Famous Ankles

Wouldn’t you know it?  The Berlin Wall is one of the swankier parts of Manhattan.  And no one seems to know it.

A section of the wall was brought to NYC in 1989 after the partitioning of Berlin broke down and East Germany (and European Communism in general) collapsed.  It isn’t a secret installation, but no one I spoke with at work had been aware of it.

Even on 53rd Street, they didn’t seem to know.  As I was taking my pictures, a gentleman came up and asked whether it was the Berlin Wall.  He had seen it a number of times, he said, and suspected it; but wasn’t certain.  I assured him that it was, but I don’t blame the guy.  It’s thinner than I suspected:

Obviously, it isn’t the entirity of the wall as my favorite memory of it is people standing on it, dancing on it, and (especially) swinging at it with a sledgehammer.  So, this must just be the facade.  There’s also a plaque that makes the history a little murkier:

It says that the “artists” were Thierry Noi and Kiddy Citny.  Well, the Wall was an East German construction, and not an art installation so I briefly wondered whether it was a “re-creation” or a simulation of the Wall done by these two.  But, it isn’t.  Apparently, they were responsible for the art work done on the Wall (as opposed to the actual construction – that is, they just painted the blank wall facing them when they lived in Berlin).

In any event, I’m delighted that the Wall is down and inhabits 53rd Street between Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue (right near a Burger Heaven, actually).

-H

Yesterday I awoke to a winterwonderland…or a slushy street scene (take your pick).  As for me, I love it when it snows and decided to catch a couple of pics to commemorate the first real snow this year.

Of course, I had to go to work but no big deal.  Here’s a scene in Tudor City looking down 41st Street.

And looking back up into Tudor City:

You can see by the footprints that I wasn’t the first to walk the sidewalk, even though it was only 7am.

Here’s a view of 2nd Avenue.

Just a very simple post to celebrate a bit o’ snow.  Later in the day it snowed the really wonderful thick flakes, but then it rained.  Blech.

-H

When I think of “delis” in NYC, two images come to mind.  The first is the little places you see everywhere in this city.  In essence, they’re a variation of a Seven-Eleven store with some groceries and drinks and some food-to-go sorts of stuff.  They differ from a 7-11 in the sense that they often have a salad bar and a hot food bar that are extremely popular places to pick up lunch and dinner.  Famous Ankles frequents such places all too often.  In keeping with the “deli” idea, they will also have a place that will make sandwiches to order or grill burgers or toast bagels and the like.  Some of the delis will reduce the size of the groceries/salad bar areas and have more and more of what is normally considered a delicatessen sort of food made to order (and generally to go).

All in all, they’re a relatively cheap source of food and, when you find a good one, you tend to go often rather than cook (it’s NYC, cooking isn’t one of those things people generally do).

A second level of deli is a big step up in formality and quality.  These are the traditional Jewish delis and they are often kosher (but certainly not always) and they tend to be more restaurant-like in their operations.  Some of the famous ones like that are the Carnagie Deli and the Stage Deli.

Another one, not quite as famous, is the 2nd Avenue Deli.  (It’s the same place, but new location of the site of yesterday’s post on the Yiddish Theater Walk of Fame.)

It has several points of distinction.  First, for a place with that name…you’d think you’d have an idea of its location.  Hint:  it ain’t on 2nd Avenue.  It’s actually located on 33rd Street between 3rd Avenue and Lexington.  The original location had been on 2nd Avenue and it had been a place of some small measure of fame in the Lower East Side as one of the best places to get food.  But, in 2006 they closed that location and moved to the new one.  The owner wanted to keep the name, probably for both the history and the memory of its founder:  Abe Lebewohl.

Abe’s story appears pretty impressive.  He was a survivor of the Holocaust and opened a thriving business in the Lower East Side when it was still a heavily Jewish area and stayed as the area went into a downward spiral and then started coming back.  He appears to have been a patron of the Jewish Theater and created a Yiddish Theater Walk of Fame that still exists at the old location (as noted, posted yesterday).

In 1996, he was murdered while at work.  The murder has never been solved.

As you can see, the window of the restaurant still has the wanted poster in the window.

Someday soon, I’ll eat there and post on my experience.

-H

I pass by the corner of 38th Street and Lexington on a regular basis.  I know the area pretty well, but just recently looked up and saw something I hadn’t noticed.

There are a lot of streets in NYC that have two names.  It will be a street number and an honorary name on a blue sign.  I hadn’t noticed this one because I don’t really read them anymore, but this time I did.  This one is relatively unique in that it isn’t a honorary street name, but a corner name:  “Brothers to the Rescue Corner” or “Equisna Al Hermanos Rescate”.

If you step back, you’ll notice that there is another unusual feature to this corner:  a police box.

Once again, you see these around, but it isn’t a random placement.  The cop is there in response to one of the block’s residents:  the Cuban mission to the United Nations.

The “tweak”?  Brothers to the Rescue is a group of Cuban exiles that used to fly near Cuba searching for Cubans fleeing by raft.  Later, they engaged in a leaflet dropping operation that would go near, and sometimes inside, Cuban airspace to drop leaflets to be blown onto Cuban soil.  If you read the Wikipedia link, you’ll see all sorts of governmental machinations including a probable Cuban infiltrator of the group and a host of different sources saying opposite things.  During its rescue/leaflet flights, the government of Cuba protested the actions until, in 1996, they shot down two of the group’s airplanes.

The point of naming the corner after the group is simply to remind Cuba that they are viewed as barbarians willing to kill unarmed leaflet droppers rather than to let them speak their minds.

I suppose Cuba has retaliated in some similar diplomatic fashion.

-H