cityrag

buddy and the baby
Buddy's off to his weekend job... kissing and annoying the baby

living the dream
last night, hangin out with our friend NO in the LES, we decide to have a little CityRag smoke-in on a main strip. but d’oh! neither of us has a light. we ask a bunch of people passing by, and a cool dude hands us a fresh pack of matches. so we ask him if he’d like to join our smoke-in. the 3 of us enjoy a leisurely smoke and good conversation in the lovely twilight breeze.

the pic is of the cool dude who materialized with the fire. sporting some awesome old school kicks, and a punk wrist band under his suit – corporate-monkey-punk style. as we parted we yelled that his pic would be on our site the next day and he shouted out a loud, resonating “YEEAAAH!” and then our boy NO summed up our little smoke-in moment perfectly with “we’re living the dream”

Allen St anarchy - a little LES history
we moved onto Allen St around 1988. at that time, just 16 years ago, the lower east side was like the wild west. raw, lawless, druggy - even friends who lived in the EV hesitated to venture down. here are some random memories from back in those dayz to help paint the picture…

the Allen St Mall (the center island between the north and south lanes) was a virtual tent city of homeless people (with a heavy concentration of drug addicts and prostitutes) the main “city” was the area between Houston and Delancy (but trickling down all the way to where Allen becomes Pike and then hits the river) at this time the mall had built-in benches up and down on both sides. everything from tents and tarps to large cardboard boxes and construction debris were used to make make-shift homes. the city and police rarely, if ever, set foot in this area, and let the homeless be with no raids/evacuations.

in the Allen St mall there was also a notorious entrance/hatch door to one of the deserted underground subway tunnels used by the homeless. we believe it was near the old, abandoned public bathrooms located right across the street from bragging gentrifiers at 115 Allen

during the 80’s and early 90’s just about any drug you wanted could be purchased at a number of store fronts along the east side of Allen between Stanton and Rivington. around 1989, Jane Fonda’s daughter, Vanessa Vadam, was busted for buying heroin on this block

there were many houses of prostitution in the area. one of the most well known ones was at 167 Allen. now a restaurant, but for decades a bodega was in this spot with an infamous whore-house in the basement. in the 12 years we witnessed its operation; it was very well known by everyone in the hood and never had a single bust by the cops. open in the daytime (closed around 6 pm) it usually had a busy business going by 9 am. the bodega was owned and run by this handsome old guy, Caesar. he had a big sign that said “Mr. Credit no here today”

the Yemen guys who own the deli on Allen and Stanton had a homey fried chicken place on the corner across the St. in what later became the Living Room (coincidentally – we noticed today construction is going on in this spot and were told a new bar/restaurant is coming in)

a little off the Allen… Castillo De Jagua was the neighborhood food mainstay, serving up delicious cheap Latin food. they treated everyone who came in like family and fed everyone in the hood (you could eat and pay them back later if you were hurtin.) they still make one of the best and cheapest Cuban Sandwiches in the city. the then un-renovated, dark and dirty Sarah Delano Roosevelt park was hands-down the most dangerous park in all of NYC. and Adam Purple was still fighting the good battle to keep his community garden alive.

in the early 90’s the city decided to start raiding the homeless city and kick out all inhabitants. The raids didn’t seem to take permanent effect – so the city came in and REMOVED every single bench up and down the mall from Houston to Delancey, and the people living there moved for good.

that’s just a taste of what Allen St was like back then. and now we've come full circle, as the Parks Dept website has put up a notice that this summer they will start a redevelopment project of the Allen St Mall

tat bonding
tattoos can separate people. in a funny way, they’re designed to do that. but they equally bring people together. a couple weeks back we brought you the Killer Knees story about a candid photo taken of a friend’s tattoos and posted on a fotolog site, and then followed the trail as they learned of each other.

today’s shots were submitted by the subject of our Killer Knees post. these are her own street pics taken of an older tattooed man in lower Manhattan. they were mutually drawn to each other's body art and exchanged tours of their tats…

The heart and soul of BBQ comes to NYC
BBQ NYC - brings an old time, down-home BBQ picnic to New York City. CityRag has the inside scoop on this very cool event, still in it’s undiscovered stage, and ready for you to pounce-on and be part of the making of a legend! …a massive and extraordinary feast, cooked by renowned BBQ chefs, in world class smokers, attended by 250 people and held in a local park - where everyone comes away stuffed and satisfied!. we have an exclusive interview with the founder and info on how to get in on next years event!

Born last summer, this year's second showing was held July 24th in Flushing Meadows Park. For only $20 a head attendees feasted on… MEAT: Brisket, Pork Butt, Brats & Chicken; SIDES: Cole Slaw, Corn on the Cob, Vegetarian Baked Beans & Potato Salad; VEGETARIAN: Home-smoked Salmon, Grilled Veggie Burgers; POTLUCK: Salads, Sides, Desserts and other dishes all prepared by fellow picnic-goers; BEVERAGES: 3 flavors of the infamous DOGFISH HEAD BEER, lemonade, iced tea, water, soda; DESSERT: Watermelon & snack cakes

Interview with Travis Mills, aka Cuemaster, and BBQ NYC founder (all photos kindly provided by Travis)…

CR: What made you decide to start doing this?
Travis: The origin of BBQ NYC came late one night on Chowhound, back when I was a 24/7 visitor to the site - every summer tourists and locals alike bemoan the lack of quality barbecue in the city, sending out pleas for where to find it - finally I got so fed up with it, I wrote into one of the myriad "Where's the Best BBQ in the City?" threads that I was a barbecue chef from Texas and that it would be my mission to bring the good stuff here. I was able to generate a good amount of buzz and collect a few adventurous souls willing to lend a hand....most importantly, Bobby Richter who answered a call for pit smokers in the area on a BBQ related message board. Thank the heavens for him - he makes this thing go.

CR: How was this year's picnic?
Travis: Fantastic. I don't think there was a disappointed plate holder in the crowd.....the weather held up despite the biblical deluge the day before - it was magic. Hard work, but totally rewarding.

CR: How many people attended?
Travis: We sold out all 250 of our allotted spots lickity split, with well over a month to go. That was fine with me, but if you blinked, you missed it. I could have easily filled 600 spots. so there's that element of having to balance what's possible with what you can get away with. Our volunteer organizers were ridiculously overworked, even though none of them will tell you that it was work for them. To me, they get all the credit, especially my wife Amy, and Abby, Carey, Jessica, Sarah, Ellen. Tons of other folks helped out too. Our legal guy was a freakin genius. Bobby's crew, in addition to his trusty sidekicks Barry and Pete, his brother Michael and buddy Andy, also included one of the east coast's top BBQ champions. it's impossible to imagine what it would have been like without just one of them.

CR: Goals for next year?
Travis: Next year Bobby and I really want to incorporate a competition element to the proceedings. BBQ is so huge these days, we see the demand and we'd love to be right there at the top....then again, my favorite aspect of BBQ NYC is the down-home, intimate gathering feel we've been able to maintain. I like to call it a picnic with 250 of my closest strangers. But I think a competition would be fun, informal at first but then it could grow to something bigger - New York state doesn't have an official one as far as I know. but my first priority is to digest from this last one first!

Tips/notes:
- go to the official website for information on how to attend and to get on the mailing list BBQ-NYC.com (and there will be pix and updates about the event there in the coming days)
- the picnic is open to everyone – on a first come basis (you must sign-up in advance. the picnic sells out very quickly and no walk-ins are accepted)
- a wonderful, funny and info packed email goes out to all attendees before the picnic that includes every bit of information you need!

THIS JUST IN! check out these Chowhound Outer Boroughs board posts for MOUTH WATERING first hand reports from dedicated NY chowhounds who attended!! GREAT STUFF (thanks for the tip Bob!)

sleepy little city dog
a weekend in the country wares him out. and that's a good thing.

smoke in the city
CityRag would like to pass a big fatty to all our friends and readers out there writing us in support of our position that... organizing police efforts to hunt down, arrest and detain people for smoking a joint in NYC is a ridiculous waste of police resources and tax payer money! we're making this a permanent feature (atleast until NYPD policy is changed) and have added a new CityRag Smoke-in category. and furthering the cause, figured since we've gotten Mila drunk, we might as well get her high...

the lowdown on NY’s crazy summer weather
this summer’s weather sucks, with weekends regularly getting rained out. it seems like we went through this last year too. to get a grip on our sanity, CityRag peeped the National Weather Services site, to help verify what’s going on…

NOAA reports on various locations around NY, we used the Central Park location (all locations around NY are pretty similar), and looked at the “since June 1” comparison – and there we found our answer…

this year’s PRECIPITATION (INCHES) SINCE JUN 1 is 10.90. the average is 8.74, so in the last 2 months we’ve had almost a 25% increase in the average amount of rain. and last year it was even worse, by this same time, NYC had recieved 14.87 inches of rain, around a 75% increase in the normal rain flow for June and July!

so the weather HAS been wet and whacky for a couple summers now! it’s good to know we’re not going crazy. we’re actually happy to be drought free, and enjoy the exploding lighting storms (this shot of lighting hitting a tree roadside was taken during the crazy storm this last Friday) but miss the swimming. and one more step towards sanity... the Gothamist is feeling it too!

Farm stands update - it's lookin' peachy out there...
between NJ, PA, Long Island and Upstate NY – at this point in the season - grocery stores, green markets, and farm stands are loaded with fresh and local fruits and vegetables. some highlights right now are – heirloom tomatoes and local peaches – both are bursting with bright and intense flavor. we find the heirloom tomatoes to blow all others (hybrids, beefsteak, etc) out of the water with amazing, deep flavor. but when it comes to peaches, a midst the myriad of new stuff on the market (white peaches, “Saturn” shapes, etc) we find the traditional variety to hold-up as the best available for juicy and firm texture and that pure, intense peach flavor.

some hot tips…
- ask at your market “what’s local” and fresh
- some items may be ripe now in warmer areas closer to the city, but as the season progresses, a continuing flood of fruits and vegetables will arrive as things start to come into season in the cooler areas upstate.
- apples are NOT in season yet. they’re not picked until September – if it says NY apple right now its last years!

previous CityRag farm stand reports - June 28, July 12

hello... kitty
the latest addition to our Tattoo’s are Personal series… “I love Hello Kitty so much, this way they’re with me all the time”

can you feel the love
here it comes, it's very subtle.... Buddy's giving you the love-eyes...

these photos also show why one of Buddy's nicknames is Chesty Chesterton