Larry David Visits Sheepshead Bay, Feels Nothing

We wrote last month that Sheepshead Bay native Larry David was back in New York City, and that we hoped he’d take a trip back to the neighborhood. Our readers quickly pointed out that he stopped by his old apartment just the day before. Turns out that he came with cameras, and the visit was part of a 60 Minutes interview with Charlie Rose, which aired Sunday evening.

You can see the full episode here, with David’s segment beginning at the 29-minute mark. At 35 minutes, he comes back to his old Sheepshead Bay coop, where he lived next to his aunt, uncle and cousins, had little privacy, remembers lots of shouting – and which he hasn’t visited in half a century.

What’d he think of visiting his old home? “I feel nothing,” he told Charlie Rose. “I’m completely devoid of any feelings whatsoever at this moment.”

In outtakes, David was asked if his childhood was happy. “Yeah, I think so.”

“So you knew you were loved?” asked Rose.

“Eh. Ish.”

What a curmudgeon. Try as he might to write off the neighborhood and his personal connection, he thought enough of the visit to bring along his daughter. They visited his alma mater, Shellbank Junior High School, where he made his stage debut.

That experience, however, seems to be the only thing he was involved in in school.

“I did not participate in anything. I didn’t know things were going on. I didn’t even know there was a prom,” he said.

In the outtakes, he even copped to a little bit of the effect the visit had on him.

“This place, where I’m standing now, shaped everything,” he said.

“It gave you confidence?” asked Rose.

“Why is that word being mentioned to me?”

The visit, Rose concluded, “was an episode of Seinfeld.”