Chocolate Chip Mint, Wet Paint, and Pepperoni Pizza

Approximately a half century ago, a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop opened up in my old neighborhood of Kingsbridge. Affectionately known to many of us as “31 Flavors,” it featured such classics as French Vanilla, Rocky Road, and Orange Sherbet. As a youth more inclined to stick with the basics—chocolate or vanilla—I remember liking their Chocolate Chip Mint, now called Mint Chocolate Chip. Baskin-Robbins, I see, is a global concern in the new century, an ice cream giant that lays claim to merchandising the first ever ice cream cake. I liked Baskin-Robbins ice cream all right, but then I liked the now defunct Sealtest brand as well. As a kid my ice cream bar was quite low.

As a sentimental softie, Carvel ice cream—also with a shop in the neighborhood—was my preferred parlor. Through changing times and faces, the neighborhood Baskin-Robbins somehow survived for four decades before closing its doors. Its packaged product can now be purchased in an area Dunkin’ Donuts. Surprisingly, the Carvel location is still operating, but it’s a shadow of its former quality—in my humble opinion—with smaller portions at not-so-small prices.

If the last two years are indicators: February in my neck of the woods is “A Train by Any Other Name Is a Bus” month. Or is it “A Bus by Any Other Name Is a Train” month.

The stores that best manage to adapt and survive changing times and changing neighborhoods are—without question—liquor stores.

"Where do you come from. Where do you go?"

I played many variations of tag as a youth, including my personal favorite: freeze tag. But I am happy to report, I never "tagged" another's property.

In portions of the Bronx—8.7 miles worth—Interstate 87 is the Major Deegan Expressway, an unpleasant thoroughfare and frequently a traffic nightmare. Looking on the bright side, however, it's not the Cross-Bronx Expressway.

If this is what my discarded coffee grinds, orange peels, and soiled paper towels are becoming, organic recycling is well worth the effort. And a sure sign of spring, too.

But I almost forgot: It's still February...

The first order of business is naming the business...

I'm more at ease in close proximity of a train that is a bus than a training bus...

When I'm feeling thirsty, a quencher "created by volcanoes" doesn't typically come to mind...

Through the years, I've encountered many "Wet Paint" signs in subway stations and at subway entrances. Rarely have I resisted the temptation to see for myself if indeed the paint was wet. So far I've come up dry every time.

This "Wet Paint" sign has been up over a month. I guess erring on the safe side is always prudent.

Many of New York City subway signals are seventy and eighty years old.

Which is why the fluorescent vest trade needn't worry...

Pepperoni doesn't agree with me nowadays. It gives me indigestion and causes my heart to race. Why then do I still order pizza with pepperoni?

"Hello, Buunni, this is Ole Buttercup!"

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

Sights and Sounds Are All Around

Approximately forty years ago, Seaside Heights, New Jersey had a boardwalk attraction called Cinema 180. Inside a movie theater-circus tent hybrid, paying customers stood and watched films of speeding cars, airborne planes zigzagging over the Grand Canyon, soaring hot air balloons, and other breathtaking adventures. The barker outside the place piqued people's interests with a lively come-on script that concluded with the punch line: "Sights and sounds are all around." And indeed they were...

I'm afraid it is...

I have always felt that seagulls have a good thing going for them.

More evidence of that...

It's called "thinking outside of the box." Take a cruise up Broadway on the HRYSLER.

See such sights as Broadway Joe's Pizza, established 1969; the former locations of legendary Manhattan College watering holes, the Pinewood and Terminal; Burger King, which originally was a White Tower, and the Marie Antoinette, a walk-up apartment building that was once home to bartender and neighborhood icon Timmy O'Connor.

"Now the children try to find it...and they can't believe their eyes...Yes, there used to be a nuclear reactor right here." 

Christmas 2017 seems like a long time ago. Yet, when Christmas 2018 arrives, it'll be like Christmas 2017 just happened...

Just a short year ago this age-old midget entrance to a Van Cortlandt Park baseball field endured. The portal was there forty years ago when my crouching friends and I regularly passed through it to "hit some out." 

But this portal proved to be mortal after all. And a venerable rite of passage is no more. 

If vans could talk...

I don't know what it is but there's something about subway track sparks...

Mike Quill was one of the founders of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU). He was deemed a "Red" by some back in the day. Now he's got a corner all his own.

Whenever I see graffiti in places like this I think of Robert Shaw frying himself in The Taking of Pelham 123...a movie classic from the 1970s that holds up quite well in my opinion.

I went to high school in the East Bronx and remember some classmates arriving via the "Dyre Avenue" line, which always sounded dire to me.

Walking in a winter wonderland...

McMann and Tate ain't what they used to be...but then what is?

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

“Eee…Snow?”

I know this fellow who is into “good stuff”—really into it. He once said to me, “Thoughts give rise to other thoughts—gotta be helpful!” Well, yeah, the first part’s a no-brainer. For example: I woke up this morning and wondered if it would be snowing outside my window. It wasn't but soon after was. The previous evening’s forecast had called for the white stuff to begin falling just after sunrise. It was expected and did transition to sleet, freezing rain, and then plain old rain in a matter of hours.

Well, the first thing that popped into my head as I rolled out of bed was this—and I said it aloud, too—“Eee…snow?” Why, you ask, did I say that? It’s actually a query lodged in my brain from—oh, say—thirty-five years ago. I was patronizing my preferred pizza parlor, Sam’s, on a winter’s day sometime when Ronald Reagan was president. And it began to snow outside. The counterman at that moment was a young chap that my brother and I had christened “Unis”— not Eunice, but Unis. He was an employee who materialized out of the blue and became a pizza-making fixture there for several years in the 1980s. But upon his arrival we were accustomed to seeing the same familiar faces: George, Andrew, and even "Eeeno." Eeeno, by the way, received his moniker for shouting to a neighborhood friend of mine, “Eee not for you!” My pal had committed the grievous mistake of assuming the greasy pizza bag placed in front of him by Eeeno was his takeout order. We never did learn Eeeno’s real name.

Anyway, back to Unis. He turned up as a completely unknown quantity in a business of very well-known quantities. And since the place was owned and staffed exclusively by Greeks back then, he was the Unknown Greek to us—or Unis for short—even after he became quite known. You see how thoughts lead to other thoughts. As for the process always being helpful—well, that remains to be seen.

While on this fascinating subject, I stumbled upon a sign this past weekend in the vicinity of Wall Street that read, “Danger…Open Pit.” What came to mind were two competing and somewhat diverse thoughts. One was of the barbecue sauce brand, Open Pit, and the second was of the Joker as played by Cesar Romero. It would have been just like him to invent a dastardly contraption to do away with his nemeses Batman and Robin. I can see the Dynamic Duo now dangling over a percolating pit of steamy barbecue sauce. 

Some more of the same: A fellow passenger on the subway this weekend resembled—as far as I was concerned—the actor Denver Pyle in his later years. He was wearing a Gray Line sightseeing tour-guide red satin jacket and nervously fiddling with his meds. I couldn’t help but wonder what his story was. I sat across from still another oddball, whom I’ve spied before on the train. He’s a dead ringer for the Monty Python guy—the hermit who appears in the opening credits and cries, “It’s!” When Eeeno the pizza man said, “Eee not for you!” he was really saying, “It’s not for you!” The Monty Python Guy, as I dub him forevermore, exited at Times Square. Perusing a local tabloid, he typically sits quietly for the ride. So, imagine my surprise when he got up to exit this past Sunday and bellowed, “Open the [expletive deleted] doors!” Apparently, they didn’t open up fast enough for the uber-impatient Monty Python Guy, who then headed off to somewhere unknown looking—for all the world—like the Monty Python guy…

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)