Anyone here grow up in an apartment complex in the city?

[HEyHEY]

What was it like? I grew up in a neat place where we spent our days in the ocean, or in the forest. What did you apartment types do as kids for fun, and what was it like being a teenager in such a place?

[fryguy]

1. lived up the block from several

but i grew up in a brookly brownstone (row-house)...great growing up in the city in the 1970s - actually couldn't imagine living some place else.

[LiberalVoice]

2. Was it anything like in Serpico? eom

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

3. Not a complex, but a row of houses... it was great

everyone knew everyone else, up the fire escape, across the roof and down the fire escape to another kitchen.
We had beaches too... the west coast of Long Island... better known as the East River. Forests? Well, we were a little short of those, but we had subway tunnels and trains and they took you all over.
Kids do the same things everywhere, I now understand, they just do it a little differently in each place.

[starroute]

4. I lived in Manhattan until I was 14, then in Queens

In Manhattan, there was a whole slew of kids my age in the building (advantage of being a leading-edge boomer), and by the time we were about five, we were allowed to visit back and forth on our own. We'd hang out in each other's apartments, or run slinky's down the stairs, or ride the elevator just for kicks.

We also played outside on the sidewalk (although always with a mother around until we were maybe 9 or 10.) Riding our tricycles, playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, bouncing balls, blowing bubbles, stuff like that. We were also allowed to go across the street to the soda fountain for penny candy or down the block to the Horn and Hardart.

By the time we were 11, my friends and I were going to the movies by ourselves, or walking over to the park to bang tennis balls around on the handball courts, or hiking up to Grant's Tomb and back, or just window shopping on Broadway.

There were a lot of kids my age in the building in Queens, as well, but there was less to do. On summer nights, we might go into the high school athletic field across the street and run around the track, or walk over to the little amusement park on the other side of the athletic field and ride the tilt-a-whirl. (But we never, never went into the playground that was kitty-corner from the apartment house, because that was where the wild kids from the neighborhood would go at night to drink and make out. And we also avoided the White Castle where the local motorcycle gang hung around in the parking lot.)

I had a good friend from school who lived a few miles away, and we'd sometimes get together and take the subway down to the beach, either to go swimming in summer or to walk along the boardwalk in winter when everything was closed and strange.

And I took a lot of solitary walks when we lived in Queens, setting out in a random direction, generally with a book for company, and doing my best to get lost and then find my way back again.