Ninth Avenue Freeze Frame

For a time in the mid-1990s, when Times Square was reinventing itself as something tall, shiny, crowded and nauseating, I worked in the Viacom building at the northwest corner of Broadway and 44th Street. During my lunch hour, to get away from the punishing modernity of it all, I would often walk over to Ninth Avenue and troll the blocks south of 42nd Street. At the time that strip had not heard the words "development" or "gentrifcation." It still had a hardscrabble, working-class neighborhood feel to it, and felt like a genuine slice of New York.

A decade later, that character has been eroded a bit (all bow your heads in memory of the shuttering and demolition of the holy Supreme Macaroni Co.), but from 40th to about 35th, walking the east side of the street, there are still enough landmarks to string a history along. Just below 40th is one of the more unapologetic dives in all of NYC, the Holland Bar. (Stubbornly keeping Christmas alive in early March in the above picture.) It's narrow, it's mean and it's dark. Any bar this close to the Port Authority is. Don't enter without confidence and be prepared to order a simple beer or a good, strong drink.

(I was sad to see that the Bellevue Bar, another long-standing dive a few doors north of the Holland, had closed its doors. It had been around since 1912.)



A little further south, at 38th Street, is the Esposito Pork Shop, which has been on or around Ninth Avenue for more than 100 years. This place displays its meat with pride, so if you're a squeamish vegan, don't even cross the threshold. Homemade sausages are a specialty, and you can order game such as pheasant, quail and venison. Your suckling pig needs can also be met. It's still in the same family, run by the grandsons of the founder. And that perky pig sure looks happy that it's about to be slaughtered and put into casings.



A few yards more and things get really Italian, as in blood feuds. Side by side are Manganaro's Hero Boy and Manganaro's Grosseria Italiano. One's a sprawling, slick hero sandwich joint where big equals good and the cooking is done in a volume well suited to the armed forces. The other is an old world ethnic grocery store where traditions and decor haven't been altered in decades. Wanna know if the two stores get along? Take a look at the sandwich board outside the second shop that defiantly tells you that the Grosseria has NOTHING to do with Hero Boy.

The nature of the feud begs understanding, but it's gone on for generations. The two brothers who run the businesses, Salvatore Dell'Orto and James Dell'Orto, have not spoken in decades (their children also do not communicate, and the daughter preparing the sandwiches behind the Grosseria counter is by all accounts a nutso anger junkie). Law suits fighting for the right to use the family name have flown back and forth for years. The sticking point seems to be who invented and/or gets the honor of making that cheeseball Italian specialty: the six-foot sub. A court ruling in 2003 apparently forbid the Grosseria from attaching its name to its subs. As for the food, it's good in both places. There, I said it. So, come and get me, fratelli Manganaro!



Another block and you find the small Trio French Bakery, which advertises brioche in the front window, but also Irish Soda Bread. It's a simple place. Not much in the way of decor. Charmingly sparten. You never hear that much about it, but it must have its fans—it's been here forever.



Finally, between 36th and 37th is Longo Bros. Wine and Liquor. Their name is emblazoned at the top of the four-story building, so one guesses they were here from the building's erection. This is not a fancy liquor store; the wine selection is quite pedestrian. But it's a serviceable purveyor of booze situated in an interesting space.

So, wine, bread, groceries, meat and a cool drink after your shopping is done. Ninth Avenue in the upper 30s still gets the job done.

Breaking: P.J. Hanley's Is Open

P.J. Hanley's is back in business.

Spurred by reports that the century-and-some-old tavern was closed for renovations (see below), I paid a visit and, lo and behold, there was life inside!

Without planning to, the owners opened the doors to all comers after three days of closure. "You gotta pay the bills," said one of the proprietors. While drinkers bellied up to the bar, workers busied themselves in the kitchen (no food is being served as of yet) and with carting the liquor from storage and placing it back behind the bar. Some of the kitchen equipment was still out in the open courtyard. Flat-screen televisions were switched on and measurements were taken here and there.

The reconfigured bar area has an airier feeling than before. There are a few small tables and stools scattered about with plenty of room to walk around. The windows provide a clear view of the street and passersby likewise have a clear view of the peoples and goings-on inside.

The room to the south of the bar is not yet finished, and it's not clear what it will be used for. "It's still a work in progress," say the barkeep. "We should have a digital camera for times like this, when we're open, but not yet open," said another worker."

P.J. Hanley's in Transition

Thanks to A Brooklyn Life for posting the news that P.J. Hanley's, the 133-year-old Tavern on Court Street and Fourth Place, is temporarily closed. Don't know how this escaped my attention. According to responders to the item, it's being renovated to render the restaurant and bar areas into more separate entities.

Hanley's is an interesting case, since it's one of the few local Carroll Gardens (South Brooklyn, that is) landmarks that harkens back to the once-huge, local Norwegian population in the area. The bar was founded by a Norwegian gentlemen. It went the Irish pub way in 1898 after Jack Ryan bought it. He ran it for 60 years. Mr. P.J. Hanley entered the picture in 1956, and he sold it to his two nieces in the mid-90s.

These days, it's known more for the Yuppie lunch crowd. Which may be why the bar folks want a little alone time to themselves.

Not Yet Developed in Brooklyn

By the looks of it, no one has even dusted since this restaurant at Richards and Coffey streets in Red Hook was padlocked. The gold leaf lettering in the window still looks nice, though. There's also an old Singer sewing maching in the window for some reason. Some poor soul lives in the apartment above this wreck, but they've got a good attitude: there are Christmas lights in every window. A neighborhood woman, a local resident since the 1970s, told me she had never seen the place open for business. She also said she and her sister have talked about reopening the restaurant. Well, yeah, good luck with that.

Prisoner of Hoyt Street

This painted lady sits in the window of an antique store on Hoyt Street near 3rd Street. In 12 years, including seven spent living around the corner from the shop, I've never seen it open.

They Can Also Send a Phax

An endearing lulu of a misspelling graces the 41-year-old sign of Phil's Stationery on E. 47th Street in Manhattan. Seen 20 years ago, it might have drawn simply a hearty guffaw. Today, it still gets a laugh, but one laced with a touch of poignancy, since Xerox has had plenty of ups and downs in office machinery dominance. Who in the office supplies world remains proud of their ability to turn out specifically "Xerox copies"?

Phil, that's who. And it's spelled with a "Z," thank you.

City: New Condos More Important Than Fire in Your Old Brownstone

Well, this is certainly indicative of the priorities of Mayor Bloomberg's City Hall. According to New York Post, two of the five firehouses closed down by the city in 2003—Engine 202 in Red Hook and Engine 212 in Williamsburg—will be sold (Brilliant! Genius!) for condos.

That's right. The man who funnels all his energy into driving smokers, purveyors of trans fats and folks who don't clean up after their pets into submission—but can't seem to get excited about weeks-long power outages in Queens, whether the Museum of the City of New York has a home, if 9/11 rescue workers need a little TLC and $$$, and if greater Brooklyn is handed over to a modern-day robber baron as a present—thinks that Brooklyn, a place with more and more condo towers, but fewer firehouses, needs still more condos, but no more firehouses to protect them should they catch on fire.

Somehow, turning fire stations into condos seems far creepier than the trend ten years ago that converted many churches into residences.

Community leaders were upset by the move. (Those nuts! Who can figure them outer borough people out anyway?) To placate then, City Hall said it was setting up Community Steering Committees to determine the future of the firehouses. "The process of using community steering committees to determine the future use of decommissioned firehouses is collaborative," said mayoral spokesman John Gallagher. "It will result in uses for these properties that best meet the needs of the communities where they're located."

Like condos, right?

Nice Door to Come Home To

A charmingly run-down home on Verandah Place.

Jennie Jerome, Go Home!

Some serious historical misinformation is being promulgated in Cobble Hill.

On the four-story, red-brick house at 426 Henry Street near Kane Street, there is a worn metal plaque that states the address was the birthplace of Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill. Great. Good to know. Only one problem: Jerome wasn't born there.

Where she WAS born is the building at 197 Amity Street (below), a few blocks north and a couple to the east. There is no plaque there, no historical marker at all. The Henry Street plaque has been there for 55 years; it was erected in March 1952. It has no official sanction, but is evidently the product of some civic-minded citizens, still full of post-WWII gratitude for the good deeds of Sir Winston.

It's hard to know why, after a half a century, the marker is still there—and kitty-corner from a school full of impressionable kids—unless it's attached by Crazy Glue and they can't get it off. The mistake has been mentioned by many New York books and guides and it's doubtfull that the owners of the building haven't been told about it at least 12 dozen times. Perhaps they have rationalized that it's not TOTALLY wrong: Jennie's parents did live there before she was born.

Daddy, by the way, was Leonard Jerome, for whom Jerome Avenue in the Bronx was named. That throughfare led straight to Lenny's Jerome Park Racetrack. He kept his family, however, two boroughs away from that nastiness.

The Fall of the Chop

Steaks. Seafood. Chops.

We've all seen these three worlds etched in neon on some of the city's older restaurant signs. They are almost always seen together, with "Seafood" occasionaly omitted, as if this trio of hearty foodstuffs were all that people once ate in New York (which may have been the case).

But "Chops" is always the one that seems alien, the one that makes people chuckle. Steaks we know. It's the all-American meal. The city is lousy with Steakhouses, both old and new. Seafood we're familiar with. The Lobster Palaces like Rector's are gone, but a whole lobster is still a dreamed-of meal. And the Oyster Bar is still a familiar concept.

But what of the chop? To judge from the signs, the chop (the mutton chop, I imagine, is mainly what we're taking about here) was once a mighty entree, desired by all. They even named a popular Victorian form of facial hair after it. But how the mighty have fallen. Sure, a chop is offered on the menu of nearly every Steakhouse around, but who orders it? It's as neglected as the chicken option. And the chops offered these days are not the mutton of old, but a pork chop, a decidedly declasse cut of meat to most diners. Keen's offers a mutton chop, but a recent Times story revealed that it is actually lamb.

Keen's is an object lesson in itself. It used to be called Keen's Chophouse, which shows how the idea of a house of chops once appealed to a broad section of Americans. But sometime in the '90s, it changed its name, realizing people now only understand what a Steakhouse is, and perhaps not wanting to be confused with those places that disassemble stolen cars.