Not that anyone’s playing favorites, but this is really nice to hear: the Rockaway Park house used as Woody Allen’s childhood home in 1987’s Radio Days seems to have made it through Sandy relatively unscathed.
Located on Beach 115th street in a neighborhood Allen’s narrator described as “at its most beautiful” when it was “stormy and rain-swept,” the house has sustained significant water damage and is in need of a new boiler after taking on five feet of water during the storm.
“I think ‘Radio Days’ is one of his best films,” said Lee Quinby, who co-owns the house with her husband. “And I thought so even before we bought the house.” Apparently, Quinby is a professor specializing in the study of catastrophe and “doomsday culture,” and she told the Times, “We have noted the irony.”
Anyway, this is at least a small piece of good news about the whole thing. If you feel like watching sentimental footage of the old neighborhood (and sentimental footage of a teeny tiny Seth Green playing a young Woody Allen), we direct you to the clip below.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.