Loew's Valencia Theatre

Or that the cannisters would come back empty! Not to imply that the young Warren would have been so mischievous!

Thanks for this information, Warren.

There was also a small above-ground public pool within walking distance from my families 3-family house on 41st Avenue. It was located in what used to be known as Linden Park just behind the former Loew’s Plaza Theatre. The park is now called “Park of the Americas” – I presume in celebration of the neighborhood’s predominantly South American ethnic makeup. I remember swimming at that pool once and finding that my sneakers had been stolen from their cubby (being an outdoor pool, there were no indoor lockers). I had to make the 6 or 7 block walk home in my bare feet – carefully studying the sidewalk and pavement ahead of me for any broken glass, bottle caps, soda-can rings or any other potential sources of pain and discomfort! I think back on those days – an 8 year old boy allowed to walk himself to the local park – and wonder how many parents would feel safe permitting the same these days! I thought nothing of it back then. My father used to ride the subways on his own at that age back in the ‘40’s as did my grandfather when he was 11 or 12 in the very early '30’s. And the City is quite a safe place nowadays! I think a very definite “suburban” mind-set has ingrained itself in the minds of many urban parents in recent years. Kids are babied and over-supervised as they grow into pre-adolescence to a degree that never existed even just 20 years ago. But I digress. I don’t want to continue to summon Warren to this page for something not directly related to the Valencia. Here endeth my social commentary!

I moved to Laurelton in ‘74, aged 9. Prior to that, I was an Elmhurst/Corona boy living on 41st Avenue just a couple of doors from Junction Blvd.

Thanks, Warren. The supporting short HELPMATES is one of Laurel & Hardy’s very best two-reelers – right up there with their Oscar-winning THE MUSIC BOX. As a young boy growing up in Corona, Queens, I used to swim at the Ederle Public Pool in Flushing Meadows. The pool used the original Ampitheater from the ‘39 Fair that housed the Aquacade. Regrettably, it was allowed to fall into a sad state of disrepair after years of disuse; and despite some efforts to save the crumbling ediface, it finally fell to the wrecker’s ball in the late 1990’s. A freind and I were able to gain entry to the decaying structure a couple of years before it was demolished and managed a couple of photos of the vandalized stands. I have to go dig those out one of these days.

There were plans to relocate the ice-skating rink that occupies part of the old City of New York Pavillion (also from the ‘39 Fair) to the site of the Ampitheatre – on the northern edge of the large, man-made Meadow Lake – but nothing thus far has come of it. And, this has nothing to do with the Valencia, but I hope I’ll be forgiven this minor tangent!

Thanks, Warren.

In other words, Lost is a bit weary from “baby sitting” me over there! Don’t worry, it’s a padded room and I’ve had my medicine.

Regarding the old Gertz Dept store….I never considered it a second rate Macy’s. The Jamaica store was the flagship of the 7 store Long Island chain and I remember it being a very nice store. The store’s slogan, written in fancy cursive script on the top floors facing the Long Island Rail Road tracks read “Gertz, Where Long Island Shops!”.

I’ve also posted a ton of photos there that I took of the Laurelton Theatre as it currently exists (it is a church) – or at least as it existed in February of 2006.

Thanks, Warren, for the Merrick Road-ology, as it were, and your description of the origin of Loew’s Valencia ! Way cool !

Ugh. Merrick Blvd. My error, Peter. It becomes Merrick Road once it crosses the border into Nassau County (which was only a few blocks to the east of my neighborhood). Merrick Avenue exists, but further out east in the Nassau town of Merrick.

I don’t want to wander too far off topic here, but I can tell you that my teacher’s problems (at least as I understood it at the time) had to do with a drinking and gambling problem as well as a recent and nasty divorce (I imagine the first two lead to the last one).

Saps… very creative writing there – and most evocative of precisely the way I imagined the inside of the Bristol to be!

Pete… in this case SRO = Single Room Occupancy. It looked to me to date back to the 1920’s. Limestone and brick, if I recall. I have to drive around the area one of these days and see if the place survived. If so, it’s probably been gutted for condominiums!

Finally, for the record, downtown Jamaica really wasn’t my neighborhood. I lived in Laurelton, which is several miles (and a couple of neighborhoods) to the southeast down Merrick Ave.

“It was the summer of ‘92 and he had invited me up to his shabby digs at the old Bristol Hotel. Curiosity about his faded treasures (EC comic books? lobby cards?) had got the best of me and I agreed to meet my old English teacher there despite the long bus ride down the seedy streets near Jamaica Avenue. As I climbed the worn-down marble stairs — the smell of stale piss and body odor and old tobacco hanging in the air and my stomach in knots — little did I realize how this visit would change my life forever…”

OK, Ed, fill in the rest.