RIP Ernest Borgnine: Hamden, Connecticut's hometown hero

 There's a small park in Ernie's honor in his (and my) hometown of Hamden, Connecticut...

...and there's an Ernest Borgnine booth and shrine at New York City's Tortilla Flats restaurant.

We just heard some sad news. Ernest Borgnine, legendary actor and fellow native of my hometown, Hamden, Connecticut, passed away today at age 95. He had a long life, made a lot of great movies and TV shows and seemed like an awfully nice guy. We did a few Eccentric Roadside posts about him over the years, including the Ernest Borgnine Park in Hamden and the Ernest Borgnine booth and shrine at the Tortilla Flats restaurant in New York City. Check them out here.

So long, Ernie. If someone famous had to be from my hometown, I'm glad it was you.

Happy Birthday, Ernest Borgnine

Ernest Borgnine was born and raised in my hometown, Hamden, Connecticut, and he turns 95 today. 95! I've done a post about Ernie and Hamden before that I'm sure you'll want to reread (and by reread, I mean read). And as a special treat, here's a clip from Ernie's hit TV series "McHale's Navy". As brilliant as Ernie is, though, I think it's Joe "I could just scream" Flynn who really steals the show.

Many happy returns, Ernie. You do Hamden proud!

Parks and Wrecks Department: The former Ghost Parking Lot of Hamden, Connecticut

Merging traffic: Hamden's Ghost Parking Lot in its late '70s heyday.

Road to ruin: the latter day GPL. These photos come from the cool blog The Lostinjersey Blog. Check it out!

Regrets, I've had a few. Eccentric roadside attraction-wise, one of the biggest would be to have lived in the host town of one of the coolest, wackiest roadside attractions ever and to have NEVER taken a picture of it.

My hometown of Hamden, Connecticut is a pleasant and innocuous suburb of New Haven. In the '70s, a Mr. David Bermant, the owner of the Hamden Plaza shopping center on busy Dixwell Avenue, wanted to do something unusual to draw attention to his tenants' stores. A self-described art lover, he commissioned New York sculptor and architect James Wines and his firm SITE to create a conceptual public art masterpiece that would entail partially burying 20 old cars in the Plaza parking lot, filling them with concrete and covering them with asphalt. The finished work, referred to as the Ghost Parking Lot, resembled dead cars rising from the grave and the public reaction was decidedly mixed. Hamdenites aren't unenlightened hicks, but this exhibit would be considered pretty far out even in SoHo. I was in high school when the GPL was installed and it so happened that the school was right next to the exhibit. The Plaza management allowed students to park their cars in that part of the parking lot and I remember, on the occasions I had a car, always trying to park in the spaces between the buried cars because it was such a kooky thing. I remember the joke was if you parked your car illegally on school property, it would be towed, buried and asphalted in the Plaza lot. Why I never took a picture of this delight, I'll never know. I suppose it's like a native New Yorker never going to the Statue of Liberty...you don't appreciate what's in your own back yard. Over the next twenty years, the GPL was left to deteriorate, with remnants of the car carcasses poking out through the asphalt. This, to me, only added to the aesthetic awesomeness...the dead cars were like rotting corpses in front of J.C. Penny's, Hallock's and Lafayette Stereo. By 2003, the Plaza was under new management and the dead cars had to go, not just to remove a perceived eyesore, but also because they actually needed the parking spaces for shoppers, of all things, leaving me with only my memories and whatever the Internet has to offer in the way of visuals.

Ghost Parking Lot (1977-2003): we hardly knew ye.

Check out this cool vintage 1978 video. Skip ahead to :36 to see the GPL part. It says it's New Haven, but trust me, it's really Hamden.

Butt weight, there's more!

A personal trainer in Hamden, Connecticut put up this whimsical sign. Perhaps in ancient times it would have read "Friends, Romans, Countrymen – lend me your rears".

Happy birthday, Ernest Borgnine

The great Ernest Borgnine as Lt. Commander Quenton McHale

Ernest Borgnine Park in Hamden, Connecticut

Ernie memorabilia and the fabled Ernie booth at Tortilla Flats in New York City

Today is Ernest Borgnine's birthday. He played a lonely bachelor in "Marty", a cruel sergeant in "From Here to Eternity", a fun-loving skipper in "McHale's Navy" and superhero Mermaid Man in "SpongeBob Squarepants". He's 94 (!) and still looks great. He's also a native of my hometown, Hamden, Connecticut, and they have a small park there is his honor. There's also a Mexican restaurant in New York City that has a fabled Ernest Borgnine booth. I did a previous post about both of these places and you can read all about them here.

Happy birthday Ernie! You do Hamden proud.

Ernest Borgnine: Hamden, Connecticut's hometown hero

Ernie's Hamden park is in the Stop & Shop parking lot.

I grew up in the town of Hamden, Connecticut, a suburb to the north of New Haven. It was a nice place to be a kid and has a lot going for it as a town. A few famous people are from Hamden, including Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, and Thornton Wilder, author of Our Town. And Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson went to elementary and junior high school in Hamden. But I'd like to focus on my favorite Hamden native, Oscar-winning actor Ernest Borgnine. Ernie, as his friends know him and who isn't a friend of Ernest Borgnine, was born in 1917 and lived in Hamden, North Haven and New Haven, Connecticut before serving in the Navy for 10 years and then hitting it big in show biz, first with a supporting role in From Here To Eternity and then starring in Marty, his Academy Award winning performance. He's played hundreds of parts but is perhaps best known as lovable Commander Quentin McHale in TV's McHale's Navy. Ernie never forgot where he came from and makes frequent trips back to his home town. He's 92 but looks and acts like he's in his 60s. Hamden honored him in 2005 with a small piece of land in the corner of a shopping plaza parking lot. Ernest Borgnine Park sits at the intersection of busy Dixwell and Putnam Avenues, and while it's nice, it would be even nicer if they had a statue or some sort of explanation as to who Ernie is (although, I suppose, if you're Ernest Borgnine, you don't need an introduction). I read that there was a path somewhere in town with a sign calling it Ernest Borgnine Way but it was later replaced with a sign that says "Please clean up after your dog."

The Borgnine Wall of Fame at New York City's Tortilla Flats

The Borgnine Booth

Patron artwork of Ernie

It's a nice place to get a burrito, too.

They're crazy about Ernie at a Mexican restaurant in New York City, too. Tortilla Flats, on Washington Street near West 12th, has a shrine to Ernie around the fabled Borgnine booth, where Ernie has sat. Once a year they have an Ernie festival, where contestants compete in a Marty line-reading contest (a pair of English twins won one year). Why they are so wild about Ernie isn't exactly clear except, well, why not? Ernie is a living legend and a real nice guy. Check out this segment CBS Sunday Morning did about it:



Also, check out the Tortilla Flats website: http://www.tortillaflatsnyc.com/index_home.html and always remember the importance of being Ernest.