I had friends of every shape and stripe and ethnicity and I don't remember anyone caring about any of that. Kids didn't bring knives and guns and whatever.
I mean, I was just doing plays in high school and hanging out with whomever I thought was sort of fun and cool. I was waitlisted for Performing Arts-I'm still waiting. There was Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, and Performing Arts, now LaGuardia. There were just a few specialized high schools. Bear in mind, there were no charter schools. The corner that I grew up on in Kew Gardens Hills was the border of four different school districts. Now, the building that I grew up in in Kew Gardens Hills was pretty safe, but it was public housing and there were all kinds of questionable characters in the neighborhood. People talk about how bad New York became in the ’70s and particularly in the ’80s and I think that's absolutely right.
