Brooklyn's Most Confusing Storefront

Plus! Meet subscriber #450!! This quarter's quarterly report!!!

Hello everyone,

Welcome to Issue #159 of CAFÉ ANNE!

So I’ve got some super fun news. I recently got an email from Ava Huang in San Francisco who writes the very popular Bookbear Express newsletter. With the help of a data scientist friend, Ms. Huang recently offered a free match-making service to her readers—offering connections both platonic and romantic.

Now, she’s looking to do some free match-making for CAFÉ ANNE readers! “As a reader, I’d like to meet others who like CAFÉ ANNE,” she explained when we chatted in a video call. “It’s a very unique newsletter!”

We’ll be launching the service later this month, but I need your help! To create matches for her own readers, Ava and her data scientist friend came up with a 70-question survey. We’d like to tweak the survey for CAFÉ ANNE readers. What do you think it’s important to include? Please leave your ideas in the comments, or drop a note to annekadet@yahoo with the subject line “survey”.

In other news, huge We-Met-The-Quarterly-Goal shoutouts to new paid subscribers Daryl S., Chloe W., Elise S., Dan C., Amac, jfrm52, Sheri, Mikey F., Molly B., Jon S., Emily M. and, of course, to Emma G. who was paid subscriber #450!

I am, of course, every excited for this week’s issue. We’ve got a little investigation into a mysterious Park Slope storefront, the promised mini profile of Subscriber #450, and our latest quarterly Quarterly Report. Please enjoy.

Regards!

Anne

PS: I am taking next week off so I can file my nails. Next issue “drops” “Monday” “April” “21”!

READER PROFILE

Subscriber #450 is a Very Good New Yorker!

Emma!

As you will recall, when I published my last issue, I was one subscription away from reaching my end-of-the-quarter paid subscriber goal. Whoever was paid subscriber #450, I promised, would get mini-profiled in the next issue.

The winner? Emma Gometz, a 25-year-old science journalist who subscribed just minutes after the issue posted.

As I was delighted to learn during our Zoom chat a few days later, Emma is a NYC native! Their dad is from Colombia and mom is an Ashkenazi Jew who grew up in South Carolina. Emma grew up in Forest Hills, lives in Astoria, works on the Science Friday public radio show and is also a writer and artist.

I hope you enjoy the chat with Emma as much I did! (Please note it has been edited and condensed).

Emma, you've been in the newsletter before! I interviewed you last summer for a story about dealing with long talkers. Are you still a long talker?

Yes! I am definitely still a long talker. And I still think about this all the time... [Remainder of this response deleted because it was seriously long.]

What prompted you to get a paid subscription?

I've been a reader for two years, and every time I see an “upgrade to paid,” I think, “I should pay.” I read this newsletter every time it comes out. But the thought of a profile pushed me over the edge.

Do you have a favorite CAFÉ ANNE story?

Yes, it was about when you went to a City Council hearing, I think about hamsters?

The hearing about the guinea pig ban!

It was really funny.

What are some other favorite publications?

I like New York City news, and I'm always sharing Gothamist, Streetsblog, Hell Gate, Pigeon Post—all the little New York City publications.

What's your favorite New York City restaurant?

The Court Square Diner.

That's one of MY favorite restaurants! I go there with my little brother!!!

There's a young, new waitress who just came in a couple months ago. I'm obsessed with her. She's so sweet. And I just love the food there. And they're open 24 hours.

What's the best thing on the menu? I’d say it’s the patty melt!!!

I like the patty melt, but I'm big tuna sandwich person—I really like their tuna melt.

What's your favorite New York City park?

Flushing Meadows. I love the globe, I love all the weird art deco stuff. There's a lot of cool history there. It's a trip. It's a journey. If you're a Spanish speaker, Flushing Meadows is so much fun because there's always, like, Spanish bingo happening in the summer, and the zoo and people playing soccer and volleyball and grilling. It's full of people having fun, not people making TikToks.

Emma riding the escalator at the Queens Center Mall!

If you could own one building in NYC, what would it be?

There's a lot of buildings that I love, that I imagine owning would be a complete nightmare—like the Flatiron Building, which is proving to be a complete nightmare. You know what? F— it. The Empire State Building!

And what's a perfect NYC day?

Wake up in Forest Hills. Bike along Woodhaven down to the Rockaways, have pastries at a bakery. Then bike up to Prospect Park. Ditch the bike. Go to the Botanic Gardens for a couple hours—the corpse flower is in bloom. We smell the corpse flower. Then lunch at Ayat, a Palestinian restaurant. Then Dream House, near Canal Street. Have you heard of this?

I wrote about it!

I love that place. I first used to go there in high school. Then walk around Canal Street and the Lower East Side, going to a Chinese bakery, going into stores, looking at fish. Then the AMC on 34th Street, watch a movie, then take the 7 train to the last stop [Main Street in Flushing] and get dim sum dinner.

You still have to get your bicycle.

I'm doing that tomorrow.

I love this next question from Rob Walker's Art of Noticing Substack: What animal would you ride into battle?

Does it have to be an extant animal?

No.

Okay, then I would want it to be an ancient species of elephant, the Platybelodon. It's an elephant with a shovel mouth. I'll put the link in the chat.

[Laughing at the image that came up] Man, who doesn't need a shovel mouth? Jesus Christ!

I know, right?

That's so ridiculous. Look at that little tongue. And it's got teeth at the end. That is f—’d up.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

Moving on, how would you spend a million dollars?

I would probably end up spending a lot of the money on funding my friends’ projects—like my filmmaker friends' movies, or a video game, or maybe giving a lot of money to a theater and becoming a board member on the theater. I'd also get a nice sewing machine, and supplies for art making. And then I'd set aside $10,000 for some of my dream luxury items like vintage bags or shoes. And a microwave!

Okay. Two more questions. This is not a Rob Walker question, this is an Anne question: on a scale of one to ten, how awesome are you?

Hahaha! What the f—? Sorry. Okay. I can imagine literally every possible answer for that being true. I think that sometimes I'm a zero, and sometimes I'm a ten, you know?

Last question: who would you like to give a shoutout to?

To The Tank and Kev Berry for letting me host my variety show. It's a theater for emerging artists on 36th street and they let basically anyone put a show up, which is cool because you get to see absolutely anything over there.

Anything else you want me to link to?

Maybe my newsletter. My next issue will specifically be about tuna melts!

Of course!

[Emma's junk food newsletter, “Not Good For You Good Food,” is a lot of fun!]

Well, I'm really happy you were subscriber #450! I think the readers will love your ideas about where to go in New York. You know the city so well!

Yeah, I love New York City so much. This place is the best!

NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH

Brooklyn’s Most Confusing Storefront—I Got the Scoop!

Illustration by Lucy Stafford

Last month I got the best kind of query from a reader: a request to solve a NYC mystery!

"There are two Brooklyn storefront mysteries I'd love to know more about—one is the combined 'Millie Healthy Bodies'/rug cleaner in Park Slope," wrote Helen K., who lives in the neighborhood. "See this Reddit post."

I clicked on the post, which was on the Park Slope subreddit. Here, locals were chatting about a mysterious store that had opened at the corner of 7th Avenue and 13th Street.

"Does anyone have insight into this place?" asked the initial poster. "I know that it’s pretty new, but it seems really random and forgive me…but a bit sketchy. Sometimes on the weekend there’s a woman standing outside pushing alkaline water and supplements…but most of the time I walk by and the place looks closed and also very sparse inside. A few weeks ago they had a sign outside that read 'Free Cooffee!'"

Several dozen responses ensued. "WHAT ARE THEY SELLING? Supplements or rug cleaning supplies?" one person wondered.

"I’m so confused by this place," wrote another.

Several speculated that the store was a drug front. New Yorkers LOVE to assume that the shop around the corner is a front. It makes them feel like they are living in a gritty, urban adventureland.

Clearly, it was time for a CAFÉ ANNE investigation.

First, I scoped out the scene using Google street view:

Sure enough, there was one shop with two signs. The first advertised "Millie Healthy Bodies—'Where Your Health is Your Wealth'— Natural Vitamins, Organic Products, Alkaline Water, Herbs & Spices"

The second advertised "Dry Foam Way to Go—'YOUR #1 CHOICE IN CLEANING RUGS & SOFAS'"

Both signs included the same phone number. They also displayed different web URLs—both of which led to dead links.

A third sign, in the window, said:

Kirby Vacuum System

Sales and Service

New & Used

I next did a search on the street address, which revealed that the space at 408 7th Avenue previously housed a Covid testing clinic. It recently rented for $8,000 a month.

So now I had two burning questions: Why would someone combine a supplements store with a rug cleaning service? And who was Millie?

The next morning, I took the F train to Seventh Ave and walked a few blocks south to 13th Street. While it was 11:30 am on a weekday, I was disappointed to find the store dark, closed and locked. It appeared to be out of business!

I peered through the windows. The interior was in a state of considerable disarray. The service counter was stacked with unopened mail and the floor was cluttered with trash bags stuffed with insulation foam and a jug of Hi & Dri rug shampoo. The rack of shelves in the front stood empty. The cash register had been unplugged.

I was trying to make out the writing on a business letter I spotted near the register when I heard a tap on the glass and looked up. There was a man inside! When I smiled and waved, he unlocked the door and welcomed me into the store.

The place was temporarily closed for renovations, the man explained. He had a Caribbean accent and introduced himself as Brent James, the co-founder.

Brent James, Rug Cleaner and Supplements Dealer extraordinaire!

I told him about my blog and explained how a reader had asked me find out about his store.

"So what's happening here?" I asked, looking around the shop.

Mr. James showed me the new three-compartment sink he'd just installed with the help of his brother, a plumber: "In order to do the juice, you know?"

"We have two type of juices we make right now," he continued, walking me to the cooler. "The green juice, which is good for the kidneys, and the beet juice is for people exercising!"

He showed me a fridge stocked with produce for making juice, a tiny juice presser and shelves stocked with vitamins, supplements, coffee, tea and snacks.

The mini tour continued on the other side of the shop, "Our rug cleaning is more like dry cleaning!" he said, and launched into a lengthy explanation of how his dry foam carpet cleaning technology is superior to the more common soak-and-suck method.

Downstairs, he also has a selection of more than 30 new and used Kirby vacuum cleaners for sale. "Because I have connections with the Kirby company!" he explained. "I was a manager."

And that wasn't all.

"We also have the alkaline water," he said, showing me the machine that he uses to alkalize and purify tap water.

"And it has a lot of benefits?" I asked.

"It's the only thing I drink!" he said.

It detoxes the body and helps with back pain, he said. Mr. James doesn't yet bottle the water, but customer can come in with their own bottles to get a fill-up.

"And who is Millie?" I wondered.

"My mother!" said Mr. James.

And then he told me a little of his story.

Mr. James, who is 42, grew up in Trinidad and moved to NYC when he was 16 to join his mom. "I said, 'Ok, let me see what America look like.'“

He got a job when he was 17 as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman with The Kirby Company. "You walk to the house, and say, 'Hi, how you doing? Are you the lady of the house?' Great! Then I give them a little gift. Dish soap! They like the gift. Everyone always running out of dish soap," he said.

"So then when I get in the house, I start the demonstration, okay?" he continued. He would vacuum the customer's rug with their current vacuum cleaner and then with the Kirby to show how much dirt remained in the carpet.

"And then I'd say, 'Mrs. Jones, this is the most important part of the presentation. I want to clean up a certain area you've never been cleaned. Take me to the closest mattress!' And I go in there and I vacuum the mattress. And they see all the dead skin!"

"That's so disgusting!" I said. We both laughed and laughed.

Mr. James did so well, he was able to launch his own mobile rug cleaning service, cleaning carpets in customers' homes. He got into the supplements business after getting interested in his own health, and rented the Park Slope storefront at the end of 2023 to launch his new venture. Since it had a lower level, he decided to add the drop-off rug cleaning service.

"We don't do any rug cleaning up here," he clarified. "If we do rug cleaning, we do it in the basement.”

The storefront took a year to renovate. And then after it opened, it took a while to get clear with the landlord on what he can sell—which is why it's been half empty. Now that he's gotten the green light to sell food, he's launched the juice brand and will soon add organic fruits and vegetables.

We returned to the grocery side of the shop, where he offered a bottle of his "Beet +" juice—made with alkaline water! It had an extreme ginger kick. He plans to sell it for $5 a bottle.

"You know, people in the neighborhood are wondering about your shop," I said. "They're very curious about it. Do they come in much?"

"They don't come in too much," said Mr. James. "We have a few good customers who come in and buy stuff. But not much. I think I know the reason why. The sign can be confusing. I plan to readjust the sign by next week. The right sign will say 'MHB Organics,’ Which will cover everything we have—smoothies and so on. And then on the Dry Foam Cleaning sign, we will say, 'Your rugs are being cleaned in the basement.'"

"That sounds very smart!" I said.

Mr. James has big plans. His mobile rug cleaning business, which employs four workers driving around the city, is doing well enough to keep the organics shop afloat while he works out the kinks. He'd like to expand his dry foam rug cleaning service to all 50 states through a franchise system. He's also interested in launching an organic dry-cleaning service.

And if I return to the store when it reopens in a few days, "It will be spanking clean!" he promised. "I'm gonna put my Kirby down on this floor, and make it Kirby clean!"

QUARTERLY REPORT

A Very Good Q1 2025 at the Café!

Vell! The numbers have been throughly crunched by our CFO, Substack the Cockroach Intern, and we are pleased to report that CAFÉ ANNE enjoyed an excellent fiscal Q1.

• Paid subs over the past three months rose from 409 to 459, a 13% increase. I am now halfway to breaking even on this thing!

• Classified ad revenue for the quarter came in at $650. (If you'd like to take out an ad, btw, click here!)

• Donations totaled $1295, thanks to a major gift from a very generous reader lady, a number of donations funding my AI robot massage adventure and a bunch of random Venmo contributions.

• Total subscriptions rose from 14,700 to 16,450. That's 1,750 new readers since the start of the year. Welcome to the CAFÉ everybody! I’m glad you are here.

In these quarterly reports, it’s also fun to look at which issues were hits and which newsletters bombed.

The top story this quarter also happened to my favorite: the profile of Greg Purnell, the Brownsville barber giving free haircuts.

The runner up: “Best Random Stranger Walk Ever!” recounting my meetup with Moammar, a recent immigrant from Bangladesh with a mania for breakfast cereal.

The worst performer? “In Praise of Unsolicited Advice,” the Q&A with my friend Dyske, defending his penchant for dishing unsolicited counsel.

So what’s up for Q2? A new goal: 500 paid subs—which I really need to keep this thing going.

But more important, I hope that by July 1, I’ll have written at least a couple stories that I can look back on and say, “I can’t believe I f—ing did that!”

Ideas? Please email your suggestions: annekadet@yahoo.com.

And thanks, as always, for your support—whether it’s your comments and ideas, sharing the newsletter with others, giving me $$$ or just reading the newsletter and sending your good vibes. I can feelz them!!!

CAFÉ ANNE is a free weekly newsletter created by Brooklyn journalist Anne Kadet. Subscribe to get the latest issue every Monday.