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My New York
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Feb. 5th, 2006 | 03:06 pm
Weekends never turn out to be as productive as I plan them to be on Friday afternoons when I'm champing at the bit to get out of the office.
I gave myself a treat today; instead of going to the gym, I took a walk. Got on the subway and rode down a few stops to Franklin Street, then started off from there, passing the Knitting Factory, crossing Broadway, heading towards the jury duty blocks, then in to Chinatown, where streets were blocked off for New Year celebrations. I skirted north and continued east along Hester Street, towards the site of my first New York apartment, a sublet my parents found for me as a college graduation present (and a way to make sure I didn't move back in with them for even one red second, one of the wiser parental decisions they've ever made), and where I lived for only one summer before the apartment's owner suddenly demanded it back. That was over twenty years ago; in that time, Chinatown has encroached on what even then was a vestigial Jewish neighborhood, and swallowed it nearly whole. But I spotted an old sign at the end of Hester, Gertel's BAKERY Luncheon, and since I always have a yen for hamentaschen, a triangle-shaped pastry with a fruit filling, meant to approximate the hat of biblical Esther's vanquished foe, and which are difficult to buy just anywhere (a fact I am thankful for), I sped up my already brisk steps, hoping this was going to be a real place and not in fact a hipster bar with an old sign. It was real. A grungy old room with shelves full of challahs and glass cases holding the kind of pastries and cookies I remember from my Brooklyn childhood, including hamentaschen (I bought an apricot and a raspberry--they didn't have my very favorite, poppy seed), and almond horns with their ends dipped in dark chocolate (I bought one of those too--I'm nothing if not impulsive). There were a couple of tables, one of them occupied by a tired-looking middle-aged Hasidic couple who might have been the owners--the man was arguing with another young Hasidic man who was asking a lot of questions about various things in the cases. At one point they were staring at each other in a way that I was afraid was going to lead to fisticuffs--over cookies!--but no such luck. I managed to walk out without buying any of an amazing-looking pile of potato pancakes, which is my point of pride for the day.
From there I turned into Essex Street, from where I could see the building on Grand where I spent the summer of 1983. The bialy bakery on the corner is now a law office, which is just all kinds of wrong, but otherwise one must admit the neighborhood is much improved; that summer of my residence, it always felt too dangerous to me to walk north of Delancey St; I'd always exit the area on foot by walking west and then north. Today I wandered up into the hipster streets off Essex and A, looking in the windows of darling little boutiques. I zig-zagged a little, going over to Elizabeth Street, then cutting back east on Bleecker, and then 2nd, which has a wonderful old mid-19th century cemetary. Among the prominent New Yorkers interred there is a member of the Fish family--I assume some relative of the noted Hamilton Fish, though this is just a guess--called Preserved Fish. (While I imagine the name was pronounced with 3 syllables--pre-SERV-ed--and had a Christian/Puritan connotation to it, it still made me wonder whether anyone called him Smoked Herring behind his back.)
On Avenue A you can catch the 14th St crosstown bus which will take you all the way back (nearly) to my door; I like the varied view from this bus, encompassing the city's growth of 3 centuries, though what I like best is everything old and neglected and preserved. There's a place on the north side of 14th St called Beauty Bar that has a sign and a storefront from, I'm guessing, the late 1940s, completely unchanged; the window display is in keeping with the retro-ness of it, and everytime I'm about to pass, I hold my breath lest I find it's not there anymore. And when the bus passes 3rd Avenue, I mourn what's missing--the beautiful old Variety theatre, knocked down a couple of years ago, it's wonderful 1920s signage and facade gone forever.
I gave myself a treat today; instead of going to the gym, I took a walk. Got on the subway and rode down a few stops to Franklin Street, then started off from there, passing the Knitting Factory, crossing Broadway, heading towards the jury duty blocks, then in to Chinatown, where streets were blocked off for New Year celebrations. I skirted north and continued east along Hester Street, towards the site of my first New York apartment, a sublet my parents found for me as a college graduation present (and a way to make sure I didn't move back in with them for even one red second, one of the wiser parental decisions they've ever made), and where I lived for only one summer before the apartment's owner suddenly demanded it back. That was over twenty years ago; in that time, Chinatown has encroached on what even then was a vestigial Jewish neighborhood, and swallowed it nearly whole. But I spotted an old sign at the end of Hester, Gertel's BAKERY Luncheon, and since I always have a yen for hamentaschen, a triangle-shaped pastry with a fruit filling, meant to approximate the hat of biblical Esther's vanquished foe, and which are difficult to buy just anywhere (a fact I am thankful for), I sped up my already brisk steps, hoping this was going to be a real place and not in fact a hipster bar with an old sign. It was real. A grungy old room with shelves full of challahs and glass cases holding the kind of pastries and cookies I remember from my Brooklyn childhood, including hamentaschen (I bought an apricot and a raspberry--they didn't have my very favorite, poppy seed), and almond horns with their ends dipped in dark chocolate (I bought one of those too--I'm nothing if not impulsive). There were a couple of tables, one of them occupied by a tired-looking middle-aged Hasidic couple who might have been the owners--the man was arguing with another young Hasidic man who was asking a lot of questions about various things in the cases. At one point they were staring at each other in a way that I was afraid was going to lead to fisticuffs--over cookies!--but no such luck. I managed to walk out without buying any of an amazing-looking pile of potato pancakes, which is my point of pride for the day.
From there I turned into Essex Street, from where I could see the building on Grand where I spent the summer of 1983. The bialy bakery on the corner is now a law office, which is just all kinds of wrong, but otherwise one must admit the neighborhood is much improved; that summer of my residence, it always felt too dangerous to me to walk north of Delancey St; I'd always exit the area on foot by walking west and then north. Today I wandered up into the hipster streets off Essex and A, looking in the windows of darling little boutiques. I zig-zagged a little, going over to Elizabeth Street, then cutting back east on Bleecker, and then 2nd, which has a wonderful old mid-19th century cemetary. Among the prominent New Yorkers interred there is a member of the Fish family--I assume some relative of the noted Hamilton Fish, though this is just a guess--called Preserved Fish. (While I imagine the name was pronounced with 3 syllables--pre-SERV-ed--and had a Christian/Puritan connotation to it, it still made me wonder whether anyone called him Smoked Herring behind his back.)
On Avenue A you can catch the 14th St crosstown bus which will take you all the way back (nearly) to my door; I like the varied view from this bus, encompassing the city's growth of 3 centuries, though what I like best is everything old and neglected and preserved. There's a place on the north side of 14th St called Beauty Bar that has a sign and a storefront from, I'm guessing, the late 1940s, completely unchanged; the window display is in keeping with the retro-ness of it, and everytime I'm about to pass, I hold my breath lest I find it's not there anymore. And when the bus passes 3rd Avenue, I mourn what's missing--the beautiful old Variety theatre, knocked down a couple of years ago, it's wonderful 1920s signage and facade gone forever.