I was born and raised in the town of Canarsie in Brooklyn, New York. I moved away to Staten Island when I started high school.
This area was about 5 minutes from my neighborhood.
Unfortunately, the whole area went down the drain pretty quickly. I can be extremely depressing and post all of the pictures I found of the closed down Canarsie Theater, or other areas in Canarsie that just look bombed out, but I’ll spare you. The times I’ve had to go back through the area are pretty tough though, the place is a shell of its former self.
And this is the funny part: when I lived there, apparently it already was just about a shell of its former self. I was blissfully unaware, though I did know of plenty of places not to go because they were dangerous. So as nostalgic as I am for my childhood in Brooklyn, I’m even more nostalgic for the time before me.
Canarsie used to be a beautiful place. It was the quintessential Brooklyn town where tons of families settled and raised kids. Everybody was neighborly, kids always had safe places to go. You know the drill: life was good, gas was cheap.
I spent most of my childhood indoors without ever knowing what I was missing out on. By the time I moved to an area vaguely reminiscent of “how things used to be”, I only realized then what I had lost out on and couldn’t get back.
Being in Long Island for school is interesting and a bit melancholy in this department; I hear a lot of great stories about playing outside, doing a lot of things with the neighborhood kids, just having a “normal” childhood I suppose. I always think “they’re so lucky”. And to an extent, they certainly are. Now I most definitely did not have a bad childhood, my parents did the best they could to work around all the new challenges of the then modern day Canarsie. But hearing everyone’s stories, whether they be from before my time, or during my time but in another area, still stings just a little bit.
And yet, I’m still nostalgic.
