Interview: “Made In Brooklyn” Rick Howard

Brooklyn native Rick Howard is the other half of the Florida Doo wop team with his wife Lisa Howard. “Although we are both from Brooklyn, Lisa and I had totally different kinds of childhoods. When I was five my family moved from Midwood to Canarsie. In the early 60s Canarsie wasn’t developed yet, there were still farms and lots of untouched swamps. After we moved to Norton’s Point when I was 9 I used to live at Nathan’s. The best French fries in the universe.” … Read More >Interview: “Made In Brooklyn” Rick Howard

Interview: Jonathan Immordino

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Brooklyn native Jonathan Immordino was working as a Senior Business Analyst for Morgan Stanley on the 68th floor of 2 World Trade Center. Very fortunately, Immordino and his co-workers were able to evacuate to safety that morning before the second terrorist jetliner crashed into that building. With no cell phone towers operable Immordino went directly home by train. Meanwhile, unaware of Immordino’s earlier evacuation, his wife had concluded that Immordino had not survived and retrieved the children from school, informing them that their father had passed away. One can only imagine the reunion he received. He said the experience changed his life forever. … … Read More >Interview: Jonathan Immordino

Interview: Harvey Zipkin

Brooklyn native Harvey Zipkin’s photographs reside in the permanent collections of 20 museums across the US, including The Brooklyn Museum, The Library of Congress, and The Smithsonian American Art Museum, just to name few. At the time of our interview with Zipkin (2016) some of his critically acclaimed Coney Island photos were going to be displayed in the Brooklyn Museum Exhibition “Forever Coney”. (You can see a sampling of Zipkin’s photos by clicking a link on the full interview page.) … Read More >Interview: Harvey Zipkin

Interview: Jack Koolik

90-year old Brooklyn native Jack Koolick started high school back in 1941 at Abraham Lincoln in Brooklyn. He left high school after his sophomore year to join the Army Air Corps (Air Force). He went on to fight with General George C. Patton’s 5th Army in WWII. His job, during the successful invasion of Sicily, was to identify low flying enemy planes trying to evade U.S. radar along Mediterranean beaches. “My father was a Russian immigrant. I remember he used to work in the basement all the time. He was a tinsmith, he built the metal linings for the wooden ice boxes people used before refrigerators were widespread.” … Read More >Interview: Jack Koolik

Interview: Eric Jacobsen

Young Brooklyn Cellist, conductor, and member of the well known string quartet Brooklyn Ryder, Eric Jacobsen was recently tapped to be the Musical Director for the Orlando Philharmonic. “In a lot of ways though, while I want to do new things and be a part of today’s cutting edge musical ideas, I’m also a conservative. I went to Julliard, so I’m always remembering and paying homage to the tradition that we come from. “It’s easy to do something different, but if you don’t achieve, or strive to achieve the highest level you can from each endeavor, then I think one is missing the point.” … Read More >Interview: Eric Jacobsen

Interview: “Made In Brooklyn” Lisa Howard

“My mother dragged me kicking and screaming to Queens. But I kept going back to Brooklyn because that’s where my friends were, that’s where my heart was.”
Lisa Howard was born in 1950 and grew up in East New York, just south of New Lots Avenue where she and her parents lived in a three-family house with her grandparents.
“It was a tough area,” she said, “at the time I was growing up it was, well, let me just say that I grew up in the middle of a Martin Scorsese movie.” … Read More >Interview: “Made In Brooklyn” Lisa Howard

Interview: Rico Petrocelli

“I feel blessed having grown up in Brooklyn. My dreams from when I was a kid actually came true. Brooklyn made that happen.”
Brookyn native and famous Boston Red Sox All Star short stop Rico Petrocelli was born in Coney Island Hospital just off Ocean Parkway near Coney Island Avenue in 1943. When Petrocelli was seven, his family moved to Bedford Stuyvesent on Kosciusko Street. That’s when he first started playing stick ball and basketball. During the spring and summer months he and his friends played stick ball in the streets everyday, or as he jokingly said in a recent interview with the Brooklyn Eagle; “We played until someone broke a window, and then we all scattered.”
Read More >Interview: Rico Petrocelli

Interview: Carlos Diaz

A Park Slope native, Carolos Diaz, now lives in Miami where he co-founded the large scale energy efficiency company ENTIC (energy analytics). Maintaining connections in New York, ENTIC clients include Yankee Stadium, the New York Mets, and many other commercial buildings. Other high profile clients include Trump Hotels in Puerto Rico and the Miami Marlins. Diaz recently spoke with the Brooklyn Eagle about his early years in Park Slope and how he built a company that saved Broward General Hospital in South Florida $315,000 in energy costs during the hospital’s first year of using ENTIC technology. … Read More >Interview: Carlos Diaz

Interview: Anthony Theocarapolous

When we told Theocarpolous we had read somewhere that he was opening a new “Cooklyn” restaurant in Palm Beach, he said: “You’re the first media outlet I’ve talked to about it. (He laughed) So there’s your exclusive scoop. And we’re building a food Market next to the restaurant, where we will definitely sell many Brooklyn-based items. But even more than that, the Market ambiance will have what I believe is a Brooklyn flair.” … Read More >Interview: Anthony Theocarapolous

Interview: Tommy Bonfiglio

Brooklyn native Tommy Bonfiglio says that New York pizza has for him been a passion since childhood. Tommy had always wanted to open a Pizzeria that would serve the “perfect” coal fired pizza he grew up eating in Brooklyn. His wife Yvette, also a Brooklyn native, had always dreamed of opening an Italian restaurant with a casual, rustic atmosphere; like the taverns in the Tuscany region of Italy, but with a modern twist. So they compromised and decided to open Tommy’s Coal Fired Pizza restaurant. … Read More >Interview: Tommy Bonfiglio