The Brooklyn Trolley Blogger: Trolley

Showing posts with label Trolley. Show all posts

Saturday, June 23, 2018

Brooklyn Dodgers: Street Art and Murals

From the desk of: FINGERPRINTS OF THE BUMS

Road Trips 2017: Cooperstown Museum

and Baseball Hall of Fame

Spanning the Borough, To Give You The Constant Variety of Bums

Gone but hardly forgotten, the old Trolley Dodgers are quite alive and doing very well. Despite being scarred and broken, Dem Bums of yore remain dear in the hearts of Brooklyn's citizenry, whom still wear their baseball caps, t-shirts, jerseys, and jackets like a red badge of courage. Here in Kings County, at least, New York City is still home to three teams.

However, Gotham's municipal powers presently and historically have always demonstrated little or no interest in recognizing, preserving, or promoting their near 180 year baseball legacy, much less Brooklyn Dodgers history. Therefore, I make it my business to seek out and reveal Fingerprints of the Bums wherever they may be. This is the first in a series of reboots and original content featuring items you may already be familiar with, and hopefully many things you're not so familiar with.

PART ONE: STREET ART and DODGERS MURALS

Why not begin at Chavez Ravine, for the above mural is not located in Brooklyn, but at Dodger Stadium itself. Speaking as a native Brooklynite, it's an appreciated acknowledgement of their Trolley Dodger roots. The picture itself was provided by my friend and L.A. Dodgers fan extraordinaire @crzblue ... Thank You!

The Dodger Stadium mural is a popular and familiar image of a Franklin Avenue (or Washington Avenue) local negotiating the right turn onto westbound Empire Boulevard. This Trolley would have been travelling southbound on Franklin Avenue along the left field/third base side of Ebbets Field. Technically, Charles Ebbets purchased the lots bounded by Bedford Avenue, Sullivan Place, Montgomery Street, and Franklin Avenue. However, the park itself was bounded by Bedford, Sullivan, Montgomery, and McKeever Place. Jackie Robinson School is situated on the lot bounded by Franklin, Sullivan, McKeever, and Montgomery (placing Ebbets Field on the other side of McKeever Place).

P.S. 375 Jackie Robinson

and Middle School 352 Ebbets Field

As the route continued westward along Empire Boulevard, two blocks away the Trolley would have rumbled to our next destination:

The above mural was painted by an MTA employee. It once covered the entire front wall of their maintenance yard located just five blocks from the former site of Ebbets Field, across the street from Prospect Park where Ocean Avenue, Flatbush Avenue, and Empire Boulevard converge. I'll venture to guess I took this picture at least a decade (and four or five phones) ago. The mural had existed for quite some time at that point with nary a reason to believe it risked being painted over. Famous last words! I made a huge mistake by cropping the original pictures in order to focus on the team holding up their 1955 pennant. If you look closely at the left border, you'll notice a brown door. There was indeed more to this mural than what is presented here, depicting Ebbets Field's exterior facade. Trust me, all these years later I'm still kicking myself in the posterior. As fate would have it, the above mural was indeed painted over and replaced with an (unfinished) alternative version featured below.

circa 2015

Ponderously, this mural also has been painted over. My mole told me it was management's call due to the employee/artist's retirement. Today, no mural exists at the site.

This image is located inside Trader Joe's;

intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street.

Inside Atlantic Center

Atlantic Avenue @ Flatbush Avenue

Commissioned for the Wythe Hotel

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Exterior of U.S. Post Office

Avenue N at Flatbush Avenue

This Ebbets Field mural is located inside the TD Bank lobby at the

corner of Montague Street and Court Street; the same address where the

Brooklyn Dodgers offices were once located.

Jackie Robinson at Sullivan Street

between Rogers Avenue and Nostrand Avenue.

Duane Reade Pharmacy Murals

Bedford Avenue across street from former Ebbets Field

Inside U.S. Post Office

Fillmore Avenue at Flatbush Avenue

Artist: Bonnie Siracusa (516-314-5060)

Oil on window pane by Ron Nesbitt

Vanderbilt Avenue

I even found Fernando Valenzuela hanging out on Montgomery Street

three blocks from Bedford Avenue!

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Vintage Bus and the Real Manhattan Transfers

Bensonhurst's most famous bus driver

Part One:

I Brive a Dus ~ R.K.

Have car, can't travel? Welcome to life in Gotham. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, we are a sidewalk trampling, street crossing, bus hopping, subway surfing, railroad riding society. Simply put, we New Yorkers are commuters. From every borough and burb we are a metropolis and citizenry forever on the move. It's our reality as urbanites, something coded into our big city DNA.

Throw in the old trolley system, and it's been this way for well over a century. For instance, this Flatbush Avenue trolley inevitably became the B41 bus route to East 71 Street.

(Pic provided by John Landers)

Be it going to school, baseball practice, Roller Palace, the movies, Coney Island, or what have you ... the buses I took as a very young boy where still colored green. And what kid/teen didn't want to ride the back corner seat with the window pushed open?

What kid also didn't have their parent tell us sit near the bus driver, whom indeed generally kept a watchful eye on familiar faces along their routes. Sadly, times have changed, and drivers instead are the ones seemingly needing protection, having been made to drive behind protective glass.

The oldest of the blue and white buses traversing today's streets are the fleet that replaced the greenies of my childhood's early to mid-1970s years. At first, they tried repainting a few of the green buses in the new blue/white motif, but ultimately retired the fleet by the early 1980s.