The line for the Martinez Huaraches stand is always the longest of the Red Hook Ballfield Vendors. I suspect this is because their bill of fare is the most familiar to the uninitiated: tacos, quesadillas, etc. This past Saturday, however, I showed up at 11:30 and the queue was doable. I ordered a chicken Huarache, got a lemonades from the Vaquero Fruit Stand kitty-korner, sat down, and enjoyed.
While doing some random searching through old articles in the New York Times' internet archives, I ran across a curious item from 1936 titled "50,000 Liquor Plant Raided in Brooklyn."
In September of that year, City police and federal agents raided 166 President Street between Hicks and Henry. They chased Paul Savasta and four or five others down a stairway from the basement level to the cellar. There they found "a 1,000-gallon still extending from the sub-cellar upward through the cellar, basement and parlor floors... They also found four 650-gallon vats of mash, several thousand pounds of brown sugar, a number of 5-gallon unfilled cans and several retaining cans."
But that wasn't their most interesting find. There was a hole in the rear of the sub-cellar. Climbing through this and down a ladder about six feet, they encountered a large wooden door, which opened to a tunnel, "with shored walls and ceiling and high enough to walk through." The 100-foot tunnel took a diagonal path to the backyard of 542 Henry Street, between President and Carroll. At that end, there was another ladder and a trapdoor. "The tunnel is equipped with electric lights and at each end there is a button and buzzer for signaling."
Totally cool.
I have to imagine the whole apparatus was build during Prohibition and the owners just kept on using it in order to avoid paying taxing on their homemade hooch.
I went and checked out both addresses and neither exists any longer. 166 President (above) is a new construction, bracketing by older buildings on either side. 542 President (below) is a parking lot, also of recent pedigree. Mysterious. I wonder if the tunnel is still somewhere underground.
The basil thieves of Carroll Gardens are hurting tonight. Their quarry has been removed.
Two weeks about it emerged that a window box brimming with fresh basil, sitting outside a green-brick building on President Street near Henry, in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood, was being regularly robbed of its herbal bounty. The owners fought back with a shaming sign: "PLEASE Stop taking our BASIL!" cried the sign on President. IT IS VERY Cheap AND YOU CAN buy you own. P.S. The children are quite disturbed by your actions. And so are the adults." [Capitalization and punctuation, theirs.]
It was still there as of mid-week last week. But tonight it is gone. And so is the basil.
Plunked down in the dirt of an empty window box (and oddly set off by what seems to be a white picture frame) is a considerably less ostentatious sign made of brown cardboard and black magic marker, which reads, "No more basil for you to take. The End."
A little bit of Soup Nazi syntax there if I'm not mistaken.
Now, how am I gonna make my pesto?
Kidding. Kidding.
Tripoli, the grand old mainstay on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, is having a little work down. A number of laborers were hard at work chipping away at the facade this weekend. Seems the place, which never had an awning, is getting a new awning. I kinda like it the way it is. An awning might obscure the quasi-majestic frontage.
Does anyone know what happened at the bakery hitherto known, since it's grand reopening in early 2007, as Monteleone & Cammareri Bakery & Cafe. Sometime recently, in the quiet of night, the red sign was switched to one that only lists the Monteleone name. (See above.)
Of course, the space previously belonged only to Monteleone, which has been in the neighborhood since 1902, when it was founded on Columbia Street by Harry and Frank Monteleone. Somewhere along the way, the brothers took on two unrelated partners, moved to Court Street and passed away.
Monteleone closed up shop in 2006. But they teamed up with another name from the past, Cammareri (of "Moonstruck" fame and formerly on Henry Street) and came back. Cammareri closed up its storefront sometime around 2000 but still survived in a wholesale fashion.
Anyway, Cammareri ain't around no mo'. See the new sign below.
Earth-shaking news regarding the infamous bus known as the B61!
Word has come through Craig Hammerman, through the Word on Columbia Street blog:
"After much consideration, NYC Transit has finally agreed to split the B61 into 2 routes -- one from Red Hook to Downtown Brooklyn, and one from Downtown Brooklyn into Long Island City, Queens (which would become a new B62 route). This move is intended to improve the reliability and timeliness of the B61 route, particularly as it serves our district.
The change would go into effect in January 2010, assuming it receives approval of the MTA Board which it is scheduled to come before later this month. We should be receiving our formal letter from NYC Transit within the next week."
I have been looking at this faded ad for some time now. It sits on the side of a brick building on President Street, between Hicks and Columbia. It's obviously been there for some time. But for the life of me, I can't figure out what it used to say or what company or product it used to advertise.
Can anyone out there give me a hand? Maybe you have better eyes than I do. The best I can figure is we're dealing with four large letters, then an apostrophe, then an "S." So, it's a good bet it's someone's name.
Part of the problem may be that we're looking at two faded ads here, one painted over the other, thus obscuring the lettering of both ads.
If anyone's got a guess, please write in.
Having overcome a previous setback in which the community challenged the legality of its strange, medieval structure, the Belltower of Columbia Street has chugged along toward completion. The two-story tower at the top of the thing—which, it turns out, is actually an elevator shaft to house a fancy glass elevator, to be used by the buildings residents—is now wholly covered in brick.
What's more, it now bears a stone plaque, engraved with a large "V" and the dating "Est. MMVIII." Roman numerals! So the creators of this monstrosity are not only vulgarians, but pompous as well. (They also got the date wrong, obviously having ordered the plaque early on, when they thought the building would be completed last year.) 
The teeny-tiny, and super bizarro Piccolo Cafe attracted some attention when it opened on Columbia Street, Brooklyn, last January due to its piccolo menu. Three items, to be precise.
It bulked up the menu over time, advertising each new addition in bold red and white signs outside the door. But the joint never caught on—possibly, as many readers pointed out to me, because the food was processed and lousy, and the fries routinely undercooked.
Piccolo's story may be told, now. Walking by today, the signs are gone and the inside is ripped up. No staff in sight. It may be a renovation, but I'm guessing it's doneski.
Sad News. Harry Edelstein, longtime proprietor of the theatre district coffee shop and hangout, the Edison Cafe, has died at 91.
He and his wife Frances opened the diner in 1980 and it quickly became the favored chowhouse of people like August Wilson and Neil Simon, not to mention plenty of poor young actors. He was a gracious, jolly, no-frills host who served up a mean bowl of matzo ball soup.
He wife Frances remains, as does his son-in-law, Conrad Stahl, who has done the heavy lifting at the cafe for many years. So the tradition will continue. But sad to see him go. He served the theatre community and the City well.
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