Comments from PKoch

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PKoch
PKoch commented about Ambassador Theatre on Mar 21, 2006 at 2:05 pm

Herbie, what Joan Crawford films did you sit through ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 21, 2006 at 2:03 pm

KenRoe, you’re welcome. I heard on the TV news six weeks ago about luxury condos being built in the South Bronx : “SoBro” : the new “cool” area in NYC to live in !

By all means, go see the Trylon while it’s still there. I first saw a film there Saturday November 3rd 1984 and last saw a film there Friday November 11 1994.

How do Richmond Hill and Kew Gardens compare with their London counterparts ? The last Jahn’s ice cream parlor is in Richmond Hill, 117-02 Hillside Avenue, corner of Myrtle, eastern end of the Q-55 bus line, next door to RKO Keith’s Richmond Hill, now a flea market and a bingo hall. It, like the Ridgewood, is rich in internal original decoration.

How do NYC cinemas compare to London cinemas ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Mar 21, 2006 at 12:50 pm

Thanks, KenRoe, for capturing and memorializing so well a beloved movie theater that is not only a big part of my past, but the past and the life of many of us on this page and this site. Great work !

Please be advised, though, as has already been discussed thoroughly above on this page, by Bway, Lost Memory, myself, and others, that the Ridgewood Theater is in Queens, not Brooklyn.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Mar 21, 2006 at 12:28 pm

SteveD, I’m not sure I knew you, either, but I do remember Ciro’s on the northern corner of St. Nicholas and Woodbine, across St. Nicholas from Sal’s Barber Shop.

The names you mentioned are not familiar to me. I knew a Joe Graif in high school (St. Francis Prep) from Miraculous Medal parish who lived on Fairview Avenue.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ambassador Theatre on Mar 21, 2006 at 10:55 am

Thanks, Herbie. Did the roar of the IRT el outside the Ambassador ever disturb your movie-going inside ? I have read that such was not the case for the Valencia in Jamaica, Queens, adjacent to the eastern end of the Jamaica BMT el.

Did you see live rock ‘n roll in the '50’s at the Bklyn Paramount ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ambassador Theatre on Mar 21, 2006 at 10:31 am

Herbie, what’s “better of all locations in chain” Please explain. Thanks.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 21, 2006 at 10:27 am

Lost Memory : C/O is “certificate of occupancy” ?

KenRoe, you’re most welcome to the compliments ! Welcome to the USA ! Please stay safe.

What theaters in Queens will you be exploring ? Have you noticed the place and street names of Richmond Hill, Kew Gardens, Kensington, Mayfair and Curzon, to name a few, common to London, UK and Queens ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Mar 21, 2006 at 8:31 am

Thanks for your response, BillyC, you’re a gentleman and a true scholar of our precious Ridgewood heritage !

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Mar 21, 2006 at 8:13 am

Hello, AprilW. ! I’m glad you posted here again. I’m also glad you feel I don’t owe you an e-mail, because that takes the pressure off me. Yet, I have a response penned out, which I WILL send you privately.

What’s to survive about your June 2005 e-mail ? It was wonderfully and lovingly detailed ! Thanks again !

I remember Maureen Daley only vaguely, if at all.

I remember Robert Osolinik lving on Woodbine between St. Nicholas and Cypress Avenues, passing his block while walking to St. Brigid’s School. Right before he and I and you started high school in September 1969, I saw an ad in what I think was the NY Daily News about how Robert O. had advanced his career in art by all his hard work as a paper boy. Therefore, when I met him by chance in the Ridgewood library in December of 1972, and we were high school seniors, I thought he would be running the art world of the Western Hemisphere, at least on a high school level. Yet, he said he did not, and had only a limited portfolio.

You mention playing ace king queen on the wall of the Ridgewood Theater. In spring 1965 I remember an ace, king, queen, jack and 10 painted on the wall of Key Food at the eastern corner of St. Nicholas and Woodbine, a block to the northwest.

There was a picture of Leona Seuffert, under her maiden name of Leona May Smith, playing the trumpet in my 1970-1971 SFP yearbook, the San Fran. She was captioned as “instrumental instructor”.

I remember well those Seuffert Band concerts in Forest Park Music Grove on Sunday afternoons, funded, in part, by the Liederkranz Foundation. The last one I attended was summer 1971 in the Christ The King auditorium due to rain. They played Johann Strauss' “Blue Danube Waltz”. There was an opening tremolo in the strings that they couldn’t quite duplicate with their wind instruments, though they came close.

Then it was sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll at the Forest Park Music Grove at night. I walked by there once with a friend in July 1976 and some Led Zeppelin soundalike was shrieking out “Heartbreaker”.
Richard Hell and the Voidoids and The Dead Boys were advertised for Saturday August 12 1978. I wasn’t there for that, just saw it on posters in Ridgewood at Myrtle and Seneca Avenues.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 21, 2006 at 7:46 am

Thanks, KenRoe.

BTW, are you Kenneth Roe of the engineering firm of Burns & Roe ?

Herbie, are you the fabled and famous “Prince Of Pitkin Avenue” ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 20, 2006 at 2:14 pm

Where in NJ ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 20, 2006 at 2:09 pm

My father went to ENY VOCATIONAL high, near the Atlantic Avenue station on the Canarsie and Fulton Street elevated lines. I was delivered by a Dr. Joseph Berman whose office was at, I think, 25 Logan St. near Jamaica Avenue.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 20, 2006 at 2:03 pm

I’m from Bushwick and Ridgewood myself. My father was from Bushwick but he knew Pitkin Avenue from about the Pitkin, past Rockway Avenue, to about Pennsylvania Avenue.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 20, 2006 at 1:59 pm

Thanks, Herbie, what was your old neighborhood ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 20, 2006 at 1:52 pm

Yes, that was rather tasteless and cynical of me. I apologize.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 20, 2006 at 7:26 am

a.k.a., “Oy Gut Gevalt, There Goes The Neighborhood !”

Co-directed by David Susskind and Steven Spielberg.

“This week’s current social controversy is brought to you by …”

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 20, 2006 at 7:23 am

Herbie, you’re not a Volkswagen, are you ?

Ah, Brownsville : militant and criminal blacks vs. corny old show business and Garment District Jews !

Tune in next week for yet another episode of that ever-popular Marxist game, “Class Struggle” !

Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel !

Directed by Spike Lee.

It’s better than Ghettopoly !

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on Mar 20, 2006 at 7:17 am

Thanks, Herbie, laugh riots are better than race riots.

Nary a dry eye or seat in the house, eh ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Garden Theater on Mar 15, 2006 at 8:54 am

Thank you, Warren, for your efforts, and for reporting on them in such detail here !

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Mar 14, 2006 at 8:04 am

mrbillyc, Warren, and Bway, thanks for all this information. mrbillyc, I’m glad you had a pleasant visit to Ridgewood, and thanks for walking up our old block of Cornelia between Wyckoff and Cypress Avenues. It’s always been a quiet block, as you mentioned about the traffic noise and loud Spanish music dropping off a hundred feet into the block. The old industial type building dated 1897 in the masonry near the roof, on Wyckoff near Myrtle and Palmetto, does indeed remain from the brewery (the Welz and Zerwick) that once took up the block where the RKO Madison was eventually built, and opened around Thanksgiving 1927.

Bway, it seems so strange for the Ridgewood to be operating at such a reduced schedule, when it is the only movie theater within a four or five mile radius of itself. Has it fallen prey to home video, both viewing and games, the way the smaller neighborhood theaters like the Parthenon did to broadcast TV in the 1950’s ? Perhaps Monica can comment on this, and on the matter of Spanish, and perhaps even Polish, subtitles.

Bway, as you and I both know from the “Bushwick Buddies” website, even Bushwick, long synonymous with urban blight, decay and disaster, is at long last giving way to the law of supply and demand at the hands of upscale urban developers. Can Bushwick’s across-the border neighbor, Ridgewood, in general, and such a valuable community and entertainment resource as the Ridgewood Theater, in particular, be far behind ?

There are pictures of it, and of the Ridgewood National Bank at Cypress and Myrtle, both in Times Newsweekly “Our Neighborhood” articles, and in Christina Wilkinson’s article on Ridgewood on Kenneth Walsh’s “Forgotten NY” site.

Thanks, mrbillyc, for all the information on the Silver Dollar Club. It reminds me of the Knights Of Columbus at Bushwick Avenue and Hart St. where my parents met and went dancing, 1940-45.

In all fairness, the only brothel I was aware of was third-hand through rumors, in the spring of 1982, supposedly above Carl’s Army and Navy Clothing Store, on the southeast corner of Myrtle and Putnam Avenues, or above what used to be Epstein’s Pharmacy, then Carl’s Place Next Door to it on Myrtle Avenue. My dad said it tried to keep a low profile, but got busted anyway.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Mar 13, 2006 at 6:38 am

Thanks, SteveD. I’m now remembering something about teen dances at the Ridgewood Theater in the ‘40’s and '50’s, probably a link someone posted on this very page to the image of a ticket to such a dance.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Mar 13, 2006 at 6:32 am

SteveD, what was the Silver Dollar Club ? A brothel ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Mar 10, 2006 at 12:14 pm

Thanks, SteveD. What was the Silver Dollar Club ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Mar 10, 2006 at 11:48 am

Sorry for the duplicate posts. Haste makes waste.

That photo of the yellow and orange brick six-family houses on Palmetto Street, showing the July 4, 1914 holiday celebration, on Christina Wilkinson’s website on Ridgewood, confirms that Ridgewood was growing and developing as early as 1905 to 1915.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on Mar 10, 2006 at 11:41 am

The Parthenon was a bowling alley, Parthenon Lanes, perhaps as soon as the fall of 1960, but definitely by the fall of 1961. I remember going in there with my mom after lunch at Koletty’s on school days.

Thanks for the answer of my house being a Stier house.

Yes, mrbillyc, there are about half a dozen six family homes on the same side of Cornelia Street, the northwest side, opposite my old house, as the former Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust bank.

I think the RKO Madison showed its last film around Halloween 1977. By late February 1978 it was a derelict hulk with a sign in front which read :

THIS IS HOW YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD STARTS TO DECAY !
IF THIS BOTHERS YOU, CALL (212) …..

Yes, I have seen that Christina Wilkinson website on Ridgewood. I submitted comments and corrections to her on 1 August 2005 that she has yet to incorporate.