Mom and Dad, who arrived at my apartment this morning to visit for the weekend, had a crusty Jewish cabdriver drive them in from LaGuardia who told entertaining stories, like that I was smart to be living in Inwood because it’s inexpensive although there are all those Dominicans to contend with. I was happy to hear the ride was much cheaper than I originally quoted; I thought outward fares from LaGuardia were flat-rate like the $45 ones from JFK, but I was mistaken.
We got lunch at Bite, a closet-sized East Village salad and panini sandwich shop that Time Out New York rated best bet for Union Square environs in its recent and annual “Cheap Eats” cover story. I had the toasted and pressed Nutella-banana sandwich (only $3) and it was a mouth-watering mix of warm, sweet, melty and chewy tastiness. Sandwiches in tow, we walked a few blocks south and gathered at the Alamo cube on Astor Place for a Big Onion walking tour of the Bowery.
We were relieved to see our tour guide, David, at least appeared to be the real deal: he was shouldering a canvas bag from the Strand, and was dressed in jeans that kept falling down a bit and what appeared to be a thrift-store shirt. (Later I learned he’s a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Columbia.) He carried a small stack of laminated handouts he’d occasionally pass around, a pocketwatch on a chain that he’d check for time, and a beard that he would stroke not theatrically but with genuine thoughtfulness. He had a passion for facts both entertaining and enlightening, a keen knowledge of local history and a grudge for gentrification and development. He reminded us in some ways of my friend Joe.
We learned the Bowery is one of the two oldest streets in the city (Broadway’s the other) and that its name comes from the Dutch word for farm; most of the area on which we stood, including Cooper Union, two Starbucks less than a block apart and a Kmart, was once part of Peter Stuyvesant’s farm. At Cooper Union, the country’s first tuition-free institution of higher learning, we were told how the founder made his fortune collecting and disposing the horse carcasses that littered the city’s streets. (Because they’re so heavy, owners often left them where they fell.) Giving fresh meaning to the aphorism “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” Peter Cooper started a glue company, then obtained the first American patent for manufacturing “portable gelatine,” a treat that would eventually be known as Jell-O. His 1845 patent application even specified lemon or lime flavoring. What it didn’t recommend was gelatin made from horse hooves; Cooper called for isinglass gelatin, which is made from fish viscera, but let’s not let the facts spoil a good anecdote. As if his school-founding and dessert-inventing wasn’t enough, Cooper still found time to develop what’s perhaps the first steam locomotive prototype.
David also told of Cooper Union’s place in American history as a rallying point for mobs and more recently home to speeches by political firebrands. An interesting architectual detail: the school was built from blocks of brownstone, a mud-colored sandstone considered a shabby excuse for construction material at the time. After the school gained fame, its unconventional look sparked a short-lived brownstone fad, culminating in buildings of that name sprouting up all over Harlem and Brooklyn.
As we headed down Bowery, we looked at and learned of McSorley’s Old Ale House, at 150+ perhaps the city’s oldest pub and one that didn’t even admit women until 1970 when a court forced it to. It was a happy coincidence to hear David reference Joseph Mitchell’s excellent 1945 essay collection, McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon, which is among my current stack of bedside books.
We also made stops outside flophouses (several of which are still active), the Amato Opera House, the doomed CBGB, the Bowery Savings Bank and McGuirk’s Suicide Hall, one of the most notorious drinking establishments ever, the site of which is now a colossally ugly new glass-and-steel condo complex. I wish for the yuppies who will live there to know that there used to be a bar on the spot that would combine the dregs from the glasses at closing time into a barrel, thread a long tube into the swill, then charge a nickel for one all-you-could-drink suck. Adding a contemporary spin to the seedy topics of the tour, I spotted a fat man near Rivington Street who appeared to be mating with a stove. That’s tough love, man.
The tour ended in Chinatown, so we bought bubble tea at Ten Ren’s Tea Time and took it to drink at Columbus Park, where Chinese men crowded around the game tables to watch rounds of Xiangqi. We walked up to McNally Robinson where we pursued travel guides for Italy and found on a globe Zambia, where my sister Dana may be living and working next. After drinks at Republic, we ate dinner at Craft. For post-dinner drinks and lively conversation, we attended Andie and Eric’s cocktail party. Mom advised Ali, newly a nurse, in the ancient arts of the RN. It was like Yoda and Luke at Dagobah.
Bite
- 211 E. 14th Street (between Third and Second Avenues)
- (212) 677-3123
- Meal 28 of 52: Nutella Banana Ciabatta ($3.00).