Reason it out however you like. You won't convince me. This last report of the Department of Health's behavior regarding the hapless, increasingly hopeless Red Hook Ballfield Food Vendors confirmed my growing belief that the City isn't out of to enforce health laws or make sure there's an even playing fields where park concessions are concerned. No, the DOH and the Parks Department have painted a target of the collective back of these Latino vendors. They want them out. This, my friends, is not bureaucracy. This is a hit.
Think I'm irrational? Well, read this piece in the Brooklyn Eagle (brought to my attention by Gowanus Lounge) and then talk to me. If I had a hundred thou, I'd hand it over the Cesar Fuentes, exec director of the Vendors, so he could buy the countless things the DOH are insisting the foodsellers buy, plus extra money to hire a lawyer and a publicist to sue the City's ass for harassment.
P.S.—As for the much-discussed need for running water and portable sinks, I was there today and spied at least four of them. They're plastic, they're ugly, they're there. Choke on 'em, DOH.
Sorry, Brooke. No other way to alert you another institution now gone. Bondys Record Shop 38 Park Row, NY NY. A rhythm and blues (among other genres) paradise. The stripped, vertical sign beside the doorway still advertises "stereo needles" and "tapes" for sale.
ReplyDeleteToday, when I told a transplanted New Yorker and former Bondy's shopper, now resident in Florida, that there would soon be an IHOP open in Times Square, he reminded that the suburbanization of Manhattan has been a continuing theme for the past couple of generations. One that has simply accelerated to warp speed now.
This Florida attorney reminded me that what was once Saks 34th Street (before Saks Fifth Avenue) was, sometime between 1967 and 1972, transformed into an E.J. Korvettes' store. That too, was a vivid example of the suburbs entering Manhattan. He was right, but I didn't feel any better.
Bondy's has been gone for maybe 6 months now. Not sure what happened to them. Good store. Not a vast selection, but I could count on them for certain new hip-hop releases for about $11-$12.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear about Bondy's, and that I'm late in recording their disappearance. It sounds as though I would have liked the place.
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