New York City memorabilia – Page 10

Attack of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“Catholics also believe that the Blessed Virgin appears to mere mortals in various times, places and languages. The most famous Marian apparitions, not counting her many miraculous appearances on moldy pizza, dried toast and wet cardboard, are –

Our Lady of Lourdes (France)
Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico)
Our Lady of Fatima (Portugal)
Our Lady of Bayside (Queens)

“Like the Little Green Men who pilot flying saucers, Mary appears only to illiterate, poverty-stricken, scrofula-ridden peasants who sleep with their livestock. Hence, her appearance in Queens. There is a theory that the BVM is, in fact, the occupant of a UFO misinterpreted by Catholic shepherds in the only way that makes sense to them – ‘Hey, Esteban, look, up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s the Virgin Mary.’

Movie poster of Invasion of the Saucer Men

BVM or BEM – coincidence? You decide.

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio — Available as a paperback and eBook
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here
https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

The Curse of Christine Keeler

Poster for Hammer horror film - The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) — Classic *monstah pitchah*

The Curse of Frankenstein jump started my interest in all things English, especially English knockers. Puerto Rican girls were sexy but I expected them to be since they wore hot socks and had hair on their cha-chas from birth. English girls were sexy coz they weren’t supposed to be but especially coz they talked good. The fact that a woman could speak like the Queen and fuck like a spic drove me and my friends crazy.

Our obsession reached fever pitch with the Christine Keeler scandal in 1963. We were still sitting on the stoop but were now sitting atop fully descended testicles. We loitered there at night waiting for the next day’s tabloids to be delivered to Rocco’s Candy Store. We smelled the headlines coming over the Brooklyn Bridge then raced each other down the block to get our hands on the photos of Christine and her sidekick Mandy Rice-Davies. These two young women – English women, actually DID IT and didn’t think it was matter for Confession. We punched each other black and blue in debates about which of the pair was sexier. Most of us chose Mandy coz she was a blonde. No lie – no movie or documentary ever came close to capturing the level of interest the Profumo affair held for the pubescent boys of Brooklyn.

Mandy Rice Davies and Christine Keeler — *Doity* English girls who DID IT

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: the smiling face of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn — Available as a paperback and eBook
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here

The Curse of Hammer Horror Honeydews

Yutte Stensgaard in Lust for a Vampire (1971) — **Hammer Horror Honeydews**

In 1957, the year I made my First Communion, the Devil popped up on my shoulder at the movies as I watched the English “monstha pitchah” The Curse of Frankenstein. He jabbed me and whispered, “Pssstt. Hey, kid, check out da bazooms on dat babe sittin’ next ta ya!” I turned my head and saw a teenage honey “making out” with her pimply boyfriend. He was rounding Second Base and heading for Third. She was squirming around inside a tight, low-cut blouse. She had long black hair all the way down her back. None on top of her head. Just all the way down her back. (Sorry – Brooklyn joke. I couldn’t resist.) Her lush black ringlets cascaded to her shoulders. She had gold hoop earrings and insolent, red lips. She might easily have been Puerto Rican. And, damn, I’d left the mozzarella at home! This torrid teen may have been spoken for but thanks to her heaving-honeydews and the heaving-Hammer-honeydews on the screen, I was one randy seven-year-old packing a pocket-rocket.

Possibly Lysette Anthony in Hammer horror film — **Another near occasion of *sinematic* sin.**

Can I get a witness?

Street preacher with "end of the world" sign. — **A Jehovah’s Witness sitting down on the job.**

It is my happy fate to live in Brooklyn and London neighborhoods where Jehovah’s Witnesses train their doorbell-ringing missionaries. They are almost always Black. Imagine the delight of a pair of young, Witness trainees when, far from slamming the door in their faces, the nice White man invites them in for a chat. A long chat. A very long chat. Imagine their chagrin to discover that the nice White man knows more about their religion than they do. Imagine the trainees running and screaming from the suddenly crazed White man when he dons a pair of red, light-up, devil horns and asks them to abandon Jehovah and become Sam Butera’s Witnesses.

Jack Chick comic book. — **A Christian message of love and forgiveness.**

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: The smiling face of Steeplechase in Coney Island, Brooklyn — Available as a paperback and eBook amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here
https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

Stoop of Horror

Vintage horror comic book cover as read on the stoops of Brooklyn. — **Classic stoop reading material**

A few years after my exposure to photographs of kinky sex, I become addicted to visual depictions of violence. Every Thursday night I get my twenty-five cents allowance and hot-foot it to Rocco’s Candy Store to buy the latest comic books. I have no interest in sissy stuff like Archie or Richie Rich. I crave Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror. Actually, what I really crave are the skin mags on the top shelves. I crane my neck to see them until Rocco suggests that I leave his establishment, “Get da fuck outa here kid before I tell ya muddah.” I then hunker down on a stoop under a streetlight and read. So strong is my desire to escape the din and dysfunction in my home that I sit on the stoop even on winter nights.

Ah, alone in my study at last. All I need are my pipe and slippers.

Attack of the Killer Dwarf

Souvenir postcard from Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn. — Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn
Better than Disneyland

I am seven and in Coney Island’s Steeplechase Park – a magical relic of a Victorian amusement park. I’m lost in a dark hallway and I’m ascared. I must have taken a wrong turn getting off the Shoot-the-Chute.

Shoot-the-chute at Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn

I open a door and I’m in the employees’ locker room. Right before me sits a dwarf-clown in whiteface but only halfway into his Pagliacci costume. Baggy clown-pants below. Guinea T-shirt on top. He is smoking and reading The Daily News. He sports a popular tattoo – a black panther climbing up his forearm and drawing drops of red blood with its claws. The dwarf-clown gives me a genuinely malevolent look – not one of those stagey, evil dwarf-clown looks so popular in modern horror-movies. This dwarf-clown hates being a dwarf. Hates being a clown. Hates being the same size as this seven-year-old punk standing before him. Hates me. “Get the fuck outahere,” he rasps.

I get the fuck outathere.

The Viking Giant

Johann K. Petursson, The Icelandic Giant. — **Johann K. Petursson and his lunch.**

That same year, I see the freak show at Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus held in the old Madison Square Garden where Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jake LaMotta, Rocky Graziano and Rocky Marciano fight. It’s where Emile Griffith from the Virgin Islands kills the Cuban Benny “Kid” Paret. At the weigh-in, Benny calls Emile a “maricon” – that’s spic-talk for faggot. In Round 12, Paret is out on his feet but trapped in a corner and held up by the ropes. The homosexual Griffith shows no mercy. Remember what I told you about our dusky brothers not liking each other? Remember what I told you about boxing promoters feasting on that hatred? The Garden reeks of that bloody history. And, with the circus in town, it reeks of lion piss and elephant dung. (Henry Miller, like me a Brooklyn boy, wanted an English language that reeked of lion piss and elephant dung. I doubt Henry ever smelled them in combination. The stench stung my eyeballs and melted the enamel from my teeth!)

The Ringling freak show features sword-swallowers, snake-handlers, fire-eaters, bullwhip-crackers, knife-throwers, fat men, skinny men, rubber men, a family of albino midgets and the star of the show – Johann K. Petursson, the Icelandic Giant – the Tallest Man in the World. Johann is no sissy giant, no puny, pituitary-gland pussy he. Johann is a true giant – 8’ 8” tall and brawny with a bear pelt draped over his shoulder.

Johann wears a tall Viking helmet with horns as tribute to his forebears and to make himself look even taller. My father buys me one of Johann’s green plastic rings as souvenir. The giant places it on his finger for a moment as consecration. I can fit all five of my five-year-old fingers inside it. I still have that ring.

Johann K. Petursson souvenir ring as sold at Coney Island and Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus. — **The Sacred Relic**

Freak-O-Rama

Vintage freak show banner depicting two-headed baby as seen at Coney Island — **Facsimile = an ancient, dusty, wax model floating in a filthy jar filled with formaldehyde**

Coney Island is where I see my first freak show. I am five and my father holds me up to see the stage. Outside the tent, a painted banner depicts a ferocious man with a head shaped like a ten-foot-wide light bulb. But, inside the tent, the meek, sickly man on-stage has only a slightly swollen head. He drives a nail up his nose to try and compensate for his disappointing deformity. My father explains that the man has a disease and the show is a gyp. There is also a woman on-stage who has dry, scaly skin. Outside she is depicted crawling through a swamp on all fours – a woman’s head on the body of an alligator. But, inside – no such luck. Another gyp.

Times Square Baptism

The classic stripper - Lily Christine aka - "The Cat Girl" — **Sex-education instructor in 1950s Brooklyn**

When we climbed out of the Times Square subway station, I was mesmerized. I’d been to Coney Island plenty, but this was something else again, something electrifying. It was the lights – up and down and all around, lights neon, fluorescent and incandescent, lights all moving, all colors and all ablaze – even in daylight; lights that outshined the sun. The billboards were alive – a gigantic man blew smoke rings while Mister Peanut tipped his hat. I didn’t know it then but I had been rubbing shoulders with Diane Arbus and Bettie Page, both working in that 1956 Times Square world – a world of bustling strangers. A world of men in hats. Women with handbags. A world that smelled of Howard Johnson, Orange Julius, Nedick’s, popcorn and pussy. I was six and I could smell it; six and I could feel it; six and I could taste it. Times Square was a dirty dangerous place. And, I loved it.

Mr. Peanut neon sign in Times Square, New York — **My mentor – Mr. Peanut**

Elvis blasted from the music stores and frigid winds blasted from the air-conditioned theater lobbies. I passed a newsstand and an excited man shouted “Extra!” I passed a doorway and a crazy man shouted “Cocksucker!” I heard the shuffle, scuffle and beat of the footfalls. I heard the horns, hollers and bleats of the cabbies – “Ya got wheels! Use ’em, Mac!” I saw my first “Street Corner Messiah.” He wore a sandwich board and was very worried about God. I was transfixed by him. I wanted to ask him why he was so worried but I was pulled away.

Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium in Times Square, New York — **A history lesson in Times Square**

It was the bestest birthday party ever. We saw the Torture Chamber in Ripley’s Believe It or Not“ Odditorium.” Then we visited Hubert’s Museum – a freak show in a 42^nd Street basement. It was even spookier and sexier than Ripley’s! We gaped at Hubert’s Cowboy Giant, midget, flea circus and Congo Witch Doctor. We gawped at Princess Sahloo and her sluggish snake. I determined that I would live in Hubert’s Museum as barker, caretaker and flea-wrangler. I would befriend the Witch Doctor, play pinochle with the midget and milk the snake.

Hubert's Museum and freak show on 42nd street in New York — **Oh, for a time machine!**

Where the elite meet to eat!

Bowery Bum with bloody nose — **Habitué of many a bar & grill.**

During Prohibition, Mayor LaGuardia cracked down on saloons and forced them to serve food to combat drunkenness. Since then every New York bar has had a “grill,” if you count a broken hot plate with old newspapers piled on top of it and stored next to the eternally out-of-order toilet as a “grill.” I’d never heard of anyone in Brooklyn eating (or peeing) in a bar & grill – except in the Gallo Brothers Bar & Grill. It had an excellent Italian kitchen. But, only the wives and girlfriends of the local Mafia were allowed to enjoy it. One of these broads was driven there in a limo every night even though she lived all of three blocks away. Did I see Jimmy Durante drinking in Gallo’s one day? Maybe it was just a man with a big honker who shouted out to me, “Stop gawkin’ at me ya little bastid and go fuck your mother.”