Baltic Gold
Life imitating art… I unearthed a copy of The Goonies that was languishing in the bargain DVD bin. We watched this 80’s film treasure the other day. I hadn’t seen this movie in its entirety since it’s theatrical release in 1985, so it was quite a treat to relive this crude and fantastic adventure. Kids searching for buried treasure…awesome!
A few days later, I was Googling my former address in Brooklyn and found this bizarre parallel tale. This November 10, 1910 article, courtesy of The New York Times Archives, details how two boys ransacked the building I lived in searching for BURIED GOLD!
There were a lot of stories about that old place, but I’d never heard this one before! "…visions of oceans of ice cream sodas and mountains of candy…" Haha, how much more Goonies can you get? Fantastic! I love this story! So weird to think that I lived in this building. I used to spend a lot of time in the basement of that building…repairing the furnace…myself…with rubber bands…
Was there really gold there? Well, we may never know. In July 2000, I pointed out a number of cracks and bulges in the east wall of the building to the new owner. I told him that without repairs, the building would come down. He shrugged it off saying that he had engineers tell him the building was fine. Three years later on July 11, 2003, my prediction came true. Actually, the building was evacuated, condemned, and demolished, but same difference only less messy.
Fortunately, I wasn’t living there any more. That would have sucked. In hind sight, I’ve never been so glad to move because my rent was tripled!
And if there was any gold, surely it would have been discovered during demolition. Right?