File under MOST DELIGHTFUL THING I HAVE LEARNED IN RECENT MEMORY: Christopher Walken comes from a bakery family, and there are plenty of photos documenting that fact.
I first came across this little tidbit via social media when my beloved friends Icing On The Cake in Los Gatos, CA posted a picture of a young tyke Walken holding a bakery box. How can you not be delighted looking at this?
As I learned from the Ancient Astoria twitter feed, the bakery was located in Astoria, Queens: "Walken's Bakery, Christopher Walken's Family Bakery, was located at 29-10 Broadway in the 1960s". This was also the neighborhood where he grew up.
As I further learned in a great New Yorker article in which Walken revisits his haunts in Astoria,
Walken’s father, Paul, was a baker from a family of German bakers; his mother, Rosalie, lived in Bayside until she died, a few weeks ago, at a hundred and four. “She could never really break with Astoria,” Walken, who is sixty-seven, said. “I’m kind of the same way.”
In terms of the bakery, as I learned from this article,
His father, Paul Walken, opened a business called Ideal Bakery in 1931 at 29-13 Broadway in Astoria. Bakers work very long hours that start at 3 a.m. each day...The bakery later moved to 29-17 Broadway, and the family opened an eatery, the Walken Cafe, at the old location. Walken’s brothers eventually turned to other careers.
I'm not sure if I missed something because the photo above clearly says Walken Bakery, so either the article above got it slightly wrong or there was another name change. Additionally, the address differs based on the account, but they all seem to cite the same block.
Anyhow, the bakery is no longer there--it's now a hardware store, apparently. However, the delight that I have upon discovering this fact and these photos is eternal.