On U

Last week I walked along Avenue U from Stillwell to Gerritson Avenue.   There are some fabled eating establishments along here, like Joe's of Avenue U, & Brennan & Carr's, & L. & B. Spumoni Gardens is only a short walk away on 86th.   Food looms large here, be it Dairy Maid Ravioli, Holy Schnitzel, third-generation Jay & Llloyd's Kosher Deli, or G. & S. Pork Store.  Screw the diet in this part of town.  If you take a street far enough, you see its different incarnations ebb & flow: Italian, Jewish, Asian, Irish.  This is why you live in New York.


It was sunny when I visited, the time of year for elderly men to resume their warm-weather posts on the sidewalk.  Seated in front of stores, on chairs plastic or wooden, they chatted to familiar passers by, or nodded into sleep, or assumed expressions of sturdy suspicion.  I entered a cafe guarded by a chair-sitter and found it almost empty.  Copies of La Repubblica were scattered on the counter, and a couple of guys in back were watching European football.  The coffee was good. Outside Brennan & Carr's the smells were divinely meaty, but inside the bear of a waiter who served me my hot roll was beefier by far than the food itself.  I wanted to like it, but it disappointed.  It was fun in the dining room though & with lots of laughs and snatches of sentences drifting past. "So I smacked him in the back of the head..." "Who the fuck do you think I am? Fred Astaire?"

I'd have taken more pictures, and better ones too, but I felt like an idiot taking out my camera.  I kept things snappy.

We resole crepe shoes