Rather than just sketch my town I will be sketching the area where I grew up.
My house was in Jamaica but I went to high school in Richmond Hill, one of the next towns over. After every event at the school...basketball games, dances, etc...we would head over to Jahn's Ice Cream Shop. This was the in place! If you were lucky you would go there for date night too. It was a chain of a few shops, but this one is no longer open. It was such a great place!
My house was in Jamaica but I went to high school in Richmond Hill, one of the next towns over. After every event at the school...basketball games, dances, etc...we would head over to Jahn's Ice Cream Shop. This was the in place! If you were lucky you would go there for date night too. It was a chain of a few shops, but this one is no longer open. It was such a great place!
There were round stools at the counter, but they had these great dark red leather booths in the back. I think they liked that we all sat back there because when we were there we were rather noisy, like most groups of teens are. We liked to sit back there and order the gooiest concoctions off the menu. A favorite was the "kitchen sink sundae" which had to be shared. It had scoops of almost every flavor on the menu and supposedly was large enough for 8 people. We didn't order that very often because it was so big and expensive. There was another called "Joe Sent Me" ( I don't know who Joe was or where he was sent) which had strawberry ice cream and lots of chocolate and whipped cream. I was never a lover of whipped cream which always delighted my friends because I would pass mine to them. Doesn't this look like a great place to hang out? This particular location closed in 2007, but there is one still open somewhere in Queens. They also served food but aside from burgers and fries I don't think we ever ate anything else there.
Hi Joan. Wow, these are fantastic. Long time no see. Great to see your work again. That ice cream sounds great. Nice to see you.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great place to hang out and what a pity it isn't there any more. I think I would have loved to go to an ice cream place like that and sit with friends. Love your paintings of it both inside and out.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much to both of you. I tis sad when you find some place that was such a fixture in your past is gone. Luckily there were a few sites that showed the front and inside, but of course I changed them enough to make them "mine."
ReplyDeleteThis so reminds me of two spots we hit as teenagers. One was called Peter Pans and that is where we got our hot fudge sundaes! The other was Carmen's Pizza Parlor where they made the best pizza ever. It was thick and the meat slices of salami were thick! The booths were red vinyl like what you have drawn here. Oh I can smell the pizza and taste the coke a cola in the green glass shapely bottles! Carmen was in my class. He and his sister worked there with the parents who came over from Italy. I don't think I appreciated that fact when I was a teen. Thanks for so many memories your art stirred up for me today!
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