Navigating the Neighborhood

The streets of the neighborhood were easy to navigate: 51st, 52nd, 53rd, etc. Officially, they were all "East," but it was a lost point. We didn't know any Western ones.

The two-way streets were called avenues, and named for cities in upstate New York - Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Utica - providing not just order, and a theme, but appropriate grandeur.

We lived in a row house, about 15 feet wide, in a stretch of them that ran one side of the block. On another side were bigger houses, some stand-alone, some attached. The other two sides of the block were apartment buildings. By code, a six floor building requires an elevator. Therefore, in lowdown and unshmancy Brooklyn 3, all were five, tops. Walk-ups.

Most apartment buildings had retail on the ground floor. Most commercial buildings had some housing above. Altogether it made for a lot of people and commerce.

Across the street from us were a dry cleaner, a dress shop, Louie Fink's luncheonette, Smilin' Jack's Appetizing, and a butcher shop. The butcher shop was known as Jerry the Jew's - even among Jews; even though Jerry seemed no more Jewish than 90% of the neighborhood population, i.e., Jews. I suppose it was just the allure of alliteration.

That was one block. On the next were a pharmacy, a variety store, a luncheonette, a fish monger, another butcher (live chickens in the yard), the Egg Man (from the chickens next door?), a hardware store, TV and radio repair, a bakery, a barber, a small grocery, a small supermarket, and another luncheonette.

On the next, a kosher restaurant, a pizzeria, a shoemaker, a Chinese laundry, a beauty salon, another barber, and another luncheonette. (It was not that we ate so much lunch, but that they all made book.)

There was a lot more than this, too, on streets I never traveled, near as they were. The density of your own few blocks made others seem strange. People on 54th Street seemed distant. 55th, foreign. I never went out there but once a year, to Trick-or-Treat.