SIR: St. George, Staten Island

Monday, April 9, 2012




Spring break for the Salisbury (CT) public schools usually means Camp Viveca for my nieces., only this year niece number one turned into a teenager, so she went away with a friend instead of coming to stay with me. Niece number two, who just turned ten (whoo-hoo: double digits!), came anyway, and even though only one of us was officially on vacation, we had a great time.

Eden’s spring break overlapped with the limited time Damaso was back in the city, so we decided she could be the first guest to join us for one of our forays to the end of the line. We even decided to let her choose where we’d go. Well, theoretically she chose; I may have biased her by how I described the options, but in any case all three of us were delighted by the decision to go back to Staten Island to explore the other end of the Staten Island Railway line at St. George.












The catch? The one train that ends at St. George doesn’t get there from anywhere that any of us would be, so we wouldn’t actually take it. The three of us met where I was working near Cooper Square, took the subway down to Bowling Green, and walked to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal just in time to miss a boat. No problem. It was rush hour, and another one came soon enough. I was surprised that Eden wanted to sit “somewhere comfortable” more than she wanted to stand outside and see the sites. She had already been to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty on school field trips, but hey, I’ve seen them too, and I still get a thrill out of watching them from the boat. One funny thing about being with other people, especially kids, is the way you always want to see everything through them. I was disappointed that she didn’t find the boat trip more exciting, but it’s a freaking ferry for crying out loud! I don’t find it that exciting either, so why was I disappointed that she didn’t? It’s not just me, either. Working in the circus business, I frequently hear parents narrating entire shows for kids who are watching the exact same thing, and it’s generally clear that the narration only improves the experience for the adult eager to mediate rather than for the child subjected to the amateur voiceover.





After debarking, we were still in the ferry building when Eden pointed to the Statue of Liberty Deli. Damaso and I nix it immediately. I wanted to explore historic St. George, and it didn’t look particularly hospitable anyway; I’m not sure it even had seating. Eden looked confused, “I thought we had to eat at the first place we saw,” she stated. I may have stopped following the agenda before I even started, but I’m a nut for arbitrary rules, and I was proud of her for wanting to follow them.





We passed through the terminal building and skirted the shoreline, 9-11 monument, and ballpark to get to Richmond Terrace. From the distance, I thought the street would be lined with delicious and quaint places to eat, but up close we didn’t find anything so we cut through a path beside what turns out to be the Richmond County Supreme Court to Stuyvesant Place and spotted the fantastic 1960s-era Lunch Depot, which unfortunately for us may have been shuttered for decades for all we could tell. We turned up Hyatt Street and saw Steiny’s Pub, which proudly proclaimed that it welcomes tourists and regulars. Tourists go to Staten Island? Well, I guess we’re tourists there, so we turned in. I wasn’t convinced yet that we wanted to eat there, but when I asked the waitress where the historic strip was she said, “this is it,” so we stayed.





Maybe if the bar hadn’t been so crowded we would have continued my tradition of taking my rural nieces to inappropriate watering holes, but we got seated at a giant, tall table in the window with a bench around three sides of it. The waitress warned us that they’d only be serving food for another 20 minutes, so we quickly chose from the limited menu. Our decision was made even easier when we found out they were out of pizza and didn’t have anything fried.



Eden, who is an extremely picky eater, asked the waitress whether the chicken noodle soup had anything “extra” in it, and once satisfied that it only had chicken and small pieces of celery and carrot, ordered a bowl. I was relieved and surprised that she was willing to put up with that much vegetable content, but she told me you always get that with chicken noodle soup.

“So what were you worried about?” I asked.

“Sometimes they put in something really weird,” she answered, “you know, like tomatoes.”

I don’t much like tomatoes either, so I had to support her on that one. Now I can start worrying about finding them in chicken noodle soup.









Damaso, who’s been acting all healthy, ordered the chicken garden salad, and I was delighted to see that the day’s special was my former favorite meal: a veggie burger with bacon and cheddar. I didn’t eat meat or poultry from ages 12 through 26, and when I first started eating meat again, I wasn’t quite ready to face a whole slab of hamburger, but I was hungry for all the bacon I could get, so I used to order veggie burgers with bacon all the time, and everyone laughed at me. In Staten Island, however, that’s a special of the day, and it came with cole slaw.

All three meals were disappointing. Damaso’s salad was wilted and boring, and they didn’t have any dressings he liked, and my burger was bland and unsatisfying. Eden liked her soup fine, actually, but she was full after about half a bowl, and since both of us were still hungry, we tried to eat it, but it was bland and oily with mushy, overcooked vegetables. Yuck.







While we ate, Eden charged her iPod touch and played games on it, Damaso charged his camera battery and checked out the Yankees on one television and the Mets on another, and I admired the giant baseball trophy by the bar and grooved to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Eden wasn’t the only kid in the bar either. A boy about her age was eating with his father at the only normally sized table in the joint. They were also the only other people not at the bar watching the game. I think the majority of customers were watching the Mets, although I would have made St. George for Yankees given that the Yankees’ farm team is right there.





We were still hungry after our skimpy and bland meal, but when we asked to see the menus again, our waitress reminded us that the 20 minutes was up and the kitchen was closed. She brought us a bowl of tortilla chips though, and they were the best food we’d had yet, fresh and salty.

We decided to have dessert somewhere else, so we settled up and went back out to explore St. George. One restaurant was open; it looked expensive but not good, and the menu in the glass box outside the front door showed lots of wines but no desserts, so we gave up and walked back to the ferry terminal. After checking out all the available dessert options, we chose the random little deli because it had a countertop display with tiers of giant, beautiful cup cakes. Damaso and I were overwhelmed with delicious options, but Eden said she didn’t like cup cakes. What?! She was, however, excited by something Damaso and I hadn’t even noticed, though: a cooler of MiniMelts, those gummy ice cream pellets, and she carefully selected the perfect package.

Damaso and I made our selections and wanted to order our cup cakes, which by the way might have been the only non-packaged/processed items in the store, but the man behind the counter ignored us because he was busy shouting at the man behind the opposite counter on the other side of the store. Damaso and Eden stood by waiting politely for at least a pause in the stream of what I’m guessing was Urdu invective, but it looked like it might take a while, so I just walked up and said, “We’d like cupcakes please,” which jarred the counterman out of his yelling frenzy enough for him to pay attention to us. Damaso got a red velvet-chocolate cupcake, and I asked for the “seasonal,” which turned out to be… damn I am the worst food journalist ever! I forgot! I think it had Oreos in it. I’ve got to learn to write these as soon as I get home.

In any case, we had dessert on the ferry home. The cup cakes were too sweet to finish, so Damaso and I each took home leftovers, but Eden had no trouble polishing off the MiniMelts. When we got back to Manhattan, our walking route back to the subway took us through the Canyon of Heroes, the section of lower Broadway that ticker tape parades pass through. Embedded in the sidewalks are granite strips with the names and dates of past honorees, many of whom are comically anti-climactic, perhaps like this journey or even this whole idea. Hey, it may not have a snappy moral or a good meal, but I got to ride a ferry and spend decent time with good people. It’s not over. It ain’t exploring if you know what you’ll find, and I’ve got a lot more lines to ride.

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

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