I recently went by Robin Raj to take a few snapshots. I was impressed by the presence of Christmas decorations still gracing the windows. I also like their cartoon hams and other food items on their outdoor menu. See more pics here.
Alex offers more fab vintage photography from his early days on the LES. [FP]
Chocolate Bar in the East Village wants to reinvigorate the egg cream. A noble intention, but the egg cream is alive and well across the LES and the city. My favorites can be found at Ray's Candy, Katz's, and Eisenberg's. As for hazelnut egg creams, that's a little hard to digest. [Times]
East Village synagogue to be demolished for luxury apartments/synagogue hybrid. Sounds kind of like a hazelnut egg cream, doesn't it? [Curbed]
...Or a Blackberry and an Orthodox Jew? If there's one thing I hate more than oblivious cell-walking, it's oblivious text-walking. In Brooklyn, you'll burn in Hell for texting. Gvalld! [NYW]
Tom's in Brooklyn has been slinging egg creams since 1936. Their food is decidedly not "artisanal" but they managed to beat Balthazar on a recent AOL City's Best contest.
ReplyDeleteJust saw a delivery kid in LIC texting while riding. Is this new, or have my eyes averted in the presence of this behavior 'til now?
ReplyDeleteI betcha that these fro-yo joints will jump on this egg cream reinvigoration/nostalgia bandwagon.
ReplyDeleteRay's egg creams are the BEST ever!
ReplyDeleteThat Robin Raj on 14th and 3rd in the 60s and 70s (maybe 80s) used to be a pizza parlor.
ReplyDeleteIt was memorialized in "Taxi Driver" as the place where deNiro, the taxi driver, asks Jodie Foster, the prostitute, out for a 'date'.
They talk and he tries to get her out of the business.
That was when 14th Street and 13th Street was full of junkies and prostitutes.
William Burroughs also memorialized that area in his book "Junkie' penned under the nom de plume, Bill Lee. He wrote that one could always score heroin when new to a city by going to a street where a wealthy neighborhood (Gramercy) borders with a poor neighborhood. (LES).
He gives several examples, including 14th Street in NY.
There used to be lots of prostitutes trolling in broad daylight along that stretch of 3rd Avenue between 12th and 14th.
Of course, the climatic shoot-out scene in Taxi Driver was shot on 13th between 3rd and 2nd Aves.