My New York is too rich for me
From the Mail on Sunday
Howyadoin?' The waitress was talking my language, I was raised round here, but I was doltish with jet lag. 'Sorry, what was that?'
'I said: 'Howyadoin'? You doin' good or what? So whatsitgonnabe?'
'I'm really sorry, but could you repeat that again?'
'Like I said: Whatsitgonnabe? You hear me now or what? Like I don't got all day standing here and asking you whatsitgonnabe. Waddayawant?'
'Coffee.' 'Now we're gettin' somewhere. Coffee and what?
'What do you recommend?' 'Hey, do you think I'm a menu or somethin? Like it's not like I'm not talkin' English, know-waddamean?'
Now I did. She meant I was back home on the Lower East Side in the venerable 2nd Avenue Deli on 10th Street, still pure Pastrami on rye, elderly waitresses with dyed black hair sculpted with a blowtorch, framed photos of minor celebrities and a die-hard bombastic clientele.
A visitor strolling down 2nd Avenue below 14th Street can still glimpse Manhattan as it was before the huge economic boom.
Here you can see that car crash of Jewish, Russian and Hispanic cultures that has made this corner of the East Village a unique ethnic brew - a jumble of delis, Lithuanian coffee shops and Puerto Rican bodegas still showing what the island was like before the arrival of the Young Urban Professional.
Love at first bite