Pepe Rosso

Wandering around downtown reminds me of why I moved back to New York. At night, it always means a night out. Every bar and restaurant is brightly lit. People are out really living, where in Midtown, people are out either gawking or wishing they were out really living. Working in Midtown in winter, it is easy to forget this side of New York. Hidden on Sullivan Street between Houston and Prince is a tiny Italian restaurant with decent $10.00 meals and only five tiny tables – all squeezed together in this hole-in-the-wall place.

A sign on the brick wall behind Sara reads:

A meal buys you a chair and
half a table for 15 minutes.
Enjoy!
–Benito.

The couple next to us consists of a short-haired woman in glasses, my guess, a village native, and a long-haired, completely disinterested man. She rambled on about exploring Oregon. He silently focused on his panino.

The problem with the window seat in Pepe Rosso is that it’s the kind of place where you actually want to stick around, watching the dog walkers and the delivery boys pull up with their been-through-it-all bikes. When you’re living and working in New York in winter, it is essential to find an escape in your favorite part of the city…and nowhere near midtown. Even in Manhattan it is alarmingly easy to feel claustrophobic. But after feeling it on Long Island, Boston, South Florida, Australia, and New York, I begin to wonder if maybe it isn’t the location after all.

You Can't Make this Shit Up

It’s 7:30pm on a Friday. I’m standing on 57th at the intersection of 57th and Madison waiting for the bus back to Queens after work, when a boy about 8 or 9 years old comes hopping down Madison Avenue on a large silver metal spring. Not really a pogo stick – more of just an actual metal spring. He was wearing a big head-to-toe blue hooded winter coat and at first, I thought that he was all alone. I sort of did a double take since it looked like I was the only one paying him any mind. There was a young “Park Avenue” looking man strutting a few feet away from the boy and gazing off in the opposite direction. Anyway, as I said, it looked like the boy was alone until he approached the corner. All of a sudden the spring sprung out from under him and he fell flat on his back, right in front of one of those R2D2 shaped green NYC garbage cans. The boy did not cry, and he did not move. After several seconds, the man walking near him walked casually over to the boy and stood over him. A tall blonde “Park Avenue” looking woman with big earings and a peanut sized dog joined the pair and also looked down at him while continuing her cell-phone conversation…the peanut pooch stood patiently by the boy’s feet. Finally, after several minutes of awkward silence save for the woman’s cell-phone conversation, the man knelt down. The boy sat up, stood up, picked up his spring. The trio with dog walked to the corner, at which time the boy leapt back onto his spring and hopped across 57th, regardless of oncoming traffic. I’m still not entirely convinced the man, woman, dog, boy, or spring had ever before been acquainted.