Athom Café on Broadway at Dodworth, across from Goodbye Blue Monday. — Photo by Diego Cupolo
One day about a month or two ago, seemingly out of nowhere, a café opened on Broadway and Dodworth. There was no Grand Opening sign, or any sign at all — bodegas and 99-cent stores often open to more fanfare. But bodegas and 99-cent stores come a dime a dozen here in the Washing Machine and Refrigerator District of Broadway, and cafés owned by real-life Parisians are more unexpected. And so Athom Café, located inside a former appliance store — and next door to another — has no problem standing out on Broadway. Especially with its new hand-painted sign.
A whirl of activity at newly-opened Beauty Bar on Broadway. — Photo by Diego Cupolo
Is there anything hipsters like less than being told that they’re hipsters? A few months back, in my hometown of San Francisco, an American Apparel expressed interest in moving into a Valencia Street location in the Mission District. (Since New York parallels are a MUST for a New York audience, think of Valencia as Bedford Avenue, but wider. You can feel free to think of the Mission District as Williamsburg, but nicer and cheaper, if you must.)
Possible location for The Putting Lot. — Photo courtesy of The Putting Lot website.
Vacant lots are, in some ways, the purest, most tragic form of urban blight. Some time back, in rougher days, someone — be it a city official or property owner — decided that everyone would be better off if a building simply didn’t exist, and in its place, the neighborhood would get an informal dumping/tabby cat breeding ground. In Bushwick’s case, of course, a vacant lot is just as likely to be an old scar from the ’70s and ’80s firestorms, especially in the area towards Broadway. But that’s another story.
Tacos La Hacienda at DeKalb and Wyckoff. — Photos by Willy Staley
Call me petty, but one of my least favorite things about New York is how obnoxiously named so many businesses are. This is especially apparent in Lower Manhattan, where businesses are often named for their previous, working-class tenants. Be it a union hall, massage parlor, piano manufacturer, or dress maker, it’s fair game, regardless of how disingenuous the the tip of the hat may be. In one breath, these businesses show off that they exist in what used to be a working-class neighborhood, and let you know that they serve food and drink that also references working-class life in just as dishonest a fashion. But hey, if people want to put truffle oil on things like grits, more power to them.
Though he made the name famous, Bushwick Bill is certainly not the only rapper to come out of this fair section of Brooklyn. Wake Your Daughter Up has recently posted a mixtape called “Bushwick Day.” It’s a compilation of raps from various Bushwick crews and MCs including Shadez of Brooklyn, Dysfunkshunal Familee, and Finsta Bunday. The mixtape is only twelve years old, but sounds like it could be from the early 90’s. It’s mostly laid-back lyrical joints that walk the fine line between gangsta and backpack raps, like so much underground East Coast rap from that time period. It’s a good listen for anyone curious about hip-hop from the neighborhood. You can download the mixtape (one long mp3!) or stream some of the tracks on the YouTube playlist.
My favorite tracks are “When it Change it Pours” by Shadez of Brooklyn and “Halloween” by The Arsonists, which contains a Bushwick Bill vocal sample! Anyone have any favorites? Anyone actually remember these guys? I’ve heard of Shadez of Brooklyn, but only in passing. Bushwick locals, drop your knowledge in the comments, if you would.
Bosna Express under the Forest M. — Photo by Willy Staley
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s official tourism site calls the Balkan nation “The Heart Shaped Land.” While that is a nice sentiment — the nation really looks like an anatomically correct heart, not the stylized heart we know so well — it should consider selling Bosnian tourism on the sheer strength of their hamburgers, or pljeskavica. Pljeskavica is the best sandwich you’ve probably never heard of. It’s former Yugoslavia’s street meat of choice, and fortunately for those of us in the Bushwick area, we can have a taste of Sarajevo right here in the hood.
In New York, rappers are inseparable from their neighborhoods. Biggie and Bed-Stuy; Nas and Queensbridge; Cam’ron and Harlem; 50 Cent and Connecticut. The list goes on. But what does it say about your neighborhood when it shares a name with a clinically insane midget rapper whose bizarre suicide attempt led to one of the greatest album covers in hip-hop, not to mention a lawsuit against Everclear grain alcohol?
Art Blogosphere On Display When critic Hrag Vartanian set up a show at a local gallery, Bill Powhida -- self-proclaimed private investigator of the art world -- smelled a potential conspiracy. By Stephen Truax
Lopez Hits Big at Small Opponents Dem Boss Vito Lopez throws his whole arsenal at small-time opponents to bump them off the ballot in a race for an unimportant office, and fails. By Aaron Short
Book Club Just Minds Its Qs Long before crooner Justin Remer invites me into an imaginative five-some for a "real sexy time," it is evident that the Bushwick Book Club is not to be taken literally... By Dan Gill
BushwickBK Food Reviewer in Times The NY Times Diner’s Journal recently reviewed a small plate at a Fort Greene restaurant, crostini featuring figs from an enormous tree that overhangs Scarlett’s own Bushwick back yard...
A Griffin Glares from New Perch A menacing new presence appears among Bushwick's warehouses in the form of a 15-ft-tall wooden griffin, which appeared on a rooftop corner two weeks ago...
Mon Khmer: Growing Up Neve-side A math-y, funk-ridden band with pedal steel and a lead singer from Northeast India? Yep, sounds like a Brooklyn band...
Bushwick Culture Weekly Picks 9/2/10 Holy heatwave. Suddenly it doesn't feel like fall anymore. The new crop of students moving to Bushwick this week says otherwise, however....
Artists Respond to the Gulf Oil Spill The first gathering in the Monthly Artist Response Forum series, this past Sunday on a residential rooftop in Bushwick, focused on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
A Dark View as McKibbin Shines Again In light of recent events, this fair felt like it may be among our final chances to remember what it felt like to be young again, to run reckless, drunk, naked through the streets...
Bushwick Apartment Roundup 8/25/10 This week, we're focused on apartments for the moderate budget. Of course, prices for today's moderate budget were yesterday's "how the hell am I supposed to afford this" prices...
Bushwick Apartment Roundup 8/18/10 It's another of those weeks where just finding places where you'll perhaps get your money's worth is a struggle....
Bushwick Apartment Roundup 8/11/10 Some weeks it's hard just finding an apartment where it doesn't seem like you're doing someone a big favor to take it off the market for them. Here's the handful of places that at least seem to avoid that.
