While today’s developers cut costs by sticking to cookie cutter formulas, these houses had similar variations by using oval and polygonal bays in the same row, and other subtle differences. The side streets of Bay Ridge are chockablock with attached row houses made with brick or stone like these probably the same developer(s) built most of them in the first couple of decades of the 20th Century. I always manage to discover something new or at least something I had previously overlooked in this historic neighborhood where I grew up. Nathan’s Coney Island location remains open, and will hopefully be there till the ocean swallows the Coney Island peninsula. It’s recently been sold and the restaurant will be razed for apartment buildings that overlook the golf course.

In July 2018 I was in Bay Ridge for one last lunch at its Nathan’s at 7th Avenue and 86th Street, which has been there since the 1970s before that, it was another roadside fast food place. When I worked nights in Manhattan, my Mondays were always happy because before heading off to work at five p.m., I’d head to Zeke’s for a repast, which capped off my weekend, which ran from Saturday afternoon when I got up to reporting for work at Photo-Lettering at eight p.m.

I still went to my favorite lunch spots, Zeke’s Roast Beef and the Nathan’s on 86 th St.

I spent my first 35 years in Bay Ridge and return often, first to visit my father, who passed away in 2003, and then for regular dentist visits-I’ve patronized the same office since 1964. I make no apologies for being a nostalgist.

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