Brooklyn, Michigan 1989

Growing up, I heard a lot about Brooklyn. It was where we went for the local church's salisbury steak dinners, held in the church basement. Sometimes we shopped at Cooper's or the Ben Franklin. When disco became popular, the place to go was called, appropriately, The Place in Brooklyn. Brooklyn would even sometimes appear on TV on Sunday afternoons when the NASCAR and Indy car races from Michigan International Speedway were broadcast.

It's only now that I live in New York City, that I realize everyone else has a different idea of Brooklyn. Brooklyn, NY is fine. But here is a glimpse of my idea of Brooklyn.

Along with the Dairy Queen (which is the only DQ I knew of that could dip your cone in cherry as well as butterscotch and chocolate), Brooklyn featured the Star Theater which was the closest movie theater around and specialized in second run movies. I saw Jaws there: I was both glued to my seat because of the film, and glued to the floor due to the stickiness that made seeing a movie there both a joy and an annoynance.

Here is a view of downtown Brooklyn. You can't really say that there is a town square in the middle, it's more like a town oblong but considering other nearby villages were lucky to have a stop light at the main crossroads, an oblong was very impressive.

Brooklyn was large enough to have both its own newspaper, The Exponent, and chain restaurants. Here is the Big Boy that greets guests outside the Elias Brothers Big Boy Restaurant.