Former Heights video store owner MARTY ARNO looked like he was signing autographs when he was spotted outside Cranberry’s on Henry Street this summer. Turns out he was just sharing his home address with some of the many people he got to know during his 21 years in business in Brooklyn Heights.
“I miss the neighborhood terribly,” he told the Eagle. “Here, it’s not like Manhattan, where nobody knows their neighbors. I miss watching all the little kids grow up. But everything changes. Nothing stays the same.”
Arno, who was looking debonair in a navy polo shirt and aviator-style sunglasses, lives in Staten Island and retired last year. “I’ve been reading, traveling, and fighting with my wife. The worst part about retirement is getting acclimated to the fact that you’re with someone all the time! I’m used to the being the boss, you know, used to ordering people around. Now I’m like a POW!”
Laughing, he added: “I even planted tomatoes. I never did that in my life.”
Lifelong Heights resident Frank Spano was with Arno that day and regaled this reporter with stories of how the neighborhood used to be. “I grew up here. And this is before cell phones. When it was time to come home, my mother would just yell down the street, ‘FRANKIE!’ Somebody’d hear her and somebody’d tell me. That’s how you knew it was time to come home.”
