So many people in Ridgewood are within walking distance of the Ridgewood Theater, I can’t see many of them taking a bus and then walking to the Atlas Park development at Cooper and 80th in Glendale instead.
I think Myrtle Avenue is still very busy at night.
Thanks for your answer, Sylvia, and thank you, alkan, for YOUR post.
The closest thing Ridgewood had to the Kishke King was the hot dog and knish stand at the “depot” : Myrtle Wyckoff and Palmetto, intersection of M and L subways, and start of the B26, B38, B52, B54, Q55, and Q58 bus lines. A bit fancier was Gottlieb’s Jewish Deli Restaurant on the north side of Myrtle, just to the east of the depot, between Palmetto and Woodbine. I grew up in Ridgewood on Jewish deli food, among other kinds of food.
Did you ever go to Knish Nosh on Queens Blvd. in Forest Hills, near the 67th Avenue subway station ?
Spring and summer 1968 my mother went to a doctor on East 98th St. near the Rutland Road IRT el station, between, I believe, Clarkson and Winthrop, so I got to know that area, on the cusp between Brownsville and East Flatbush, a bit. I think there was a small Jewish deli restaurant there that had all kinds of knishes, kasha and groats and maybe spinach, as well as potato, the round kind with a burned-looking crust, like the ones at Canarsie Pier, as opposed to Gabila’s knishes, “King Of Potato Pies”, which were more common, and looked like golden-brown square pillows with sharp corners.
Who was the Kishke King ? Did you ever hear of “the prince of Pitkin Avenue” ?
Half my ancestry is Polish, so I grew up thinking that kishka was pig’s blood and rice inside a sausage casing. Ugh !
There’s even a polka, “Who Stole The Kishka ?”
My small “Oy vey – it’s Yiddish !” glossary says that “kishkes” means guts, or intestines.
Another word I grew up with was “schmata”, which seems to be both Polish and Yiddish for “rag” :
“Oy gut, Mama, take that schmata off your head !”
I am VERY MUCH enjoying your trip down memory lane !
If you go to www.nycsubway.org, Station By Station, IRT Brooklyn Line, Saratoga Avenue, you will see the brown brick hulk of the Ambassador in about ten images of that el station.
My Uncle Joe, the younger of my two uncles, was born November 9, 1934.
My dad, who grew up in Bushwick, recalls Murder Inc. as active also in the Bway Junction – East NY area.
My wife and I just watched “The Bishop’s Wife”, with Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven, last weekend. One of our Christmas movies.
What does your last name mean ? I should know, because I’m half German, but I don’t. I ask, because I’ve seen ads for a Schildtwachter Fuel Oil Company.
Thank you, Sylvia. Mayn own shtetele ist Bushwick und Ridgewood (Ritchvoot). I am a youth of 50. Where can I find your collection of stories, “Remembering Brownsville” ?
Perhaps “Bway” on this site could get a current picture of 38 Herzl St. for you.
My condolences on your physical handicap(s).
May I ask what year you were born ? I ask so I will know where you stand re : my generation and my father’s (he was born in 1919).
Around 1940 or so my dad dated a gal named Anne Scherbach who lived on Pitkin near Pennsylvania. They went to Loew’s Pitkin once.
Sylvia Schildt, thank you for all this wonderful information !
What was your past experience of Loew’s Ambassador Theater at Saratoga and Livonia Avenues, or have you already commented on that theater’s page, on this site ?
Lastly, do you know a gentleman named Saul Zaveler from your former neighborhood of Brownsville ?
Yes, and there is also Academy Award nomination-induced re-release at the end of the old year, and / or the beginning of the new one. I remember the Christmas 1983 Jedi re-opening in Manhattan theaters.
No, it’s crystal clear. I know exactly what you mean. My mother said almost exactly the same thing after her electric schock treatments 40 ½ years ago.
Yes, Lost Memory, I understand. Thanks for the explanation. Does your handle have anything to do with your war experience, as in memories you wish you COULD lose, but haven’t, yet ?
Tonino, could it have been the Fox Theater, which, like the Brooklyn Paramount, was near Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues ? Or was it the Brooklyn Academy of Music at the western end of Lafayette Avenue ?
You graduated high school in the year I was born, and as I am now 50, that means you are nigh on 70 … years young ! Welcome to Cinema Treasures !
My native ‘hoods are Ridgewood and Bushwick, but I know Glendale and Ozone Park well also. I hope I, too, can tingle you nicely also !
Thanks, Jeffrey1955. Good seeing you on this page as well.
Sadly, the friends of my wife and myself that once lived in Brewster are now divorced, the man now living across the Hudson in Ramapo, NY, and the woman re-married, and living in Perrysburg, Ohio.
Thanks, Warren and Jeffrey1955, for your answers. Warren, I thought that 589 Woodhaven Boulevard looked suspicious. Perhaps that was the address before the hyphenated Queens “Philadeplphia” street address system of numbered streets and avenues took effect. Thanks, Jeffrey1955, for your personal details. It’s a good idea to to include your year of birth in your handle on this board, so other moviegoers can gain some sense of what your movie-going experience might be.
The sixth comment on this page is my first comment on the Drake Theater, as “Peter.K”, on 14 April 2004. I somehow logged myself out, and had to log back in as “PKoch”.
RobertR, I think I saw that version of “The Lost World” on TV in fall 1963, on the “NBC Monday Night At The Movies”, 9-11 p.m., a half hour after the end of “The Outer Limits” on ABC. Unlike the silent Willis O'Brien version of the late 1920’s, it had sound, it had color, it had LIZARDS !
No matter how much you enlarge or slow down or put extra fins and spikes on a lizard, it still doesn’t look like a dinosaur !
How about “The Lost Continent” on Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9, with Cesar Romero (The Joker on the Adam West / Burt Ward “Batman”)and Sid Melton (Charlie Halpern, of “The Danny Thomas Show”) gored by a triceratops right before the end, before they get rescued (?)
Thanks, EdSolero, for your post, including the good news about Loew’s 175th Street and Metropolitan in downtown Brooklyn. I thought the Metropolitan had been multiplexed, and was still showing movies.
I know what you mean about the original color scheme not being preserved at the Valencia, but at least the interior is in good repair, even though there are no longer any “stars in the sky” (on the ceiling) and the naked cherubs have been covered for modesty.
Correct, LuisV, and thanks for posting your comment.
Bway has argued, both here and elsewhere, that a church is probably the best post-theater function of a theater, because at least the seats and the stage are preserved and maintained.
I have a friend from work who graduated Grover Cleveland High School in Ridgewood in 1972, and his ceremony was held in Ridgewood’s RKO Madison Theater.
So many people in Ridgewood are within walking distance of the Ridgewood Theater, I can’t see many of them taking a bus and then walking to the Atlas Park development at Cooper and 80th in Glendale instead.
I think Myrtle Avenue is still very busy at night.
Thanks for the recent pix, Warren. I think the stars are just for the holidays.
Thanks, Warren.
Thank you, Sylvia. Please, where is the Manhattan JCC that the Folksbiene now does its productions at ?
I know there used to be a thriving Yiddish Theater scene around Second Avenue and East 7th St. in Manhattan (corrections welcome).
Was there ever a Yiddish Theater scene in Brooklyn, perhaps at Loew’s Pitkin ? Not off-topic at all.
“Where Were You When The Lights Went Out”, starring Robert Morse ?
“Sorcerer” ? “Cross Of Iron” ?
Thanks, Robert R !
“Rosemary’s Baby” at the Pitkin ! Oy gevalt ! Meine Yiddische Mama, Ruth Gordon, mit der dybbuk ! Whatever happened to the Yiddish Theater ?
29 screens among the plexes in Brooklyn any more ? Someone more ambitious than me, can count them !
Sylvia, have you clicked on the links I included in the first post on this page ? I just tried the first one, and it works.
Or do you want better and/or more recent photos, showing the front and the interior ?
Peter Koch
I am on here as both “Peter.K” and “P.Koch”.
Thanks for your answer, Sylvia, and thank you, alkan, for YOUR post.
The closest thing Ridgewood had to the Kishke King was the hot dog and knish stand at the “depot” : Myrtle Wyckoff and Palmetto, intersection of M and L subways, and start of the B26, B38, B52, B54, Q55, and Q58 bus lines. A bit fancier was Gottlieb’s Jewish Deli Restaurant on the north side of Myrtle, just to the east of the depot, between Palmetto and Woodbine. I grew up in Ridgewood on Jewish deli food, among other kinds of food.
Did you ever go to Knish Nosh on Queens Blvd. in Forest Hills, near the 67th Avenue subway station ?
Spring and summer 1968 my mother went to a doctor on East 98th St. near the Rutland Road IRT el station, between, I believe, Clarkson and Winthrop, so I got to know that area, on the cusp between Brownsville and East Flatbush, a bit. I think there was a small Jewish deli restaurant there that had all kinds of knishes, kasha and groats and maybe spinach, as well as potato, the round kind with a burned-looking crust, like the ones at Canarsie Pier, as opposed to Gabila’s knishes, “King Of Potato Pies”, which were more common, and looked like golden-brown square pillows with sharp corners.
Thanks for your answers, Sylvia.
Who was the Kishke King ? Did you ever hear of “the prince of Pitkin Avenue” ?
Half my ancestry is Polish, so I grew up thinking that kishka was pig’s blood and rice inside a sausage casing. Ugh !
There’s even a polka, “Who Stole The Kishka ?”
My small “Oy vey – it’s Yiddish !” glossary says that “kishkes” means guts, or intestines.
Another word I grew up with was “schmata”, which seems to be both Polish and Yiddish for “rag” :
“Oy gut, Mama, take that schmata off your head !”
I am VERY MUCH enjoying your trip down memory lane !
If you go to www.nycsubway.org, Station By Station, IRT Brooklyn Line, Saratoga Avenue, you will see the brown brick hulk of the Ambassador in about ten images of that el station.
My Uncle Joe, the younger of my two uncles, was born November 9, 1934.
My dad, who grew up in Bushwick, recalls Murder Inc. as active also in the Bway Junction – East NY area.
My wife and I just watched “The Bishop’s Wife”, with Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven, last weekend. One of our Christmas movies.
What does your last name mean ? I should know, because I’m half German, but I don’t. I ask, because I’ve seen ads for a Schildtwachter Fuel Oil Company.
Thank you, Sylvia. Mayn own shtetele ist Bushwick und Ridgewood (Ritchvoot). I am a youth of 50. Where can I find your collection of stories, “Remembering Brownsville” ?
Perhaps “Bway” on this site could get a current picture of 38 Herzl St. for you.
My condolences on your physical handicap(s).
May I ask what year you were born ? I ask so I will know where you stand re : my generation and my father’s (he was born in 1919).
Around 1940 or so my dad dated a gal named Anne Scherbach who lived on Pitkin near Pennsylvania. They went to Loew’s Pitkin once.
Thanks again !
Sylvia Schildt, thank you for all this wonderful information !
What was your past experience of Loew’s Ambassador Theater at Saratoga and Livonia Avenues, or have you already commented on that theater’s page, on this site ?
Lastly, do you know a gentleman named Saul Zaveler from your former neighborhood of Brownsville ?
I thank you in advance for your replies.
Thanks, tapeshare. I forwarded the link to your ENY – Cypress Hills site to Karl B privately a few weeks ago.
You may not be mistaken, JohnG409 !
Yes, and there is also Academy Award nomination-induced re-release at the end of the old year, and / or the beginning of the new one. I remember the Christmas 1983 Jedi re-opening in Manhattan theaters.
No, it’s crystal clear. I know exactly what you mean. My mother said almost exactly the same thing after her electric schock treatments 40 ½ years ago.
Yes, Lost Memory, I understand. Thanks for the explanation. Does your handle have anything to do with your war experience, as in memories you wish you COULD lose, but haven’t, yet ?
Yes ! As a bearded Larry Hagman (?) once said on “Laugh-in” in 1968 :
“What this show (page)needs is more pregnant pathos !”
Thanks, Lost Memory, for posting the link to the photo.
Tonino, could it have been the Fox Theater, which, like the Brooklyn Paramount, was near Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues ? Or was it the Brooklyn Academy of Music at the western end of Lafayette Avenue ?
You graduated high school in the year I was born, and as I am now 50, that means you are nigh on 70 … years young ! Welcome to Cinema Treasures !
My native ‘hoods are Ridgewood and Bushwick, but I know Glendale and Ozone Park well also. I hope I, too, can tingle you nicely also !
Thanks, Jeffrey1955. Good seeing you on this page as well.
Sadly, the friends of my wife and myself that once lived in Brewster are now divorced, the man now living across the Hudson in Ramapo, NY, and the woman re-married, and living in Perrysburg, Ohio.
Thanks, Warren and Jeffrey1955, for your answers. Warren, I thought that 589 Woodhaven Boulevard looked suspicious. Perhaps that was the address before the hyphenated Queens “Philadeplphia” street address system of numbered streets and avenues took effect. Thanks, Jeffrey1955, for your personal details. It’s a good idea to to include your year of birth in your handle on this board, so other moviegoers can gain some sense of what your movie-going experience might be.
The sixth comment on this page is my first comment on the Drake Theater, as “Peter.K”, on 14 April 2004. I somehow logged myself out, and had to log back in as “PKoch”.
Jeffrey1955, were you born in 1955 ? I was.
RobertR, I think I saw that version of “The Lost World” on TV in fall 1963, on the “NBC Monday Night At The Movies”, 9-11 p.m., a half hour after the end of “The Outer Limits” on ABC. Unlike the silent Willis O'Brien version of the late 1920’s, it had sound, it had color, it had LIZARDS !
No matter how much you enlarge or slow down or put extra fins and spikes on a lizard, it still doesn’t look like a dinosaur !
How about “The Lost Continent” on Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9, with Cesar Romero (The Joker on the Adam West / Burt Ward “Batman”)and Sid Melton (Charlie Halpern, of “The Danny Thomas Show”) gored by a triceratops right before the end, before they get rescued (?)
Perhaps EdSolero, being a fairly recent Jamaica High School graduate, can enlighten us.
Thanks, EdSolero, for your post, including the good news about Loew’s 175th Street and Metropolitan in downtown Brooklyn. I thought the Metropolitan had been multiplexed, and was still showing movies.
I know what you mean about the original color scheme not being preserved at the Valencia, but at least the interior is in good repair, even though there are no longer any “stars in the sky” (on the ceiling) and the naked cherubs have been covered for modesty.
Correct, LuisV, and thanks for posting your comment.
Bway has argued, both here and elsewhere, that a church is probably the best post-theater function of a theater, because at least the seats and the stage are preserved and maintained.
I have a friend from work who graduated Grover Cleveland High School in Ridgewood in 1972, and his ceremony was held in Ridgewood’s RKO Madison Theater.