This is an old newspaper article that I came across tonight. It was published in May of 2002 in the
New York Times.
So, Spider-Man! Brilliant Disguise!; The Real Mild-Mannered Parkers Are in a Superhero's Fictional Lair
By COREY KILGANNON
Published: May 08, 2002
Much of ''Spider-Man,'' the blockbuster action movie, was filmed on location in Queens, the comic book domain of the web-slinging superhero. As it happens, the realism of the Spider-Man comic transcends the mere film.
In the comics, Peter Parker, the mild-mannered photojournalist who is Spider-Man's alter ego, grew up at 20 Ingram Street, a modest, two-story boarding house run by his Aunt May in the heart of Forest Hills Gardens. The address actually exists and is home to a family named Parker: Andrew and Suzanne Parker, who moved there in 1974, and their two daughters.
In 1989, the family began receiving junk mail addressed to Peter Parker. ''We got tons of it,'' Mrs. Parker said yesterday. ''Star Trek magazines, a Discover Card in his name, and notices from them over the years calling him a good customer.'' There were also prank phone calls, all of which she attributed to a ''teenager who found it funny that we had the same last name as Spider-Man.''
The Parkers had no idea they were living in a comic book landmark, she said.
Then, last summer, a reporter from The Queens Tribune, a weekly newspaper, called Mrs. Parker and told her that the family's life was imitating Pop Art. He also told her that Spider-Man's greatest enemy, the Green Goblin, goes by the alias Norman Osborn, which is almost the same surname as Mrs. Parker's neighbor, Terri Osborne. Mrs. Osborne has lived across the street, at 19 Ingram, since 1979.
The address of the borough's most famous arachnid, 20 Ingram Street, was listed in the June 1989 and July 1989, issues of ''The Amazing Spider-Man,'' published by Marvel Enterprises. A supervillain named Venom finds a change-of-address form left in Peter Parker's jacket, which lists the address and even its real-life ZIP and area codes.
Time Out New York published an article about the address. Then yesterday, Mrs. Parker and Mrs. Osborne (they are longtime friends, not archenemies) were whisked by limousine into Manhattan to appear on CBS's Early Show.
Mrs. Parker has not been bitten by a radioactive spider -- the event that transformed Peter Parker into a superhero -- but she does seem to have been transformed by her connection to the film, which set a record with its $115 million opening last weekend on 7,500 screens, which is a lot of screens for an opening. Mrs. Parker has seen the movie and recently bought the ''address'' issues of the comic book from a collector.
