"My craziest Brownsville memory, though, involves Mike Tyson, who came
from Brownsville. This was back in the seventies, before he was the world
champion or had even started boxing. I was about eight years old, holding my
mother’s hand, walking down Pitkin Avenue by the OTB, when this dude
came by and snatched my mother’s earrings right off her earlobes. Left her
with bloody ears and everything and just took off.
I was too young to remember exactly what he looked like at the time, but
years later, when Tyson started getting famous, my mother saw him on TV
and swore, “That’s the guy who snatched my earrings!” It sounds crazy, and
of course I don’t have any proof, but that didn’t stop me from fantasizing as a
kid that a slew of Brooklynites and even some Manhattanites could say the
same thing about the World Champ."