I Went Hunting for Artists on Staten Island!
Plus! Whip Chips!! We have an illustrator!!!
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #157 of CAFÉ ANNE!
So let’s talk snacks! As you’ll recall, I felt very inspired by the Hasidic man I spotted in the spa lounge of the New York Palace Hotel when I got my AI robot massage a couple weeks ago. He was dining on champagne, a tin of potato crisps and a canister of whipped cream. I later recreated the concoction at home with Pringles and a can of Reddi-wip. It was so tasty, I vowed to sell the creation when I set up shop as a NYC street vendor later this spring.
I still needed a name for confection, however, so I asked for help. And it was reader Tim C. in Manhattan who came through with a truly inspired suggestion: “Whip Chips!”
“The exclamation point is crucial,” he added.
Thank you Tim!
In other news, huge shoutouts to new paid subscribers Jennifer A., Anna, Lindsey C., Adam S., Linda M. and triple-founding-member Greg P. As you’ll recall, I’m aiming to reach 450 paids by the end of this quarter and as an incentive, everyone who subscribes by March 31 gets a bench dedicated to them on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.
I’m very close to hitting the goal, BTW, so now is the time to subscribe. As you know, CAFÉ ANNE will never have a paywall, but I can’t continue without the growing support of generous folks who are willing to pay for something they’re already reading for free.
Finally, I am very pleased to announce that CAFÉ ANNE now has an illustrator! Lucy Stafford emailed out of the blue last week. Noting that I’d been using AI to generate images for the newsletter, she asked if I’d considered working with an illustrator and included several examples of her work. They were just the right vibe!
When I told her I’d hired an illustrator several times in the past but couldn’t afford to continue, she replied with a surprising offer: “I'm not looking for any renumeration (no, really) as I'm a full-time legal advisor. I'm just looking to paint for the sheer purpose of bringing joy.”
So yay! Ms. Stafford will be painting occasional illustrations for the newsletter based on my photos. I hope you enjoy her charming work as much I do, starting with her rendition of Staten Island’s St. George Theater, which graces this week’s feature. I’d link to her Insta, by the way, but she’s not even on social media!
I am, of course, very excited for this week’s issue. We’ve got the latest edition of “The Neighborhood Speaks,” an ongoing series in which I profile NYC communities as described by the people who live there. Please enjoy.
Regards!
Anne
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THE NEIGHBORHOOD SPEAKS!
I Went Hunting For Artists on Staten Island!
It's easy to find St. George. Get off the Staten Island Ferry, and you’re in it. The neighborhood, on Staten island's North Shore, has spectacular views of Manhattan, weird houses, a minor league ball team (the Staten Island FerryHawks) and a newish outlet mall with a Game of Thrones theme. But when I visited last week, I was mainly on the hunt for artists.
Because it is so close to Manhattan (just a ferry ride away!), St. George is one of those NYC neighborhoods perpetually said to be on the brink of discovery by artists. The artists, it is foretold, will attract a slew of galleries, bars and cafés which will, in turn, lure enough developers and chain stores to drive out the all artists! But here, the cycle never really gets rolling.
To start my journey, I skipped the waterfront with its ball park and mall. I was aiming for Fort Hill Park which looked, at least on my map, to be the neighborhood's heart.
Hiking up Hyatt Street (the neighborhood centers on a huge hill), I passed Jimmy Steiny's Pub, a pizza joint, a tattoo parlor and a bagel café aptly named "Bagel Café". Next up: two local landmarks—Enoteca Maria, a restaurant which hires grandmothers from around the world to cook on a rotating schedule (next up, Nonna Helena from Egypt!), and the St. George Theater, which, according to the marquee, had an exciting spring lineup planned including The Canine Stars Stunt Dog Show and a Pink Floyd cover band.
I knew I was close to Fort Hill Park when spotted the Fort Place Laundromat. This struck me as a good place to meet some locals.
Sure enough, Zabeth, a tall lady sporting a white bob and wire rim glasses, was willing to chat while folding her laundry.
"It's close to the ferry," she said of St. George. "I have more business to do with Manhattan and Brooklyn, so that's practical. And it's less expensive than a lot of other neighborhoods."
She moved to St. George 40 years ago, she said. Or maybe 30. "I don't remember, it's been a long time!" Before that she lived in Park Slope. Before that, in France. She had a French accent.
Not much has changed, she said. "Not drastically, like other neighborhoods. Younger people, you know, they want to be in Manhattan, in Brooklyn. The ferry, that's not their cup of tea."
"I always hear that the artists are going to move to St George," I said.
"Well, you could believe that, but it did not really happen," said Zabeth.
Turns out, Zabeth, a knitwear designer, was part of a community of "artists, photographers, painters, people like that," who settled decades ago around Westervelt and Hendricks Avenues. But a second wave never materialized, she said, and the original colony scattered.
She likes the area well enough: "Things really change from one street to another. For me, it's totally okay. For people who maybe like less diversity, maybe that will not be okay."
I continued my climb, enjoying a bewildering architectural mish-mosh: stately Victorians, 50s-era brick apartment buildings, aluminum-sided row houses. At the end of Fort Place, I spotted a steep, two-story flight of stone steps which, according to my map, led straight to the park.
I stopped at the top to get my bearings. To my right stood a row of stately, 1920s-era mansions. To the left was a wooded lot that looked like someone's overgrown backyard.
I was snapping photos when two ladies approached. They asked how I was doing, in the way one does when you're on their turf. I explained that I was writing about St. George, and looking for locals to chat with, and trying to find Fort Hill Park.
Boy, was I in luck. Lisa and her daughter, Karen, told me they lived in the giant fieldstone mansion across the street. And Karen was the founder of Fort Hill Park!
"This is the park," said Karen, indicating the wooded lot.
The 58-year-old television graphics designer (which makes her an artist, sort of!) moved from Boston to Manhattan back in the 1990s, and then to St. George to live near a friend.
She was renting a room in the mansion in 1997 when it went up in flames and was nearly destroyed. Karen bought the home and restored it with the help of a handyman friend.
"It must be amazing inside," I said, hoping for a tour.
"It is!" said Karen, failing to take the hint.
A few years later, she learned that a developer was planning to pave over the wooded lot to build six homes. She persuaded the city to buy it and make it a park. It's become a sort of community project, with school kids planting native species and an annual Earth Day weekend.
"So when is the grand opening?" I asked. There was, after all, nothing on the lot to indicate a park—just some highly impressive tree trunks.
"Grand opening?" said Karen. "It's already here. It's already open. This is as open as it gets."
It's what's known as a "passive park". No signs, no benches, no fountains, just trees.
Karen's mother Lisa, who is 85, moved here last year from Oregon. "I'm getting used to it," she said. "There's so much traffic here. People do the damndest things in their cars."
"It's a kooky place to live," Karen said of St. George. "Really nice people, and then you'll see a sadistic clown on a bicycle. You'll never know what you're doing to get."
"It's an interesting mix," she continued, "and I really do enjoy it. There's a lot of Sri Lankan restaurants and Indian families. My neighbors are a mixed bag of races. There are the people who pick up the litter and the people who throw down the litter."
"We're the litter-picker-uppers," said Lisa.
"I used to pick up the litter before she came to visit so it'd look good for my mom," said Karen.
They pointed out some plantings in the park, including the first blooms of the spring, and sent me on my way.
I walked down the other side of the hill to Westervelt Avenue. This side of the neighborhood was a little shabbier. The streets were lined by the sorts of homes I have come to think of as North Shore Vernacular. Tall, narrow, faded-pastel affairs featuring a garage on the bottom, they are often fronted by tiny concrete patios and chain-link fencing.
There were many "BEWARE OF DOG" signs, but no dogs. Tree pit signs announcing, "Welcome to St. George, a no-litter community!" were festooned with litter.
I passed through the Richmond Terrace housing projects and came upon a pocket park where I spotted two gentlemen chatting on a bench. They sounded like they were having fun, so I went over to say hello.
They were very welcoming! Cal turned out to be another artist, of sorts —he was about to shoot a video interview with his friend Jamal.
"My name is Cal One 'The God,' aka 'The Chef with a Little Bit of Hair,’ because my hair used to be long,'" said Cal, introducing himself as if the camera were already running. "And I have on an identifiable piece of clothing. This is called a Pelle Pelle jacket. Everybody on Staten Island, this is what they like. And you also have to have a hood. And you have to have a mask."
"A what?" I said.
Cal indicated the stubble on his chin. "You can't shave! You can't shave your beard. You gotta look kinda dirty, a little bit. But my sneakers are clean!"
"That's true!" I agreed, admiring his very white Nikes.
"Your sneakers gotta be dirty or your clothes gotta be dirty," Cal continued his tutorial on St. George fashion. "One can be clean but both can't be clean at the same time! Can't shave, and if I have a vehicle, my vehicle MUST be dirty. I am not making this up."
Cal and Jamal, who went to high school together in the Bronx, moved to a spot in the shade so Cal could shoot the interview.
"I'm here live with Jamal Lee, aka 'First Born Man', my fellow diva," Cal addressed his phone camera. "So the first thing I wanna ask is, 'Jamal, how did you feel about Trump saying that he's not gonna let transgenders play any of the sports?"
"Well, I'm not a Trump fan..."
"I didn't ask you that!"
Jamal was giving a lengthy and rather thoughtful reply when Cal's camera conked out. The shoot was over, so I asked about the neighborhood.
Cal is a retired postal worker and settled here a few years ago. "I said, 'Let me look at the Forgotten Borough and see what it's about,'" he said. "So I came out here, I looked around for about seven hours. No, three days. And I was able to find space. You got parking out here, you got different derivatives. You got the projects here and you got the three-million-dollar houses. So it's kinda mixed."
He loved the Bronx, he said, but it was crowded and noisy. "Here, you can walk down the street, talk on the phone, you can hear yourself. You can hear yourself think."
And the people?
"The men and the women, they gonna be tough," said Cal. "A little bit rough over here. I ain't talking Bronx tough, though. They Wu-Tang tough."
My last question: What's the most quintessentially St. George place in St. George?
"My house!"said Cal.
Cal won't be here long, though: "New York City is too expensive. That's why I'm living here. But it's too expensive out here too!"
I continued along Jersey Ave., the neighborhood's western border. Things were looking rougher and rougher. A young man heading into his townhouse apartment agreed to chat—on a strictly anonymous basis: "Call me John Doe."
While he looked older, he was just 17. He grew up here.
"How would you describe the neighborhood to someone who's never been here?" I asked.
"Um, like a tip? Or, like, overall?"
"First a tip, and then overall," I said.
"I would say to mind your business," he said. "Always mind your business. If you don't mind your business, you get into something you don't want to be in."
"Alright."
"I would say living on Jersey Street is like living in the hood. Well, it is the hood," he continued. "It's a lot of problems, a lot of drama, a lot of activity.”
He'd like to leave before he hits 20: "But I do like the neighborhood because I know everyone here. I got family here and my school's right here. It's really good people here. You'll find some wise people here, whose bodies are very aware of what is going on. I'd say that's a pro of living here."
The ultimate neighborhood spot? He recommended Famous New York Pizza. "Everyone around here goes to that store for pizza, pasta, alfredo, anything you want. Famous Pizza down the block!"
Continuing on, I didn’t see any cafés or galleries, but I did pass many bodegas and storefront churches. I admired the handwritten signs in the shop windows: "Don't come in with lit cigg!!!" "NO credit" "NO HANGING OUT LITTERING GAMBLING."
"So many cop cars around," I murmured into my recorder. And then I spotted Famous New York Pizza.
Inside, a row of pizza pies shared the counter with an assortment of homemade cookies. A hand-lettered sign bore a warning: “In a rush? Bad mood? Let us accomodate you to the door because you are in the wrong place!”
The manager, Trisha, said she lives over the pizzeria. Her parents own the discount store next door. I told her I'd heard that the pizzeria epitomized the neighborhood.
"People weren't lying!" she said
Her boss, who is Mexican, like her, is a great guy, she said. "A little intimidating, but he tries to look after the community." Folks too broke to pay full price still get fed. He's also an inventor. His dessert pizza is topped with marshmallows and Italian rainbow cookies. Ah-ha! Another artist!
"We have a bad reputation down here," she said of the area. "You hear a lot of people say 'Oh, don't go down to Jersey Street.' But it's really not a bad place. I've lived here a long time and we're not monsters! I feel like we have a strong community and people in the area stand up for each other. We don't let nobody come in here and mess with our neighborhood."
She stopped and laughed. "Okay, that sounded intimidating!"
And she could not have been sweeter. She offered me a free slice of pizza (another house invention—American and mozzarella cheese, beef and onion) and a homemade chocolate chip cookie. Reader, both were soooo delicious! I highly recommend this place!
Turning north on Victory Boulevard and back towards the ferry, I came across Everything Goes Furniture & Clothing, a shop operated by Ganas Community, a local commune founded in 1979. Brian, the furniture store manager, agreed to chat as long as we confined our conversation to the shop and the neighborhood.
It's an amazing store with two huge floors of used housewares ranging from $10 chairs to $1000 antique bureaus—plus an enormous back lot packed with a riot of furniture displayed in sheds.
Brian said the store gets families who have immigrated from Sri Lanka, Mexico, Honduras, Ecuador and Bangladesh. "I think it's more the liberal side of Staten Island," he said of St. George. "This is where the arts community is. There's no galleries, but there's places to play music."
My ears perked up. "So there's kind of a little scene here?"
The "scene" it turns out, consists of the Everything Goes Café around the corner, also run by the commune. "They have poetry and a stage and stuff,” said Brian.
"You always hear the artists are moving to St. George," I said.
"This is the up-and-coming neighborhood for 40 years," said Brian. "I think it's supposed to be the next Williamsburg or something. Hasn't happened!"
Turning north on Bay Street, I was almost back to the ferry when I spotted The Love Shoppe. What better way to understand a neighborhood than visiting the local sex toy boutique?
Cecelia buzzed me in. She's the shop's brand-new proprietor. "Today is a week of me owning it!" she said. "It was owned by a gentleman who got sick, he couldn't maintain it anymore. He offered me a great price. And here I am! First female adult toy store owner on Staten Island!"
"So what are people buying here?" I asked.
"Everything, everything!" she said. "Things that you wouldn't think of. I'm still being surprised by people's requests. You know, a lot of people watch porn, and not everyone's a porn star, but they want to be. Let me tell you something. Sex has changed! People are doing some really freaky, crazy stuff! I just try to keep up with it!"
"Is sex really changing?" I wondered. It has, after all, been around for a while.
"Oh man," said Cecelia. "I got a good story for you!"
And then she told me a story about a local couple. Reader, she's right. Sex is changing. I sort of wish I could un-hear the story she told me.
But the store's best-selling items are on the tame side. Fox-tail butt plugs. Arousal concoctions. Cake pans in naughty shapes.
"It must be fun to know what everyone's doing in the bedroom," I said.
"On the other hand, there's a lot of information I have to tuck in the back," she said. "Guys come in with their wives and buy all this great stuff and a week later come in with their girlfriends and buy all the same toys. I have to keep it to myself. I'm from Staten Island. Staten Island's very small. Some of these people, I'm like, 'I’ll see you in church! I’ll see you in the supermarket!' and they have to trust I'll keep my mouth shut."
Cecelia said business is booming. But when I got home, I realized I'd forgotten a crucial question, so I gave her a ring.
"You always hear that the artists are going to move to St. George," I said. "So I was curious if you've seen that. If you get many artists in your shop."
"This is crazy, but I have a customer who just moved here from Tennessee," said Cecelia. "He came in with a real big looking bag. I said, 'That's a funky bag,' and he said, 'Well, I'm an artist and I keep all my art equipment in my bag.' So yeah, as a matter fact. It’s just so crazy!"
"So maybe Mr. Tennessee is the first of the new wave of artists coming in," I said.
"Maybe!" she said. "That would be awesome. On Bay Street. Funk it up a little bit!"
CAFÉ ANNE is a free weekly newsletter created by Brooklyn journalist Anne Kadet. Subscribe to get the latest issue every Monday.
Thank you so much for including in us. And I promise I was not giving the finger lol it's my way of how I grab the bags🥲 . There's nothing g but lo e here ❤️
"Really nice people, and then you'll see a sadistic clown on a bicycle."