It’s hard for anyone who visits Park Slope now to remember, but that was an edgy community in the sixties and seventies. I could hardly afford today to rent the upstairs apartment in the duplex that my father and mother bought in the sixties for less than $40,000. Back then, your universe revolved around your front stoop. You know, you were either a Union temple kid or a Garfield temple kid. It was like a Reform Jewish version of the Sharks and the Jets, and we were a Union temple family.
But the life of a kid in New York City, it’s about making your circles bigger and bigger around your home. When you’d get a little older, you’d get on the F train and go to Rockefeller Center and tool around a little bit. I remember taking a train to West 4th and going to Rocky Horror. For the longest time, I just assumed the graffiti was painted on the subways when it came off the factory line.