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

NQ: Astoria/Ditmars Boulevard, Queens

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 It’s been almost five months since our last trip, during which time Damaso has been living in Barcelona. I was sure that by the time he got back I’d have viveca.net up and have started publishing these stories. I’m a little sheepish to see him again without any progress to report. My only defense is that I have been riding my web programmer to help me get started, and I haven’t given up. In any case, I hate quitting in the middle of something, and equally relevantly, even if nobody else were ever going to read any of this, I want to see the rest of the city! We meet in Astor Place and ride the N uptown into Queens. The ride isn’t long. When we get off the elevated tracks at Astoria/Ditmars Boulevard, it’s raining and hot. The tracks run over a busy thoroughfare with plenty of culinary options. Damaso spies a transit worker and asks him for a recommendation, but the MTA employee says he brings his own lunch. Like us, he lives in Brooklyn. When pressed, he says the other guys eat at the diner, and he gestures vaguely across the street at Mike’s Diner. We stay on our side and walk to the end of the block, peering into a Southwest-style place and weighing options. Nothing is appealing. We cross and walk back towards Mike’s Diner, but right before we reach it, we notice the Last Stop Restaurant, which fits our theme too well to bypass. Inside, our thought process is rewarded. The entire café is decorated with a subway and train theme—the name is posted in tiles, toy trains line the counters, train art hangs over the tables, and two walls are painted as a subway car exterior (N train) with passengers peering out through the windows. Facing us are a conductor, a wary mother, and a smiling daughter peering out of the end of the train mural. Damaso asks me to make a face as though I’m running away from the train barreling towards me. He takes a few pictures of my attempts to act, but I only look crazier in each one. I know these would be better if I were willing to include pictures of myself in them, but my vanity rebels. This photo goes beyond unflattering to ridiculous though, so maybe I’ll let it slip through. The air conditioning is freezing against our wet clothes, and the man behind the counter graciously turns it down for us. I had just given Damaso a bunch of t-shirts, and he hands me one back to use as a shawl while we peruse the menus. Nothing appeals, and I particularly don’t want any of the Last Stop Specials. Damaso wants to order a burger but doesn’t want me to mock him for it. He often hears judgment when I think I’m stating facts, and I’m slightly sad that my commenting on him liking to order the same things made him feel insulted as unadventurous. Worse, I worry that we’re experiencing some sort of social Heisenbergism, which of course doesn’t exist. But just as social Darwinism falsely extends evolutionary theory to behavior activity, I apply the uncertainty principle to this project: measuring (or documenting) an activity changes it in ways that prevent it from being measured accurately. It’s ridiculous. There is no “real” End of the Line experience, and Damaso changing his order doesn’t hurt anyone. In any case, he decides to get a turkey burger, “to mix it up,” and I eventually order a chicken parmigiana sub, because the waitress says it’s her favorite, and a side of broccoli because I gained a ton of weight traveling recently, and I’m convinced that eating extra vegetables, even if smothered in oil, will magically make me thin. While we sit, a man follows a wandering toddler around the restaurant. They seem to belong here. Maybe he works in the restaurant, or maybe they’ve finished eating and just don’t want to face the rain. Damaso keeps trying to say hello to the child. He or she, I can’t tell, stares back for a while but is blissfully unresponsive. When our food arrives, “thin” leaves the building. My “sandwich” is served open faced, with chicken, sauce, and cheese oozing over the sides of a giant toasted hero roll. Damaso’s large burger comes with a heaping helping of battered French fries, and my broccoli could feed a dozen schoolchildren if children ate vegetables soaked in fresh garlic and olive oil. The broccoli is still green, not too mushy, and delicious. The rest of the food is, well, adequate. I eat the toppings and leave the bread on the platter. The waitress won’t give me a refill on my iced tea, and I’m sulky and spoiled after six weeks out of NYC. Iced tea runs freely in the rest of the country, but it’s a precious commodity here. Outside we cross to a bakery whose interior is much less appealing than its appearance but which smells fantastic. Somehow convincing myself that buying food here will help me avoid eating restaurant food and therefore that this will actually help me lose weight, I buy a loaf of olive bread and two almond cookies, one plain and one dipped in chocolate. I promise myself that I won’t eat the cookies until I finish an overdue article draft and write this up. That was four days ago. I threw out most of the bread today, but I finished the other project a few hours ago, and when I finish the next sentence I’ll go retrieve the cookies from the fridge. I hope they’re not too stale.

Photographs by Damaso Reyes

JEZ: Jamaica Center/Parsons Archer, Queens

Tuesday, March 29, 2011



We take the J because we both live on it, but it’s also the end of the line for the E and the Z. Wait, do I live on the J or off the J? I live off the BQE, but I’m pretty sure I live on the J, and I definitely wait in line. Well, actually I’m not sure what I say when I don’t think about it, but when I do think about it, I wait in line. Waiting on line reminds me of the basements in my college library, where you had to follow colored lines on the floor to find various sections. I loved following those lines and the stacks that moved to let you in among the books. Now they probably have some Jetsons-like automated system that pops your book out of a slot in the wall. Oh, who am I kidding. Do college students even read books? Back then I was amazed that people used to write entire books without word processors. Current students probably wonder how we researched papers without the Internet.

Anyway…

The most surprising thing about reaching the end of the J line is how crowded the train is, and the station too is large and bustling. Damaso guesses many of the riders might be going to York College, and signage around the station points out several other local attractions.









We exit into a neighborhood that immediately reminds us both of downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall. Right away we see a narrow passage under a colorful sign that says Food Fest, and we debate whether to disqualify a food court but decide to go check it out. Inside, we’re tempted by the modestly named Taste and See, and we trade potential tag lines for their Indian food:

“What have you got to lose?”

“Could be okay!”

“Not that bad!”



The food court is sunny and clean, but even though we’re hungry, we’re too curious about the neighborhood to settle yet, so we press on. Besides, Damaso needs to visit an ATM, which turns out to be the perfect errand, as the Citibank is down a side street directly across from Patty World Jamaican Restaurant & Bakery, gaudily decorated with fake bunting—a rectangular banner displaying the printed image of red, white, and blue bunting. Jamaican sit-down? Fake bunting? Forget the food court. We're going here! Damaso will finally get his curry goat!



I order the first item in the traditional Jamaican breakfast category, callaloo codfish, which says it comes with dumplings and bananas. The counterwoman looks at me slowly and asks, “Do you want the dumplings?” I affirm that I do, and she walks away sighing heavily. The sign says my meal is $6, so I’m surprised when she asks me for $12 for the meal and a bottle of soda. I thought she was charging me extra for the included dumplings, but she confirms that the meal is $6… and so is the 10 oz bottle of Roots Man Drink. Immediately I’m infuriated that no soda can possibly cost that much but simultaneously convinced that this must be the most delicious drink ever. I fork over the $12.

The walls are bright yellow with brown trim and decorated with mirrors and paintings of Jamaican life, including market scenes and a cricket match. The tables are standard Formica, but the chairs are fancy white and gold dining room chairs. If they weren’t ensconced in plastic upholstery covers, they would be very nice in the waiting room of a funeral parlor.



Damaso’s curry goat comes with plantains, cabbage, and about a square meter of dirty rice. It’s delicious. I don’t see any codfish on my plate but soon realize it’s cooked into the callaloo. I’d thought callaloo was the name of a particular green, a la kale or collards, but the word can refer to any greens mixed up into a soup or soupy mush, usually with seafood. It’s tasty, and it comes with the world’s densest starchy sides—a boiled green banana and a saucer-shaped dough rock, presumably the dumpling. We both cover our food in hot sauce and eat till we’re stuffed.





The Roots Man Drink may defy my descriptive powers. Let me try: blech! Remember those exclamations in the middle of the Batman TV show fights? That’s what it feels like hitting my tongue. The fascinating label (which looks like the back of a label but then has no front) features a long list of ingredients, including strong back, chew stick, poor-man-friend, man-back, blood wisp, and raw moon bush, but I detect not-so-subtle notes of blood, aspirin, and whatever that cough syrup was called that advertised that it must work because it tasted so bad. I can hardly drink it, but I keep trying because it cost $6! Maybe it’s an acquired taste, and I’m determined to acquire it by the end of the bottle. Some sips are okay, but then the aftertaste sucker punches you in the umami. Damaso lets me wash it down with some of his water.









While we’re eating, another patron enters and asks whether they have an ATM. They don’t, but the Citibank is directly across the street. Instead of crossing the street, she starts counting her cash and trying to figure out what she can get without backtracking. When she pours out her change to complete her bill, Damaso gives her a dollar. Neither of us buy $2 videos from the kid who strides in to vend, so he says he might have to head into Manhattan to unload them. Manhattan seems to be a long way away.

Before we leave, I return to the counter to load up on take-out baked goods. From the Royal Caribbean Bakery products (tag line: “mmm… Jamaican Me Hungry!”), I choose a Jackass Corn Coconut Biscuit and a Round Spice Bun. Obviously I pick the former because it says jackass, and I pick the latter because it seems so superfluous to label it “round,” when it’s clearly round. I also get two non-packaged homemade treats: one looks like a snowball with a red splotch on it and the other resembles peanut brittle. They both turn out to be cloyingly sweet coconut pastries, but the biscuits are delicious—spicy, dry, and not-to-sweet—they were perfect with tea.

The weather is crisp but gorgeous, and neither of us are in any hurry. A sign for $9 wigs lures me into a giant going-out-of-business sale. They don’t have the wig I want (platinum bob), but I keep wandering through the racks of stockings, hats, sandals, and clothes, convinced that I must need something. The store occupies an entire block, and we exit onto a pedestrian mall on the opposite side from where we entered. There seems to be a Rainbow store on each block. I don’t know that I’ve ever bought anything at Rainbow, but I like the brand because they always feature big-bootied mannequin bottoms outside the stores. I used to get upset when I couldn’t find clothes that fit me at the Gap until I stopped shopping at white people stores. Eventually I stopped shopping retail almost entirely (in favor of thrift stores, which offer fewer options to paralyze me), but I still get lured by the displays of $5 tank tops and $10 dresses.

Meanwhile Damaso is fascinated by all the stores offering massive discounts on coats, including buy one, get one free deals leather jackets and North Face parkas. Usually I'm the tourist, and he's all business, but this is the first time he wants to linger in the neighborhood as much as I do. At one point, he stops to take a photograph, and I keep walking. As soon as we’re separated, the world changes. Three different men talk to me within a block—nothing threatening, just making conversation, complimenting my smile, my hat, whatever comes to mind. When Damaso returns to my side I become invisible again.

It’s bittersweet knowing this will be our last trip before he moves to Barcelona. In this project, as in so many things, he has called my self-bluff, getting me to stop talking and start doing. Of course, if you're reading this, I've found some way to show these, but from my perspective right now, I’m finishing writing up this tenth trip before I’ve begun creating the means to publish the report from the first one. Now, though, I have the deadline of debt: Damaso’s put work into this project, so I’ve become responsible to him to make it happen. On to the next step, and I’m looking forward to his next visit home in July. That’ll be the perfect time to explore Coney Island, the Rockaway Beach shuttle, and plenty of ends to other lines.

Photographs by Damaso Reyes

M: Middle Village, Metropolitan Ave., Queens

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Yesterday kids were playing basketball outdoors in t-shirts and shorts, but today February returned with a vengeance, the wind biting fiercely into any inch of exposed flesh. As this was only our second excursion, I wanted to go as far as possible, to head to the southern reaches of Brooklyn or the northern limits of the Bronx, but Damaso was already hungry and cold and suggested one of the mid-city termini, the G to Church Avenue or Court Square perhaps. We squinted at The Map debating how far we could journey before starvation and hypothermia would cripple our Shackleton expedition, and The Map gave us our compromise: the M train was perfect. The line isn’t too long, so we could get to the end before wasting away from hunger, but no other lines end near it, so my obsessive need to push boundaries would be sated. We set off to take the M train to Middle Village, Metropolitan Avenue—the end of the line.

Not too long later, we were walking towards the yellow metal bumpers that waited to send the train back whence it came. A giant Toys R Us and K-Mart building looms over the station, and a Lutheran cemetery stretches endlessly in front of it. Train behind us, big box retailer to our left, and cemetery in front made it easy to decide to turn right, where we found two pizza shops flanking a bar… and that’s it. It didn’t look like there was another business for miles around, and the wind through the cemetery was brutal, so we quickly turned in to what was apparently our only sit-down choice, P. J. Quinn’s Bar & Grill.

As soon as we walked in, we realize this isn’t what we had in mind. Almost every bar stool is occupied, but the tables all yawn empty, and the strange, odd smell that hits us upon entry does not pique our appetites. It’s 6pm on a Saturday, but the bartender is nonplussed when I ask whether they’re serving food and assures me this is a bar not a restaurant. Is it my imagination, or are the other patrons laughing at my ignorance? We defend our mistake, pointing out that the sign outside announces a bar and grill, but the bartender just shrugs and says it’s an old sign. “Anyway,” she adds, “Bar & grill sounds better.”





Conversation on the bar stools closest to the front door has stopped for our interruption, so we take advantage of the attention to ask where the nearest restaurant is. Again, we’re stared at as people wonder at our clear obliviousness; there is a pizza counter just next door. We explain that we’re looking for a sit-down restaurant, and someone points out that we can get slices to go and return to the bar to wash them down with some beer. Other options are an Arby’s “pretty far” to the right, a Chinese place past the Toys R Us to our left, and a different pizza place with a sit-down Italian restaurant in back that’s the crowd agrees is pretty good: “Just keep walking,” they tell us. “Walk pass the K-Mart, the Toys R Us, and the BJ’s, and you’ll see it.”

 We leave, but the strong wind makes it hard even to push open the heavy wooden bar door.

We make it back to the subway station, perhaps all of 20 feet, which feels like a heroic effort. In front of us we see only the cemetery and the chain stores, and I know Damaso is already regretting not staying in the bar for a beer. We abandon plans. Hey, it’s not really about the food, right? Flexibility is a virtue in adversity, and the bar offers us the chance to talk with the denizens of Middle Village, which (although consciously I realize I’m conflating it with Tolkien’s Middle Earth) still sounds magical and mysterious to my subconscious associations.

We turn in to Metro Deli & Pizza, and although it offers only standard deli fare, we’re both seized with options analysis paralysis and wander aimlessly around touching bags of chips and gazing at tuna salad mounds in the display cabinet. Finally I notice the names of the specialty sandwiches, and while I don’t believe in signs, I do believe in themes. We order the MTA (pastrami, corned beef, and provolone) and the NYPD (roast beef and salami) and ask for them hot. While our sandwiches are being prepared, we grab one bag of childhood comfort in the form of original Bugles and one bag of Middle Village exotica labeled “Jalapeño Trio Smart Fries.” The cashier offers us two free cans of soda with our meals.

 
 

The bar patrons are delighted to see us return, and we’re delighted to be in America, where bar patrons talk to strangers. (Damaso's been living in Europe, where he says they don't.) P.J. Quinn’s doesn’t have anything on tap, so Damaso makes the bartender name every beer they have in bottles but then asks for a Guinness, which she hasn’t named and they don’t have although they do have a prominent illuminated Guinness clock. Eventually he orders a vodka and cranberry, and I order a cranberry and soda. Our drinks come in tiny crystal stem glasses, and we unwrap our sandwiches on the bar to dig in.
 

Except for their proximity to the arctic blasts from the occasional times the front door opens, our corner seats are the best in the joint. To our right, a middle-aged couple appears to be putting money into a large computer monitor. They notice me watching them and explain it’s a game showing them two almost identical pictures, and they have to spot all the differences. Sure, like in Highlights.

They ask us where we’re from, and we both say we live in Brooklyn, “But where are you originally from?” they insist, focusing on Damaso, who assures them he was born and raised here. They’re getting tipsy, and their voices grow louder as they insist that he doesn’t have a Brooklyn accent and that even if he were born there, he must have grown up some place else. He doesn’t have a Brooklyn accent, but neither does he have any other discernible accent, and I can’t help but wonder whether the insistence on his foreignness isn’t covering for something else—he’s the only person of color in the bar. Is a dreadlocked black man an exotic foreigner in this white, middle class part of Queens?

I ask where they think he’s from, and they say he talks like he’s from the Midwest. I say that’s me as I grew up in Chicago, and the man of the couple tells me that although his mother was raised in the Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn neighborhoods near where I live now, he grew up in Michigan.
 

In front of us behind the bar is a cage full of bingo balls, and to our left stretches the line of bar stools. The seat immediately to my left is empty, and the older man on the next stool also gives in to his curiosity. It’s too loud for him to have heard what we told the first couple. “Where are you from,” he asks, in a throaty rasp that I can barely make out over the loud music, “do you live around here?” He eyes me up and down before asking his follow-up question, “You aren’t a Yankees fan, are you?” I eye him up and down too. While we’re talking he pulls on a NY Mets jacket over his NY Mets sweatshirt. He’s also wearing a NY Mets baseball cap.
 
“Nope,” I assure him. “I grew up in Chicago and then lived 10 years in Boston. I’ve been carefully trained my whole life to hate all NY sports teams.”

He nods slowly and thoughtfully before signaling his grudging acceptance, “just so long as you’re not a Yankees fan.”

Above the bar, three televisions play three different channels without closed captioning. Behind us in the vacant main area is a pool table with red felt, and along the back wall is an Internet juke box (My Touch Tunes) and some video game called Broadway. Nobody touches them.

 The bartender, Eileen, keeps coming back to our side of the bar. I thought she was curious about us, but it turns out that she is friends with the couple. Eileen and Vicky worked together at the NY Stock Exchange for 20 years, before Eileen was laid off four and a half years ago and returned to tend the bar she’d worked at two decades earlier. Vicky still works at the stock exchange, so I ask whether she has any thoughts on the Deutsche burse-NYSE merger announced yesterday. She rolls her eyes and says, oh yes, she has thoughts about it, but she can’t say what they are while she still works there.

We ask Eileen how the bar has changed over the years, and she describes how crowded it used to get with heavy-drinking, high-spending stock traders. Before last year’s MTA cuts, the M was a straight shot to the financial district, and the bar was a regular haunt for commuters returning from Wall Street. We’re not the only ones who want to enter the first place they see after getting out of the subway. As Wall Street’s been hit, the bar has had fewer and fewer patrons, and the ones who are left spend less. Vicky’s husband Jim was also laid off from his job as an equities trader and has been out of work for 14 months.

Damaso’s photo taking doesn’t raise any eyebrows, but my note taking does. Vicky asks me what I’m writing down, and we tell them about our project. They say we should do a story on how the recession has affected New Yorkers in each neighborhood we visit. They’re worried about Eileen and about themselves. Vicky feels trapped in an organization that prizes youth and wants the longest-tenured workers out. I ask why she doesn’t leave, and she looks at me with pity for my naïveté. “There aren’t any jobs out there,” she explains sadly. “There aren’t any jobs for someone like me.”

The sandwiches are fine, uninspiring. The Bugles are smaller than I remember from the boxes I used to tear through as a kid. I try to make a full set of Bugle fingernails, but they crack and break off my fat fingers. The Smart Fries are puffed and fakey without much taste. Damaso’s drink is strong, but my thimble of soda leaves me thirsty. We order another round. When Damaso asks the bartender when she got the rose tattooed on her chest, she proudly puffs her cleavage and asks whether he’d like to take a photo of it. She’s a far cry from the Dominican waitress in Inwood who was so camera-shy she almost ran away.



By now the raspy Mets fan has limped out on what appears to be a prosthetic leg. What is his story? I probably should have tried to draw him out more, but it was so hard to understand him over Eileen singing along to Guns N Roses. At least I found out he used to work in sanitation in Coney Island, but that doesn’t even hint at what happened to his throat or his leg.

As everyone who remains grows more comfortable talking to one another, the conversation gets more personal and more heated if also more scattered. In an argument I never quite understand, Jim blames government regulation for the financial collapse, “because the government didn’t stop the banks from cheating.” I point out that his argument seems to blame the lack of regulation, and he says it doesn’t matter how many laws you have if you can’t enforce them. Vicky tells us about her hard childhood and how she’s spent the last six years taking care of her cancer-ridden mother. Jim tells me he hates the Cubs and how the mid-70s Cincinnati Reds were the greatest team of all time. He’s wearing a Red cap. Damaso says he likes the Cyclones. Jim and Vicky lament the lack of local restaurants and say the few times they eat out, they want to support local businesses but that it’s hard without options. It’s a family neighborhood, so an Applebee’s would be do very well they bet and would be a great addition to the area. Again I don’t understand how eating at Applebee’s would support local business, but apparently my sobriety makes me dense, as I’m unable to follow many of the conversation's threads.

When Eileen’s shift ends, we close out our tabs, and she joins us on the civilian side of the bar for a vodka and Coke. “Nobody drinks that,” I point out foolishly and of course incorrectly. She flits in and out of the bar, smoking in the cold and then chatting with the regulars inside. We don’t have any excuse to stay, and eventually we can’t put off our exit any longer. We thank Jim and Vicky for our introduction to Middle Village and head back into the cold. It was a very interesting night, but I’m still hungry.

 Photos by Damaso Reyes.