NYC Livin'

[LESider]

Welcome John,

I really enjoy your writing, especially Serious Pig. I understand that you lived in NYC's Lower East Side some time ago. and I'm wondering if you have any memories of that you'd like to share? I'm also curious if you've been back lately and seen how much it has changed?

Thanks much,

S.

[John Thorne]

Yes, I lived on East 11th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A and on 9th Street between First and Second Avenue back in the early 1960s. I've written about this experience at some length in my book OUTLAW COOK (there's also another perspective on it in HOME BODY in the essay "The Fire Escape"). I don't know why this is, but once I wrote about it, I found my experiences there falling out of memory, although if I think about it hard enough I can bring some of it back. When you say "share my memories" I realize with a pang that it is getting to the point now where that would be like me asking my grandfather in 1950 to tell me about Boston back in 1900, when he worked as a bank clerk. I think the 2nd Avenue Deli had been open for just two years when I lived there.... I did take Matt to see where I had lived in 1996 or so. I felt like a ghost. Not because it was so different but because it was so much the same, only without me. This probably isn't the response that you're looking for, but it's hard to know what memories are interesting, which are irrelevant, and which simply wouldn't be believed. For example, it used to be a common experience to walk by store-front pizza joints and watch the pizza dough being sput into the air again and again to shape it. Is this still an ordinary sight? Do apartments there still have a row of toilets (one for each apartment on the floor) in a row? Do the hallways still smell of boiled cabbage. Etc.

[LESider]

The hallways smell like Pernil, now, not cabbage.

...thanks sorry if it sounded like a "back in the day" type of question. But it has prompted me to go out and get Outlaw Cook ,which I look forward to reading...

Are you wroking on a new tome now?

[robert brown]

John, I hung out there in the early '60s when running the Filmmakers' Cinematheque on E. 4th Street. My spots were the B&H Dairy Luncheonette (still there, at least until recently and mentioned on eGullet a year or so ago) and the Gems Spa. There were the Polish restaurants on First Ave. or Ave. A. I also lived for a while on 8th St. between First and A, near the Jazz Gallery. Does any of that ring a bell? And let's not forget the Fillmore East and Ratner's.

[John Thorne]

First of all, just to show how memory fades, I lived one block further east in both instances than I originally wrote above: on East 11th between A and B and on East 9th between Avenue A and First Avenue. Among my memories of the area are the Two Guys From Brooklyn vegetable and fruit store on First Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets, with vegetables spilling out to the curb. Beside it was one of the old indoor pushcart markets which was fading even in 1962. Always half empty. There was also a butter and egg store where the butter was cut from a huge chunk (10 pounds, 25 pounds -- I know an order of a pound hardly made a dent into it). There was also a "used bread store" around the corner that sold day old bread and pastries, including slices of cake. They sold a "Boston brown bread" that was really a black pumpernickel rye loaf that was one of the best breads I ever ate and could never find again. And Polish butchers selling smoked kielbasa that was really SMOKED. So good. I couldn't afford to eat in many restaurants. Also an Italian pastry shop that was still there last time I visited. And Kossar's bialies on 14th Street near a place that sold deep-fried potato knishes. Anyway, no need to apologize. And, finally, yes, I currently have contracts for three tomes, but don't hold your breath.....