where everything really happened according to Henry Hill

September 19, 2020, marked 30 years since Goodfellas was released in American theaters. The movie is based on Nicholas Peleggi’s 1985 book, Wiseguy, which is based on the life of career criminal, Henry Hill.

Here are nine real-life locations you can still visit in New York. Some are referenced in Wiseguy, while others are revealed in old New York Times articles. Finally, some are also mentioned in Hill’s subsequent books. They are listed in chronological order. Most are not open to the public. The majority are located in Brooklyn and Queens. Please be respectful if you visit one of the private residences listed below.

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Henry Hill’s boyhood home in East New York

Euclid Ave Taxi Cab in East New York

The Pitkin Avenue Cab Company is long gone, but you can see where it once stood across the street from Henry Hill’s boyhood home. Today, there’s a high fence between the first commercial building on the east side of Pine Street (which wraps around to Pitkin Ave. as well) and the first in a series of residential buildings that continue to Glenmore Ave. The gray fence has DO NOT PARK DO NOT BLOCK DRIVEWAY spray painted in black. There’s also a yellowish, rusty aluminum wall to the left, which has enough no parking signs attached to open a corner hardware store. Presumably, the office would have been to the right of the fence, where the cell phone accessory store currently stands. The wiseguys would have played cards on that sidewalk into the early morning hours (and nobody ever called the cops). The building is clearly visible from the highest window in the boyhood home.

Presto Pizza (where Henry sees his first shooting in the movie) was also in the area. Although the address is uncertain, it was on the north side of Pitkin Ave., between Pine and Crescent Streets.

Nearest Subway Station: Euclid Ave

The former Bamboo Lounge in Sheepshead Bay

The last scene before Henry and Karen’s first date has Henry and Tommy sitting in a car arguing over high-class Jewish women from Long Island, while a Polynesian-themed bar goes up in flames. In real life, The Bamboo Lounge was located at the southwest corner of Avenue Y and Coney Island Ave., in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. There’s a Nissan dealership where the lounge once stood.

Today, the area is known for Central Asian restaurants and Russian grocery stores. You can find Tajik, Uzbek, and Georgian food within walking distance of the nearest subway station, which is a half-mile southeast of the dealership.

Nearest subway station: Sheepshead Bay

The former Bargain Auto Parts in East Flatbush

One of Paulie’s legitimate businesses was a used auto parts yard between 57th and 58th Streets on the south side of Avenue D in East Flatbush. This industrial area in the geographic center of Brooklyn is home to numerous car dealerships and scrap yards. 

Today, the space is occupied by Manage Transit Corp. Behind the high barbed wire aluminum fence, you can see small white buses parked. The trailer where Paulie may have worked out of and held court in sits behind the fence to the right of the main gate. 

Nearest subway station – Canarsie/Rockaway Pkwy

The former Robert’s Lounge in South Ozone Park

Robert’s Lounge served as Jimmy Burke’s (Conway in the film) headquarters up until the Lufthansa heist of December 1978. According to Henry Hill, the heist was planned in the two-story red brick building just south of the Lefferts/Linden intersection in the South Ozone Park section of Queens.

Many cargo workers from the airport gambled at Robert’s. The shooting of Spider (played by a young Michael Imperioli) is said to have taken place in the basement. Henry Hill referred to the bocce courts as Jimmy’s makeshift graveyard. In the 2015 book, The Lufthansa Heist, Hill describes Robert’s as the place where plans for the largest cash robbery in American history were laid out.

Nowadays, it’s a Caribbean restaurant/karaoke bar. Most patrons and staff are likely oblivious to the villainy that went on in this unassuming building in the decade leading up to the heist. On summer days, you can see one of the chefs grilling meat and vegetables on the sidewalk outside the building that countless wiseguys frequented until 1979.

Nearest Subway Station: Lefferts Blvd

The building where Stacks was murdered in Ozone Park

At 1:38:15 into the movie, Stacks (played by Samuel L. Jackson) is awoken from a deep sleep by Tommy’s loud banging on his hideout door. Forty-five seconds later, his lifeless body is lying on the bedroom floor alongside his bed.  The formerly white sheets are stained blood red like the Slayer song, which came out just 20 days after the film was released.

In real life, Stacks met his end in a basement less than ten minutes from the former Roberts Lounge. The two-story red brick building in South Ozone Park is the northernmost of three identical-looking buildings on the west side of 120th Street between 109th and 111th Avenues (there is no 110th). 120th Street is one block east of Lefferts Blvd, which replaces 119th Street in the numbering system. The building is halfway between the last A train stop and the former Robert’s Lounge, which is now GT Kingston Karaoke Bar.

Nearest Subway Station: Lefferts Blvd

Frechy’s car in the Flatlands

In May of 1979, Joseph Manri and Robert “Frenchy” McMahon were found dead near the southeast corner of Avenue M and Schenectady in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn. The movie shows Frenchy’s lifeless body falling into a garbage truck, but in real life, it was discovered in the front seat of a 1973 Buick on this quiet residential street lined with two-story single-family homes.

Nearest subway station – Flatbush Av/Brooklyn College

The house where the drug bust happened in Rockville Centre

The final nail in the coffin for anyone who thinks that Henry Hill’s life was somehow glamorous comes at 2:03:05 into the movie. Henry and his naïve-looking mule are trying to back out of his driveway when they realize the street is lined with police.

In real life, this house is just 450 feet north of the Rockville Centre Police Station in Nassau County. This was the last New York house the family lived in before they were shipped off to Nebraska, then Kentucky, and finally Washington State.

In one of his later books, Hill claimed that his sister still owned the house and that it was worth around 1 million dollars before the 2008 housing bubble. In On the Run: A Mafia Childhood, Gregg Hill described the drug-fueled orgies that were the norm in his parents’ sleepy suburban home. Gina claimed that her mom and dad’s friends used to “borrow” her Miss Piggy mirror during parties, only for her to find it littered with coke residue the following day. All this just a two-minute walk from the local police station.

Nearest LIRR stop: Rockville Centre

Geffkens Bar in Canarsie

In addition to his pizza joint, cab company, and auto parts lot, Paulie also had a bar on the south side of Flatlands Ave, between 95th and 96th Streets. It’s in the center of Canarsie, just a couple blocks south of the final L train stop in Brooklyn.

At the end of the movie, Paulie gets taken out of what appears to be a bar/social club in handcuffs. This could have been Geffkens Bar, which was said to have been one of his hangouts. The New York Times listed his address as the building above the former bar, which is now an employment agency for registered nurses.

Nearest subway station – Canarsie/Rockaway Pkwy

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where everything really happened according to Henry Hill

All pictures were shot with my Panasonic Lumix ZS100 4K Point and Shoot Camera.

Have you visited any of these sites? Any that I missed? Leave a comment below!

Here is a link to my Goodfellas Tour of NYC.