A: Howard Beach/JFK, Queens

Wednesday, May 22, 2013



Damaso and I were both in town at the same time, which is a lot rarer since he moved to Barcelona and I took a touring job. I’m almost caught up posting the … hang on. My spell check has a squiggly green line under “rarer.” When I hover over the word, it says, “Non-standard word (consider revising).” Really? Is it “more rare”? Dictionary.com supports my usage, but now I am completely distracted realizing that I don’t remember the rules for forming comparative and superlative forms. Doesn't it have something to do with the number of syllables in the root?

Maybe I should start over.

Maybe I should give up this project. I’ve posted all but three of the trips we took last year, and my fantasies for The End of the Line are dashed. This won’t be a book. Nobody will pay me to ride subways and eat food in other cities. Heck, it turns out I don’t even write about food the way I thought I would. But you know what? I like taking subways with Damaso, I like exploring the city, and I love slavish devotion to meaningless tasks, so I keep on.

I was still on the road when I realized from Facebook that Damaso was home, so we started making plans to meet up. I wanted to go to the Bronx because I had time and we’d only done one visit there. He wanted to go to Brooklyn because he was staying there. Not off to a great start, but then he heard that the A train was resuming service to the Rockaways for the first time since Hurricane Sandy in October, so we decided to go there.



Someone leaned around a man to hand me this flyer at Broadway Junction. I’m feeling so open to new possibilities that I actually considered it for half a second.

We met on the A platform at Broadway Junction, where we realized the A forks into three lines in that direction. We decided to take whichever Rockaway train came first: Rockaway Park Beach or Far Rockaway. Only the train that showed up said Howard Beach/JFK, which wasn’t even an option on the map. Confused, we got on anyway, figuring we could take it a few stops and transfer if necessary, but when we got to Howard Beach, we were dumped out and told we could only continue via shuttle bus. Turns out our information was wrong, or at least premature; regular service was not being reinstated for another week, so we’d lucked into a temporary line end. While we were disappointed not to make it to the hard-hit Rockaways, we were eager to explore Howard Beach.





Well, I was. Damaso had some other ideas. Should we take a shuttle bus to the beach? Should we eat at the airport? Does the AirTrain to JFK count as a “line” for this project? No, no, no! I’m hungry!
Across from the temporary terminus, the Rail Bar & Grille [sic] beckoned. We’re both suckers for anything whose name evokes the project mission, but we’ve also discovered that “& Grill” doesn’t actually mean anything. In fact, I think we have yet to find an “& Grill” that served food, and this one doesn’t either. Well, they did. Turns out Hurricane Sandy knocked the whole establishment out of business. The bar has just re-opened, but the owners haven’t finished fixing the kitchen and restaurant, so those are still closed indefinitely.

On the same block facing the station are two fast-food joints, pizza and Chinese. As Damaso says, “maybe the food at the end of the line isn't very good.” Instead of eating fast food, we set out to explore. One problem with the original concept (eat at the first place I see) is that after taking a subway for an hour or more to some exotic area, we always want to explore. I suppose we could eat first and then walk around, but what if we miss a great restaurant?

After that first block, the neighborhood is entirely residential. We walk until we spot five fire fighters on a cross street’s sidewalk. Damaso says, “Let’s ask them. Fire fighters always know the best places to eat.” He has previously declared this to be true of transit workers and police officers. He might be right, but I can’t imagine he has actual data on the subject. Who cares? It’s a good excuse to chat with some locals … some locals in uniform.

The fire fighters eye us warily as we approach and none immediately answer the question. Finally they suggest Bruno’s Ristorante, a 10-minute walk at Cross Bay Boulevard. They’re confused that we’re in the middle of a residential neighborhood with no car and ask what they’re doing. We make a deal to tell them if they tell us why five of them are standing on the sidewalk. Turns out they’re doing a building inspection. They won’t tell us whether it passed.

We circle back to the Rail Bar & Grille, pizza place, and Chinese storefront but can’t face them and head out to Cross Bay Boulevard. As we walk, we pass stone cherubs on several front gates and painted stars on several utility poles. The stars bear messages including “Hope” and “Love.”






A boy wearing a Spiderman shirt is sitting on a front stoop with an old man. I say, “Hi Spiderman” as we pass. I hear him whispering to the man, and then the kid shouts back, “I’m not Spiderman!” I tell him I was confused by his shirt, and he tries to explain to me that he’s just a kid. The man is amused; the kid is sincere.

Finally we make it to Cross Bay Boulevard, a large commercial thoroughfare. I ask whether we should look up Bruno’s on our magic phones, but Damaso says that’s cheating. At first I object that the whole thing is cheating since we didn’t go to the first place we saw, but Damaso points out that we never do, and somehow I agree—looking around isn’t cheating but looking things up is. Anyway, expensive Italian feels all wrong, so I’d rather find something else.





We pick a direction randomly (right) and settle on the Sugar Bun Bakery, where we linger at the counter trying to decide what to order by spying on everyone else’s food. The clientele are eating small sandwiches and salads. Everyone’s food looks delicious, but nothing on the menus above the counter appeals, so I guess what one diner’s sandwich is and order a whitefish salad sandwich on an onion roll (they don’t have everything bagels). Besides, whitefish seems slightly more exotic than tuna or egg salad, and when the sandwich arrives, I’m right. It’s oily, salty, and much fishier than tuna. The sandwich melts into the onion roll, which is mushier than a bagel. These several minor differences raise my satisfaction with the relatively boring meal. It also comes with cole slaw and a half pickle. The cole slaw is crunchy; unfortunately the pickle isn’t.

Damaso, who has taken up running and lost a ton of weight since I’ve last seen him, orders an avocado salad and a strawberry-banana smoothie. I’m nervous because he’s ordered avocado salads before and then been disappointed to get just a plate of avocados, but this time the avocados are spread on a large bed of romaine and other vegetables. He complains though that the romaine is lifeless and the salad boring. The romaine looks fine and fresh. He asks for more dressing, and I suggest salt. The combination of add-ons brings his meal up to, as he says, acceptable.






The restaurant’s other patrons are older and look Jewish (do gentiles eat whitefish salad on onion rolls?). The seating section is airy and bright but filled with fake stuff as decoration: fake plants and presents line the top of the room, and window frames with mirrors in them hang on the walls instead of pictures. Before we leave, I ask whether they give refills on iced tea. The woman behind the counter tells me they don’t give refills and then promptly takes my cup and refills it. It’s in a take-out cup anyway.  As we walk back to the subway, we see statues of the Virgin Mary and other Catholic iconography. That might mean it’s a Catholic neighborhood, or it might mean Jews, atheists, and others don’t put out as many lawn ornaments. Come to think of it, what would be the Jewish outdoor decoration equivalent of a crèche or a Mary?






When we return to the train station, we notice how many of the other passengers have luggage, presumably on their way to or from the airport. The station overlooks a field in which we can see an abandoned rowboat and a pair of swans nesting, not an image I’d associate with the big city, but that’s the joy that keeps me doing this (because it sure isn’t the food!): finding such unexpected range of New York City.

Photographs by Damaso Reyes

A: Inwood-207th Street, Manhattan

Thursday February 3, 2011 The idea had been hanging over my head for years. I was hungry to explore the extremes of my adopted home city, and more than that (and as usual), I was just hungry. The scope of the project daunted me, but the potential rewards kept me from giving it up altogether, and I daydreamed about it abstractly, never buckling down to make it real.

Over the years, the simple concept teased and eluded me, but it never backed away, and in 2011, my new friend Damaso called my bluff, and together we made it happen. When I first moved to New York in 1993, I had more time than money. When I heard rumors of glorious and usually temporary outer borough delicacies, I loved nothing more than tracking them down: searching Roosevelt Avenue for the woman who sells the city’s best arepas (but only on Friday and Saturday nights) or loading up plates from the taco carts that ring the soccer fields in Red Hook (but only on sunny afternoons). To a newcomer living in Manhattan, the outer boroughs were exotic, and the food tasted better the farther I traveled to get it.

Almost two decades of foodie explosion later, my little quests seem quaint. Who doesn’t know soccer taco, for crying out loud, heck by now they have an outpost in the Brooklyn Flea food market! My appetite was whetted though and my snobbery piqued. Anything that appeared in the food press was already passé, tainted with the known. I still love following up on a live octopus lead or a guinea pig roast, but I was just following up, not leading, and you can’t explore a path someone else has cut.

Like my actual ravenous appetite, my appetite for exotica was never sated, and it wasn’t just food I craved; it was neighborhood. How many years could I live in this city and never learn it all? Every time I leave the city and drive through the strip malls and chain stores of “real” America, I long for the idiosyncratic and small, the misspelled and the locally owned. Every time I wander through this city, I want to walk every sidewalk and explore every store. I want to eat the entire city, ingesting its sights as well as its flavors.

New York is no city of moderation. I wanted to find its extremes, and my plan was simple: I’d ride every subway line to the last stop, get out, and eat at the first restaurant I saw. My exploration would be random but controlled, large but finite, and most importantly, would take me beyond my comfortable commutes and into neighborhoods unknown.

 Only I never did it.

For almost two decades, the idea stayed safely in my mind, one of many nagging at my sense of potential, until I told it to my new friend Damaso. “Would you want to collaborate?” he asked. Of course! He’s a photographer, and I’m a writer. It hadn’t even occurred to me how much the project needed pictures, but he’s right of course. Plus, it’ll be fun to have a partner. I became determined to conquer the city, one subway line at a time.

Where to start? I briefly considered tracking down the history of the subway system to ride the trains in the order they developed but instead decided to use the city’s own ordering system. That narrowed down my decisions for the seminal journey to two: A or 1 train and uptown or down. I’ve always given letters priority, and my decision to start uptown is made by the slimmest of associations. I remember my father teaching me the order of baseball innings by saying they went from bad to worse, from top to bottom, and I decided if it works for baseball, it works for me: the project would start on the A train uptown.


At over 31 miles, the A train is the city’s longest, but I wasn’t trying to ride it all; I just wanted to get to Inwood and eat. The express stretch from 59th Street to 125th was familiar, but beyond that the stations were unfamiliar and relatively empty. 181st Street intrigued briefly with a series of white-on-white arches cut into the walls behind the tracks. The relief arches hint of former glory, but I didn’t exit to examine them more closely. A restaurant was waiting at the end of the line.


Finally the doors parted at 207th Street. I waited for the familiar announcement for everyone to please leave the train, but the PA system remained stubbornly silent, and I stepped off into the overwhelming odor of cleaning fluids on the platform. That terminus was clean, as was the train across the tracks, exactly where the “Next Train” sign pointed to it. Upstairs the station had historical tidbits about the neighborhood on small, tasteful tiles directly across from a giant, glittering silver sign reading, “At the Start.” The text art repeated on the floor, although without the silver glitter. “At the Start,” it said, and across from it, “At Long Last.” Sheila LaBrettville’s installation was a fitting welcome; at long last I’d reached the end of the line, but I was still at the start of the project. The city has 24 subway lines, several with more than two terminal stations. It’ll be hard to find time when Damaso and I can both fit a two round-trip, and it’ll take us a while to get to the end of every subway line. This was only our first trip, and we still hadn’t eaten lunch!
  Exiting the station wasn’t promising. The stairs faced a solid wall of red brick without a restaurant in sight. Making a U-turn out of the stairs onto Broadway immediately calmed my hunger-induced panic. Even at that altitude, Broadway was bustling. Across the avenue, a majestic snow-covered tree dominated the tiered walkways of Isham Park. The branches etched a stark contrast against the brilliant blue sky, but I hadn’t traveled that far to sightsee, and my stomach was rumbling with impatience.

On the corner with the subway exit is a business, not a restaurant but a T-Mobile/Sprint store, and my heart fell at its functional, franchise exterior. This was the end of the line? It was so practical and prosaic. Similarly, the first restaurants I saw were Grandpa’s Brick Oven Pizza next door to Carreon’s Bakery Deli, and my stubborn snobbery overtook my preconceived randomized selection. I refuse to learn that New York City sprawls with similarity and that even at the extremes, the chain stores and pizza windows repeat in infinite patterns. I will find something special out here. I am the urban explorer, and I will not “discover” that people live and work out here the same way the rest of us do nearer to the more familiar areas that subway lines only pass through on their way to these exotic ends.
 
Looking up the east side of the avenue, I seized on El Nuevo Ambiente: Hispanic & American Food. Inside was crowded with colors if not with customers. An ATM and a jukebox shared one wall. Opposite them, Jesus radiated color from what might have been a dress but looked like a bulletproof shield. His picture hung next to an ancient video game on top of a shelf filled with bouquets of metallic tinsel. A crack on the display obscured the last letter so it proclaimsed: “Touch Maste” instead of, presumably, “Touch Master.” The tables each had a plastic flowerpot full of plastic flowers, and a giant painting of a waterfall reminded me of Bob Ross’s happy little trees and happy little clouds. In case anyone feared an inch of boring paint or plaster, the walls were paneled in vertical strips of mirror, between which were set all manner of plastic decorations.
 
The menu was in English and Spanish. I ignored the specials for “Thrusday,” because the very first item on the menu, Dominican breakfast special number one, transported me back to La Rosita before it shuttered some ten years ago. I ordered in Spanish: huevos, queso, y chorizo, eggs, cheese, and salami, but I mumbled because I was embarrassed at how bad my Spanish had become. The waitress asked what I wanted with my order—mangu or yucca, and I requested mangu and a carrot-orange drink. My companion asked for a papaya drink, pernil sandwich, and avocado salad. His parents are Dominican, and his Spanish is more confident than mine, but I secretly suspect it isn’t any better.
 
Most Spanish speakers appreciate people making the effort, but I generally avoid speaking. This time I was trying to be brave—wasn’t I the one who set out to explore? Isn’t it more satisfying to imagine the A train extends beyond the English-speaking city? Some items on the menu were only in Spanish. I asked the waitress what ponche was, and she answered that it was a hot drink containing “café, huevos, y azucar.” While she talked, Damaso translated for me, “coffee, eggs, sugar.” Why was he translating when I had asked the question in Spanish? I understood the waitress but was saddened at Damaso’s perception that I couldn’t. Distracted thinking about language, I couldn’t imagine this combination of coffee and sweetened eggs, but I’d heard enough to know it pierced both of my Achilles’ heels of omnivorism; I don’t drink coffee or alcohol. Later I looked up ponche and found many variations on what is apparently hot coffee-flavored punch. Yuck? Yum?

All the other patrons sat at the small counter. They were all male, and every single one had a hooded sweatshirt as some layer of his dress. This is a workingman’s lunch joint. Eventually other men and women entered and sat at the tables. None of them took off their coats to eat.
 
The food was startlingly good. Apparently I didn’t ask for eggs, just the cheese, salami, and mangu, and it was perfect. The cheese was mild and fried so it was soft on the inside and just browning on the outside. It made a perfect foil for the so-called “salami,” which resembled a salty slab of ham. The mangu (boiled, mashed green plantains) was warm and satisfying with a few sautéed onions and peppers on top. I drizzled it with hot sauce and salt, and ate every drop. Damaso assured me his sandwich was excellent. My carrot juice was naturally sweet enough beneath the acidic orange juice, and I turned down the waitress’s offer to add sugar. Damaso’s papaya drink was fresh and sweet, and the sliced avocado side salad was just simple slices, delicately dressed. The whole meal cost $20.

Damaso took a few photos of the interior and then asked the waitress permission to take her photograph, at which the chubby, middle-haired woman dissolved into a fit of giggles so overpowering that she was only able to wave her refusal. Without leaving, she coyishly touched her bright blue hair net, her white cotton shrug, her tight stretch jeans, checking each piece of herself while she waved away his camera as though showing him specifically what not to document. She appeared flattered to be asked but adamant refused, saying he could photograph her “next time.”
There won’t be a next time. It was a fine start, but there’s no going back. Afterwards, I wasn’t ready to get back in the subway, so despite the sub-freezing temperatures, we wended our way down Broadway to the next station. Although we hadn’t noticed any other restaurants before eating, afterwards we passed Piper’s Kilt, Yummy Thai, the Garden Café, and Pizza Haven as well as Dunkin’ Donuts and other fast food outlets to remind me that we weren’t in an obscure Dominican outlet but rather following along another tentacle of the city’s many fractals. Perhaps there are no outskirts in this all-or-nothing city—I’ll certainly keep exploring, but at least there’s a very good Dominican restaurant at the end of the line.



Photos by Damaso Reyes.