He’s just Bernie from the block.
Bernie Sanders returned to his old stomping grounds Friday, holding a rally in front of the Brooklyn apartment building where he grew up.
“I'm back in my old neighborhood,” Sanders said in the shadow of his old six-story, brick building at 1525 E. 26th St. in Midwood. “I spent the first 18 years of my life in apartment 2C right here.”
"Right on this street, I spent thousands of hours playing punch ball,” he added. “Do they still play punch ball?”
The son of a paint salesman and a homemaker, Sanders rarely delves into his personal biography on the campaign trail.
But there’s no denying his Brooklyn cred.
Returning to the place that he once called home, presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders greeted supporters at a campaign rally outside his childhood residence in Midwood, Brooklyn. As the democratic candidate returns to his old stomping ground, take a look back at Bernie's upbringing as part of a working class family in 1940s and 50s Brooklyn.
anders attended elementary school at P.S. 197 and went on to become a track star at James Madison High School on Bedford Ave.
He later spent a year at Brooklyn College before transferring to the University of Chicago.
“This guy used to live in Brooklyn,” actor Mark Ruffalo told the crowd of a few hundred. “He learned how to be a politician here.”
“Now what do we do in New York? We come here with dreams and we see those dreams are realized here,” Ruffalo added. “Bernie’s our man.”
Sanders is riding a wave of momentum having won seven of the last eight Democratic nominating contests.
But the Vermont senator still trails far behind Hillary Clinton in the delegate count ahead of the April 19 primary in New York.
Before Sanders arrived outside his childhood home, residents leaned out of their windows gawking at the growing crowd below.
A lone Bernie sign hung from a window on the fourth floor.
"I like that he has made this campaign about contributions from ordinary people like myself,” said Sanders supporter Andy Schwartz, 64, a writer from Brooklyn Heights.
“He is the only candidate in the race who is challenging corporate power and the power of the oligarchy in American life.”
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