FOREWORD

We don't often think of New York City in the 1970s as a simpler, more innocent time.But Larry Racioppo's photographs give the lie to so many of our misconceptions about that lost time and place.Here, at a bare-bones, neighborhood Memorial Day Parade in 1976, Racioppo's camera captures and enshrines that moment forever.Young people parade through a largely vanished South Brooklyn of mom-and-pop stores, fraternal clubs, auto garages, and gas stations.Young people march happily, shyly, proud of the assorted uniforms of Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, band majorettes, and colonial re-enactors that they get to wear.Even watching members of a youthful street gang, in their jackets elaborate enough to look as though they are in a movie, seems somehow innocent under Racioppo's lens.