I remember seeing him at West 4th Street hanging out with Black kids he went to high school with at Seward Park. Ricky never succumbed to the tribalism and territoriality that afflicted many other kids in his neighborhood during those years. One incident from those years that stands out in my memory happened in September 1976, when a very large group of West Village teenagers and young men went on a rampage in Washington Square Park, attacking Black and Hispanic people with pipes and baseball bats, killing a dark-skinned Dominican volleyball player and wounding thirteen others. The level of open racial antagonism-even in a very liberal neighborhood like Greenwich Village-existed in ways that people a generation removed cannot really understand. The utopian and “cool” integrated Knicks teams helped kids attitudinally-and in Ricky’s case on a much deeper level-transcend some of the animosity, segregation, and polarization that was part of the city that decade. The role of sports was central to the sensibility and development of so many New York kids in the ’70s. Fortunately, we were blessed with daughters. I have a cat named Clyde and had somehow convinced my wife to name our first-born son Clyde if we ever had a boy. Living alone and untethered to family, Ricky’s eternal boyhood did not seem so strange to me. The early 1970s Knicks, unlike any other New York team, had a mythical resonance for any city boy who fancied himself a ballplayer. Ricky’s heroes were the sports heroes of our early adolescence-Joe Namath, Pistol Pete Maravich, and, first and foremost, Walt “Clyde” Frazier. He regarded the Village Vanguard as a neighborhood shrine. His social media postings establish Ricky’s radio station of choice was Jazz 88, WGBO (Newark). I am not sure he even particularly cared for the music of the acts that he documented. His pantheon of gods was made up of athletes, not the hip-hop superstars he so memorably photographed and befriended. It was remarkable to me that his obsessions in 2021, judging by his Instagram and Facebook, remained those of a 13-year-old New York boy born in 1961. We all get old, but for my brother and I, neither of us having seen Ricky for thirty years, his physical transformation was jarring. Middle-aged Rickey was a paunchy guy, with ridiculous looking grey mutton-chop sideburns, who never went out without a baseball cap affixed to his head. The hearts of young women and men beat harder in his presence. As a teenager and young man, he’d been almost unbearably good looking. There was also the matter of Ricky’s appearance. In Ricky’s case his persona at some point became the person. Fields, a kind of theatrical street smarts, which is not to say it was inauthentic. Ricky’s middle-aged made-up street patois seemed to me a wonderful cross between Jimmy Cagney and W.C. “He talks entirely differently,” my brother said somewhat indignantly. My brother had kept up a friendship with Ricky a bit longer than I had, and when we talked about our memories and tried to reconcile them with Ricky’s later colorful public personality it was disorienting. *As a reminder, your registration fee is still tax-deductible.Somehow, until a few years ago, I had been entirely unaware of Ricky’s Beastie Boys adventures, his role chronicling rap and hip hop’s early years, and his public access cable television show, “Rapping with the Rickster.” Thank you for supporting TriCity Family Services. We will also have warm apple cider and cookies available while you wait.Īgain, we share your disappointment but trust that you understand the safety reasons for making this important decision. At that time, we will distribute all quarter-zip tech shirts, finisher medals and goody bags, as guaranteed during the registration process. Charles) on Friday, between 1-7pm, as scheduled. PLEASE NOTE: Packet pick-up will continue to take place at Dick Pond Athletics (303 N. It is for this reason that we must, with regrets, cancel Saturday’s Snowflake Shuffle, due to the hazardous conditions. While our agency looked forward to celebrating this milestone anniversary with all of you, we must remember that, first and foremost, our top priority is keeping you and your family members safe at all times. Last weekend’s blizzard has presented us with a challenge … treacherous surroundings that will prevent even the most seasoned runners from safely navigating the deep snow, icy surfaces and future threats of freezing rain … impassable paths for snowplows to navigate and shovel in time for the race. TriCity Family Services’ Annual Snowflake Shuffle 5K has become a winter tradition for our community and is truly a family-oriented experience for all ages.
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