Brooklyn Archives - 3 Quarks Daily

by Barbara Fischkin

On the stoop outside 4722 Avenue I, Brooklyn, New York, circa 1956. Barbara Fischkin as a toddler, atop the shoulders of her brother Teddy. With Cousin Shelli—and Barbara and Teddy’s father, Dave Fischkin (with cigar, as always). Family photo, possibly taken by Barbara’s mother, Ida Fischkin.

Moving forward, I plan to use this space to experiment with chapters of a memoir. Please join me on this journey. Another potential title: “Barbara in Free-Range.” I realize this might be stepping on the toes of Lenore Skenazy, the celebrated former New York News columnist, although I don’t think she’d mind. Lenore was also born a Fishkin, albeit without a “c” but close enough. We share a birthday and the same sensibilities about childhood. These days Lenore uses the phrase “free-range,” typically applied to eggs, to fight for the rights of children to explore on their own as opposed to being over-supervised and scheduled.

I feel free-range, myself. I don’t like rules, particularly the unnecessary and ridiculous ones. My friend Dena Bunis, who recently died suddenly and too soon, once got a ticket for jaywalking on a traffic-free bucolic street in Orange County, California. She never got a jaywalking ticket in other far more congested places like New York City and Washington, D.C.

As a kid, I was often free-range, thanks to my parents, old timers blessed with substantial optimism. I have been a free-range adult. I was a relatively well-behaved teen but did not become a schoolteacher as recommended as a good job for a future wife and mother. I wanted a riskier existence as a newspaper reporter. I did not marry the doctor or lawyer envisioned as the perfect husband for me by ancillary relatives and a couple of rabbis. Instead, I married Jim Mulvaney, now my Irish Catholic spouse of almost forty years, because I knew he would lead, join or follow me into adventures.

I left newspapering as my career was blooming to write books, none of which made me a literary icon or even a little famous. I am glad I wrote them. Read more »

by Angela Starita

When I moved into my new neighborhood, I was anxious to the point of nausea. Even today, the soap my husband and I used to clean the kitchen when we first arrived induces a nervous sadness, the feeling of a no-turning-back crisis. But this was one I’d brought upon myself. We’d moved from a wonderful 2-bedroom apartment overlooking the campus of an art school in the now idealized landscape of Brownstone Brooklyn, and that treasure in the currency of New York City real estate, just two blocks from the subway. But I wanted more space and a chance to garden. I got that in a house in Kensington, about five miles south of my old place, but culturally at a complete remove. Kensington is a world of immigrants and Hasidic Jews, row houses and dozens of brick apartment buildings along a road that runs straight to Coney Island. That last, Ocean Parkway, was the idea of the great Olmsted and Vaux of Central Park fame, and it had been an esteemed address at one time. (While I suspected this from the architecture of some of the older buildings, my hunch was confirmed when I heard an interview with David Geffen describing his childhood ambition to one day have an apartment on Ocean Parkway. It should be noted, that Geffen said this to demonstrate what a parochial world view he’d had as a young man.) The neighborhood’s eastern boundary, Coney Island Avenue, is overrun with car repair shops almost as desolate as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Valley of the Ashes. Read more »

Tag: Brooklyn

Midwood to Belfast and Beyond: A Memoir Begins (Working Title)

An Excerpt From “Farms In Kensington”