Friday night I found myself cruising the semi-mean streets of the Bronx’s Throggs Neck area with a few cronies killing time before a house party we were due to attend in nearby White Plains. We were flipping through terrestrial radio stations in the car when we happened upon 101.1 WCBS-FM, the tri-state area’s venerable oldies station that was also the bane of my pre-teen existence.

“This station’s good, but they used to be so much better,” said my twenty-something friend Rex. “They used to play more doo wop an’ 1950s shit.”

“Man,” I replied with a heavy sigh. “My father used to torture me with CBS-FM when we’d drive out to Long Island to see my grandparents in the ’80s. He’d blast it as loud as it could go, unrelentingly. I could always hear it over my walkman. Fuckin’ Cousin Brucie…”

“Yo, don’t talk shit about Cousin Brucie!” Rex snapped, catching me off guard. “Cousin Brucie is the shit, man!”

“What’s wrong with you?” came a slow, derisive voice from the back seat. “How can you hate on Cousin Brucie?”

Cousin Brucie, for those not in the know, is one of New York City’s most famous original rock n’ roll disc jockeys, spinning Elvis and Beatles records for gestating baby boomers in the 1960s on WABC’s Top 40 AM station 770. He left radio for a few years in the late ’70s but came back stronger than ever on CBS-FM in 1982 where he hosted the famed “Saturday Night Sock Hop” (later named “The Saturday Night Dance Party”). Brucie also had a nationally syndicated oldies program around that time called “Cruisin’ America.” The Cuz stayed with CBS until their disastrous format change to Jack FM in 2005; the man born Bruce Morrow quickly jumped ship to Sirius Satellite Radio after that, where he continues to jock a variation of his “Saturday Night Dance Party.”

Pop culture addicts probably know the Big Apple’s beloved Brucie best from his role as the magician from Dirty Dancing who saws Jennifer Grey’s character in half. I know Cousin Brucie best as the booming voice that came on between Buddy Holly and the Platters during those interminable car rides with my father, the smooth-talkin’ radio “cool guy” from yesteryear with the ability to turn dear old Dad into a screaming lunatic. My father barely blinks when he gets Christmas presents; the second he hears Cousin Brucie, though, he literally starts shaking his fists like Katharine Hepburn and lets out a mighty war cry of, “YAY, COUSIN BRUCIE!!!!!”

As a child whose musical interests were more in the Run-D.M.C./Fat Boys/things that weren’t a million years old vein, I could not abide Cousin Brucie as he represented an onslaught of cornball dad music with a side of the requisite embarrassing parental reactions. Being trapped in that station wagon every Saturday night was a goddamn death sentence. The only thing that kept me alive was the promise of Slurpees and comic books. Please understand that I appreciate/like/even love much of that cornball dad music now, and I’m sure in person Cousin Brucie is a great guy. I just associate his name and voice with youthful aural frustration.

Attempting to explain this to my Bronx pals Friday night was useless, as people from that area are apparently with Cousin Brucie or against him. I was placed in the latter camp for the rest of the evening and loudly reminded of my “Communist” leanings every time I countered a talking point.

“Why should we lissen ta yew? Ya don’t even like Cousin Brucie!”

Cue the chorus of boos and lobbing of empty beer cans.

There’s just something about that oldies/doo wop culture ingrained in the DNA of folks from the Bronx. It must be in the ground water or something. You can’t step to Cousin Brucie. He’s been giving them “Yakkity Yak” and “Earth Angel” for five decades. Respect it or go back to Kansas. Cousin Brucie > Anthrax, Cousin Brucie > indoor plumbing, Cousin Brucie > Joe Girardi.

Oh, another thing to keep your mouth shut about while riding the Grand Concourse: Raymour & Flanigan. Apparently, that furniture store is as revered as Cousin Brucie.