So I’ve been back in Brooklyn a few weeks, and in three months the neighborhood has changed drastically. Mostly not in a way that pleases me, either.
- Jack’s is, after all, closed. Not only will I miss the pot roast, but I will miss the place for the sake that it was the first place I heard a song by Spoon. That is, I heard a cool song, and asked who it was, & the server said “Spoon.” I think it was their “Back to the Life.” Anyway, a place that played music cool enough for me to discover will be sadly missed.
- We now have a 7-11. I’m really not even sure what to think of that one.
- Our local favorite Greek diner is remodeling.
- But the worst change of all is this: My favorite pizza joint, Lenny’s, no longer makes zeppolis.
And I’ll tell you why it sucks: because when I first moved to Brooklyn, and first went into Lenny’s, I felt like I was home. Old Italian guys making pizza who’d been making pizza for decades, photos of Italians on the walls, those awful formica stalls, fountain soda, italian ices out of paper cups, and yes, zeppolis.
I’ve always had this vague feeling I was born in the wrong era. I’m beginning, more and more, to be more sure that I was, watching the change all around me. I still haven’t gotten over paying more than 50 cents for a cup of joe, after all. Why people ever agreed to pay $2 for a cup of coffee that you have to prepare yourself so that now that’s all you can buy, I’ll never understand.
SO true, all of it, and most places. Amusingly, because the UES has been so unhip, we still have nearly no big box stores, and mostly mom and pop shops which have been here forever, some of which will give my kids whatever they ask for and wave to me through the window next time they see me, with a bill scrawled on the back of a napkin for me to pay.
But even with this, and even with the fact that, since the major development around here was done in the 1960s and earlier, we have fewer of those ugly glass and steel “luxury condos” than most nabes, I am not that happy. Because it is very possible that I’ll have to move in a couple of years or less, I can’t really re-do my space, which needs work.
And in thinking about where I would move, I keep coming up with the same answer. I want to live in the NYC of the early 1970s through early 80s. Now THAT, that was my home.
I live in a small city in South Carolina. We’ve been a Wal-Mart society for years and years. There are very few mom-and-pops anymore. We just got our first Starbucks last fall. The descent to hell has officially begun.
50’s great food…. It was before they advised us that “everything” we ate caused cancer…. We could even eat movie popcorn made with coconut oil!
My home town is due to be wiped off the map when Ohare Airport expands…. There won’t be any home town after that… and our families heritage home is now under the waters of Cumberland Lake in Kentucky. The family lost one of those antibellum homes with the 24 foot ceilings and the pillars (they were inside the foyer!) that had been built by one of our great great somethings in 1835.
All things change…. yet such sadness to lose
For those of us who don’t speak “NYC”, what exactly is a zeppoli?
it’s the Italian version of fried dough with powdered sugar on it.
I heard Coney Island is getting a Dave & Busters.
I could shit on every skeeball machine and still not find my disgust at this fully actualized.
I passed that 7-11 a couple weeks ago and did a full-on stop-in-my-tracks double-take. I considered that perhaps it had been there before, and I had missed it? No, there were no loiterers yet!