To Skate On Sun

borninflames:

The Jokers make the Brooklyn of today look like a hopelessly twee playground for locavore bedwetters and parental check-cashing poosays.

The book is impossible to find but here’s some interesting facts I read somewhere: The Jokers were a bunch of Italian-American Catholic kids whose turf was Prospect Park, where the last photo was probably taken. They used to bring portable record players to the park and have dances there at night. The photos in the restaurant were probably taken at Helen’s Candy Store, a “beloved local institution known for its superlative egg creams”. There really was a Helen. Her store is now the Carroll Gardens Newsstand on Smith Street, I keep forgetting to visit there.

Also, the fella in the white t-shirt in the first and third photos was named Lefty. He was the semi-leader of the gang and the first to get into hard drugs, he later died of a heroin overdose. Cathy, the girl reflected in the cigarette machine was considered the most beautiful. One of the other gang members said she was “Brigitte Bardot beautiful, always sad, always fixing her hair”. She commit suicide by a gunshot to the head a few years after the photos were taken, and I guess I’ll end the depressing anecdotes there. 

ronisolomondds:

Bruce Davidson, Brooklyn Gang, 1959

(via beaucoupshade)