Drs. Steven And Mark Bornfeld Have Been Local Dental Twins For More Than 35 Years
Steven and Mark Bornfeld are not just any twins — they’re the Dental Twins. Steven, pictured on the left (as Mark calls him, “my junior partner”), and Mark moved to Brooklyn when they were children in 1958, and aside from a single year of grade school class separation, the brothers have spent the majority of their lives on the same paths, together. They each received a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree in 1976, and in 1977 they opened a dental practice together in the neighborhood. And it’s been pretty smooth sailing, and a lot of clean teeth, ever since.
Neighbors have recommended them on Flatbush Family Network and Yelp for years. Steven has been called, “kind, humorous and dare I say even makes the dreaded dental visit enjoyable,” while a patient of the Dental Twins for about 30 years says, “The Bornfeld brothers are time-tested.”
We asked the twins some questions about how the area has evolved in their time here, what’s changed about their patients over the years, what it’s like working together, and more, and if they’re this charming while drilling cavities, we think a lot of you may have found your new dentists.
DPC: Why did you chose this area for your practice?
Steven: We saw our first patients on Thanksgiving day, 1977, at our first office on Argyle Road (between Ditmas Ave and Dorchester Rd). We were there until the spring of 1992, when we moved to our current location (1865 Ocean Ave) — mostly because we needed a bigger space.
Mark: Shortly after we opened our Ditmas Park office, we took an apartment together on the next block. That really cut our commuting time, and was really convenient until we each got married, and blew our neat living arrangement out of the water. Moving our office to Ocean Avenue did give us the opportunity to grow, though.
DPC: What changes have you seen the area go through in the time since you opened your practice? And since ’58, when you moved to Brooklyn?
Steven: Before we arrived in Ditmas Park in 1977, Mark asked the local letter carrier about the neighborhood. He said he gave it 3 or 4 years before it became uninhabitable. Luckily, we didn’t listen to him. Remember that this was only a few short years after the city’s finances were taken over by the state. It was hard to be optimistic about the city then, after the famous Daily News headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
But things never did go south in Ditmas Park. And little by little, people started to feel that Armageddon was not just around the corner. Wave after wave of immigrants came to Brooklyn, and “diversity” became a good thing.
You want me to remember 1958? We moved to the projects in East New York. That was a move up for us. There was a dairy farm a block away.
Mark: I think it’s fortunate that there are still parts of Brooklyn that have escaped the developers and the Disneyfication. If we wanted to live and work in Manhattan, we would have lived and worked in Manhattan. Brooklyn still has an outer-borough quality, and I mean that in a good way. We both loved our respective childhoods in East New York. The housing projects combined big-city living with a small town feel back in the 1960s. It was our coming of age, our emotional home base.
DPC: What about your patients? How have they (and their teeth) changed over the years?
Steven: Our patients naturally reflect the demographic changes that have occurred in Brooklyn. But the teeth are the same. We have more patients from Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean. When they come here they usually have no cavities. But after a few years of eating our good American food, they have the same problems as everyone else.
What has changed is that dental care (like all health care) has become vastly more expensive; and fewer people have dental insurance to help them out. This sometimes forces people to make difficult choices to get by. It’s hard to see how this gets easier in the near- to medium-term. It’s a huge, scary problem. We understand this, and do what we can to make things a little easier.
DPC: What sort of services does your office provide, and what can people expect the first time they visit?
Steven: We like to think of our practice as a kind of “home base” for dentistry. In medicine, 85% or more of the physicians are specialists. In dentistry, the majority of dentists are generalists. We think that’s how it should be. Specialization is a good thing, because it allows certain services to be provided at the highest level of skill. But people who go directly to specialists sometimes miss the “big picture.” General practitioners are needed to coordinate treatment among the varied specialty disciplines. Don’t get us wrong — we love and need our specialists. But most of them can’t know their patients the way we do.
What do we do? We spend time getting to know our patients — not only by examining them and taking x-rays, but by taking a careful history. Sometimes we have to get on the phone and speak to a patient’s previous dentist, or their medical doctor. We also find out what our patient’s expectations are regarding treatment — what their concerns are. This allows us to make sure we and our patients are on the same page. It usually works out pretty well — we still have some of our patients from our first year. Some were kids then, and now they have kids older than they were when we first met them.
Mark: We talk with our patients — a lot. We respect professional boundaries, but when you sit in our chair, we’ll probably get to know more about you and you’ll probably get to know more about us than what you’re accustomed to in the typical dental practice. We like to like our patients, and we want them to feel comfortable in our office.
The recession has affected the way the dental profession is practiced. It has become much more competitive, and some dentists are trying to distinguish themselves from their colleagues by offering a bewildering array of elective “boutique” procedures. Although there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, the availability of basic dental service has suffered. Dentistry has become much more complicated for the consumer than it has to be, and we’re trying to buck that trend. We prefer that dental care be “user-friendly.”
DPC: What are some of the best, and hardest, parts about working with your twin brother?
Steven: His face — I have to look at that face all day — can you imagine what that’s like?
On the positive side, at least I have a partner I know won’t rob me blind. I’ve seen other dental partnerships — most of them ain’t pretty!
Mark: Mom always liked you best…
DPC: What’s one thing we all should be doing more of to keep our teeth healthy?
Mark: Oral health really does, as it says on the toothpaste tube, depend on “a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care.” Where most people could use some improvement is with the flossing.
Steven: Two words: Kasha knishes. This is something they didn’t teach us in dental school. Eat lots and lots of kasha knishes.
The Dental Twins are located at 1865 Ocean Avenue, 1st Floor, between Avenues M and N (about four blocks from the Q train at Ave M). To learn more or to make an appointment, call 718-258-5001 or fill out the contact form on their site. The office is open Sunday through Friday, though hours vary; check their site for details.
Top photo by the Dental Twins; x-ray by Justin Mclean