Stoop kids, by Phil Buccellato

Island People Are So Warm: Multi-culti-and-loving-it blog Bed-Stuy Banana finds a botanica on Broadway and is perplexed by the use of a strange language in addition to Spanish. Is it Haiti-an, she asks? No, as the lone comment says, it’s likely Yoruba, the language of the slaves brought to the Caribbean by the Spanish and whose language (and beliefs) is still used in santería. In other words, next time you hear “che che colé” blasting out of a car, don’t grab a Spanish dictionary.

Focus on the Pizza, Plsthx: NY Post‘s Page Six blurbs Roberta’s and mentions all the sorta famousish people who have stopped by. We love Roberta’s, but you know what would make it even better? If they stopped running out of dough. Nothing is worse than walking up to Moore Street and then being told there’s no more pizza — “but we have other options.” Thanks, but I’ll pass on the $8 1/4oz of duck prosciutto or $9 smudge of cheese on wax paper with a dot of honey.

Bushwick Bangles: Brooklyn Paper, the JMZ touches about 7 feet of East Williamsburg. So if jeweltrix duo Lady Grey is under the tracks, they’re probably in Bushwick. Lady Grey jewelry is sold by boutiques across the world — good job, girls. Half of the pair is from South Florida, boosting our Bushwick numbers even higher. Overrepresent!

Not Much Worse: “Where do you live!?” my friend’s coworker shouted at him, after news reports of a shooting on Central and Cooper. Well the cops got the shooting suspect — after he shot at them on Central and Moffat. None of this is worse than when I lived on 23rd and 6th, and Fabolous et al were engaging in an internecine shootout and had cops swarming the back of my building, with hundreds of people on the street — just as we were about to take the dog out.

Across 135th Street: A listing on a blog in Mott Haven (seriously) cites Bushwick crowding as a reason to move up-up-uptown. Sure, I have a soft spot for the borough that is the point of origin for my family’s American Story, and it’s great to see the Bronx getting some love, but a loft needs to be less than $1800 before anyone in Bushwick or anywhere else should consider moving 50 minutes north of 14th Street (as opposed to 15 minutes southeast).