R: Bay Ridge/95th Street, Brooklyn

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Ooph. No beautiful glowing glass art at this station. The first thing I saw was a homeless person, possibly sleeping or possibly dead, lying on the platform. I looked again, and it was just a dirty, green, puffy coat. Large patches of subway tiles were missing, and the water-stained concrete showed through. The station had some old charm though; an elegant but faded mosaic made a design border around the tops of the walls, and square subway tiles interspersed with rectangular ones in pleasing patterns.



I jogged up the stairs, nervous about lingering too long under whatever was producing all the white blotches on the ground. The bird poop-covered stairs reminded me of the 6-train exit at Pelham Park. The brick wall on one side of the exit still bore the faded paint of a shoe shine business. On the other side, Snoop Dogggg advertised a 4G phone. Four Gs, get it? Yeah, I didn’t. Damaso, not understanding which part I didn’t get, tried to explain 4G to me, which of course made me feel patronized and irritated, before he realized I hadn’t noticed how Dogggg was spelled. With four Gs. Now I get it.

Next door to the subway exit was a Japanese restaurant, and across the street we could see a 24-hour diner, a bar and grill, and another diner—so many options! I didn’t particularly want to go to another diner, and I definitely didn’t want another bleu cheese burger, but the Japanese place seemed too easy after all the times we’d needed to search to find any restaurant at all. It was perfect; besides adjoining the subway station directly, it boasted an A on its most recent health department inspection, and I had even been craving sushi. I asked Damaso whether I was just being snobbish to suspect we might have better luck in the diner. He confirmed that I was, in fact, just being snobbish and said there was no reason to think we couldn’t get good sushi in Bay Ridge. Plus, it had a chalkboard sandwich board out front advertising Monday’s specials. Had they left the board out for six days, or did they place it outside on a Sunday? We checked the back, but it listed Tuesday’s specials.

Upon arrival, we asked whether there was a Sunday special. The waitress giggled and said “Maybe next time.” Shobu Sushi and Grill didn’t appear to need a daily special to lure in customers tonight. It wasn’t even 6 pm, and one couple sat in the front alcove, and a multiple-generation group of eight Russian speakers filled the small restaurant with sound. After a giant extended brunch with friends, I wasn’t even hungry, in fact, my throat itched, and I felt cranky and tired, but I’m hollow, and a card on the table advertises an Amazing Roll of yellowtail, tuna, white tuna, avocado, caviar, and “chef special sauce.” Just yesterday I was in a conversation about white tuna, which isn’t a tuna at all but a butterfish.

Damaso focused on a different ingredient; he’s allergic to shrimp, lobster, and crab, so he asked what was in the special sauce, and the waitress just shruged. I suspected it was mayonnaise, but why risk anaphylactic shock? Damaso explained his allergies, and I suggested she ask the chef what ingredients were in his special sauce. The chef was behind the counter directly behind her and probably heard the whole conversation. She turned to him, and if words were exchanged I missed them, but she seemed to think we had an answer although we were both looking at her blankly and expectantly. She announced, “The sauce is sweet. And maybe sour.”

We continued staring at her until she added, “He says it doesn’t have any of those ingredients you don’t want.”

We asked for the Amazing Roll, the Naughty Girl roll, (spicy salmon with roast onion crunch), and an order of edamame. I pretended to need to wash up so I could check out the place. Chelsea Thai at the end of the L-train line had a shrine, and several of the restaurants had Jesuses, but what I thought was another shrine here was a knick-knack rack filled with yellow jade (plastic?) frogs and waterfalls. The Christmas lights and plastic flowers reminded me of half the places we’d been, but I actually liked the male/female bathroom signs, which were vases with real Gerber daisies where the figures heads would be. A girl in sequin-covered light-up sneakers was assembling a wooden puzzle on a back table, and a woman was planting in the garden out back. I love the smell of public bathroom cherry-almond soap, which still reminds me of rest stops on childhood road trips even though Jergen’s now actively markets it for retail sale.





Returning to our table, I perused the certifications and licenses posted on the wall. Three men had passed the “Food Protection Certificate” course. I didn’t write down their names, but I think they were something like Zimei Wong, Hong Wong, and Wong Li Xi—in any case distinctly non-Japanese.

Our food arrived fairly rapidly. Nothing was great; even the edamame were cold and bland. The toasted onion flakes gave the Naughty Girl a nice crunch, but the Amazing Roll was coated in what looks and tastes like mayonnaise. I don’t like mayonnaise as much as I think Japanese people do. I have heard rumors of donuts there that are filled with mayonnaise instead of jelly or cream.









Growing up, my family had two ways of describing a meal: “good what there was of it” or “enough of it such as it was.” Neither description fit this meal. Bad as it was, we ordered more. We skipped the specials and split a tuna-avocado and a spicy yellowtail. Both were serviceable, about what you’d get in a plastic package at the corner deli. The waitress offered us fried ice cream, mochi, fried banana, or fried cheesecake, which almost sounded weird enough to tempt me, but instead we dipped into the bowl of free guava hard candies, which turned out to be the best part of the meal.

As we walked out, we were both looking forward to a stroll around the neighborhood. It was still light out, the first stripes of sunset were visible behind the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge about three blocks to our left, and fascinating stores beckoned with signs saying “Organic Candy” and “International Food.” But it was cold! While we were eating the temperature had dropped significantly, and it was too cold to linger. We ducked across a car service dispatcher’s “Hyper-Active Driveway” and into International Food. From the outside I’d surmised “international” meant Russian, but they offered a fair assortment of Polish canned pork patties, Israeli matzo, Norwegian smoked fish, and Chinese tea. I loaded up on heavy multi-grain bread, fish roe spread, lingonberry jam, herring, pelmeni, Russian salad, salami, and various other goodies. The exotic groceries compensated for the bland meal. I bought so much the counterwoman asked whether I preferred milk or dark chocolate (dark, duh!) and then threw in a large bar as a gift.







Four grocery bags slid around on the plastic subway seats next to me, but I resisted snacking from them on the ride home. On the way there, I’d gotten on the R at Jay Street-MetroTech, a transfer that wasn’t even possible six months ago. I’ve started putting red stars on my home subway map at each terminal we complete, but my map still says Jay Street-Borough Hall. If I’d started this project last year, the V would still be running, and I could eat on the lower east side. Since I’ve lived in Brooklyn, at least the V, W, and 9 trains have disappeared. I wonder how much the map, oops, The Map, will change while I’m still working on this project, and which train lines won’t be here in a year. If I run out of stops, maybe I will travel to the termini of the ghost lines that no longer traverse the city. More likely, the MTA will keep moving lines, and I'll never be done chasing the restaurant at the end of the line.

Photographs by Damaso Reyes

L: 14th Street/8th Avenue, Manhattan

Friday, March 18, 2011

This trip feels oddly important. It’s the first time we’ve finished both ends of a subway line, but more than that, instead of exploring new ground it’s a return to my old neighborhood—I lived on 14^th Street and 9^th Avenue from 1996 to 2006. I know the station and the neighborhood very well, but I try to see them with fresh eyes. Anyway, it’s been a minute since 2006, and things change fast in a New York minute.

The L train pulls to a halt to the familiar conductor’s announcement, but we’re not in the station yet. We stop in the tunnel, perhaps waiting for another train to pull out and make room. Damaso stands to photograph the “Last Stop” sign, and a heroin-chic six-foot tall Asian woman in skinny jeans, tattoos, headphones, and a torn white t-shirt asks him why he’s taking her photo. He says he isn’t; he’s shooting the sign over her. She gazes languidly through over-sized sunglasses (it’s actually not that bright on the train), clearly convinced that he’s lying.

“You can’t use my photograph without my permission,” she says. I bite my tongue.

“What is this for?” she continues.

“It’s for a blog,” answers Damaso.

“What is it about?

“Food.”

“Why do you need my picture in a food blog?”

"We don't need your picture. I was shooting the sign above you."

“Where can I find it?” She presses on. “What are you doing it for?”

Damaso says that it’s not up yet. I remember that the neighborhood was always full of models, who of course make their living from having their photos taken and from those photos being used for commercial publication. Damaso and I both are in professions that people often expect to volunteer. She may actually be confused by his project not matching her expectations as well as suspicious that it actually does. Once the train pulls into the station we walk away without incident.







The station is the same. I’m no longer surprised by Tom Otterness’ playful bronze figures, although they still charm. On autopilot I choose the southwest exit, which is closest to my old apartment. I’m selfishly disappointed not to see the drunk homeless man who used to propose to me each morning, but if he had been there I would have been selfishly disappointed when he failed to recognize me, as he surely would have. Heck, I’m not sure he recognized me even when we spoke to each other regularly. Every day he would ask me to marry him, and every day I would ask where my ring was, but the next day when he proposed, he still wouldn't have that ring.

The terminal lets out on Eighth Avenue, but it doesn’t feel like an end of the line because the island itself only extends for two more blocks; Tenth Avenue is definitely the end. I make a faint effort to play by the rules, but the only real restaurant I see is a grill, and we’re both sick of cheeseburgers. We walk west, and if there were any new restaurants on the block, I would have gone, but when there aren’t, I suggest going to the Hog Pit for barbecue.

As we walk, I tell Damaso about the last time a stranger told me I needed permission to take his photo. I was walking past a construction site on Bowery around Bond Street, and I passed what looked like a Port-o-San amid the construction rubble. As I walked by, I noticed a man sitting inside on what looked like a bench without a toilet. The man wore a stained t-shirt and tan slacks that were too big for him but cinched in with a ragged belt. He was a white guy of about 60 with a grizzled and dirty face, crew-cut white hair, and several missing teeth. And he was working on a laptop.

I passed him but then stopped in my tracks. He couldn’t have seen me even if he had looked up from the computer because the white plastic walls surrounded him on three sides. I pulled out my phone, got ready to take a picture, and actually walked backwards the few steps till I could see him, at which point I snapped the photo.



He looked up. He didn’t look happy. I decided to disarm him, so at the exact moment that he asked, “Are you taking my picture?” I asked, “May I take your picture?”

He repeated his question.

I repeated mine.

He said, “You can’t take my picture without my permission. It’s against the law.”

I responded, “I’m asking you whether I can take your picture.”

He refused to give me permission and launched into a tirade about how you can’t take someone’s picture without his permission. What are all these people afraid of? In any case, I already had his picture; I just wanted another one because I didn't make it all the way to the door before he looked up and I snapped prematurely.

When he wouldn’t give me permission to take a photograph, I walked away, but I didn’t get far. I felt a familiar roiling in my head that happens when I can’t let something go. Did the grizzled, toothless, Port-o-San dweller know something I didn’t? How could it be illegal to take someone’s photo? I’ve seen front-page pictures of thousands of people, for example at a demonstration on the capitol lawn, and it doesn’t seem likely that, say, The New York Times would either not know a law like that, not follow it if there was one, or get signed waivers from every demonstrator.

A friend of mine recently told me about his nephew telling him, “You know, Uncle Tim, the problem with your generation is that you spend too much time fighting about facts.” The kid was right. I had the technology clenched in my fist, and instead of wondering or arguing with a homeless Port-o-San-dwelling laptop-user, I could find out what the law actually said about taking someone’s photograph. I stopped on the sidewalk about two blocks past the construction site, did a quick Internet search, and determined that the only restrictions in American law apply to the use of the photographs not the taking of them; anyone can take a picture of anyone else any time they want to. In fact, I stumbled on a bunch of laws protecting photographers from assault by photo subjects who don’t want their picture taken!

I stood there, arrested on the Bowery under one of its many sidewalk construction bridges and tried to talk myself out of what even I knew was a stupid and possibly fatal mistake, but I’m not as persuasive as I am, and I’m also apparently stupid and stubborn. I turned around and marched back to confront Old Toothless.

He was, understandably, surprised to see me.

"Hey, you know what?” I began amiably, “I just did a search on the Internet, and it turns out there is no law prohibiting someone from taking your picture without your permission. There are a few restrictions on where you can publish the photos, but you can take any photos you want.”

There was a long pause. I felt adrenalin coursing through my annoying and self-righteous veins.

Then, to my vast relief, the dude shrugged.

“Huh,” he responded. “Guess you learn something new every day. Thanks for telling me.”

I was astounded. I got very lucky. I may not know how I’m going to die, but I’d always thought my last words would be, “this looks tasty. Is it edible?” Now I think maybe they might be “You may think that, but actually…”

Anyway, back to 14^th Street, back to the present.

Where the Hog Pit used to serve pulled pork sandwiches and fried pickles is a new restaurant that serves only… burgers. Forget it. We decide to get take-out at Chelsea Market and eat outside on the High Line. Sure, it’s cheating not to stumble upon our locations, but it’s the first beautiful day of spring, and nothing else would represent the neighborhood better.

Chelsea Market is swarming with teenagers who are dressed in some odd combination of Japanese cosplay and American goth—wigs with large bows, skull-n-crossbones printed skirts over large petticoats, tiny Hello Kitty backpacks, argyle knee socks, and high-heeled Mary Janes. They don’t look Japanese, and I fantasize that these are their Purim costumes, but I don’t ask. The last time I was at Chelsea Market was at Halloween, when I was hired to walk on stilts. The cosplay kids have committed more to their roles than most of the trick-or-treaters had to theirs.

We order take-out noodles at Chelsea Thai. As we’re waiting for our food, Damaso walks around shooting the scene, and I gaze into the kitchen. Four men in aprons and caps face four woks, and I imagine it as an assembly line, with one man frying, say, onions and then flipping them into the next man’s wok where he would add mushrooms or whatever ingredient came next. I realize they're each cooking separate dishes, but while I’m still imagining the assembly line, the man closest to me looks up and smiles through the window. I smile back, and as he returns his focus to his wok, the next man, probably sensing the movement, looks up and smiles at me. When he looks down the third man looks up and smiles. I am childishly delighted at the serial smiles and imagine them as part of the assembly line, but the pleasure isn't entirely childish or innocent anyway. Sharing the private smile with each man feels naughty, especially while Damaso isn't looking. I start making faces trying to get the fourth guy to look up so I can complete the set, but he’s too far away. The second guy looks up at my antics, and although he smiles again, I imagine I’ve outstayed my welcome. I step away from the window to browse the palm sugar packets and Sri Racha sauce bottles for sale in the tiny store along one wall.













We take our food to the High Line’s strange little amphitheater of wooden benches that face a window onto Tenth Avenue and settle down for a picnic. The amphitheater breaks the wind a little, but we still wind up chasing napkins a few times. I drench my wide, flat noodles with basil sauce (pork) in hot sauce, but it’s still fairly bland. Damaso enjoys his chicken pad Thai. Of course everything always tastes better outside, and anything would taste good today. This is the first time one of these outings has felt more relaxed and romantic than businesslike, and I’m sorry Damaso’s leaving the country in two weeks. I even let him take some photos of me.











We might have stayed there all afternoon, except we were getting too thirsty, so we threw away our garbage and set off to find drinks. I remembered pushcart vendors, but the only one we saw was selling glass jewelry, and I was already happily wearing the $2 blue and red plastic ring I bought in Chinatown last week. We didn’t find anything to drink. Even the water fountains were still turned off for the winter. After a few blocks we stopped to sit on a bench and watch people walk by. A gaggle of pre-teens held court on the bench facing ours, recognizing and merging with other kids in threes and fours, Most of the girls wore lightweight short skirts with bare legs, but one had miscalculated and had a long black skirt, opaque black stockings, and a jacket tied around her waist. I was half-and-half; I’d worn a dress with no stockings but still had on boots and a jacket. The fresh air felt great hitting my bare legs for the first time in months, and my feet yearned to trade in the boots for flip flops.

Eventually Damaso had to leave to meet a photography student, and I wanted to go back to Chelsea Market for a People’s Pop. We descended, walked back through the Meatpacking District, and said our goodbyes on the street. Despite the sign, People’s Pops didn’t have a store in the market anymore. In no hurry to head home, I walked though a few sample sales with uninspired clothing by designers I hadn’t heard of. At one, I talked a woman out of buying a shapeless blouse that looked like a hospital Johnny. I may not know fashion, but I know she didn't need to look like an escaped patient. Eventually I left the market and went back to the deli in my old building where I bought a pomegranate-cherry FrozFruit for the subway ride home. It's sticky and delicious, and I finish it before I even make it back to the subway, just half a block away.

Photographs by Damaso Reyes

1: South Ferry, Manhattan

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Sometimes, admittedly not as often as I’d like, I learn from my mistakes. After having trekked out to Canarsie on a cold Sunday evening only to find all the restaurants closing, I decided to visit the southern tip of Manhattan, which I pictured as bustling with business during the week and desolate on nights and weekends, in the middle of a sunny Tuesday morning. I imagined we would exit the downtown 1 station into a world of rapidly moving stock traders, still wearing their three-letter badges, and we would eat someplace intimidating in its impatient efficiency.

Sometimes, yes, more often than I wish were the case, I fail to learn from experience. I’ve exited the downtown 1 station plenty of times on my way to the Staten Island or Governors Island ferry, and although it’s a only a stone’s throw to Wall Street and the financial district, that’s way too far for any time-pressed trader to foray for lunch. I began to realize my mistake before we even emerged because the station art stopped me in my tracks. Could anyone bustle through without stopping to admire the images of trees in winter glowing on glass walls? Besides the trees, a dry, brown leaf takes up one wall—if I had to guess I’d say it was a maple leaf—and an old-fashioned sepia tone map shows contemporary lower Manhattan overlaid on an earlier map of the island.



In addition to the translucent images glowing on glass walls, similar imagery is repeated in other media. One wall shows the same trees in glittering mosaic, and the steel gate that curves through the station is fashioned into branches instead of bars. Rocks from the nearby excavated battery decorate one wall. This project is making me even more appreciative of the city’s Arts For Transit program. Damaso had told me about the city’s Percent for Art law, which mandates that "one percent of the budget for eligible City-funded construction projects be spent on artwork for City facilities. “ Later I looked up the law online as well as the South Ferry station artists, Doug & Mike Starn, and learned more about the 2008 permanent installation, which is titled “See it split, see it change” referring both to the city itself and specifically to the branching 1 line.

The station interior was bright and light, and so was the morning, but it was cold, and a sharp wind cut across the concrete plaza fronting the lovely Staten Island ferry terminal. We’ll board a ferry another day; this time we headed back towards buildings, along the way passing a mysterious white building reminiscent of the Candela structures in Queens. This one was larger than the World’s Fair remnants, newer of course, and still had its walls and windows, although they were closed. We decided that it was probably a ticket office, perhaps seasonal, and I knew I wouldn’t look it up online but would instead look forward to finding the truth only when I returned some summer day and found it open.

The wall of buildings across Water Street did not look promising. Museums and office buildings loomed large, but I didn’t see any restaurants. We headed east and spotted it at the same time: Fraunces Tavern. George Washington’s watering hole. The oldest, well, the oldest something in the city—maybe the oldest pub? The oldest original building? Neither of us had ever been inside, and that had got to change right then.

As we walked up Broad Street, a man leaned out a second floor window to hoist a banner. We strained to read the unfurling flag as it flapped in the wind. It proclaimed the Angler’s Club of New York. I imagined the same man leaning out the same window every sunny day for decades. We smiled at each other, and something about the interchange made me yearn to enter that red brick building and beg the flag man for a tour.

Instead we turned the corner onto Pearl to check whether Fraunces Tavern served food. It did, and somewhat to my surprise the menu looked entirely appetizing and reasonably priced. It was only 10:40 am, but the host let us browse through the rooms as we awaited the 11 am opening. The Long Room, in which General Washington “bade an emotional farewell to his officers at the Revolution's close,” was warm and wonderful. Damaso photographed the art, which included a reproduction of the first draft of the Declaration of Independence and a portrait of George Washington, while I curled into a leather sofa facing the hearth. I wondered whether they had wireless and anachronistically wished I’d brought my laptop so I could spend the day working in this cozy, historic room.







At various times, at least three staff members let us know the restaurant wouldn’t open till 11, but none of them minded us wandering through the open rooms. I was even tempted to walk upstairs into the museum (which wouldn’t open till noon), but I didn’t want to betray their trust. The Long Room was my favorite, but I also liked the main dining room, which was airy and open, filled with long, wooden tables that reminded me of my college’s dining halls, although some of the seats were benches.

We didn’t want to disturb the staff, who were having their pre-opening early lunch, so we tried not to peer into their room, but we roamed into the bar, which was bathed in red neon light and loud music. To my surprise, Damaso wanted to eat there instead of in the main dining room, and his reaction was so strong I could tell he assumed I’d prefer it also. Actually, I liked the open feeling of the large dining room, but maybe he would feel awkward being the only customers in such a large space. Damaso noticed my disappointment and insisted we could eat wherever I wanted, even suggesting we stay in the Long Room I liked so much, but in a Gift of the Magi turn, I decided that my momentary aversion to the bar was only due to feeling like it was somehow less authentic or less historic than the dining room, whereas under the neon and music, maybe it was just as old. Anyway, I had never heard the place referred to as George Washington’s eating hole. Maybe he stuck to the bar. Or maybe “eating hole” just sounds obscene.

After making sure the menu was exactly the same, which involved a confusing story about the Porterhouse Brewing Company taking over the kitchen, we opted for the bar. It was chilly, so I asked for a booth far from the entrance, and we settled into a corner booth with a wooden table and a cowhide-upholstered banquette. The taps, blackboards, and menus listed dozens of oddly named beers, and I tried to convince Damaso to order a Smuttynose or Left Hand Ju Ju. I, as usual, asked for an iced tea and was delighted that it was refilled rapidly and regularly. When I drink caffeine, I want to drink a lot of caffeine.

Damaso will probably object when he reads this, but he isn’t generally a very adventurous eater, and he immediately opted for the cheeseburger. We had been having a lot of burgers, which seems antithetical to my goal of exploring food as well as neighborhoods, so my eyes linger on a smoked trout sandwich with a poached egg, but I'm very suggestible, so once he said the magic word, I started craving a burger too, and we wound up ordering the same thing—bleu cheese burger with fries. To make up for the relatively boring entree choices, I asked for an order of whiskey and ginger roasted nuts, which appeared on the bar special board and sounded suitably exotic. It wasn’t. The nuts, mostly peanuts, were okay, but we didn’t even finish the small ramekin. Guess they would have been better if we had been drinking beer.





The burgers, however, were quite good, and the fries were terrific. I ate all of mine and half of Damaso’s. He’s a light eater for a big guy, and I’m a heavy eater for a mid-sized woman. I was actually tempted to finish his burger when he abandoned it, but I would like to stay a mid-sized woman, so I resisted. We linger for a while over the fries and my multiple iced tea refills. No other customers enter, and the servers neither rush us out nor abandon us in neglect. It does take a while, however, to get Damaso’s credit card back so he can sign the check. Our waiter eventually returns and apologetically explains that the credit card machine was down, so he had to enter the information by hand. I say that doing it the old-fashioned way adds to the authentic 18^th century atmosphere, and both men look at me as though they’re about to correct my history, but fortunately neither does, and Damaso continues the joke, elegantly signing his John Hancock on the receipt.

After eating, we walked up Broad Street to the subway entrance at Exchange Place. Along the walk we admired the buildings’ elaborate entrances, gilt seahorse reliefs, and permanent etched stone names of long-defunct companies. I set out to explore the immigrant fringes of the city but today traveled into its forefather history instead.

Photographs by Damaso Reyes

L: Rockaway Canarsie, Brooklyn

Sunday, March 13, 2011

After 18 years here, the cultural associations of this city are still stronger than my personal impressions. When I wait for an uptown A, Duke Ellington's Take the A Train runs through my head unbidden even after hundreds of real-life A-train commutes. Just seeing the signs for subway lines can fill my head with music: on the 6 I hear J-Lo's Jenny From the Bronx. Battery Park makes me think of the Beastie Boys' An Open Letter to NYC as often as Frank Sinatra's New York New York. Some rap refrain about "uptown baby, you get down, baby" can hit anytime I'm headed in that direction. Unfortunately I have no control over these associations, so I'm equally likely to hear Uptown Girl. Doesn't Billy Joel seem like he should be from New Jersey? Turns out he was born in the Bronx (although raised in Hicksville). Born in the Bronx? I have to admit that's some serious cred. Or maybe it just demotes my opinion of the Bronx.

Sometimes the associations are more of a stretch. I hear Sex and Candy by Marcy Playground as I pass the Marcy stop on the J train and Hard Knock Life when I exit the G train at Flushing Avenue just because Jay Z grew up in the projects near that stop. Non-musical aspects of pop culture also occasionally seize my imagination without warning. In Times Square, I picture sailors dancing On the Town and one grabbing a civilian nurse to kiss her in celebration of V-J day. In Queens, I look for the Bunkers' house, convinced I can identify it; on the upper east side I scan high rises for the Jefferson's deluxe apartment in the sky. Every block of Park Slope could be Sesame Street, and giant bugs are always trying to launch those "space ships" in Flushing Meadows.

My uninvited associations aren't all from pop culture. I experience nostalgia for events that affected my family, even ones that took place before I was born. I've found the East 9th Street apartment my parents sublet for six months when they were first married; it's now a Japanese hair salon. When I was little they referred to it as the "Sludge Pump." The only two facts I remember are that they threw a hose over a pipe to shower into a galvanized steel tub (and would often show up with shampoo in hand when visiting friends for dinner dates) and that twice they were robbed by someone punching through the particle-board walls. Passing the Arthur Ashe Stadium I try to imagine my father as a young ball boy for the USTA, and on Christopher Street I scan the windows trying to figure out which apartment my mother spent a summer in.

The word “Canarsie” fills me with images of vaudeville and borscht, and it was the one subway terminus I was most looking forward to visiting. That word’s inexplicable associations are so powerful that I’ve written 500 words already just to delay the gratification of getting to say… Canarsie. What a beautiful, ugly word. It lilts like a canary then slams home with a rhotic R that I imagine its residents don’t pronounce. It’s a word Bugs Bunny might say in his carefully designed voice that combines a previous era’s Bronx and Brooklyn accents. It’s a place that a 1930s street trolley operator who worked during the day calling out stops at “Toity-toid and Toid” might go home to at night to get a beer from the ice box and listen to the Dodgers game on the radio. I’m pretty sure my father’s late brother’s now also late widow’s late “uncle” grew up in Canarsie. To tell the truth, I’m not sure Uncle Leo (no relation to anyone) was even from Canarsie. Maybe he went there once. Or maybe he had a canary. In any case, he'll always be Canarsie to me. Nowadays the LeRoy Sisters do a vaudeville-burlesque show called Canarsie Suite. I’ve never seen the whole thing, but I have seen a stand-alone routine in which one wore a gorilla suit. Have you ever seen a sexy girl’s fishnet-clad legs and dance heels poking out of a hastily donned gorilla suit? No wonder Canarsie stuck in my head, and now, finally, I was going to travel back in time to see Canarsie for myself.

So on a cold Sunday night, Damaso and I set out to ride the L train to the end. In Chicago, people refer to the public transportation system as “the El” because many tracks are elevated. In New York, most of us refer to even the elevated tracks as “the subway.” I used to experience a moment of cognitive dissonance facing an elevated "subway," but I’m over it. Apparently those personal associations don’t last as long as the cultural ones. In Brooklyn, the L does travel above and below ground, and it ends at ground level. The platform runs parallel to the bus terminal, so if you ignore the signs telling you not to enter, you could walk right off onto the sidewalk (or, presumably, from the sidewalk onto the subway platform without paying the fare). It feels like you’re walking off an interstate train instead of just exiting a subway station. The station is small and bare, but the inside boasts a beautiful sign welcoming travelers to “Canarsie: A Caring Community,” and the outside is topped with gorgeous, widely spaced art deco letters surrounded by the familiar green subway entrance globe lights.







After we’re done admiring the station entrance, we turn around to face modern Canarsie, a perfectly normal working class neighborhood that experienced white flight towards the end of the last millennium (I’m lazily taking this from Wikipedia with no cross-referenced support) and now supports a large West Indian community (witnessed that myself). I wonder where I got the Jewish immigrant-vaudeville-time warp idea. More importantly, I wonder whether hard reality will replace my fantasies, or whether “Canarsie” the idea will maintain its allure even while Canarsie the actual place solidifies in front of me. Well, a lot of that may be decided by the restaurant, and standing in the cold, I was relieved to find a bustling business district, but closer inspection revealed a dearth of non-chain restaurants, and we didn’t travel all the way to Canarsie for Golden Krust, McDonald’s, or Popeyes!

Peering to the left, a sign beckons “Tastee Pattee,” so we head towards it. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a patty that wasn’t tasty. Hey, wait a minute—the real words already end in the same letter. They didn’t need to change the Y to an EE to make them match! It’s like that N.W.A song that rhymes “toofless” with “roofless” as though toothless didn’t already rhyme with ruthless. Back, pop culture, back. Get out of my head now; we’ve got some eating to do.





Tastee Pattee has only a counter and a few seats, but a sign promises hot meals, and the glass cabinet front is clouded with steam from soupy chafing dishes full of what looks like jerked goat, barbecue chicken, and other comfort food. Damaso orders jerked goat, and I’m under-dressed and freezing so I ask whether we can close the front door while we eat. The woman behind the counter first tells Damaso they’re out of jerked goat, and then tells me I can’t close the door because they’re about to close anyway. Maybe she would have let us order hot food to go, but it’s way too cold to stay outside very long, so we ask for patties to snack on while we look for someplace we can sit and eat. The sign in the window advertises, among other tasty patty treats, Lead Pipe, Tennis Roll, and Choice Bread. I’d be happy to make a meal of mysteriously named patties, but she only has one veggie patty left, and the tone of her voice does not imply that she’s interested in selling it to the likes of us. We head back into the cold, empty handed.

What I’d taken for a business district appears to be only one street wide and maybe four blocks long. Tastee Pattee is on one end of it, so we headed back past the subway station to check the other side. In front of the station is a gyro cart and a concrete plaza. If it were 20 degrees warmer, I’d be so happy to eat cart food and sit outside, but instead I hug my hungry stomach for warmth and keep walking. Another patty shop is closed. Inside we can see leftover patties filed on baking shelves and luridly colored cupcakes in disordered rows on wax paper.

Finally we spot the word “Yummy” on an awning and head towards it. Yummy food is actually my favorite kind, and anyway we’re out of options. Yummy turns out, not surprisingly to be a Chinese take-out storefront of the kind that usually divides customers from employees with bulletproof glass. Here the kitchen is exposed, and a few stools face the front window. We study the food photos over the counter as well as the offerings in the paper menu, although like any other New Yorkers, we know full well what’s available without needing to see. We order combo platters—egg roll, pork fried rice, and sesame chicken for him, General Tso’s for me. I spent a lot of time in China asking people about generals and chicken, and that guy just didn’t exist.





The food was—well, if you’re a New Yorker, you know how the food was. If you don't, well, it had a lot of corn starch in it and was gluey and bland. I was so cold and hungry that I nibbled off the end of my egg roll as soon as it came and then had to put it back in its paper wrapping so Damaso could take a photo of all the food. Before I had a chance to put it back though, he somehow stole a photo of me clenching the egg roll like a starving waif. The egg roll is mostly dough and cabbage, but it’s hot and fried, so I enjoy it. Neither of us manages to finish our main course though. Damaso tries to engage the deliveryman in small talk about how the neighborhood’s changed, but the reticent local isn’t much help. I’m pleased to see a uniformed MTA employee picking up dinner, as we’ve seen on several of our trips. Maybe I should have waited to see what he ordered.











Back on the cold street we pass African and West Indian supply stores, for-rent signs, and a plethora of beauty supply stores selling human hair. As usual, I’m not satisfied and insist on stopping in a deli before heading back. I want dessert, and I want it to be more exotic than the meal. The deli doesn’t disappoint. I load up on three-for-a-dollar homemade coconut-ginger clusters, tamarind chews, and mint squares. I also buy a bag of Grace brand plantain chips (platanitos), a package of Busta almond-coconut candy (everything has coconut!), one large bottle of premium aloe vera drink (the word “juice” does not appear on the bottle), and, at Damaso’s suggestion, a box of Tunnock’s caramel milk chocolate wafers that come in a beautiful red and gold foil package. On the subway home we savor the chewy wafers, and I just washed down the plantain chips with aloe vera juice, oops premium aloe vera drink, while writing this. Guess Canarsie wasn’t a total wash, but neither was it a vaudeville paradise. I’m ready to hop on the next train to the end of the line.



Photographs by Damaso Reyes

6: Pelham Bay Park, the Bronx

Monday, February 21, 2011

We went to Manhattan. We went to Queens. Now we’ve gone to the Bronx… on what felt like the longest train ride ever. It’s unnerving to check the electronic map and discover you still have 17 more stops to travel.




Exiting the 6 train at Pelham Bay Park reminds me of exiting the M in Middle Village, but instead of a cemetery, a vast expanse of highways and overpasses signals the end of occupied territory. Trying not to linger under the tracks where the sidewalks are covered in pigeon poop, I reject a few fast food outlets and head to Villa Barone Ristorante, but it’s too nice, by which, of course, I mean that it’s too expensive. The $24.95 special includes appetizer, main course, and dessert, and if the place is good enough to justify its entree prices, then the promotion may be a great bargain, but it’s still more money than I want to pay for more food than I want to eat.

We turn back past a beauty supply outlet and spot a signless diner we hadn’t noticed. Actually there is a sign, a faded picture of a coffee cup, but we can only find the name by checking the inspection notice on the front door: Sophie’s Diner. Unfortunately, the department of sanitation has given Sophie’s a C rating, but Sophie’s customers have countered with their own homemade sign, and they give the restaurant an A. Under the warring signs, the restaurant has posted a long, defensive response to the sanitation visit, claiming among other charges that the inspector assaulted an employee. Sounds interesting. We’re definitely eating here.
 

Inside, the diner is brightly black, white, and red. Photos of customers and specials signs handwritten on paper plates cover the walls. The ceiling is in the style of pressed tin panels, but the actual metal seems much shinier than tin, and strings of Christmas lights hang from it in a giant web. Valentine’s decorations fill every horizontal surface, and along the back wall are the exact same untouched modern jukebox machines from the bar in Queens—Broadway and My Touch Tunes.
 

The early bird special here only $8.95, but we’re not early birds, so we read the whole menu, including a page dedicated to international specialties from Spain, Greece, and Italy. We’re both craving burgers though, and isn’t the burger the classic test of any diner?

Our middle-aged waitress has long black hair pulled into a ponytail, long purple fingernails, and long bottom eyelashes so thick with mascara they remind me of eyelashes painted on a doll. Damaso orders a Coke, but she tells him they only have Pepsi. He asks for a Sprite instead, and she looks across the room to confirm there is some in the cooler. I comment that it’s odd for a restaurant to carry only Pepsi but still have Coke products, and she says they usually carry both brands but that they thought they were going out of business and had let their stocks run down. She directs our attention to an empty cooler by the front door. At the 11^th hour and just a few days ago, a friend of the owner had come through, buying into the business with enough cash to keep it from shuttering. Damaso says, “Wow, they really were at the end of the line.”
 

I order Sophie’s Special deluxe, which hits both of the things I like in a menu offering: it’s the home special and it’s the weirdest combination, bacon, feta, and grilled onions. It arrives overcooked, but who cares as long as it’s got bacon on it. The real treat though is the fries—curly fries for Damaso and waffle fries for me. Both styles are seasoned and crisp. I even like the coleslaw, which comes in those tiny paper cups that look like mini toques, and the pickle spear.




The bathrooms are locked by a key that hangs from a five-foot string attached to the opposite wall. The advantage, I suppose, is that you can’t accidentally lock the key in the bathroom. The disadvantage, which seems more salient, is that anyone else can unlock the door while you’re inside. Apparently I don’t understand a lot about how other people do things. A giant glob of green soap squirts onto my hamburger grease-covered hands, but the water is only a thin, cold stream, and it takes forever to wash the chyme-like grease-soap mixture from my hands.

When I come back to the table, Damaso has struck up a conversation with a uniformed MTA employee eating alone. I wonder whether the end of this line is an MTA haunt the way the end of the M-line was stock trader central. Turns out the MTA dude has spotted Damaso’s Leica, and they enjoy geeking out together about the pricey camera. I don’t care about the hardware at all and am slightly sad when the transit man leaves before I can ask him what he would shoot with a multi-thousand dollar camera.

Our burgers are gone, I’m resisting getting a milkshake, and it’s time to go. On the counter near the door we discover a big glass collection jar raising funds to save Sophie’s Diner. It’s a good thing Sophie’s affluent friend bailed her out. The jar contains $3.21.
  Photographs by Damaso Reyes