From the Fang’s vast archives this week’s found photo is an examination of young love. This photo was taken at the Mineola Skating Rink. Mineola is out on Long Island, New York. Long Island scares me, you can’t drive through it, if you want to leave the only way out is to turn around and go back the way you came. Unless you have a boat waiting somewhere. Still, plenty of great rock’n’roll came from Long Island including the Bell Notes (“I’ve Had It”), 3/4th’s of the Velvet Underground, the Young Rascals, Billy Miller of Norton Records (who grew up on the same block as Joe Satriani and Steve Vai!). Technically Queens and Brooklyn are on Long Island, so you can add the Shangri-Las (from Cambria Heights), the Vagrants, the Ramones (both from Forrest Hills), the Excellents (“Coney Island Baby”), the Magnificent 4 (“Uncle Sam”), and the Heartbreakers, not to mention songwriting teams like Goffin & King, Mann & Weil, Burton & Sawyer, etc. I went to a wedding in Mineola once, I remember it as being a mostly Jewish-Italian middle class suburb, looking like most of Long Island– strip malls in every direction, all the women snapping gum, lots of traffic. I’m not sure if the skating rink is still there, nor do I have any idea what became of Russ and his gal, but I love this photo.
“…Billy Miller of Norton Records (who grew up on the same block as Joe Satriani and Steve Vai!”LOL!!!
HEY , you forgot to mention the GOOD RATS,they’re from L.I. too.LOL
Hey let’s not forget College Point/Whitestone’s finest, The Fleshtones.
Pardon the pedantry, but….The Ramones were from Rego Park, not Forest (one “r”) Hills. None of the original Rascals came from Long Island. The Excellents were (I think) from the Bronx, the only NYC boro that is *geographically if not spiritually* part of the U.S. mainland. LL Cool J and Run-DMC are from Queens, so were doowopp groups The Cleftones and The Capris. And Tony Bennett LOL.
I saw Little Richard do a killer show there.It’s otherwise worthless. Pearl managed to get NBC to pick up the tab!JumpyPJL
GETTING BACK TO THE PICTURE…women look hot when they wear scarves around their necks, just like that chick in the photo. this should be revived.
“None of the original Rascals came from Long Island”are you sure about that? where were they from?
Where were the Rascals from: Brigati and Danelli were from Jersey. Cornish was from Canada. Cavaliere was from Westchester County, slightly north of the Bronx.