Welcome Back, Benny

Brooklyn Bridge. Don't know who took the picture, though.


So here I am. Back in Brooklyn. I’m staying at my mom’s apartment. She’s been here since Labor Day of 1977. We were supposed to move in that Monday but the elevator was broken and the movers refused to bring our meager items up five flights of stairs. They came back the next day and I missed the first day of school that year.

A lot has happened since then in this old, two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment in Flatbush.

There’s been a lot of bad memories; bickering, arguing, yelling, crying, screaming and misery. A lot of late nights unable to sleep (like now while I’m writing this; it’s 1:57 a.m.). There’s a lot of ghosts here. My stepfather got sick in this apartment and had nightmares that death was coming for him before he actually died. There’s a part of me that still believes he’s still here; making fun of me, taunting, tormenting. He wasn’t a very nice man.

But there’s a lot of good memories here, too. Birthdays and celebrations like first communions and graduations. Baby showers and Bachelorette parties. Easter, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners; some lean, some not so lean. Aunts, uncles, cousins; all putting aside our differences for a while, rejoicing in the sheer moment of being, eating and drinking. Spending time together doing absolutely nothing but talking and existing.

A slew of people have come and gone; some for a short while, some for a long time, some repeatedly. And then there were the weeks and months, if not years, of Spanish soaps, movies, t.v. shows.

And of the hundreds of shows we’ve watched here as a family, one of those shows was “Welcome Back, Kotter.” Not necessarily the best of shows but one remembered because very few were supposed to have taken place in Brooklyn. Unfortunately for me, now that I’m here, the theme song to the show just keeps playing itself over and over and over again in my brain.

Welcome back, welcome, back, welcome back.

As I retrace the steps I once took between my sophmore year of high school and the year I moved out on my own. Walking past the building where I had my first apartment, on East 18th Street and Newkirk. Walking up Foster Avenue to the bagel shop for my heavily buttered Bialy and Yoo-Hoo. Crossing Newkirk Plaza to the candy store for a pack of Violets. Taking the Q train (once the QB) past Avenue M and my old Alma Mater, Edward R. Murrow High. Passing Kings Highway where I used to cruise the parking lots late at night. Barreling past Neck Road and my last apartment before finally moving away from New York and to Fort Lauderdale; to a different life. One on hold for another few weeks, if not more.

Much has changed between then and now. Waves of immigrants have come and gone; latins, koreans, russians. Neighborhoods once known for dangerous gangs, loud music blaring on the street in the summer, racial altercations and the seediness of the prostitues, their pimps and the drug dealers, have now been regentrified.

Like the Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street area that now have a Target. Park Slope, which was THE place to move to back then because Manhattan was becoming so expensive. Flatbush, which now boasts a Target as well. Kings Plaza, once home to Alexander’s, Orange Julius and some other department store I can’t remember (Korvette’s?) now home to Macy’s, Sears, Old Navy, Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works.

And let me not forget Redhook.

Once upon a time, you would never want to be caught dead there. Well, okay, maybe you would be FOUND dead, but you certainly wouldn’t want to be caught dead there. Once a whore and drug infested, flea-ridden dog of a neighborhood, it’s now up and coming. An Ikea set to open in June and a huge, I mean HUGE Fairway Market stuffed to the rafters with people from all sorts of neighborhoods now anchors that regentrification. Above the supermarket and around the immediate area, where empty warehouses once stood falling apartment, gloomily facing their doom, there are now luxury condos along the water.


Condos over Fairway Market on Van Brunt.

You can see Staten Island in the distance and the Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island just beyond and the gap where the Twin Towers once stood.


Like mother, like son. Enjoying a cup of joe.

But as many changes as there have been, much has also stayed the same. The people are rude, crude and rough around more than just the edges. They don’t speak properly, they sure as hell don’t enunciate and have absolutely no manners to speak of. Blacks, Latins, Russians, Middle Easterners and Asians now fight against the newest wave of immigrants . . . Causcasians . . . for the right to breath against a certain . . . complacency that still exists here in Brooklyn. It's a complacency that is almost stifling. And yet, strangely comforting . . . like an old pair of jeans where the material has been worn soft and fit just right . . . because it borders on acceptance. And of all the things you can say about Brooklynites, we are who we are and that is all. There's no pretense.

Yup. Brooklyn is still here. Once, it mocked me. Now it just sits and waits to see what’s going to happen next. To see if I’m going to run towards something again, or away from it. And like my mom’s old apartment, Brooklyn is still filled with ghosts. The difference is that THIS time, the ghosts can no longer harm me.

I guess like parts of Brooklyn, I’ve changed too. I feel . . .

. . . clean.

Now if only I can get that damn song to stop haunting me!


Welcome back. Your dreams were your ticket out.
Welcome back. To that same old place that you laughed about.
Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they're turned around.

Who'd have thought they'd lead ya, here where we need ya.
Yeah we tease him a lot cause we got him on the spot, welcome back.
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.