The Boys of 2nd Street Park (2003)

           Baby boomers like myself will enjoy this documentary, a sort of period piece, about a group of buddies who were close friends growing up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in the late 1950s. The epicenter of their childhood memories of stick ball and basketball was 2nd Street Park. Through interviews, original home movies, and still photos we follow their life stories through nostalgic recollections of childhood, teenage angst, and emergent adulthood with all of its attendant poignancy and pain—the volatile fifteen years between 1960-1975 when romantic descriptions of rampant drug use gave way to nightmarish reality, the Vietnam War, broken marriages, sick kids, professional challenges, and the like. All of this is utterly normal, and happens to very normal people, which is to say that it is a universal story that makes this a meaningful retrospective on life, love, loss, regret, and hope.