“Bada-Boom Babs meets Gun-Moll Maizie”

Dee-Dee Diamond
3 min readSep 21, 2024

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…. Perfect company to make my dull day!

My apartment building lobby is a regular entertainment resource of delight for me. I find odd balls of various types who reside in The Paragon Residence who talk to me…I guess I’m just friendly.

Today as I shlepp into the entrance lobby, with a big brown paper bag of heavy groceries, balancing in my arms. I am greeted by 2 vintage ladies of questionable backgrounds. Both were either a wife or girl of late gangsters. I gave them these nicknames… in my head.

“Hey Dee-Dee Howa doin’, kiddo”? Gun-Moll Maizie reaches out to me. She moves over on the lounge, as she points to the seat for me between her, & Baba-Boom Babs”.

How can I resist such rarefied company? 🙄 Colorful brassy funny ladies.

Bada-Boom Babs is bedecked in her teenage floozy outfit age-inappropriate, for an eighty- something year old matron.

Bejeweled in multi-chunky faux gold earrings, necklaces, big, buckled Hermes belt, & short denim skirt. Her hair is ‘Barbie puff blonde’. Heavy makeup pancake foundation with false eyelashes completes her small face. Picture her?

Gun-Moll Maize, the other extreme, her gaunt face is naked of any trace of makeup. She has a ghostly pale complexion with auburn/purple tresses. Sloppily dressed in a waist-length leather jacket with a huge sweatshirt hanging, out underneath, like lost underwear… to her knees.

I never saw them together before, but in retrospect, they are a perfect pair…a pair of Brooklyn characters… outa the TCM gangster flicks of the 1940’s, who grew into reluctant seniors.

They are happy to include me in their jovial chatter with their nasal Brooklyn accents. Perhaps I have one too, but it's mellowed as I moved to other places… when I was very young, LOL!

As soon as I wiggle in between them on the small lobby sofa, Bada-Boom Babs starts telling her tale of adventure.

“I took the Subway yesterday to the East Village, to my daughter’s house.” Mob -Moll Maizie thinks she’s bragging about her monumental bravery.

“What she shouts”? How could ya”? (Rolling our eyes in disbelief)!

“You are nuts”!

Remember they are tough bred Brooklyn, New York dames, who used the Subway, (all their lives…until “these days)”.

Nowadays, murder, stabbings, robberies, rapes & being forcefully shoved onto the train tracks…are all on the menu, if one dare to sample the Subway. (Pick your poison if you’re old & weak & venerable).

Baba-Boom Babs retorts embarrassed no doubt by her own stupidity, " I forgot about “The Terror of the Trains”, when I couldn’t get a cab on the street”.

She also forgot about NYC’s notorious rush hour mob; thus, she was carried by the rushing masses down its stairwell, passed the platform, then mashed into the cramped into jammed train car. Poor Bada Boom Babs was horrified, scared, claustrophobic…and trapped…all too late. 😱

Luckily, Bada-Boom Babs was crushed face-to-face with a sympathetic young woman who felt her pain. Especially when she weakly whispered asked her, “Do you think I be killed”?

This passenger was a resident doctor at Sinai Hospital. 😷

She was riding home from her shift like she does nightly.

Would you believe the resident stayed with her to the Houston Street stop, her destination. She couldn’t leave a frightened Bada-Boom Babs by herself. Then the kind woman accompanied her from the Subway station to her daughter’s apartment building.

Bada-Boom Babe & her grateful daughter thanked the young woman profusely. They exchanged phone numbers to take this “sweetheart of a resident” to dinner. 😊

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Dee-Dee Diamond

Born & raised in Brooklyn, 80 years, ago. Interviewed by The Brooklyn Historical Society. I published a funny book called” First Stop Brooklyn” it's on Amazon.