield County (CT) Weekly newspaper

Special Bonus:
Coney Island Sound Portrait
(a 17-minute audio documentary in Real Audio)

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