Q: 96th Street, Manhattan

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

It's been almost three years. At this rate, the project might never be possible because new stations open faster than we visit the existing ones. I might learn Chinese from fortune cookies before I explore all the city's subway line ends. But it doesn't matter. It's the journey, right?

New York State has completed at least two major subway expansions in the last few years: the 7 train extension west to Hudson Yards and the Q train expansion up Second Avenue. I wrote  "New York City" at first, but then I remembered the state runs the MTA, which runs the city's subways. They sure feel like a city program. I might have said city in past posts. Forgive me, Albany. In any case, the Second Avenue expansion, which was proposed 98 years ago, is theoretically only the first step of a larger project, but it's already carrying 200,000 passengers every day. You don't want to know how much it cost. Since it opened January 1, lots of my friends have posted photos of station art by Chuck Close (who I just found out has prosopagnosia!) and other artists. I figured I'd be needing to ride it soon enough, but it turns out I just don't get to the Upper East Side that much. Damaso, on the other hand, actually needed to be up there for some reason, so that's the station we chose.

His sojourn in Barcelona ended a while ago, and he'd moved back to the city and gotten a full-time job at the News Literacy Project, for whom he had volunteered in the past. I can't imagine anything more timely. He mostly works from his home on the Upper West Side though, so he had some timing flexibility but not enough to trek out to the far reaches of the Bronx or whatever, so exploring the new Q terminus would be perfect.

The outside of my subway car was filled with gorgeous but disconcerting graphics celebrating the new line. Gorgeous because of their simplicity and color but disconcerting because letters appear in colored circles, but not according to the subway color-letter codes that every New Yorker knows. For example, the final "AY" of "SECOND AVENUE SUBWAY" appear in a green circle, but everyone in Brooklyn and Queens knows a green circle means the "G" train. The inside of the train is also entirely devoted to itself: "We've been anxiously waiting for this to open. It feels great," says "Zen Master Samu Sunim, Zen Buddhist Temple, Upper East Side" on one poster. On another, "Irene Nesbit, Upper East Side resident" states breathlessly, "We're a great city and we need great transportation like the Second Avenue subway will deliver."

Besides the city denizens quoted on the posters, the car is full of commuters who don't look quite as breathless or excited. The bench next to me is occupied by a sleeping man with one foot in a walking boot. Having spent quite a bit of time in walking boots over the course of two foot surgeries, I'm sympathetic. Plus, he doesn't even smell.

We agreed to meet at the uptown edge of the platform at the last stop. Another major change since the last time we did this is that the MTA now provides free wifi and cell service at every station in the city, so we knew it would be easy to find each other. I exited a few minutes early into the wide, open platform. It doesn't look like one of the old stations with the I-beam pillars, but it doesn't look particularly interesting either. It just looks like a Metro North or Long Island Rail Road station. I walk to the front of the platform and discover the escalator is out of service. I wonder whether it is already broken or hasn't been fully installed yet.

The next train arrives, and I see Damaso about half way down the platform walking away from me taking pictures. I walk towards him, and he says he's been there a while. Not like us to both arrive early.


 

 

 

 

 

The art in this station is by Sarah Sze, but at first it doesn't grab me. It's a mural or mosaic of what looks like white pieces of paper blowing around on a blue background. As we ascend from the platform, the wall around the staircase bears a more attractive blue and white image. The colors make it look like a blueprint, but the image doesn't look architectural. I don't stay to figure it out. I was vaguely disappointed that the subway tiles aren't subway tiles.

 

 

We exit to the broad expanse of upper Second Avenue and walk, as usual, in the direction the train was going. Ahead of us, we see the barren expanse of Metropolitan Hospital, and Damaso says the city's best tamale vendor is often there. He says he's been getting into tamales, and this woman makes particularly moist ones. I, on the other hand, am almost always disappointed by tamales, because no matter what exotic fillings they advertise, they're mostly just corn meal. There used to be a tamale shop by my old apartment on West 14th Street that identified its tamales by purported country of origin. I can't remember any of the specifics, but I remember that I never believed the fillings had anything to do with those countries. For example, maybe Guatemala was raisins, goat, and cumin and Ecuador was chicken, olives, and sun-dried tomatoes. I'm just making up those correlations, but I do remember raisins, goat, olives, and Guatemala were all represented. And I do love street food, although for some reason I feel like the project demands sitting down and taking our time somewhere.

When we get to the hospital entrance, there are female tamale vendors on either side of the gate, and Damaso doesn't recognize his source. He remembers that she used green banana leaves and her tamales were moistest. He approaches one vendor and asks, in Spanish, whether she has tamales. She tells him she has spicy chicken and non-spicy chicken. He translates for me, which amuses me because when I visited him in Barcelona, I was still translating for him. Fair to guess his Spanish has overtaken mine in the intervening years. He gets a spicy chicken tamale, and it comes in a green wrapper.

 

 

 

Since we still don't know which is the good vendor, and admittedly because I'm thinking that they're all probably exactly the same or if they aren't, any of them are as likely as any other to be good, I order from the other vendor, who has chicken with mole or chicken with green sauce. I ask for the green sauce, and my tamale comes wrapped in yellow banana leaves. Uh-oh. I take a bite, and it's almost exactly what I expected. Well, the tamale part is exactly what I expected, a dry mush of cornmeal with a tiny bit of chicken inside. Not exciting. The part that's unexpected is that the chicken has neither green sauce nor mole. Just chicken. Damaso says his vendor is definitely the good one. I'm defiantly sure they're exactly the same, but then we trade bites.

He's right.

His tamale is delicious. It still has the drawbacks of a tamale, meaning it's mostly all corn meal, but the corn meal is grainy and moist, steaming in the banana leaves and quite flavorful. He offers me more, but I just finish mine even though I don't really like it that much.

We  circle north of the hospital and walk east towards the East River, thinking we might find someplace nice along the water, but we're cruelly disabused. The landscape is barren and industrial. We don't bother to walk all the way to the FDR, but we head back on First Avenue and hope we can find something on 96th Street. Nope. Back to Second Ave, where we finally decide on Vinus and Marc, which I see now described on its Google blurb as a "stylish, clubby venue pairing craft cocktails & wine with elevated French-Latin fusion plates," but which we walked into because it said "bistro" and then we immediately wondered what made it a bistro. Mostly it serves burgers.

The restaurant was long and narrow and fairly dark, with a wood bar along one side and a red wall with giant mirrors on the other.  We sat at a round four-top in the front window. I have no idea how someone would have gotten into the chairs facing in, I guess they would have had to pull out the other two chairs and the table, but since we were the only ones there, we sat facing out, with the empty chairs between us and the windows. My unsweetened iced tea was huge, which made me happy, and cloudy, which made me nervous is was coffee or lattéed or something, but the waitress said it always got cloudy from being in the refrigerator, and that made me happier because it meant it wasn't newly brewed hot tea watered down and still tepid, which is what I'm often brought.

I'm supposed to be on a diet, but I never seem to eat differently or less. Damaso, as usual, said he was trying to eat better but unlike me he actually does something about it and ordered a house salad, so I did that too. He didn't even get any shrimp or chicken or whatever on it, so I didn't either, but all I could think was that it wasn't going to be enough food and that I'd be hungry. The salads were lovely with red onions, carrots, and cucumbers on a bed of mixed greens under a semi sweet house vinaigrette. I could have eaten five of them. I reminded myself that I'd just had a tamale, which together made it a reasonably sized lunch.

 

 

The waitress, who was lovely, gave me a free refill of my giant iced tea. She had a little speck of something green on one tooth, and I debated whether to tell her. My rule, instilled at a young age by Miss Manners is never to tell people when you notice problems they aren't likely to be able to fix (mismatched shoes, run in stocking) but always to tell people about things they can do something about, but while spinach in teeth falls squarely in the latter camp, the combination of stranger and server threw me off, and I didn't say anything. Nobody else came into the restaurant while we were there anyway, and it was on my side, so I doubt Damaso could even see it. Yes, I'm rationalizing. If I have spinach on my teeth please tell me. But see, now you know what I prefer, so I'm making it more comfortable. Oops, rationalizing again.

Anyway, we didn't linger long. Mr. Newly Employed graciously tried to pay for our lunch after, but I didn't let him. He headed off to find a print shop, and I decided to wander slowly down to Bryant Park to meet the Tuesday after-work juggle. The walk was fantastic, but that's a whole other story. Let's just say it was the first (and last for a while) beautiful day of spring.

Photographs by Damaso Reyes

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

3: 148th Street/Harlem, Manhattan

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

I read a bit of that Quran, but I didn’t get far. First of all, I hated the defensive translation, which kept inserting parenthetical notes explaining how the text didn’t really mean to kill all infidels, only those who tried to kill you first. Uh, it didn’t say that. Secondly, it was boring. I mean the Bible was boring, and I read that, but I had more incentive. Maybe I’ll try the Quran again another time.

Anyway in the time that I wasn’t reading the Quran, Damaso went on an extended “Beer, Baseball, and Barbecue” road trip around the country and went (for the second time) to Cuba for five weeks. Jealous! He’s moving back to Barcelona next month, so I was impatient to squeeze in as many end-of-the-line rides as we could manage, but my busy schedule was not cooperating. Finally, we managed to find a Tuesday afternoon we were both free, and we agreed to meet at the top of the 3 line in Harlem at 1pm.

I had a ton of work to do, but I’ve been on a big exercise kick, so I forced my lazy ass to the gym for a hard workout before lunch. I figured I’d be home around 3, and I’d be able to work all afternoon. I woke up early, traveled into Manhattan, and raced to finish a decent workout and sauna. At noon, I left the gym weak, hungry, and with plenty of time to make it to Harlem. I didn’t want to be late, as I’d made Damaso wait for me a few times in the past, but when I turned my phone back on, I discovered he’d left a message saying he was running late, and he’d meet me at 2.

Suddenly I had an hour to kill in Manhattan, and my mood immediately changed from positive and productive to stressed about the lost work time. I ran a few errands that had been hanging over my head, including buying over $80 of ink for a crappy printer I got free (and stupidly gave away a really good printer) and still had plenty of time, so I texted my friend Matt to find out whether he was in the country and could talk. He works on cruise ships, and it turned out he was in the Caribbean somewhere but on his way to a Starbuck’s whence he’d be able to Skype. Sounded like a good idea, so I found myself a Starbuck’s and spent probably 20 minutes trying to figure out how to set up the Skype application I already had on my phone. Eventually it worked, and I drank a large iced tea and a free large iced tea refill, while Matt gave me advice about my romantic life. The only way I justify paying Starbuck’s prices for something I make at home in bulk is to get the free refills (free with a registered card, which I now use through my phone), and I emerged 20 minutes later freezing, over caffeinated, and late. Late?!? I was the one killing time! Somebody didn’t manage my extra hour very well! I texted Damaso that now I was running a little late but on my way, and I hopped on the 3 train from 14^th Street.

On the long ride up, I finished the only magazine I’d brought and played a little Scrabble, but my phone battery indicator wasn’t so green after all the Skype time, and the 48 ounces of unsweetened iced green tea were swelling my bladder. I got off the train at 2:05, and raced out of the station hoping Damaso wasn’t irritated to be kept waiting. Au contraire, mon frere, he’d gotten my text and responded, fine, then he’d be there at 2:30. D’oh!

I didn’t see any place to eat, but two cops were chatting in front of the public school at the train exit, and we always trust cops and transit officials to guide our selections. I interrupted them but immediately got distracted trying to figure out whether they were wearing matching eyeglasses. They claimed their pairs were different. They were both strikingly good-looking women. After we chatted about their glasses for a while, I asked them whether they could recommend a place to eat, and they suggested I get back on the train and head to a neighborhood with better options. I assured them I’d be okay eating someplace local, and they asked me what kind of food I wanted. I said anything that was open for lunch and wasn’t fast food. They looked at each other, looked back at me, and repeated the suggestion that I get back on the train, insisting there was nothing nearby. Finally they came up with two suggestions, the closer or which was over five blocks away. I didn’t mind walking five blocks to eat, but I wasn’t going to walk five blocks to pee before Damaso showed up, so I sat down on the curb and turned my phone-Scrabble back on to distract myself from my full bladder.

Eventually Damaso turned up, feeling generous for letting me have longer to get in from Brooklyn. Of course he couldn’t have known where I was coming from or what my schedule was, and I felt simultaneously irritated at his presumption and guilty for being irritated while he was trying to be nice. My full bladder didn’t allow me to stall around though, and I hustled Damaso down Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard to look for food.

The police were right. The first place they suggested was supposed to be between 144^th and 143^rd Street, but we got all the way to 143^rd without finding anything. We backtracked to 144^th to look for the second place, and found Grini’s Tapas Bar between Adam Clayton Powell and Lenox, exactly where the cops said it would be. We walked in, and I got paralyzed by chafing dish options until Damaso reminded me to go use the bathroom. That solved half of my bad mood, but I was still starving after the work-out, hour stall downtown, half hour wait uptown, and six-block walk. The place looked fine to me (albeit completely devoid of tapas), and we hadn't passed any other restaurants on our walk, so I was surprised when Damaso suggested going out to check out our options.

On the corner of Lenox and 144^th, we were delighted by A Touch of Dee, which was not, as the name might suggest a nail salon or gift store, but rather a bar. The windows were covered with printed pages inviting passers by to Mary’s birthday and “Chyna Grown and Sexy.” Damaso stopped to take photos of the signs, and a very curious woman walked out to ask why we were photographing her window. Before Damaso can answer, I say, “Because it’s awesome!” which holds her long enough for him to get his shots, and we walk on.


Next door, Lenox Fast Food promised the “best breakfast uptown,” but the counter was tiny. We walked another block or so, and I had to stop to check out a gorgeous geometric-block print coat with multiple diagonal zippers (too rich for my blood), but we didn’t find anywhere else to eat, so we backtracked to Grini’s.

As usual in that kind of place, none of the chafing dish options seemed to match any of the menu offerings posted on the wall, so I pointed to a bunch of stuff, asked what it was, and asked the counterwoman what was best. She wouldn’t commit to a recommendation, but she did tell me what was what, and I pointed to the best-looking pork and asked for some okra with it, and she offered me my choice of plain white rice or yellow rice with peas (with peas, duh). I asked how to say “okra” in Spanish, and the counterwoman stared at me blankly, but the man with her said, “boletrones,” which I figured had something to do with the little balls inside. I repeated it to myself over and over and wrote it down as soon as I got to the table, but when I look it up now, Google translator gives ten different Spanish words for okra, and none of them is even close to boletrones. My phone gives yet a tenth word, so maybe okra names are micro-regional in Latin America. After taking my order, everyone I’ve been talking to disappears, along with my food, and someone else takes Damaso’s order for a grilled chicken salad. After a while, my counterwoman comes back and asks whether she can help me. I say she already made my food and that I’m waiting to get it, pay, and eat. We finally get all our food, take over a table, and sit down to eat.

My tin foil dish is loaded and heavy. Besides the rice with peas, okra, and pork, she’s thrown in a few plantains. I careful separate my paper bag and keep the plastic lid to my tin foil plate, thinking that I’ll be taking home the majority of my massive plate, but once I start, I don’t stop eating till every grain of rice is gone. The pork is fantastic, blackened until it falls softly off the bones, which by the way are so soft, I don’t just suck out the marrow, I eat the entire bone ends.



While I hoover down my food, Damaso tells me about his travels. I can’t believe he got a salad, but of course he’s had his fill of rice and beans after a month in Cuba. He laughs and takes photos of my gluttonous bone chewing. Behind us, one man is sound asleep over his empty dishes. Restaurant is fairly bare, but a few early Christmas lights glitter on a table, and a poster with two large drinks, one green and one orange, advertises “SLUSH.”


I get buzzed back into the bathroom to wash my pork-covered hands, and this time I notice a single business card stuck to the wall. It says (punctuation, capitalization, and spacing faithfully copied), “If your Lips not Popp’in ,He’s not stopp’in!!!” After gazing at it for a while I realize the card owner sells make-up. I’m tempted to take the card, but I figure if I leave it there, I’ll be saving my potential for popp’in lips until we come back for A Taste of Dee.

Photographs by Damaso Reyes

S: Franklin Avenue, Brooklyn

Thursday, August 11, 2011

 
Boy if I thought Damaso changing his order was “cheating” on the purity of this project, how do I justify our actions this week? Neither of us even took the train! We didn’t have a lot of time and wanted to squeak in one more restaurant before Damaso leaves for a month’s road trip Monday, so we met on the platform of the Shuttle terminus at Franklin Avenue. Only we both took the C train to get there. Hey, at least I didn’t drive. We both arrived early, and we debated riding the shuttle to the other end and back, but then we remembered the whole time-constraint thing. I’ll ride it when we visit the other end of the line.

 
The day is beautiful, and the streets are full and fascinating. We walk along Fulton Street, and I’m shocked to realize how close I am to my home. Somehow looking at everything through my End-of-the-Line eyes changes my perspective even on what should be familiar. Damaso spots a Halal Chinese restaurant, and I wonder whether it’s actually run by Uyghurs. More likely it just caters to the clientele, a la Kosher Chinese, but in any case, it’s closed, perhaps permanently, so we keep looking.

We didn’t look long before coming across a small restaurant surrounded by large banners proclaiming “No More Junk,” “Eat Healthy,” and “Halal is the Answer.” The storefront and buffet wouldn’t have enticed me into the unimaginatively named Halal Restaurant (1168 Fulton Street, Brooklyn), but I want to eat healthier! Plus, two other signs in the window clinched the decision. One read “We use alkaline kangen water,” which even a few Google and Wikipedia searches later I can’t interpret. The other was a list of fresh fruit drinks, and it included fruit sea moss, sorrel, and maeby. I’d only had one glass of iced tea before heading out the door, and I’m averaging over 50 ounces a day, but I immediately decided I would risk a caffeine-withdrawal headache and lost afternoon to get myself a fruit sea moss drink. Needless to say, we entered.

 







After our freezing lunch at the Last Stop Café in Astoria, I’d brought a sweater in my bag, proud not to make the same mistake twice in one week, but the inside of Halal Restaurant was steamy and stale. Along the left side of the narrow room, one cooler offered Jamaican and regular soft drinks, and the other was stocked with home-filled plastic cups labeled only with letters: “M,” “S, and “GT” for example. We asked what they were, but the answer was unclear enough that Damaso took an MP without knowing whether it was mango-pear or mango-peach. It was mango-peach, sweet and delicious. I took the FSM, fruit sea moss, and it was thick and glutinous but only had a mild, sweet flavor.

 

The buffet offered a startling mix of food from Muslims around the world. I mostly chose what I’d guess were dishes from the Caribbean and India, including four different types of greens—I think kale, collards, and two different preparations of stewed okra. They were all slimy and satisfyingly bitter. We shared two of the three bread offerings, and both were outstanding. I chose a large, flat rectangle of fried white dough that was chewier than paratha and deliciously greasy; Damaso picked the puffed golden-brown circle that turned out to be fluffy and sweet inside. The “bread” we didn’t try came in fat rectangles, about the size of most pieces of corn bred, but it looked starchier, like a fufu maybe. Aside from the bread, Damaso filled his plastic plate with vegetables and salad, but I tried a piece of fried fish (bland), several types of beans, and a lovely mild pattie that turned out also to be fish. Good eating.

 





We sat under a giant poster of pilgrims praying in Mecca. Above the counter was a sunrise/sunset Ramadan schedule, and we realized the counterman, who I think said he was the owner’s brother, wasn’t eating, only presiding over an empty restaurant for the occasional infidel. He said he didn’t mind watching us eat while he couldn’t. I donated a dollar to buy a Quran from a stack on the counter. I don’t expect to find all the truths the restaurant promised, but I’d been meaning to read it anyway, and this volume looked manageably small. The man wouldn’t let Damaso take a picture of the 3D mosque-image clock on the wall, but he laughed and wasn’t upset to be asked.







I wanted to try another drink, either the mysterious maeby, which the counterman described as a bitter bark, or a green tea to get some caffeine in my blood stream, but I was overfull from the buffet, so we walked out into the sunlit day to explore the neighborhood. While traveling earlier this summer, I was filled with love in each city I visited, first convinced that I wanted to move to Berkeley, then to Bemidji, then to Baraboo. Now I was filled with love for Brooklyn. What wonders were so close to home! I leaned into the Slave Theater, where the Rastafarian “artiste” who greeted me was civil and sweet but told me he couldn’t answer all my questions because the government had recently been trying to pit the races against each other and oppress the Black man. I said I thought that had been going on for about 400 years, and he nodded sagely.

Back on the street, we admired posters of evangelists, wig stores, and murals before stopping in front of a striking church to wonder whether the sword, crescent, and star over the door meant it had been a mosque or a masonic lodge. We both had places to be, but it was too sunny to descend into a dark subway station, so we stalled in a dollar store, sure we would remember what we needed as soon as we saw it. Damaso did (baby wipes for the road trip), and when I couldn’t think of anything to buy, he reminded me that President Obama would be disappointed that I wasn’t helping the economy. I took some pictures of fabulously bright ghetto candy (“Kiddie Kandy: All Items Contain Candy”), and we moved on. Now I can't find the photos to post.

At the beginning of the day it seemed silly to pursue an “end” so close to the beginning on a line I hadn’t even ridden. But by the time I ran for a bus to leave the neighborhood without having to leave the sunshine, it didn’t feel awkward anymore. Especially when the line ends so close to home, it takes a mission and an intention to remind myself to eat at the pan-Halal restaurant, explore the dollar stores, read the candy labels, and talk to the local political artistes. Damaso’s heading out again to explore America. When he gets back, I’ll be ready to explore some more of the world, right here in New York.

Photographs by Damaso Reyes