A Perfect Storefront, Ruined

Klenosky Paint on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was the first shop I showcased in the running column "A Perfect Storefront," a feature I occasionally use to spotlight what I called at the time "Gothamite street art, coming in the form of conscious, sub-conscious or unconscious mercantile design."

"What makes a perfect storefront?" I continued in that first column, which ran January 2010. "Well, a lot of things. Originality, for one. That doesn't mean the store owner has to be self-consciously bizarre or artful, just that they show a little character and individuality. One should be able to tell that the store is owned by a person or a family, not a corporation or chain... Great storefronts are almost always accidents of time, putting themselves together in haphazard style with the flipping calendar." There's further philosophizing here, should you wish to read it.

Apparently, Klenosky didn't see the beauty of their own storefront. I walked by the other day and found the "new and improved" facade you see above. To which I can only say, "Thanks, Benjamin Moore corporate overlords!" I guess the hanging sign wasn't enough for them. Moore had to have it all. The Moore engine won't be satisfied until their taken over the signage on every independently owned family paint and hardware shop in NYC.

Below, you can see the humble charm that once was. 

What's Left of the Astrotower

The Astrotower's 50-year life came to a sudden, unexpected and violent end over the past week, following reports on July 2 that the one-time Coney Island attraction was swaying worryingly in the wind. Officials shut down the Wonder Wheel and Cyclone rollercoaster, and all surrounding rides, in fear that the disused landmark might topple. Obviously, Coney Island can't remain indefinitely inactive during its peak operating season. So, soon enough, workers got busy dismantling the 270-foot tower, foot by foot. 

At first, the plan seemed to be to lop off just enough so the monument wouldn't present a danger. But I guess once the workers got into a rhythm, they didn't see the point of stopping. I had planned to journey down to Coney on Thursday or Friday to witness the Tower's trimming, but couldn't find the time under Saturday morning.

What I encountered there when I arrived you can seen in the photo above. The Astrotower was completely gone, reduced to a stump fenced off by chain link. I had a tough time even finding the thing—something that was never a problem when the Tower was at its full height. The chunks of Tower were sold to a local junkyard for scrap.

What a goddamned waste. Even as City Hall and real estate developers teamed up in recent years to strip Coney off all its character, the boardwalk retained four seemingly immutable landmarks: The Cyclone, the Wonder Wheel, the Parachute Jump, and the Astor Tower. Now there are only three. When Astroland, the amusement park that gave the tower its name, was unceremoniously kicked out a few years ago, the City was given the option of adopting the tower. The owners of Astroland were willing to make a gift of it to the City. But the City didn't want it, even for nothing. Astroland closed in 2008, and the Tower just stood there, untended. The far less interesting amusement park Luna Park grew up around it.

The only place you can see the Astrotower now is in this map of the Luna Park grounds.

"A Bowl & A Roll": A Cafiero's Memory

I have a feeling that, as long as keep this blog going (and maybe long after I'm gone), memories from people who experienced Cafiero's Restaurant will continue to flow in.

Over the years, I've written about the long gone South Brooklyn Italian joint more than any other subject. My posts have travelled far, and I've made connections not only to past patrons of the President Street eatery, but several actual descendants of owner Sharkey Cafiero and his relations.

Here's the latest memory, from one Howard Linker. It's a particularly lengthy and poignant reminiscence:

My best friend’s father was in the wholesale and retail poultry business and supplied Sharkey with his products. That couldn’t have been their only connection because of the way they were treated during their regular visits to Cafiero’s. My visits to Cafiero’s were during the late 50’s and early 60’s and always with my friend and his family, even when I had a son of my own (He was about two years old during his first and only visit to Sharkey’s). We always sat in the little Dining Room in the back. You had to pass through the kitchen to get there, so you got a good look at the four sauces on the cook-top and a huge dose of the delicious aromas. I do believe the menu was written on one white sheet of paper, however, other than the rolled stuffed steak, I never saw any of the items mentioned in your blog. I remember Veal & Peas, Veal and Mushrooms, Bragiole (not the rolled steak, but a large stuffed meat ball). Our favorite was pasta and meat sauce. We weren’t that interested in the pasta, it was the sauce we adored. What we really wanted was to finish the pasta and sop up the sauce with the best Italian bread I ever tasted (a Bowl & a Roll). No long thin sub shaped rolls, these were large bagel shaped breads about one foot in diameter and sectioned for easier tearing into fairly uniform chunks.

Desert was around the corner at a waterfront bakery I can’t remember the name of. Inside were immaculate polished wood cabinets with framed glass “windows” that revealed marvelous old world pastry treasures.

We were teenagers with gargantuan appetites and it was heaven!

Lost City Asks "Who Goes to The Famous Oyster Bar?"

I thought, by finally dining at The Famous Oyster Bar, I might crack this mystery of a restaurant, which has dumbfounded me for 25 years. Who owns it? How have they managed to hang on to this prime piece of real estate (54th Street and Seventh Avenue) for more than 50 years? Do they own the building? What's their secret? I have been able to uncover little on my own, because it seems that no one has ever written the story of the longstanding restaurant, in either newspaper or guidebook form.

But I left discovering only that the place has been owned by the same Greek family since 1959 and has always been in the same location. There are no framed reviews or stories on the walls that would have told me more. And the waitresses are not forthcoming.

After digging through newspaper archives and finding nothing about the Famous Oyster Bar prior to the 1980s (the results of health inspections, mainly), I begin to doubt the joint's story. Maybe it didn't open in 1959. Since the idea of it's being a "famous" restaurant is obviously a fantasy, maybe the owners also made up the founding date. The only think dissuading me from this theory are the neon signs, the only thing about the Oyster Bar that does look like it's been there since 1959.

I'll get to the bottom of this one if it's the last thing I do. In the meantime, here's my Eater column:

Who Goes There? The Famous Oyster Bar

This year, the Grand Central Oyster Bar has collected pallets of publicity in connection to its 100th anniversary. Meanwhile, the restaurant that calls itselfThe Famous Oyster Bar, which has been sitting on the same Midtown corner for more than half a century, continues its habit of attracting near zero notice decade after decade.

Having lived in New York for some time, I usually enter long-standing restaurants with some basic knowledge of their history and reputation. But The Famous Oyster Bar has stumped me for 20 years. I've often paused outside it to admire the classic postwar neon signs screaming "Oyster Bar" and "Sea Food." But I've never known anyone who ate there; never read a review of the place; never found it written up in any New York food guides, past or present. I've often wondered where they got the chutzpah to call themselves The Famous Oyster Bar (certainly, that wasn't the joint's original name), when the Grand Central is, by any measure, galactically more celebrated.

I have no doubt that many a tourist wanders into the strategically placed restaurant under the misapprehension that they are in the Grand Central Oyster Bar. And you do get mainly tourists here, most of them seemingly happening upon the place by chance. Judging by their unfamiliarity with the surroundings and the menu, there were few second-timers in attendance the night I recently dined there. The joint does get some local traffic, however; a couple of theatre professional were talking business at one table. And one guy at the bar didn't look like he was going anywhere.

With the South Street Seaport institution Carmine's having shuttered in 2010, The Famous Oyster Bar can safely lay claim to the most kitschy nautical decor in the city. A life preserver reading "Oyster Bar" hangs on the wall. There's a Titanic model under glass. Sea shells adorn the ceiling and there's a maritime mural along one wall. The menu is replete with seafood. It's the kind of place that still does Oysters Rockefeller and Lobster Newberg. Prices are typically Times Square: that is, expensive. Seafood is pricey, of course. But this isn't good seafood. The oysters were passable, but the clams were rubbery. And the soft shells crabs only acceptable. On the plus side, the service was unflaggingly friendly and attentive.

I couldn't find out much more about the history of the joint, except this: it has been run by the same Greek family since opening in 1959, and has always been at the same location. According to Internet records, the owner is one Angelo Agnonostopoulo. Finally, I have to point out that, for a place that goes by the name The Famous Oyster Bar, it's odd that they had only two selections: Blue Point and Wellfleet. The restaurant also has no raw bar. So, technically speaking, it's not only not famous, it's also not an oyster bar.

Nice neon, though.

—Brooks of Sheffield

A Memory of Old Ludlow Street

Found among the comments on an item I wrote about the changes on Ludlow Street back in 2008, from the actual owner of the once-popular Ludlow Street Cafe:

I owned The Ludlow Street Cafe and The Piano Store. I lived on Ludlow St. since 1967 and Jack Forster worked for me (Hi Jack) and was right about the guns and that it was NOT a job for a guy just out of college! (Hey Gaby we NEVER sold a piano? We sold lots of pianos!) Before gentrification got out of control it was fun. The block is now unbearable--not then. We had 3 bands a night 7 nights a week. The food was good and it was cheap. Girls would bend over garbage cans--we kept the backyard dark. Drug dealers provided something wanted--if they sold in the bathrooms they were fine. We had no C of O--our legal limit was 74. Fri/Sat night we'd have well over 200 people. They never bothered us for it but clocked us $1,500 for selling a beer to a cop who looked 30. The brunch was first-rate. It was all fun and firsts and I feel responsible for bailing when I did--if it had kept it's rough edges Ludlow St. might have survived. We NEEDED the bodegas selling bags of dope 8-Balls of coke on 

A Good Sign: York Deli

Just the Pepsi sign, I mean, not the awning. Bold. Simple. In Yorkville.

A Perfect Storefront: 3 Star Deli & Grocery

I haven't done one of these features in a while, but I couldn't pass up the chance to showcase this little York Avenue gem of a storefront. It's the old-school signage that primarily makes it, of course. (That sort of sign that lists exciting attractions found inside like "Newspapers, Hot Coffee..," etc., never gets old.) The seven-digit phone number, hanging sign and happy riot of color (blue facade, red awning, yellow sign) all contribute to the charm. The cryptic "Peaceful Deli" written on the awning adds a bit of mystery. And the name's not to be discounted. 3 Star Deli & Grocery. I guess that's according to a three-star rating system, right?

Here are some previous "Perfect Storefront" features. Looking back, I've posted more than I thought.

Furniture on Fifth

The Hutwelker Building is a handsome, simple, red-brick, four-story structure on Fifth Avenue and 19th Street in the South Slope. You'll see it's odd name—and that it was erected in 1896—if you crane your neck and look up to the cornice. And, if your eye is sharp, you spy what sort of business it used to hold from a darkened, barely noticeable, vertical sign running down the corner edge: Furniture.

Charles Hutwelker was not in the furniture business, but the wholesale grocery business. He started a meat packing business in Brooklyn in 1884 and was prosperous enough to build a couple large cold storage buildings up on Hall Street in 1909 and 1919. Hutwelker died in 1924. At some point after that the building became a furniture store. Apparently, this stretch of Fifth was once a furniture mecca of sorts; another one-time huge furniture store sits right across the street.

The building was renovated about a decade ago. It's now filled with smarmy, expensive loft apartments. 

A Taste of Bay Ridge in Park Slope

I was surprised the other day, walking down Fifth Avenue in the South Slope, to spot a familiar blue and yellow awning I had been used to seeing in Bay Ridge. It was unmistakably Leske's Bakery, a Swedish icon from the southern edges of Brooklyn which, after briefly closing in 2011, was bought by new owners and reopened. Now, it seems, the owners are intent on expanding. This new outpost is the first of what a clerk told me the owners hope will be a few new Leske's around the city. It's a nice turnaround for a classic Brooklyn business that very recently was on the brink of extinction.

The layout inside is very similar to that of the Bay Ridge store, with the counter and shelves of delicacies to the left as you walk in. I had a black and white cookie, and an almond danish, both of which were fresh and delicious. (I'm not a fan of the iconic black and white city, but I will agree with what others have said, that this is the best example in the city.) I had been unaware of the Leske's tradition of serving free coffee from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. every day, but apparently this is so.

After 128 Years, Block Drugs Expanding

You can always depend on Block Drugs. No matter how much the East Village changes, no matter how many stores come and go and Second Avenue, the 128-year-old corner druggist with the huge neon sign is always there at the southwest corner of Second and 6th Street.

Until now. No, Block isn't going away. It's actually expanding. A sign behind the roller shutter of the building beside it tells us "Block's Vision Care" is "Coming Soon." What a pleasant surprise that one of the city's oldest small businesses is thriving and growing, rather than shrinking and disappearing.

The drug store is currently owned by Carmine Palermo, whose father bought the business in 1962. According to a past article, the business was supposed to open in April. Obviously, it's taking a little more time.

Lost City Asks "Who Goes to Totonno's?"

It seems I've spent a lot of time in recent years waiting patiently for Totonno's to reopen following various disasters, and then making a trip to the Coney Island pizzeria to make certain nothing had changed. I hope no more catastrophes befall the culinary institution. I don't know if the owners could withstand another financial setback after the recent fire and flood. Here's my latest "Who Goes There?" column from Eater:

Who Goes There? Totonno's

Totonno's isn't really an appropriate candidate for this column. It's not dusty and forgotten, or even slightly neglected. Who goes there? Everyone, all the time. Locals and folks from all over the five borough, Jersey and Long Island. Tourists visiting Coney Island, Food Network devotees and pizza fanatics making pilgrimages.

But Totonno's has had a hard time of it lately. First a fire knocked it out for a time in 2009. Then Sandy put it out of commission for five months. The place is a phoenix, though, and the Balzano-Ciminieri clan—descendants of found Anthony Pero, who was trained at Lombardi's in Manhattan—reopened again in March. So I figured they need all the ink they can get. But maybe not. The young man who brought me my pie said they have been busy ever since reopening. "Memorial Day weekend was packed."

A recent visit found the place looking like it always does—spare, spic and span, an elemental, nostalgic vision in white and black. The walls are still adorned with coathooks, oval mirrors and dozens of framed press clippings, seemingly half of them from the Daily News. The owners must have spent a lot of money on frames over the years. There's a large standing fan, and a ceiling fan. The tile floor is apparently new, but looks old. So are the red table tops, but they blend in. The restroom is still small, and you have to wash your hands in an industrial sink in an alcove nearby.

The pizza, too, hasn't changed: the crust thin, yet sturdy, and delicious on its own; the subtle sauce and fresh cheese existing in perfect harmony. It's my favorite pie in New York. It's a pizza, however, best eaten hot and, since it cools quickly, should be finished within 10 minutes of hitting the table. A cold Totonno's slice eaten on the subway back home is still tasty, but the magic is gone.

The formidable Cookie Ciminieri still waits on, and clears, tables. The recent calamities seem to have aged her, but she still possesses enough spunk to rush out onto Neptune Avenue and wave some European backpackers back when she thinks they're shortchanged her. First-timers are easy to spot at Totonno's. They take pictures and spend a lot of time reading the articles on the walls. The truly unschooled will walk up to the aluminum, art deco counter in back, thinking that's where you place your order. One young couple actually asked Cookie what the pizzeria's wifi password was. (I was stunned to find out that the place actually has one.) Everyone was drinking little glass bottles of Coke, little glass bottles of Sprite, little glass bottles of wine.

To get a sense of the pizzeria's regulars, you have to go for lunch on a weekday. Locals will declare themselves by casually walking in, giving Cookie a quick wave, and seating themselves wherever. Very often, these are older men. Gold necklaces are not uncommon. One such twosome order a couple of pies between them, a margherita and a white pie. The white pie is not on Totonno's bare bones menu, which hangs at the back of the pizzeria. You have to know about it, and some regulars think it's the best thing the kitchen does. Certainly the two men did. I'd never had the white pie myself. As I was getting ready to go, I asked them whether they thought of it. "The BEST!" said one, barely looking up. "Have a slice," said the other. Really? Really. I thanked them, grabbed a slice and left. It was good.

—Brooks of Sheffield 

Blarney Cove Latest Manhattan Dive Bar to Shutter

They're dropping like flies, the old-school Manhattan dives. The Mars Bar, the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, the Emerald Inn. And now the Blarney Cove, a narrow slice of drunken darkness on 14th Street and Avenue A.

The property has been leased to another company, and the bar has posted a closing date of June 30. The bar has for some time been surrounded by vacant storefronts. Apparently, the whole stretch of street is now earmarked for developed. Lovely.

No idea on the age of this place. My guess, judging by the decor, is a birthdate sometime in the 1970s. But the space has probably been home to a bar far longer than that.

Long Island Restaurant Signs Removed

A tipster tells Lost City that, over the weekend, the classic art deco neon signs that adorn the Long Island Restaurant on Atlantic Avenue have been taken down. (I'll take a photo later today.)

The long-dormant inside—the interior of which is a perfectly preserved 1950s-era bar and diner—had been undergoing a renovation for the past few months. I have no first-hand information on the undertaking, but my understanding is that the new proprietors intend to preserve the look of the place, including the signs. (Indeed, one of the stipulations of the Alperin family, which has long owned the building, and used to run the restaurant, is that anyone who occupied the space wouldn't be allowed to change a thing about the decor. This led to may would-be tenants being shot down over the past five years.) That said, I suspect the signs have been taken down for restoration. Maybe we'll be the first generation in decades to see that cursive neon lit!

UPDATE: As I suspected, the neon is being restored—according to a reader—at Let There Be Neon. Also, I walked by yesterday, and apparently the signs had been so long a part of the building that, when they were removed, chunks of plaster crumbled and fell to the sidewalk.

Lost City Asks, "Who Goes to DeNino's Pizzeria and Tavern?"

New York foodies aren't are adventurous as they think.

They'll go to Flushing to check out a secret Vietnamese hole in the wall, or Red Hook to source a cart serving a particular Ecuadorian treat. But mention Staten Island—an entire borough belonging to the City—and they'll make with the trite "That's not really New York" and "There's nothing good there" remarks. Happens every time on Eater when I venture to Staten Island for my "Who Goes There?" column. So provincial. But I'll keep going, because so far the island to the south has shown me it can give me this and this and this. I'm sure there's more where that came from.

Who Goes There? DeNino's Pizzeria and Tavern

It's called DeNino's Pizzeria and Tavern. And it's just that. You walk into the fairly nondescript, one-story building on Port Richmond Boulevard, past the elaborate mural that tells the history of the 76-year-old Staten Island institution, take a quick left, and you're given a choice. You can veer left and take a seat at the bar, or hang right and snag a wooden table or booth for a repast of pizza pie, with maybe some garlic bread, fried calamari or buffalo wings to start. Though people talk mainly of DeNino's way with a pizza, you get the feeling that both arms of the business are given equal weight by locals. They are certainly given equal real estate. This may have something to do with the fact that the place was a bar long before it was a pizzeria. John DeNino opened the business as a saloon in 1937; pizza was introduced by his son, Carlo, in 1951. A third generation of DeNinos now runs the restaurant.

DeNino's feels like the kind of neighborhood place you might find anywhere in the country, the sort of local institution where families go on a Friday night without even thinking about it. Because, of course you'd go to DeNino's! Where else? The less-than-thrilling slogan, after all, is "Casual Family Dining Since 1937." (How's that to get your pulse racing?)

The dining room is plain, the lighting functional, the ceiling low. If it weren't for the old wooden booths, it could be the basement of a church. It's peopled by locals. This is Staten Island, after all. Although DeNino's enjoys a citywide reputation, most of the patrons come from the borough and have eaten here many, many times, and come for special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, meeting the in-laws, etc. The dinner hour is always busy, but the lunch trade is brisk, too. Pitchers of Bud abound.

I ordered a sausage pie, because the waitress told me that, while all the toppings were good (though the mushrooms are canned), the sausage was "out of this world." It was good sausage, the lump kind—as opposed to sliced—that you rarely see around New York. The crust was not quite as Neapolitan-light as that at Gotham's other vaunted pizzas, such as Totonno's or Patsy's, but not quite as heavy as the doughy stuff you find in a run-of-the-mill slice joint. It was somewhere in the middle. A good, solid, satisfying pizza, overall. The kind of above-average pie that causes a local to love their neighborhood joint, and cry out to anyone who will listen that it has the best pizza around.

Me? Of the Staten Island iconic pizzerias, I like Joe & Pat's product more. In all of NYC, I probably prefer Totonno's of Coney Island. For a single slice, Di Fara's in Midwood. But on a Friday night, with some friends or family members, I don't think I'd rather be at any other pizzeria than DeNino's.

—Brooks of Sheffield 

Lost City: Milwaukee Edition: Marty's Pizza

Milwaukee, I've learned, has—like New York, like Chicago—it's own style of pizza. It's a thin style, which a dry, crackery crust. It is often served in a rectangular shape, as opposed to a circle, and it is invariably sliced in a "party cut" or "tavern cut"—that is, not eight wedges, but innumerable squares. The cheese is, naturally, good quality. And sausage is a prominent topping, as popular as pepperoni, and is frequently of the fennel-flecked lump sort.

Curious to check this phenomenon out, I paid a call on Marty's Pizza on a recent trip to Cream City. Milwaukee possesses more famous exemplars of the local pizza style—Maria's and Zaffiro's are two renowned practitioners—but Marty's was close to where I was staying, and it has been doing what it's been doing since 1957, so I figured they couldn't be doing it terribly wrong.

The business is on Bluemound Road, a thick and unlovely commercial strip that runs several miles from the outlying city of Waukesha to the neighborhood of Brookfield, with various strip malls and big box stores on either side of the strip. Marty's is surely the oldest business along this thoroughfare. The owner told me that, when Marty's began serving pizza out of a wooden shack in the late '50s, it was just about the only place around to eat, and Bluemound was barely a step above a dirt road. (See photo above.)

Today, the restaurant is house is a modern, fairly charmless building. The interior is just as utilitarian. Beyond that, however, things get quirky. As I stated above, the pizzas are not round. They smallest are squares—as was the one we ordered. From there, they grow into longer and longer rectangles, and are given size names like "Family," "Party," "Colossal" and "Super."

As a helpful guide, pizza trays matching each size are stuck on the wall. When the pie arrived, the waiter, who was also the owner, said, "Oh, I forgot the scooper!" The "scooper" (seen two photos up) was a small metal spatula. One comes with every pie. No picking up the pizza with your nasty fingers.

How's the pizza? By New York standards, on the tame side. Not too tangy, not too zesty. And the thin crust has an odd, chalky taste to it. And yet, it was strangely addictive. Before we knew it, two thirds of the pie was gone. Maybe it's that "party cut." The tiny pieces make you want to reach for just one more.

The Coolest Bodega in South Brooklyn

With ninety percent of the bodegas in New York City, you walk in and just go "Ugh." The florescent lighting, the lowered acoustical tile ceilings, the bad tile floor, the thin walls. It's all so ugly, so uninspired. All I can think of when I walk around such places are the beautiful old wooden floors, brick walls and tin ceilings that have been covered up in the name of saving money on heating bills. 

And so I was stunned and pleased when, one day last week, I walked into my local Stop 1 Food Mart, which I have been patronizing for a decade, and saw this! The proprietors, Mr. and Mrs. Lee, had ripped out the ceiling and found this. An extra eight feet of space. And, as far as I can tell, they did it entirely for aesthetic reasons, thinking what lied behind the awful ceiling was probably more interesting and attractive than the stained, off-white tiles. And it seems, aside from some sprucing up and cleaning, they intend to leave it that way. 

I gathered from my conversation with Mrs. Lee that she thought perhaps there might be a tin ceiling lurking behind the tiles. (She owns the building and the apartments above have tin ceilings.) That wasn't the case. She doesn't intend to put one up. She'll live with the wooden rafters. 

The most interesting part of the excavation to me was this large brick remnant of a chimney. Very likely it led done to a mantle and fireplace that is no longer there. It was a fruit and vegetable store before the Lees owned it. 

South Brooklyn's Oldest Green Grocer Closes; To Become Bar

The last couple times I walked by Jim & Andy's on Court Street, the roller shutter had been pulled down on the timeless Cobble Hill green grocer. I thought perhaps the owners were on vacation. (Old Italian vendors in the neighborhood tend to close up shop for a month at a time without notice.) But last Friday, I noticed this notice taped to the front:

Liquor, wine and beer? I stopped into the nearby Cafe Pedlar—which has always rented from the owners of Jim & Andy's, to ask what was up. They told me the owner had decided to close the tiny store and only sell vegetables wholesale from now on. This happened more than a month ago. The space is to become an upscale bar, serving cocktails, wine and beer. No word about who will be running it.

Jim & Andy's was a throwback to South Brooklyn's past. It was an old school green grocer, with one aisle down the middle and boxes of vegetables piled high on either side. You collected your veggies in brown paper bags and brought them to the front, where they were weighed on a hanging scale and given an approximate price. In the past, Frank Sinatra would always be playing on the loudspeakers.

It was a father and son operation, but in January 2009 Vincent Cincotta died at the age of 82. He was also known as Jimmy and was the "Jim" or Jim & Andy's. He son, Carmine, carried on.

Vincent Cincotta began his career as a horse-and-cart peddler, like his father before him, selling vegetables and fruits door to door, street to street, yelling out his wares. He bought his vegetables at the old West Street Market in Manhattan. When he got older, and that style of selling was fading away, he opened the small store in 1970. At Christmas, he brought out bottles of booze and poured out nips for customers as they left.

Jim & Andy's was a part of the neighborhood before Smith Street and Court Street became awash with shops selling artisanal foodstuffs. In the early '90s, Jim & Andy's carried delicacies like Morel mushrooms when no one else in the area did. I bought them there annually for a while; they only had them for a brief window of time.

The last time I was there before it closed, I had a longer than usual chat with Carmine, who, with his full head of dark hair and beard, always reminded me a bit of James Brolin. I have no idea how it happened, but somehow the conversation veered to The Beastie Boys. I mentioned being saddened by the news last year that member Adam "MCA" Yauch had died. Carmine said, as if it were nothing, "He used to come in here all the time in the '80s. Nice kid."

How the New Hankow Restaurant Looked

A helpful reader sent me the above photo, an image of the New Hankow Restaurant on 34th Street. I posted something on the history of the Chinese place back in May 2012.

The pictures attests to my past report that it was a second-floor restaurant—perched above Field's Better Apparel for Less, as it turns out. Lovely neon sign. All gone know, including the building itself.

A Good Sign: Joe's Tavern

Found this battered old vertical neon sign outside a building way over on 10th Avenue and 25th. Joe's is long gone, and it doesn't look like the ground floor business space has been inhabited for years. I've seen this style of sign, with the horizontal "BAR" tacked on the end, countless times. But the forlorn appearance of this specimen makes it particularly poignant.

A Final Visit to Joe's Dairy

Joe's Dairy closed on Saturday, May 11, after 60 years of doing simple and honest business in SoHo. The closure was the owner's decision. He's decided to continue on doing only wholesale business, not retail. So there's a chance you may still get to eat Joe's peerless cheese at a local restaurant, or buy it at a local store. But where? That remains to be determined.

When I went there, on Friday afternoon, many people were already paying their respects, praising the cheese and lamenting the fact that the store was going under. "It wasn't my decision," said the busy clerk, who was evidently not happy about the turn of events. Joe's famous smoked mozzarella was gone by early afternoon. So I bought a pound of regular, which I ate plain and used in pasta over the next 24 hours. It was fantastic, among the best I've tasted in the City.

Joe's Dairy was one of the last remnants of working-class SoHo. It hailed from a time before the art galleries, before the boutique shops, before the luxury chains. In a way, it belonged more to the old South Village Italian community of Bleecker Street and thereabouts than it did to the cast-iron region real estate agents christened SoHo. 

Joe's opened in 1953. Its original owner was Joe Aiello. Since 1977, the shop has been owned by Anthony Campanelli, who had worked part time in the store when Joe ran it. Anthony was only 18 when he bought the business. (Meaning he's 54 today.) Anthony was eventually joined in the business by his brother Vincent, father Frank and uncle Nick. 

Joe's sold a variety of Italian goods, as the pictures above attest, including 35 kinds of cheese. But customers mainly came for one thing, the mozzarella, which was made daily. He sold more than 1,000 pounds a day. 

To make the famous smoked mozzarella, Joe's put the in a barrel with wood chips underneath and exposed them to the smoke. No liquid smoke or other fake smoking methods. 

While I was there, a walking tour came by. The guide pointed out Joe's Dairy and told its history. She then came out with a tray of samples for the group. It was surely the wast walking tour to find Joe's open for business.

Meet Otto, of Otto's Scandinavian Bar

A reader made me very happy yesterday by sending me some new information and photos about one of my favorite lost businesses, Otto's Scandinavian Bar. It stood for many years at the southeast corner of Columbia Street and Kane Street in Brooklyn, near the waterfront, and was, before it finally closed in the 1970s, one of the last remnants of Red Hook's Scandinavian past.

Until now, the only pictorial evidence I've had of Otto's are the photos seen above (from the 1960s) and to the right (a shot from the Jimmy Breslin-inspired 1971 film "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight."

Now, I know what Otto Hansen looked like. This image (below) is from a Norwegian-language article the reader sent me. It's quite a long piece, titled "Otto's Bar, First and Last Stop," which was a motto painted on the outside of the tavern.

The photo is of Otto behind his dark, somewhat shabby, but charmingly eccentric little bar. The picture is from 1974, when Otto was 68. Notice he is his holding a cord that is connected to the bell, perhaps the closing-time bell.

Otto's history, detailed in the story, is related in a rather offhand manner, which leads me to distrust it a bit. But here are the basics. He was born in 1907 in Christiana (now Oslo). As a young man he took to the sea, working as a cabin boy. He eventually got work on a ship, the Norvega, going to America. The voyage was terrible. The crew was starved and there was no soap. When they docked in Portland, many of the men fled. Otto, however, told the captain he was waiting until they got to a bigger city.

There were many more adventures, and different ships, to Stockholm, to Rotterdam, to Chile. He won $1,000 in poker on one occasion. At some point, he was hired on as a cook on one ship, though he had no experience. He finally settled in New York in 1924. He took various jobs, and served in the Army during WWII.

His first bar was near the Bush Terminal, near Sunset Park. No date is specified for when he opened the bar at Kane and Columbia. The saloon was originally situated in a three-story building. The third floor was shorn off at some juncture.

The bar is described as so: "The bar itself was right when one came in the door, on the left side stood a few small tables. There was also a room in the [back]. It was, among other things, a billiards [hall]. On the left wall [were] ship pictures. There were several famous scenes from different time periods." There was also food served. Dach evening, two police officers regularly stopped by for a hamburger and "a shot of Fleischman" before they continued their rounds. 

Apparently, Otto, as a way of advertising, would go down to the docks and hand out comical cards to sailors, featuring this photo (right) of him. It worked. Many of the seamen found their way to Otto's bar. 

Otto allowed many sailors to buy on credit, and kept a book recording how much they owned. According to the article, the amount the seamen owed Hansen added up to $12,000, and many of the debts were never collected. He married three times, first in 1931 to a Norwegian woman with whom he had a daughter. The daughter was born in Norway, and never met her father. During the war, he married again and had another daughter. This wife died in 1963. He kept a house on Court Street and lived with an Australian woman named Betty Bass. They got married in 1966. 

In 1978, before a trip to Norway, Otto closed the bar. In 1982, he and Betty moved to Hudson, New York. He died on March 29, 1985. He was 77.

The Doors of DeGraw Street

You can tell a lot about the age of a building by its door.

Having lived in Brownstone Brooklyn for quite some time, I can come upon a ballpark figure of a building's age by eyeing up its door and windows. A dead giveaway that you're looking at one of the older brick homesteads in Brooklyn is a Greek Revival Style door.

The Greek Revival Style thrived from the 1820s the 1860s. It was, at the time, a move away from the Federal style that had dominated. The style was used in the construction of churches, banks, town halls, and, of course, houses. As one might expect, a common aspect of the style was columns and pilasters, typically made out of wood, but made to resemble marble. In terms of doorways, the look was austere but elaborate. Small-paned windows framed the door on the sides and top, and the door was bracketed by two columns.

The block of DeGraw Street between Hicks and Columbia is filled with such entrances. One can easily conclude, with a scan of window lintels and doorways, that several of the buildings on the block were the work of a single developer. That so many of these structures have survived relatively intact into the 21st century is a minor miracle, particularly since this is not a landmarked block.

The state of the various Greek Revival entrances is variable. The doorway above, belonging to 148 DeGraw, is handsome enough, but a number of the window panes have been covered up and painted over. 

The entrance above is also in decent shape, though the door is obviously of recent vintage. 

This homeowner made the door nicely "pop" by painting the surrounding brickwork white. But all the surrounding windows have been painted over, ruining the intricate design effect. 

This beat-up old specimen, No. 142, best shows how the buildings used to look. Every window is still filled with glass. Painted white, all the details of the columns shine through. The address is currently under construction. Let's hope they preserve the look of the doorway.

No. 138, meanwhile, also has all its windows, though the door is more modern, and the columns seem to have vanished.

Who's Pop Torello?

I've often wondered about this plaque, which it outside 227 Smith Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. It's quite old, having been placed there in 1956, when the area was still largely Italian, with some Irish and Scandinavian thrown in. Given that it was put up there by "The Boys," I assumed there was some sort of Mob connection, and Pop was a local don. But, on reflection, that makes no sense. Why would such men advertise their presence?

Turns out Torello—real name Nick—was a humble bartender, who ran a bar and restaurant on Smith Street near Butler. There was a bar here called the Golden Eagle Bar and Grill in the 1940s, so that's probably where he worked. Torello also seemed to have owned the building, as he made some sort of renovations to it in 1951. The bar was the target of a robbery in 1946.

In the 1880s, there was a bowling alley at this address, called Golden Eagle Alleys. I've heard that remnants of the alleys remain in the basement. In 1885, a 14-year-old boy was struck by a bowling ball in the ankle. He fractured his ankle, got blood poisoning and died. No charges were filed.

Another New York Jewish Deli Lost

Chalk up another loss for the dwindling New York Jewish Deli scene.

Following the closure of Stage Deli, and the fire at Sarge's, we learn from Sheepshead Bites that Adelman's Kosher Deli, which has stood at 1906 Kings Highway for 60 years, shut its doors on March 25. The eatery had closed for Passover, as it does every year. Only this time, it never reopened. The phone number has been disconnected.

"According to a representative for the landlord, however," wrote the blog, "the neighborhood staple had fallen far behind on rent and was having money troubles. The landlord won an eviction against the business operator after failing to strike a deal."

But there's a small glimmer of hope. "The landlord, Waldorf Realty Co., said that there’s still a chance Adelman’s could reopen. The evicted owner was not the original owner of the restaurant, and the original owner may still have the right to seize the business and take over the lease." The most recent owner was Mohamed Salem, who won some press for being a Egyptian Muslim who served a Jewish clientele.

Adelman's began its life in Borough Park. It was at its current location for the past 30 years. Its walls were covered with sports memorabilia.

There are two kosher delis remaining in Sheepshead Bay: Jay & Lloyd’s Kosher Deli (2718 Avenue U) and Mill Basin Deli (5823 Avenue T).