BAY RIDGE

"Bay Ridge ain't the worst part of Brooklyn. I mean, you know, it ain't like a hellhole or nothing."

                                                                 

                                               Tony Manero - Saturday Night Fever

No, Bay Ridge is not a hellhole - not even close. It's a sort of insulated middle-class community at the bottom left hand side of Brooklyn. Bay Ridge is a quiet place to live, in part because it's transportation challenged. The only subway for Bay Ridge is the R-train. There are also buses - an express bus to Manhattan - and cabs. Lack of transportation keeps it from being a favorite place to live in Brooklyn and therefore less crowded and cleaner.

If you were listening, Bay Ridge had a moment in the spotlight in the movie Saturday Night Fever. Most people who don't live in Brooklyn aren't really aware of the neighborhoods until they attempt to move there. I wasn't living in Brooklyn when I saw the movie and the reference flew right over my head.

by CoutZ

The movie was based on a story in New York magazine published in 1976. The article reads like a movie treatment -- same characters, same names, sames action.

The New York magazine article is here: http://nymag.com/nightlife/features/45933/

A lot of what was written in the article has been retracted, but still, it's interesting to read because it is a vignette of a time long gone. For example, they still named the dances in the movie - The Walk, the Hustle, the Bus Stop - all that is gone along with the 2001 Odyssey Club. The house at 221 - 79th St. where Tony Manero lived in the movie is still there, although remodeled. At the opening of the movie, Tony buys a slice from Lenny's Pizza (1969 - 86th Street) and that pizzeria is still thriving. The bridge they fooled around on - and the suicide jump - was the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island.

You can see more about Saturday Night Fever here:

http://www.bensonhurstbean.com/2015/11/who-was-tony-manero-the-true-fake-story-behind-saturday-night-fever/

Commissioner Reagan's house in Blue Bloods is on Harbor View Road between 80th and 82nd Street. I guess they might shoot exterior scenes in Bay Ridge, but from what I've seen they stick closer to the Old Navy Yard.

The Italian domination of the neighborhood is gone. Bay Ridge has a large Middle Eastern population now as well as immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia. The restaurants along 86th Street are now more diverse making Bay Ridge an interesting place to eat out.

A friend of mine moved from the West Village in Manhattan to Bay Ridge. She sold her two-room (three, I guess, counting the bathroom) basement apartment with half-windows covered in bars that gave her a view of people's feet and calves. She bought a three bedroom condo in Bay Ridge with a break-your-heart view of the New York Harbor and the Verazzano-Narrows Bridge and had money left over. One night we were sitting in her living room and a cruise ship passed by, filling the enormous front window. It was amazing.

Photo by Jim Henderson

Post by Alana Cash

MUSIC IN THE SUBWAY

I moved to Brooklyn from Austin, Texas, where there are at least 150 live music venues not even including small coffee shops, cafe brunches, and live-music dancing at grocery stores on weekends. A lot of it is free with the meal (or the grocery shopping). I never saw anyone playing on the street. It just wasn't necessary.

New York isn't really a city with available music. There are famous clubs - Birdland, Cafe Wha?, Blue Note, Smoke - but they aren't cheap, not remotely. You have to buy your tickets in advance and

the shows are an hour long usually and then you are expected to leave to make room for the audience at the second show. There are a couple of accessible places in Brooklyn, but this blog is about subway music, which I consider the best New York City music venue.

I just finished reading Underground by Matthew Nichols about the five years he spent as a subway busker. Taken from diaries he kept, the book is a raw, passionate view of the life of an artist and an interior view of the mind of a musician. Anyone who's experienced the struggle of trying to make a living as a musician, painter, dancer, actor, writer, potter, can relate to Nichols' story. There's the passion for his art form which is what keeps him going amidst the frustrations of dealing with and competing with other musicians, the mood swings from elation to despair, the money shortage, and the hassles from the police (You aren't supposed to use an amp in the subway stations, but how else will anyone hear above the din of the trains and people?).

It's an amazing book because not only do you get a sense of Nichols' life, you get to see what the subway is like for the commuters, which is far different from the tourists who are only around for a week or so and miss a lot of the drama. Be prepared for strong emotion - particularly toward commuters who listen for a long time and don't put money in the hat - and strong language, which you're used to if you ride the trains, but might not be so common in other towns. And the book is not politically correct either.

The stations I most frequented in Manhattan were Canal Street and Union Square. There was an Asian man who used to play the ehru really well on the 4-5-6 platform (upstairs from the Q and N platform where I caught the train). Nichols lets you know he hates the sound of the ehru, but I like it for a couple of reasons. First, my acupuncturist used to play ehru music while I was zoning out, and second, a study of music and it's effects showed that ehru music is the most relaxing to the human body. Classical music is next - that's what Nichols plays on his guitar.

Union Square had a lot more variety. There's the main "stage" on the first level. Musicians have to be approved to play there and can use amps. I listened to Peruvian flutists there for an hour once. I also danced salsa in that station last Christmas to the music of some Spanish musicians. They clapped for us. I've heard country western, jazz and, somebody please explain why, a woman playing the saw. Perhaps if there was some accompaniment, some rhythm or even someone playing the kazoo. But a saw? It's like a weird smell.

Other musicians are on the lower (train) levels. They don't have to be approved, but they aren't allowed to amplify the music. There were people playing drums sometimes. They used overturned plastic tubs and if you tip them up a little they amplify quite a lot. These drummers were always great. There were folk guitarist/singers, steel drum player, and occasionally, doowop singers. I also found sax players at the Broadway-Lafayette Station on the B-train track in Manhattan and at the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn.

Nichols writes about the musicians who played on the trains. This is against the law. You can't even play a radio on the trains. But it happens and as Nichols writes, some of the players knew one song and played that song badly. It was pathetic and annoying. Sometimes on the weekends, you'd get a 3-piece mariachi band on the train - usually good. And sometimes there were male pole dancers with  boomboxes. Crank up the music and they were tumbling down the aisles and swinging around the poles. Obviously, this was not at rush hour.

I was once invited to a private concert that would be performed by a very A-List musician. There was a sort of gathering before the concert and when I entered that, I recognized the room was filled with musicians. I can't say how I could tell, but it's something there in the body language, the appearance, something. These were the working studio musicians, the influencers in their field. The musicians who were invited to play, not begging to play. No more hat in hand for them. How they made it and not someone else is the book waiting to be written. Was that body language and appearance there before or after they became successful?

Matthew Nichols website here:  http://www.matthewnichols.com/

You can find Underground online, and Nichols has a YouTube video interview here:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=matthew+nichols%2C+underground&t=ffab&ia=videos&iai=gRZlec1ZNNo

ATTENDING A GAME AT YANKEE STADIUM

It was on Craigslist under the free section where I was looking for bubblewrap. The title of the ad read: Free Ticket to Yankees Game Tonight. I thought it might be a trick or some kind of spam to collect email addresses, because it's hard to understand why someone would give away a Yankee's ticket to a stranger. I took a chance and sent off an email. I got a quick reply with a name, Sol, and a phone number to call which happened to be a business in Brooklyn. We talked for a short while until I became comfortable that this wasn't a scam and he told me I could pick up the ticket at Yankee Stadium "will call." 

 It's not hard to get to Yankee stadium on the B-train, but it's a long trip. I had to leave right away.

I'd never been to a Yankees game, and to be candid, I figured the stadium was pretty much all I'd see. I'd sat in the high mezzanine section at a couple of Mets games and I could see so little.  It was like watching the game from the window of an airplane - that is, when I could see anything of the ball field since people were constantly getting up for snacks or whatever and blocking the view. [Again I will tout the Coney Island Cyclones games where every seat has a perfect view and the stadium is on the beach].

Anyway, this is how it worked out. I got the ticket and followed the number system around the stadium to find the gate number that was printed on my ticket. I walked down a ramp and I was stopped by an usher who looked at the ticket and showed me to the seat. I was six rows from the field, right behind the dugout. The players were right there. I had a very expensive field seat. And all around were loads of empty ones. A waitress came by and asked if I wanted to order anything - my hotdog was delivered to me. It was amazing.

I sat next to Sol, the man who gave me the ticket, and he explained that his usual baseball buddies were away, but they'd be coming back and he just thought it would be fun to give away such great tickets (he had 4 and only used his own). The other two seats were taken by teenagers that he knew.

The game wasn't terribly exciting - no stealing home, grand slams or fights - I don't remember much about it. I was too amazed at sitting close enough to hear the players talking and watch them warm up in the batter's circle. And it was nice to look around The Cathedral of Baseball. Although, I'm not sure why they had to build a new stadium - it has less seats than the old one and was designed to look the same. And it cost the New York taxpayers about a $1,000,000,000. 

Old Yankee Stadium

New Yankee Stadium

Seems to me the Yankees make enough money from the sales of their tickets and gear - besides the stadium shops and online, they've got five stores in Manhattan - to pay for their own stadium. But in New York, sports teams can make the front page of The Post or the Daily News and the Yankees have the best PR of any sports team in the country so maybe it was about tourism.

Anyway, that's the only Yankee's game I ever attended, and I don't see how I could top it. Field seats are not for sale generally. They are purchased year after year by the same people or businesses. I went back to watching baseball on TV which I prefer since you get to see the best plays in slow-motion instant-replay a few times.

But the evening ended on an up-note. Since he lived in Brooklyn, Sol gave me a ride home.

Tearing down Old Yankee Stadium

MY FIRST BIKE ACCIDENT AND ROCKAWAY BEACH

Photo by Jim Henderson

You’d think given all the huge potholes and lumps in the streets of New York and the mad driving habits, especially the vans for the handicapped who didn’t hesitate to pull quickly in front of me and slam on their brakes, that I’d have had a bike accident in the street.  But no, I never did. I did meet a fellow who rode 20 miles to work and back and 60 miles on weekends who said he was hit by a car at least once a year.  Probably made some extra income that way.  I have only been hit by a car once on the bike and that was in Los Angeles. 

My first, and worst ever bike accident happened one weekend when my landlord and I took the bikes out to Rockaway Beach on the A-train. Rockaway is a long, skinny peninsula that juts out from Queens down toward Brighton Beach.  There’s a lot of carrying the bike up and down stairs for the subway and you’re supposed to have a license of some kind.  I didn’t know how to get one and I figure that might be the least of the worries of a Transit Cop on a Sunday morning. 

The train doesn’t go very far onto Rockaway, so you have to ride the bike down Rockaway Beach Blvd. and then choose one of the numbered Beach Streets to get to the shore.  The beach at that part of Rockaway is undeveloped – lots of dunes and beach grass – and has a low population of swimmers and sunbathers, but it’s the only place in New York for surfing. 

After wandering the beach looking for shells and sea treasure for an hour or so, I was ready to move on and I convinced my landlord it was time to go.  We rode down to the Gil Hodges Bridge (aka Marine Parkway Bridge) which connects Rockaway with Brooklyn near Floyd Bennett Field.  I got on the pedestrian/bicycle section of the bridge and that’s when things started to go wrong.

I got caught behind a group of lollygagging people.  My landlord zoomed over to Brooklyn and was long out of sight when I finally got past the group.  The pedestrian/bike bridge has horizontal steel bars on the side and while I was pedaling hard to catch up to my landlord, I must have veered a little and the handlebars of the bike entered between two of those bars slamming the bike to a stop, and I flew off.  But not totally.  My right hand caught between the handlebars and the brake and when I went off the bike my hand carried the bike around so that it slammed into me as lay sitting against the bars.  The crash of the bike caused a few hotspots down my right leg that would show up later as 5” bruises.  And, along with that, I felt a massive sprain from my wrist to the shoulder.  Yeah.  That was a painful twisting fall.  .

Okay, so I’m out in the middle of the bridge and I had to get up and get home.  I suppose someone might have called an ambulance and gotten me carted off for x-rays and drugs, but I had to find my landlord.  Some folks helped me up and I got on my way, my right arm dangling because moving it made me want to scream

My landlord was not waiting at the end of the bridge, so I followed a pathway at the side of Flatbush Avenue (that’s where it ends, or maybe where it begins) until it came close to the beach.  And that’s where my landlord was parked.  I told him about the bike accident, but he didn’t take it seriously maybe because his mind was elsewhere. 

I followed his line of sight and saw that he was watching two people having sex about fifteen feet away.  They weren’t nude, but all the strings of their bathing wear were untied and they were … never mind… it was all very clear.  The beach wasn’t jammed but it was definitely populated with kids and adults.  The couple looked to be in their 30s.  They surely had other choices of locale for their activities, but I assumed this was a stimulus, a bit of rebellion, some exhibitionism for a relationship that had gone stale. 

At any rate, my arm was draining me and I said I was heading home.  I carried my bike in my left arm up the subway stairs one at a time and was more than happy when I finally got home and got some ice on my wounds. 

It was a week before I could take stairs in a regular manner or use my right hand to type.  And I never went out to Rockaway again.

THE POLISH CONNECTION - THE SCENT OF BRUTAL

Photo by Cancre

My landlord in Brooklyn was from Poland.  When he was a child, his father was arrested as a political  prisoner and murdered at Auschwitz. When I moved into the house on Ocean Avenue, my landlord was employed as an architect which was interesting for me because I love buildings and the stories that buildings tell about a place. 

He liked me because I had been to Warsaw while I was making the Marie Curie documentary (she was born and raised in Warsaw).  I talked to him about that trip.  To get there, I drove with my son from Berlin in a rental car.  The highway to Warsaw cut through a forest so thick you could only see about fifteen or twenty feet into it.  It made me think about fairy tales and stories of woodsmen.  The highway was only two lanes - one in each direction -  and cars passed in the center between them willy-nilly which was very scary.  Also got pulled over by the police for something, which was also scary.  I didn’t know what I had done wrong because I didn’t speak a word of Polish and they didn’t speak any English.  I just held out a wad of German marks, they took whatever they wanted, gave me something that looked like stamps, and I drove away.  We stopped for lunch at a MacDonald’s in Poznan because I knew what to expect on the menu even if I couldn’t read it..  I noted that every person in the restaurant, except us, had blond hair and blue eyes.  In Warsaw we went to a buffet in the hotel and they served cow’s lung soup at a buffet.  Of course I tried it.  It had a texture like boiled chicken liver and made me think that Communist countries didn’t waste anything and had a low carbon footprint.  Anyway, I’m too far from Brooklyn and so I’ll return.

My landlord loved a bargain and me too.  So when he invited me to bike over to a little Polish neighborhood in South Park Slope to grocery shop, I readily agreed.  It was just a few shops really – a couple of produce stores, a few deli-bakeries that also sold packaged goods and a butcher on one side.  Across the street, was a small Polish supermarket and some Indian stores selling shawls, spices and Indian foods. The ethnic stores in Brooklyn had their signs in their own language, in this case Polish and Hindi, as well as English. 

I will digress, again, to point out, again, that I have never found cheaper produce anywhere than in New York City.  Not in California where they grow a plethora of fruits and vegetables.  Not in Texas where they grow lettuce, greens, and citrus fruits.  Nowhere else.  At Christmastime in New York, I was able to buy a pint of blueberries for 50 cents. 

Okay, so my landlord and I went into this little deli-bakery.  My landlord ordered his sliced meats and bakery goods and then stood chatting in Polish with a blond blue-eyed woman.  I finished ordering ham and some rolls and I wandered around (a few steps at most because it was a tiny place) and found myself looking at a 4-layerl shelving unit – 12” x 12” – with cosmetic products.  And one of the items was a man’s cologne and the name of it …..BRUTAL.

I picked it up and asked one of the clerks if she knew what the word brutal meant.  She did.  I asked if this might be a mistranslation (because I’d seen some odd translations in New York.  For example a Chinese product claimed to be more cardigan.  And I figured they confused sweeter with sweater and came up with more cardigan to mean more sweeter.  And I once saw a package of black sesame seeds in Chinatown labeled as Black Sesame Sperm.  Although I suppose that isn’t really a mistranslation, just not a very appetizing one.

At any rate, the Polish clerk told me, “No.  That’s the correct translation.”

So.  Brutal cologne.  A Polish specialty.  What does it smell like?  Sweat and iron filings?  And who wears it?  Don’t think about that too much.  Think about this – who would be attracted to a man wearing that scent?

I never found out.

My landlord and I finished our shopping at the little supermarket across the street and went home. 

 

Post by Alana Cash

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

Never give in.  Never give in.  Never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. 

                                                                                   -Winston Churchill

She stands magnificent on her own island in the middle of New York Harbor.  And she is awe-inspiring.  I could see her from the windows of the train as I crossed over the Manhattan Bridge going to and from Brooklyn and Manhattan.  And for the first year I lived in New York, I stood and walked to the door, if there was room, to get a better view of her.

There are a lot of places in the City where you can view the Statue of Liberty – from buildings in the Wall Street District, from Battery Park in South Manhattan, from the Promenade or a hill in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, from Staten Island shore, from the top of Rockefeller Center, from the bridges –  Verrazon-Narrows Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge – from a hot air balloon.  You can take a boat and tour Liberty Island, crawl up inside the statue and look out through her crown.  I never wanted to do that, because she was more real to me, more alive, from the audience than backstage.  And my favorite view was traveling past her on the Staten Island Ferry.

Who is she?  305 feet tall, made of iron, steel, and copper that oxidizes green, she gets struck by lightening several times a year,   The official rhetoric is that the Statue of Liberty was a friendship gift from the French government to the United States government, but that is not really the truth and the truth is so much more meaningful.

The Statue of Liberty was created by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi who originally offered her to Egypt to stand as a lighthouse at the Suez Canal.  Bartholdi designed her as a Nubian slave girl of ancient Egypt (I appointed slaves as watchmen in thy harbour…Ramses III donation to the Temple of Re) and dressed her like a Bedouin wearing sandals.  When the Egyptian government declined his offer, Bartholdi then turned to the U.S.  It took fifteen years – imagine his passion – for him to raise the funds through donations from the French and the American people to manufacture his statue, our statue, our Nubian slave Statue of Liberty.  There is some irony here.

She represents something enormous, and I suppose each person has to decide what that is.  Liberty?  It seems a lot of us are captive to social pressure or criticism or the need to work at an unfulfilling job.  Or we are shackled with worry about finances or health issues or the meteor that is supposedly going to fracture the earth into pieces.   

For me, she represents dignity and strength in the face of all that.  Boldly holding that torch, look here, don’t give in to your fear or to the fear of others!  Don’t give in to fear and hatred.  Never give in except to honor and good sense. And find that honor and good sense inside yourself.  And PS:  It’s not always easy.

Post by Alana Cash

RACE RELATIONS ON THE Q TRAIN

This is a true story that happened on a Saturday afternoon when I was taking the Q-train from Chinatown into Brooklyn  The seats on this particular train were 2-seaters at a 90-degree angle to the wall, then a 3-seat bench against the wall, another 2-seater, etc. 

I entered the car and took a seat at the end of a 3-seat bench and there were two white women in their 50s in the two-seater next to me.  For the sake of clarity, I name them Tara and Colleen   They look annoyed, especially Colleen.  Behind them in the same 2-seater were two black girls about 5 and 6 years old.  I name them Lily and Jasmine.  On the bench-seat next to those little girls was a very large black woman. I name her Sherry.

As I sat down, Sherry was making loud moaning sounds, “Ooooh.  Oooooh.  Ooooh.”

I’d lived in New York a while by this time and seen people dancing on the subway, groping themselves on the subway, sleeping (a lot) on the subway and puking on the subway.  I once approached an MTA worker in uniform who was standing in the train car, and told him I thought the man I’d been sitting next to might be dead.  He said, “I can’t get involved in that.  I’ll be late to work.”  I had been threatened with being punched by a man who wanted to read his newspaper, and therefore I should not take the only seat next to him.  I had literally been pushed off a seat by a deranged man talking to himself through his fingers who wanted to sit alone.  We all let him do that.  I’d sat next to a large man wearing a yarmulke and reading a Hebrew text who tried to push me off the seat with his hips and I almost fell, but I am not to be bullied and turned to sit with my back against him.  I’d been on trains that smelled massively of body odor.  I was used to being ignored by the people in the booths at train stations while they chatted with each other.  The subway has its own drama and you get used to it.

And so at first I paid no particular attention, but as I listened to Sherry moaning, I saw that Lily and Jasmine were looking confused and a little frightened.  I heard Colleen throw a remark over her shoulder, “You should teach them to behave,” which set Sherry to moaning even louder and rocking on the seat

Sherry said, “It’s not a racial thing.  It’s not about race.”  She looked at a man across the aisle and said, “It’s not about race is it?”  He shakes his head, no.  What else can he do?

I asked Colleen quietly, “What’s going on?”

Colleen told me that she and Tara were already in their seats when the little girls got on the train with their mother and took the seat behind Tara and Colleen.  The girls kneeled on the seat facing toward Tara and Colleen.  As the train was lurching at the next stop the girls’ arms banged over the seat into Colleen and Tara.  Colleen turned and told them to sit down and that got Sherry involved defending them.

Colleen had not been speaking quietly, because I’m pretty sure she wanted to continue to make her point to Sherry and everyone else that she had the right to a peaceful ride on the subway without being knocked, however gently, by another person’s children. 

Colleen said loudly, “I don’t suffer from white guilt and I’m not going to put up with rudeness.”

I understood now, why Sherry has been declaring that it’s not a race thing.

Sherry has heard Colleen talking to me, and she spoke up to say plaintively, “I’m just taking my nieces to Coney Island.”  Then, “Oooh, oooh.  It’s not a black white thing.”

My stop was next and I got up and went to the door.

Colleen said in a loud voice over her shoulder to Sherry, “See she is leaving because you are making a scene.”

Aw man. 

I looked at Sherry, a severely overweight woman who was just wrung out.  She was making a special trip with her nieces to the beach to show them a nice time and it’s gotten messed up.  This wasn’t just for today though.  This was at the end of a long line of Sherry trying to find out what the right thing is and doing it.  And now she’s failed again.  And will someone please tell her how to get it right.  Live right, do right so everybody around her is happy.  She was not even angry.  She was really sad.  And she just wanted this day to go well.  Just something to go right.  Some way to express the love and tenderness she felt for her nieces behind all her fears and stress.  . 

I looked at Colleen also overweight, but not so much.  Her intention wasn’t to trigger all this pain.  She has her own.  Just like Sherry, she’s wanted things that she didn’t know how to accomplish and now she’s lost her value in this culture – her youth.  Whatever little power she ever had in this world is slipping away and she is becoming invisible.  No one marches for her.  No one protests for her.  No one declares in the news that she is important and that her life matters.  She just wanted to ride the subway in peace and not have all her needs and sense of loss stirred up.

I said to Colleen, “Do not speak for me.”  And I left the train.

That’s the end of the scenario.  But still I think, that if they really looked at each other they would either have started laughing or crying and all that tension would dissipate.  They’d be right there on the subway in a little community of humanity until one of them had to get off at a stop. 

Be kind.  And don’t take someone else’s projection onto you so seriously.  Be kind.  Be helpful.  Be generous with your spirit.  Laugh and cry.

SAN GENNARO FESTIVAL, LITTLE ITALY - MANHATTAN

It used to extend north and south from Canal Street to Houston Street and east and west from Broadway to the Bowery.  Now the realtors have created “Nolita” (North of Little Italy, meaning north of Broome Street), and Chinatown has expanded north of Canal Street, so Little Italy is shaved down to just a few blocks near the intersection of Mulberry and Hester Streets.  But what blocks these are!

The old tenement architecture with exterior fire escapes has not been replaced, and there’s a reason for that – geology.  At the Wall Street district there’s bedrock under the soil that can sustain large, heavy skyscrapers.  Same with midtown where the Empire State Building is located.  That’s why Manhattan has such a strange skyline – tall buildings, lower buildings, tall buildings again.  So, even though realtors are tearing down tenements in the area between Wall Street and midtown, they can only build those glass and steel structures so high (about 6 stories)..

Anyway, for me, the sidewalk cafes along Mulberry Street are the only place to eat Italian food in Manhattan.  I used to love the old deli Manganero’s in Hell’s Kitchen with its original floors and equipment little booths, and tons of historic pictures on the walls – but it closed when the last generation (of  4) to own it just didn’t want to work there anymore.

I like my own cooking, so pretty much the only reason I eat out is for the service.  For the price of a meal in a chain diner, I could eat lunch at any of a number of sidewalk restaurants on Mulberry and the tables had a white tablecloth and impeccable, friendly service too.  The lunch food was good, not extraordinary, but the desserts always were and it was a great place to rest up and people watch.  Dinners were more pricey, but the food was better.  I recommend Angelo's.  And Umberto's Clam House - no tablecloths, but great clam dishes.

At the corner of Broome and Mulberry Streets is Café Roma.  This was my favorite place to get a cup of tea (not much of a coffee drinker) and have some quiet time in Little Italy.  I’ve only been there in the late afternoon or late evening when it wasn’t crowded.  It has a corner door and old windows that look onto the sidewalk and the old-style one-inch octagon tile and café tables, a high ceiling, lots of wood.  It feels as old as it is and I like it.  Apparently, in the 1970s the Genovese crime family ran a numbers game from this café.  The government took that over, calling it the New York Lottery.

Wimpy Boy's Social Club 247 Mulberry

There are a few interesting historic buildings in Little Italy.  At 247 Mulberry there used to be an Italian social club where John Gotti spent a lot of time.  Note the high windows in the photo - no drive-by shootings for the members of the Wimpy Boy's Social Club.  Since this photo was taken, the brick has been knocked out to make display windows for the new tenant - a high-end shoe store (opens at noon so don’t go there before lunch).   

Farther up Mulberry at Prince Street is the gothic Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral – the original.  Built in 1809, it now holds mass in English,

Spanish and Chinese.  That could be interesting.

Old Police HQ, 240 Center St.

The Old Police Headquarters is at 240 Centre Street (at Grand St.).  Just two blocks west of Mulberry, it’s worth seeing  – a massive beaux-arts building a block long made of solid limestone.  The first time I went there, I thought it was a real police station – it was turned into  lux condominiums – and the doorman directed me to the police station in Chinatown (fyi NYPD headquarters is now at 1 Police Plaza near the Brooklyn Bridge).

When you look at the Old Police Headquarters, you’ll notice that there are bars on the half-windows at street level.  These were for the 75 basement jail cells, and as New York realtors waste no space, these too are probably condos (I was never invited inside).  This gives cause to ponder what it’s like living in that building considering leftover vibes.  

 I once stayed in a Caritas hostel that was a former KGB interrogation building in Prague, Czech Republic.  The nuns hadn’t completely renovated the place, keeping the hard tile floor, and the echo of footsteps that must have put the fear of God into those waiting to be interrogated kept waking me in the night along with the slamming doors.  The basement of that hostel still had the thick, heavy prison doors and little square windows inside the rooms near the ceiling that barely gave a look out onto humanity.  So, I don’t think I’d want to own a condo in a former police station.  Too much to think about.

As you walk along Grand Street from Centre Street back toward Mulberry, you’ll pass the John Jovino Gun Shop which has been located at 183 Grand Street since 1911.  You can’t miss it because it has a big revolver hanging outside over the sidewalk.  It’s a tiny store and they sell mostly to NYPD.  They don’t like strangers browsing around - I know because I went inside to look at all the weapons.  It was weird..

On Grand St. just east of Mulberry is the famous Ferrara Bakery.  People line up to buy coffee and pastry here – long, long waits for a table at certain times and impossible waits during the San Gennaro Festival.  I had ice cream there once late at night before I even moved to Brooklyn.  It was nice, but not something I would wait in line for.    

And then there’s the San Gennaro Festival which is held every year during the week of September 19.  The Church of the Most Precious Blood on Mulberry just south of Grand Street hosts the shrine of San Gennaro and is open long hours during the festival. 

San Gennaro (St. Januaris) was a bishop in Naples, Italy who was beheaded by Diocletian in 305 a.d. and when the body was carried away, a woman mopped up his blood and saved it in two vials.   Not sure why this occurred to her, but the vials were reserved in a vault in Naples and in 1382 a.d. the dried blood liquefied on September 19.  That miracle generated the festival of San Gennaro. 

When a large number Neopolitans moved to Manhattan in the 19^th century, they brought their festivals with them.  The fete days of San Gennaro spilled out from the church onto the sidewalks of Little Italy in 1928 when three men who owned café/bakeries put tables and chairs onto the sidewalk a few days before September 19.  A statue of San Gennaro was carried up and down Mulberry Street and people pinned money to the statue which was intended to be distributed to the poor (or poorer).  The festival has grown from there, and now several blocks of Mulberry Street are blocked off for the festival and filled with all kinds of vendors.  There’s music and strings of lights and loads of people.  It’s free to pass through.

Because it’s well attended and religious, the festival continues in the face of heavy complaints from the residents living in Little Italy and Nolita who are no longer Italian working-class immigrants.  And there has been some criminal activity – at one time members of the Genovese crime family stole the money off the statue.  Really? 

Post by Alana Cash