BONUS: Zadie Smith, Goodfellas, and the Queens of My Childhood

I Grew Up Near the Lufthansa Heist. I Thought Everyone Did.

To my subscribers: I wasn’t planning to send five emails in a week. I genuinely apologize. But novelist Zadie Smith wrote a beautiful essay for Galerie about Goodfellas, and it hit me right in the childhood. I grew up in Rego Park, not far from where the real Lufthansa heist guys hung out, and I had some thoughts.

So consider this a bonus post: part film analysis, part Queens kid remembering where the bodies were buried - underneath the floor at Robert's Lounge, 114-45 Lefferts Boulevard in South Ozone Park - and part Proustian dive into literary memoir.

Yes, I used the word “literary”, because I’m engaging with a real novelist and I also write real good. See? Bonus means it’s good, not annoying.

(If you somehow still don’t own Goodfellas, you can fix that here. That’s an affiliate link so I do make money if you click on it.)