Snake America Ten Years in New York Anniversary Edition - super rare
Snake is a weekly newsletter covering vintage clothing on eBay. Off-topic for this one.
I've been living in New York for 10 years today exactly. I don't know where the time went or how I did it. Here are my favorite places, gone and not gone, in the city.
Louis Valentino, Jr. Pier and Park off Red Hook near Steve's Key Lime Pies, on the corner of Ferris and Van Dyke, Brooklyn: I was having a hard go of it in 2013 and spent a lot of time when I wasn't working on this pier and the abutting park, reading and looking at birds. The pier sticks out at a perfect 45 degree angle not only from the park but from the neighborhood -- from the borough -- and from it you have a good view of the State of Liberty's back, unsightly barges, a floating traffic beacon, the Liberty Warehouse, which has weddings and is by the Fairway, right southeast of the pier, and a short rocky beach west of the park where they give kayak instructions.
I went back a year and a couple years later, when things were going much better, to fish. (I noticed there were always people fishing there when I went during that first run.) I didn't catch anything. But I started getting more into fishing. There are a lot of good places to fish in New York -- off the Belt Parkway, in Prospect Park, in Chinatown. The oldest fishing store in America is on 36th between 7th and Broadway(1). Who would have thought?
I didn't tell anyone about Valentino, Jr. park and pier for a long time. Not because it was some secret -- it's a city park, not a secret -- but because I kept it quiet to start and going there was doing the trick. But it's my favorite place in the city. The park is only 21 years old and is named after a fireman from Brooklyn who died in 1996 in a fire near Brennan & Carr roast beef.
City Sub, 450 Bergen Street, Brooklyn: City Sub, the original, 450 Bergen Street in Brooklyn, lasted until 2014. It was open about 30 years. A comment on its Menupages page left by Terrence in 2010 reads, "15 yrs ago, some friends at work brought me a sub from 'City Sub' and I've been hooked ever since. ... The bread taste good enough to eat by itself." The NYMag capsule review said the sandwiches were good even toasted. You should never get your sandwich toasted. Or with banana peppers. I direct messaged the author and asked him for his order but he never responded. Eighteen on the old menu was Cajun style eye round with pepper jack, and it's 18 on the new menu (they put up a new menu board last week). They used Mazzola Bakery bread, with the sesame seeds. My bodega uses that for their egg sandwiches: I was there once at 6 AM and he couldn't make me a sandwich until the bread came, and when it did it was from there. Who knew? The inside of City Sub had pink walls and the cold cuts were like that Seinfeld episode where Kramer slices everything so thin he can't see the sandwich. If I become half as good at writing after 30 years as City Sub was at making turkey sandwiches then I don't have to worry about my future.
City Sub both had good sandwiches and was frustrating. It was very busy on weekends and the bread ran out fast. The original owner -- no idea his name -- had the store open when he wanted and closed when he wanted. I think the bread thing was an excuse. An old roommate would pit stop driving from Crown Heights to Gowanus every work day for a two-cheese sandwich (a 25), and it would be closed -- this was at noon on a Wednesday. Once he switched it up and went by at 3 on a Sunday and it was closed. I want to say they were regularly closed on Tuesdays too. I think once they ran out of bread at noon on a Sunday. If you went by and it was closed you'd see a would-be customer outside wondering why; the level of understanding when your gaze met theirs was akin to finding a friend on the first day of boarding school. The owner shut down his restaurant in May, 2014 when his daughter ... I think ... graduated from college.
The counter guy opened City Subs -- there's an extra s at the end of Sub -- a block away, where the failed Nutella restaurant was, after about a year. I broke the news that it was reopening on whatever day it was it reopened in this newsletter. Sandwiches are named after different blocks in Brooklyn, but my street isn't represented. My friend Erik -- who directed a feature film and was the first cash transaction at the new iteration -- said they put up a new menu board last week. Where is the old board? The original City Sub has been empty since. I went to City Subs on the first Saturday it was open, fall 2015, and waited four hours in line for a sandwich, a 13. The local news interviewed me and asked me why I waited so long. Truthfully, I was hanging out with a good friend. But I said the original stayed in my head because it was so frustrating as to resemble a difficult piece of artwork, and also the sandwiches were pretty good. I didn't make air. I have only been back a couple times since, but they have enough bread now that you can get sandwiches after 9. Which is an incredible development. But I'm not sure there'll be another business in this city which cares as little about money as the original. What an inspiration.
Church Street Surplus, 327 Church Street, Manhattan: Not really an amazing store, and in Tribeca, below Canal, so I haven't been there in a while. Once I went with my friend Adam and the owner asked if we were from Polo because of Adam's jacket, a Polo varsity with the tiger on it. Super rare; he thought we were buyers. Another time they were playing Bad Brains on the radio -- only one song -- and this was in 2010 or 2011. Very strange. They have a dollar bin outside the store with clothing identical to the stuff in the store. Not sure why it's cheaper. They have the best selection of Wranglers in the city and I never really bought anything good there. I'm not sure there are good stores at which to buy vintage in the city. I get everything on eBay. Dave's on Sixth is good but it's all new stuff. Grand St. Vintage was OK for a while and Stella Dallas always has something, but it's expensive and if you wait you can find it yourself. (If finding stuff yourself is your thing ... if its not ... I can find it for you... seriously.) Front Street Vintage in Dumbo is also very good, but the clothes are small and are more churchy than sports. The one guy with the T-shirts at the Brooklyn Flea has good stuff in the sense that if you go every week for a year you can find five good shirts.
Bright Lyons, a furniture store, was my favorite furniture store in the city for a while, when it was open on Atlantic. I think it's by appointment only now and does art during the week. There's a strip of furniture stores on Atlantic, and Bright Lyons was the only good one at all, the only place with colorful and modern pieces and with more than two items worth buying. Girard prints, colorful Tulip chairs, Nelson dressers, Knoll stuff, Eames -- stacked on top of each other. The Girard blankets and artwork really lit the place up -- makes sense he's doing that stuff. It's this guy Paul Bright, and turns out this stuff is on 1stDibs. I feel like I've written about this before, but it's worth mentioning again today. Also I think he played in the 1990s London Ontario semi-post-hardcore band Shoulder, but since the store is closed, I can't ask.
Graham Ave Meats and Deli, 445 Graham Ave., Brooklyn: incredible sandwich shop that was open until 2015 in Williamsburg near the ice coffee place which put coffee ice cubes in their ice coffee, on Graham by the BQE. This place definitely had a better Italian combo than City Sub and was also better than DeFonte's, even though the sandwiches were smaller. The former owner, Michael Virtuoso, was taken into custody on extortion charges in 2011 and had an actual Rolodex of his mob contacts; a year later he died. The Daily News' headline was Mob guy (Mike the Butcher) takes final cut when he died. I guess that's funny. But it was so much more than a deli.
Then the place shut down, out of nowhere on a weekday. There was an article with reporting up on The Fader about musicians that missed it and its sandwiches. But I only ever saw one scrawny twerp in there. The final time I went was with my dad, we got a Nicky's Special and a Godfather and split them. I liked the Nicky's Special more than the Godfather because it has a bit more meat, but I wanted the old man to have both. The idea that the slicers went from standing behind the counter at Graham Ave to a different line of work -- I haven't seen them at other delis -- is repulsive. The brains behind the best sandwiches in New York, maybe the tristate area, now sell insurance or are in law school, and not growing as shokunin. It is like fruit rotting on the vine or a plate of uneaten spaghetti. What a waste. I'm glad I had at least four sandwiches there. Also the mob stuff isn't so bad, either. I bet if I was a business owner and knew my protection money was going into that deli, the pill would be easier to swallow.
3-400 block of Hicks Street, on the other side of the BQE: This is my favorite block near me. It feels very serene. The buildings you see on the East side of Hicks, closer to the train, are mostly red brick, closer in color to the brownstones everywhere, but there are more white brick and puke-colored buildings on the West side. So it looks different. And while the architecture is as spartan on both sides of the highway, the buildings on the far side are even more ignored. There is less renovation on the far side of the BQE. The trellises and stairs are older. But the houses hold up just as well. It can sound like the ocean from up above, but only when traffic isn't heavy.
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My favorite news stories about New York (and why):
4/30/09 NY Post, BED-$TUY IS LOTTO CHAMP by Amber Sutherland (I also had two jobs at the time, and would not have quit my day job if I won the lottery):
Wallace Morris, 50, a copy-machine repairman, cashed in after scratching off the “jackpot” box on his New York Lottery Jumbo Bucks ticket.
The husband and father of three plans to quit his second job, as a security guard.
02/14/95 NY Times, Dentist in Gun Battle Wounds Masked Intruder, by RONALD SULLIVAN (I found this googling dentists in the neighborhood; he's still in business and the whole article is worth reading):
Hearing the commotion, Dr. Reich told the police he drew his licensed, .38-caliber revolver, which he said he kept in his office, Cobble Hill Dental Associates.
Confronting the dentist in the small treatment room, the gunman fired three times, but missed the dentist and the patient he was treating.
The police said the dentist, seemingly unfazed by the shots fired at him at close range, was a far better marksman. They said he fired five times, hitting the gunman twice in the chest and once in the face, stomach and left hand.
Roony Flancraich, the owner of the Bagel Point Cafe, where Dr. Reich ate at 4 P.M. yesterday, said of the dentist: "He's the last guy in the world you'd expect to shoot." ....
At the Atlantic Avenue intersection, the gunman ran up to an automobile waiting to make a turn into a parking lot and attempted to force the driver, Milagros Negron, and her two sons, Wesley and Hamilton, out of the car.
But the police said Wesley Negron, 16, put up a fight and that his 15-year-old brother, Hamilton, punched the gunman in the chest and took the gun away from him.
09/17/1949, New Yorker, The Mohawks in High Steel by Joseph Mitchell (Boerum Hill in Brooklyn used to be a Mohawk neighborhood, Little Caughnawaga, from the 1920s until later. It hasn't been for a while but there's a community in Bay Ridge. Mohawk Indians from the Kahnawake reservation outside Montreal moved to find work as high-altitude steelworkers, built the city, and drove home every weekend. Mitchell's piece is obviously incredible):
At present, there are eighty‑three Caughnawagas in the Brooklyn local and forty‑two in the Manhattan local. Less than a third of them work steadily in the city. The others keep their families in North Gowanus and work here intermittently but spend much of their time in other cities. They roam from coast to coast, usually by automobile, seeking rush jobs that offer unlimited overtime work at double pay; in New York City, the steel‑erecting companies use as little overtime as possible. A gang may work in half a dozen widely separated cities in a single year. Occasionally, between jobs, they return to Brooklyn to see their families. Now and then, after long jobs, they pick up their families and go up to the reservation for a vacation; some go up every summer. A few men sometimes take their families along on trips to jobs and send them back to Brooklyn by bus or train. Several foremen who have had years of experience with Caughnawagas believe that they roam because they can't help doing so, it is a passion, and that their search for overtime is only an excuse. A veteran foreman for the American Bridge Company says he has seen Caughnawagas leave jobs that offered all the overtime they could handle. When they are making up their minds to move on, he says, they become erratic. "Everything will be going along fine on a job," he says. "Good working conditions. Plenty of overtime. A nice city. Then the news will come over the grapevine about some big new job opening up somewhere; it might be a thousand miles away. That kind of news always causes a lot of talk, what we call water‑bucket talk, but the Indians don't talk; they know what's in each other's mind. For a couple of days, they're tensed up and edgy. They look a little wild in the eyes. They've heard the call. Then, all of a sudden, they turn in their tools, and they're gone. Can't wait another minute. They'll quit at lunchtime, in the middle of the week. They won't even wait for their pay. Some other gang will collect their money and hold it until a postcard comes back telling where to send it." George C. Lane, manager of erections in the New York district for the Bethlehem Steel Company, once said that the movements of a Caughnawaga, gang are as impossible to foresee as the movements of a flock of sparrows. "In the summer of 1936," Mr. Lane said, "we finished a job here in the city and the very next day we were starting in on a job exactly three blocks away. I heard one of our foremen trying his best to persuade an Indian gang to go on the new job. They had got word about a job in Hartford and wanted to go up there. The foreman told them the rate of pay was the same; there wouldn't be any more overtime up there than here; their families were here; they'd have travelling expenses; they'd have to root around Hartford for lodgings. Oh, no; it was Hartford or nothing. A year or so later I ran into this gang on a job in Newark, and I asked the heater how they made out in Hartford that time. He said they didn't go to Hartford. 'We went to San Francisco, California,' he said. 'We went out and worked on the Golden Gate Bridge."'
In New York City, the Caughnawagas work mostly for the big companies — Bethlehem, American Bridge, the Lehigh Structural Steel Company, and the Harris Structural Steel Company. Among the structures in and around the city on which they worked in numbers are the R.C.A. Building, the Cities Service Building, the Empire State Building, the Daily News Building, the Chanin Building, the Bank of the Manhattan Company Building, the City Bank Farmers Trust Building, the George Washington Bridge, the Bayonne Bridge, the Passaic River Bridge, the Triborough Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Little Hell Gate Bridge, the Bronx‑Whitestone Bridge, the Marine Parkway Bridge, the Pulaski Skyway, the West Side Highway, the Waldorf‑Astoria, London Terrace, and Knickerbocker Village. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I like New York. It's crazy you can buy cooler clothes on eBay than in any store here. But buying retail is like playing tennis without a net. They keep shutting down the good stuff here and everyone keeps moving away. Prospect Park has good bass fishing and they've been opening up these new movie theaters. It's hard to complain. When I moved here, my first apartment was on Judge Street. It's tough to imagine, after the past five years of horrible Judge reunions, that was a good sign. But it was. Still is.
Thanks for reading and indulging. Regular programming to follow.
Snake
(1) info from Ian Frazier's collected writing about fishing, one of my favorite books.