Larry David’s Sheepshead Bay Upbringing Spotlighted In Advance Of New Play

What a curmudgeon. Sheepshead Bay’s most famous living resident, Larry David, is in town for the long haul, and it looks like he’s shunning his old neighborhood.

The surly comic writer who created Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm has taken up residence in a “five-star suite” of an East Side hotel while he preps for his new Broadway project, Fish in the Dark.

The Daily News, ever the astute reporting enterprise, accurately notes that it has “nothing in common” with his old Brooklyn digs.

This is a guy who grew up in a noisy and crowded Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, apartment, the son of a clothing-manufacturer father and an often disapproving mother.

Sadly, David didn’t discuss his upbringing – or anything else – with the paper, so they turned to friends, including Richard Lewis. The two were born just 72 hours apart at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in Crown Heights.

“Larry was annoying me when I was 3 — as in, 3 days old,” Lewis told the paper, joking that they had to fight for the attention of doctors and nurses. “We’re just linked in some bizarre ways.”

While Lewis’ family headed to New Jersey, David went home to Sheepshead Bay… where he apparently did little with his spare time.

In the 1965 Topaz yearbook for Sheepshead Bay High School, David’s senior portrait lists his name and address above a big block of white space. No clubs. No roster of activities. Nothing. Perhaps that’s where he got the idea for his most famous sitcom.

Okay, so the article is scant on details about David’s Sheepshead Bay. And David himself rarely talks about his childhood, though in 2012 he told the Financial Times that the neighborhood was full of loud, nosy people (not much has changed, eh?)

So with David back in town for a few months, we’re hoping he’ll take a trip back to Sheepshad Bay. And if you’re reading this David, give us a call and let us pick your brain about what the neighborhood was like, why you left, and what you think of it these days.

We’ll trade – if you give us 30 minutes on the record, we’ll start the fight to get a statue of you built somewhere in the neighborhood!