I stopped doing this
column a few months back because I moved away from Bushwick, but now Im
in Bushwick again for some reason, and thus the column resumes. This
time Im going to try to make it interesting or amusing or something. Or
maybe I wont. WHO KNOWS LOL!??!?
Gentrification Complete
Walking to the grocery
store on Knickerbocker off Flushing this week, I was waylaid by a
40-something Puerto Rican fellow who, despite already being drunk at
10:30 in the morning, ended up being enough of a go-getter to own four
or five buildings in New York and New Jersey, including the one against
which he was leaning, uh, possessively. After explaining to me apropos
of nothing that if ones arm is amputated, one is less readily able to
walk with ones arms swinging, he somehow segued into his past career as
a correctional officer (and his even more distant career as a Bronx
street hoodlum). Now, though, the fellow was a landlord, and this
particular building happened to be 205 Knickerbocker - the place where
Bonanno crime family boss Carmine Cigar Galante was assassinated in
1979, a hit referred to by the somewhat more fictional and thus
better-known mobster Tony Soprano as being fucking beautiful in some
episode or another. The landlord insisted on showing me the backyard in
which Galante spent his last few moments, although he did allow me to
get a cup of coffee from across the street before performing the mobster
death scene examination duties which I had just now been assigned by
the former prison guard, whom I obliged largely because he had given me
two cigarettes.
So,
here I was in the somewhat notorious backyard, which seemed to me like
any other but which the owner, whose name is Ray Something Spanish,
noted has very nice shade. After demonstrating how it was that he
manages to capture birds by use of a milk crate and a stick with a
string attached, he explained his plan for the nicely-shaded property -
he was to re-establish it as a cafe for you newcomers, yuppies. I
agreed that this was a great plan and suggested that he take a look at a
couple of existing yuppie-oriented coffee shops in order to get a sense
of what us newcomers dig, but he insisted that he already understood
our mentality vis a vis coffee shop patronage, which I doubt, as, again,
he is a middle-aged Puerto Rican landlord who used to work as a prison
guard and who prompted me not once, but thrice, to cross myself during
this short visit (once for Galante, once so that no evil spirits
followed me out of the backyard on my way out, and then a third time for
reasons I do not recall but which I imagine had to do with Catholicism
or Santeria or some such thing.
So, I am happy to report that Bushwicks very
prison guards have succumbed to our influence and are now preparing to
convert the last notable vestige of this neighborhoods criminal history
into a creative class venue. You can also hit the guy up for smokes if
you dont mind Newports, which I do.
Fuck Rocios Bakery
I just did a stint
living in Williamsburg, which, though not Bushwick, is close enough to
Bushwick and home to enough travel-worthy bars that its
prominently-located bakeries ought to be of concern to Bushwick
residents to the extent that any bakery can be of concern to anyone.
Having said that, I have gone several times to Rocios Bakery - which
takes up some increasingly-prime real estate on the corner of Grand and
Union - and can assure anyone who is interested that the place really
sucks.
On occasion one, I
bought a bunch of donuts and pastries and whatnot. The former were
vastly inferior to most any I could remember encountering in the past -
not nearly sweet enough, overall. A couple of the pastries were okay,
although I cant remember what sort of pastries they were other than
that they were filled with cheese. I guess they were cheese pastries.
On occasion two, I got
myself a Cuban sandwich. The meat was ridiculously dry and moderately
tasteless. I only ate half of it initially even though I was undergoing
starvation or at least the 21st century Western port city equivalent
thereof, which is to say that I could have gone for a bite. Later I
relented and ate the rest of the sandwich.
On the third occasion,
I wanted a milk shake and assumed that not even such a flawed
institution as Rocios Bakery could fuck up such a thing. And I was
right! It was pretty good.
Just kidding. I ordered a chocolate milkshake
and received a chocolate banana milkshake that had been concocted with
too much milk relative to ice cream and which was thus not all thick. I
then became angry but drank the milkshake anyway because life goes on.
Anyway, Spanish
bakeries are simply not to be trusted in general. Go with the Hasids
when possible.