In my twenties I graduated from college in early June, and within a month, I found and rented my first apartment located at 210 Park Place in downtown Brooklyn. Today this area is upscale, but when I lived there it was a middle class section of the city.
In September, I became an elementary school teacher in Ocean Hill Brownsville, where I worked with some great kids for the next few years. I taught 5th and 6th grade for seven years and learned so much from my kids. Ocean Hill was one of the toughest neighborhoods in New York. The area around our elementary school looked like bombed out Berlin at the end of WW II. The kids in that party of the city, had the odds of succeeding in life stacked heavily against them. It was my goal to open up the world of education and reading to hopefully give them a better shot at success. I always felt deep in my heart that some of those kids became better readers and I helped point them in the right direction, giving them a better shot at a decent life.
That was also the beginning of the Disco Era and I spent many nights in the dance clubs of Manhattan. I was very fortunate to eventually meet Ms. Evelyn Valles, who became my Disco Dance partner. We did a dance called “The Hustle” and she was a fantastic person and dancer, who made me look ten times better than I actually was. Going to the Manhattan Dance clubs with Evelyn was the social highlight of my life. It was fantastic. Yes the clothes we wore were somewhat bizarre, but we had lots of fun dancing to that pulsating, rhythmic, sexual beat of the Disco Era.
My favorite club was “The Cheetah” on Broadway, where they alternated between two live bands playing for a crowd which was dancing on a very large hardwood dance floor. Live Disco Music rapidly migrated to DJs spinning records, as it became very rare to find a band playing in the Manhattan Discos. Although the aforementioned Evelyn was my dance partner, we weren’t dating. My girlfriend was Ms. Arlene K who was very nice and treated me too well. I didn’t deserve that special treatment and I’m sure Arlene would agree with that comment. Here are some of my Disco Era photos, plus some hanging out with the guys at Manhattan Beach which is actually in Brooklyn.
When I was in my twenties it was about a lot more than just music as the culture of America was undergoing a metamorphosis. Many young people would no longer tolerate sexism or racism. It was a divisive, but an exciting time in America which I would characterize as a cultural upheaval. The Vietnam War caused a rift between generations which made many young people question many of the values and double standards they saw everywhere.
This time frame marked a huge shift in the direction of my life. When I was a young man, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to live anywhere other than the Big Apple. However, the attraction to New York began to fade over several years. I gradually began to realize I wanted to live someplace where it wasn’t extremely overcrowded, people were friendly, and best of all, there’s an abundance of trees and grass, which are very rare in New York.
In my late twenties I decided to end my teaching career, leave the Big Apple forever, and move to Maryland to take a job with the United States Park Police, who were headquartered in Washington, DC. I didn’t know a soul in the area, so I was starting from scratch in a very different environment. In retrospect, that was probably the best decision of my life, as the move opened up an entirely new world.
Leaving NYC and moving to the Maryland suburbs introduced to me a new culture which placed a premium on being friendly and treating others with respect. That certainly wasn’t part of the Big Apple Culture.
In Maryland, we were surrounded by trees and grass almost everywhere we looked. Those were rarities in Brooklyn, so the new environment brought a deep appreciation for nature and the beauty of America. The biggest downside was the DC Beltway level of traffic, which almost matched NYC in terms of gridlock.
