A Trader Joe's Panhandler Tells All
Plus! Marco Polo's Adventures in Brooklyn!! Bananas vs nuts vs crackers!!!
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #78 of CAFÉ ANNE!
After I wrote about some amazing franchise opportunities in Issue #77, reader Len in Brooklyn Heights wanted to know: what about franchises for less than $50K?
Great question Len! While a quick search for such opportunities turned up mainly janitorial and travel agency brands, I did spot one very intriguing option. For just $30,000 down, you can launch your own Mosquito Mary’s franchise and spend your days running around your neighbors’ backyards killing bugs. The franchise fee includes a website, software, truck wrap and training!
According to the website, “People hate bugs so much that they are projected to spend over $20b in pest control services in 2021. And it’s that hate that is driving one of the fastest growing markets around.”
Also in last week’s issue, my excessive use of the word “bananas” as a synonym for crazy led to a discussion about when it is appropriate to refer to something as “bananas,” and when the adjacent food descriptors “nuts” and “crackers” are more fitting.
So far, we’ve surmised that “bananas” means out-of-control while “nuts” refers to something more deeply and internally confused. And then “crackers” refers to a state of mental psychosis? Let’s sort this out! Please leave your thoughts (and examples!) in the comments or email me: annekadet@yahoo.com.
In others news, Sam Silverman, founder of NYC Bagel Tours and CAFÉ ANNE friend, is hiring a bagel tour guide. This is surely a dream gig for somebody! You can apply here.
I am very excited about this week’s issue, of course. I didn’t realize until writing this note, but both stories take place on Court Street in Brooklyn. At the corner of Court and Union, we’ve got a visit with Joseph and Marco Chirico, chatting about how they kept their restaurant going for decades by changing and not changing at the same time. And then twelve blocks north, at the corner of Atlantic Ave., we’ve got an interview with Marcus, the omnipresent panhandler in front of Trader Joe’s. Please enjoy.
Regards!
Anne
IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Marco Polo’s Adventures in Brookyn
I lived around the corner from Marco Polo, the Carroll Gardens restaurant, from 2004 to 2017. Carroll Gardens used to be one of those blue-collar Italian neighborhoods so typical of Brooklyn, and by the time I arrived, Marco Polo was one of the few red sauce joints remaining on a stretch of Court Street now crowded with yoga studios and fro-yo shops. Everyone said Marco Polo was where Brooklyn's wink-wink power brokers met to make Brooklyn power deals and eat Brooklyn power dishes like clams casino and osso buco.
But I never ate there, for two reasons. First, it was a little expensive, and I'm a cheapskate. Second, I had this notion that not only did I not belong there, but that merely by going in, with my dumb philosophy degree and otherizing curiosity, I'd be ruining its real-dealness. "Leave them alone," I thought.
I was delighted, then, when I heard last month from a PR man asking if I'd like to cover the restaurant's 40th anniversary. I was happy to attend the celebratory cocktail party which featured bow-tied violinists serenading Court Street and enough canapés to feed the whole borough.
Check out these party pics!
I returned the next day for a chat at the back table with Joseph Chirico, 78, and his son Marco, 35. I asked Joseph how he’d enjoyed the evening.
"It was great!" he said, in his heavy Italian accent. "After 40 years, to see old friend and new friend, new customer, old customer, people I haven't seen in 30, 35 years—they all come out, they came to celebrate with me!"
"It's like a funeral, only you're still here!" I said.
“Yes, yes," he said. "It was a great night. One of my friends Congressman Ed Towns came straight from Washington. He was here when we cut the ribbon 40 years ago!"
Joseph Chirico moved to Brooklyn from Italy in 1964 and got a job doing maintenance at the local union hall. He saved enough to buy Joe's Luncheonette, a coffee shop down the block.
"In those days, it didn't cost a lot to buy a luncheonette," he said. "Guy wants to get rid of it, I bought the business."
In the 70s, he experimented with an Italian café, a Manhattan pizzeria and an import/export business. He opened Marco Polo in 1983, naming it after the Italian explorer.
I loved his description of the scene in the 80s.
"They stayed for lunch and dinner in those days," he said. "The businesspeople would bring clients. All day long, making deals with their clients. Contracts for construction. The banks. Brooklyn Gas, you know what I mean? Con Edison, the telephone company! They were all here."
"Every week, the same people you used to see, Friday and Saturday," he continued. "They knew the table by numbers. They'd call for a reservation, 'Make sure I get a table with number this, number that.' Steady customers. Or they would call, 'I want this waiter, I want that waiter.' They knew which waiter they wanted. That was a beautiful customer, very nice."
"And in those days, they wouldn't ask for a menu,” he went on. “They'd say, 'What you make us to eat today?' We know what they like, what they don't like. It was beautiful. I miss that! It's not the same now."
No, it is not. Most of the area's Italian families moved to places like Bay Ridge and New Jersey. Joseph moved his own family from Carroll Gardens to Staten Island in 1990. And then the professionals moved in. And out. And in and out. Coming and going.
"People used to live here 50 years. Now they come stay three years, five years, you see them here and then they move out,” said Mr. Chirico. “You don't see them no more. You only see new faces."
Around the time I left the area, his son Marco, who started working at the restaurant as a busboy when he was 14, graduated culinary school and took over the kitchen. He also moved back to Carroll Gardens, down the street from the restaurant. "Now, the area was more like Williamsburg, every night, people out," said Marco, who had joined our conversation at the back table. "It was exciting and fun for a young person."
While the old crowd returned on weekends to celebrate family events, a restaurant can't survive on weekend business. Marco pushed for changes.
They redesigned the restaurant to give it an airier feel, replaced the forbidding solid doors with glass, ripped out the rugs and updated the menu to include arugula salad and branzino filet.
More recently, Marco created a new artisanal cocktail "program” and tossed the white tablecloths.
"You gotta be smart, follow the trends, mix the classics with the new," he said.
I told them how I lived around the block before they remodeled. "I was always very curious, and I would never go in," I said.
"Ha-ha!" said Marco. "Intimidated, right?"
"I was like, 'I don't belong here,'" I said.
"That's why today we try to be more inviting," said Marco. "Back then it was different. You needed a jacket to come in. Nowadays people get very intimidated very easily. You want to go out, but you don’t want to dress up as much as you used to be. We try to make it more inviting, but still make it very nice. We welcome all crowds."
Even the tourists. "This Carroll Gardens, they know all over the world," said Joseph, shaking his head. "I don't know why, I don't know what happened!"
I asked Joseph to explain the restaurant's longevity. Most NYC restaurants fold in a few years.
"Number one, when the customer comes in, you greet them right away, make sure you know what he wants to eat, what kind of food he loves, and make sure he becomes your friend," he said. "To stay in the restaurant business, you have to love the restaurant business, love people, talk to them every day. That's the key."
Marco agreed: "The owner, you have to be here all the time to create that kind of atmosphere of friendliness and mom-and-pop style. The more people get to know me, the more they come. Relationships, making bonds, that's still important."
"It probably helps that you own the building, right?" I asked. A space the size of Marco Polo on Court Street would likely rent for roughly $500,000 a year. That's a lot of clams.
"When you open a business, I advise anybody, buy the building first!" said Joseph. "If you don't do that, you won't stay in business. If it wasn’t that I owned the building, I wouldn't be in business so many years. The rents keep going up and up and up!"
"I don't know how people do it," Marco agreed. "It's just crazy."
"Did you have any advice for Marco when you handed over the keys last night?" I asked Joseph.
He gave me a funny luck. "Any advice for Marco? What kind of advice? No! He wants to carry on the legacy, the tradition. Marco Polo continues!"
Q&A
A Trader Joe’s Panhandler Tells All
If you shop at the Trader Joe’s at the corner of Court and Atlantic, you’ve likely seen the man who stands outside every morning rattling change in a plastic cup.
His pitch never varies:
"Nothing is too small, and I'm grateful for it. Every job opportunity welcome. Your spare change is a blessing. Everything helps, and I will work for it."
I always give him a dollar, because I give everyone a dollar—it eliminates the endless decision making. But I often wondered, was he actually looking for work?
Last week, I asked if he'd help me carry my groceries home. Marcos, who is 45 and a Brooklyn native (he grew up in Sunset Park and Park Slope), said I could pay whatever I felt was right. I live a half mile away—roughly a ten minute walk—so I offered $20.
Marcos also agreed to let me interview him, and we had an interesting chat as we walked. The Q&A that follows has been edited and condensed.
I was just chatting with one of the cashiers about you. He said you're very consistent, and treat this like a full-time job. Do you know all the cashiers there?
Almost all of them. Some I don't really know. But I do say hi to all of them.
How long have you been standing outside Trader Joe's?
About a year-and-a-half. When Covid hit.
Why did you pick this location?
Oh! Traffic! A lot of traffic! And I hope somebody will let me work for them. I do get odd jobs. Yards, painting, garbage removal. It's just not steady because I don't have an address. I'm homeless.
You are?! Where do you sleep?
Wherever I can! Where it's calm and quiet. The street, the trains, a hallway. I've tried the shelters, but there are too many mentally ill people in there. I don't want to get hurt in one of those shelters.
Where you keep your stuff?
What stuff? I only got these jeans and two more pants and two or three shirts. I'll carry it around, or hide it somewhere and come back for it later.
Are you outside Trader Joe's every morning?
If I'm not there, it's because I'm working on some kind of job.
I get maybe two or three jobs a week, or once a week I'll get a job for a day or two. Not a whole day. I'll go at 10 am and leave at three, and come the next day to finish up.
What was the last job you had like that?
My last job was doing Dr. Dean's yard. This doctor I know, his name is Dean. It's hard to pronounce his last name. Every time he needs his yard done, he calls me and says come down.
But I’m there [at Trader Joe’s] from eight o’clock to twelve or one o'clock every day. And if I don't make enough, I stay there until four or five. I have no choice. How am I going to eat or even shower? I have to pay someone to go shower at their house.
What, really?
Yeah, man. It's like a hotel—I gotta go pay to take a shower and stuff. If I want to sleep at someone's house that I know— I know two or three people—I've got to pay for that night.
You do that depending on the weather?
If I have enough money, I'm like, let me get a good night's sleep on a bed. And I'll go and pay for it. Take a shower, go to bed. You know. But if I'm not in front of Trader Joe's, I don't eat.
Everybody thinks I make a fortune standing in front of Trader Joe's, but everybody's going through hard times too. I don't get much. I make $20, $30, $40 the most in one day.
I'm surprised. I thought it'd be more.
Me too! But anything is a blessing. Even if I got one quarter per person, I think I'd make more that way.
Do people ever yell at you?
Yes! Once in a while I hear, "Get a job!" or "You're a bum!" It hurts my feelings and stuff. Instead of coming to me and saying, "Yo, why don't you got a job?"
Okay, now I'll tell you my story. I don't have a job because I came from Pennsylvania to get a job that I had lined up. And when I came from Pennsylvania here to get the job, the Covid hit, I lost everything and this is why I'm here in front of Trader Joe's. I have no address and no one wants to hire me without an address.
What did you do before?
I was doing a lot of construction, carpentry, demolition, garbage removal. I know all about painting, ceramic tiles, acoustic ceilings, I know a lot of things. But since I have no address, no one's going to hire me.
I bet you can't believe what happened to you.
I can't believe what happened to me! But I do what I can. I do not steal, I don't go to stores, no, I can't do that. I'd rather stand in front of Trader Joe's and ask for work. If I was a thief I wouldn't be standing there. I'd be going from store to store. Or stoop to stoop, stealing people's packages. Come on man. You deserve to be on the street, like that, if you're taking people's things.
When I see people do that, it makes me mad because I'm being included in that group. Because I'm homeless, people see me, they think, "Oh, he's one of those guys. He lives in the street, he probably steals packages. Watch him, he's in the neighborhood." So even though I'm not, I get put in the category.
And what's that book you're carrying with you?
That's not a book!
Oh, it's a waffle in a box!
Somebody gave me a waffle. But I don't eat much. And then when I do want to eat, I'm not accustomed to eating good, I get nauseous. When you don't eat right, it takes a toll on your body.
What do you eat in a typical day?
Little Debbie cakes, donuts.
All sugar!
Yeah, to keep my energy up. When I'm not feeling right, the sugar keeps me moving. If I ate right, I'd have enough energy.
It makes me mad how they raise all this money to help dogs and cats but they don't raise money to help the homeless and mentally ill. Or they do raise money but it's not going to the mentally ill and the homeless. It's going to the beautiful offices, the furniture in the office, to the accountants. And then there's nothing for the homeless. You see them riding around in their vans, "Homeless Outreach." But they don't stop to help nobody.
What kind of help do you want?
A jail-sized room. Eight-by-ten. That's it. Let me get a space to sleep, a place where I can shower, brush my teeth in the morning. That's all I need. Then I can go out and look for work. That's it.
But there's no help for the homeless and there's no help for the mentally ill. They're saying they're helping, they're helping, but there isn't no help.
When you go to get help, they give you all this paperwork and pass the buck: "You got to finish up over there. You got to take your paperwork over here. I didn't send you there, you gotta go over here." They keep passing the buck.
It's like the DMV, only it's your whole life.
Right! They pass you from person to person and you get sick of it and say, "I'm not doing this no more." That's what they want. They want you to get sick of it.
But I am looking into this place called Breaking Ground. They help the homeless. They're helping me, these two guys, they care about people. So I want to see if I can get help, get a job there.
I'm glad you're talking to someone who seems promising.
And they need to speak to the people who are getting all the money and not helping the homeless. They take, take, take, take, take.
Well thanks for your help. I really enjoyed speaking with you. I thought I had more cash—this all the money I have. [I gave Marcus all the money in my wallet, but I don’t think it was much more than the $20 we had agreed on.]
Thank you! I wish I could interview people for your blog. Maybe when I get a job. Thank you so much. Have a blessed day!
Marcos texted later to say he is saving for an E-bike so he can get delivery work, which requires no address or interview. If you’re on Cash App you can donate to his account: $BlessedGrateful123. Or you can Venmo me: @annekadet and I’ll pass your donation along.
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So rare to hear from directly from someone going through homelessness. Typically the homeless population is treated like a monolith so getting to hear an individual’s story is really valuable. Great interview!
There's so much captured in the second interviewee being in a three-job poverty loop, while the first was able to buy a luncheonette on a whim. We have some questions to deal with. Or ignore. Ignoring them's good for sleeping in.