Eat, Drink and Be Thrifty
B.Y.O.B. joints that will leave your stomach and your wallet full
Sick of seeing that bottle of wine you just paid $38 for at a restaurant in the dusty $10 bin at your nearby wine store? In a city of six-dollar Budweiser’s and eight-dollar glasses of bad wine, bar tabs can outweigh the cost of your actual meal when dining out. The secret to eating great without blowing your budget is all about finding those rare gems: restaurants without liquor licenses. You don’t have to teetotal it; just swing by the corner bodega or liquor store and bring your own. You’ll save yourself a bundle and won’t feel guilty splurging on dessert...
Tony’s Pizza
A Bushwick Tradition
With little more than a guitar to his name, Peter Polizzi took a chance and bought Tony’s Pizza at 443 Knickerbocker Avenue on November 4, 1976. Thirty-one years later, the business is thriving under the stewardship of his five – yes, five - sons.
Last Tuesday, I sat down with three of the brothers, Peter, Jack, and Anthony, over a gigantic slice of veggie pizza. Every table was full of families and groups of friends eating pizza by the slice or the pie.
Today, Tony’s is a Bushwick institution—but times were not always easy. When Peter bought it, the space had a faulty oven and a crumbling floor. Peter’s wife, Anna, was eight months pregnant. The first day they opened, they took in two hundred and seventy five dollars, hardly enough to maintain the business...
To The Hills
The Films of Fritz Donnelly
Among the myriad of culture proliferators filling every genre gap in our busy neighborhood lurks a filmmaker whose impressive project has earned him an important place among the masses in our local community.
Fritz Donnelly is like a one man marching band who simultaneously plays the guitar, keyboard, harmonica and drum strapped to his back, while his little monkey collects money in his top hat. The only difference is that he's not a musician, and has no little helper monkey. In fact, he's a prodigious filmmaker whose concerted effort has earned him significant press and a devoted audience across the country...
The Gutter and How to Stop Time
As with Beacon’s Closet’s vintage clothing, Barcade’s video games, Diamond’s shuffle board, and Bushwick Country Club’s mini-golf before it, The Gutter struts onto the Greenpoint/Williamsburg scene with a buffed and shined offering of an old favorite – and so the tradition of turning old and used hobbies into the new moneymakers continues in this eight-lane bowling alley and bar on North 14th St.
It is often repeated that The Gutter is the first of its kind in fifty years, but The Gutter is also one of few alleys worth mentioning in Brooklyn – more so than, say, Bowling Fun Center, located just South of the Greenwood Cemetery, at least. In light of the recent closing of Mark Lanes in Bay Ridge, there is a distinct shortage of authentic alleys in Brooklyn...
Antibalas
Antibalas, one of the latest North Brooklyn bands to reach international fame, hit the BAM Opera House stage as the headliner of their Takeover all-night party the first Saturday night of November. There was a line out the door and around the corner down St. Felix St. to get into the multi-faceted all-night party. Five bands, four films, three djs, art video installations throughout the building, and burlesque in between musical acts on the main stage kept the party going into the early hours of the morning...
Lafff Out Loud
Stand-Up Comedy in Bushwick
Our neighborhood has a cornucopia of creative types pursuing their creative passions full force. Artists have studios in Greenpoint while they live in Bushwick and vice versa, and, of course, everyone is in a band. Filmmakers abound and actors, even b-list celebrities, call Williamsburg their home with increasing frequency.
What we may overlook, however, is the comedy circuit that thrives in the neighborhood. The audience that avidly follows the many sketch comedy groups and solo stand-up comedians is not, it turns out, so small and esoteric...
Buddhist in Brooklyn
Taking it Past the Yoga
Although there’s practically a yoga center on every other block of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, stumbling upon an actual Buddhist temple is not as easy. My yoga teacher recommended crossing the bridge to go to Chinatown, but my research found at least two in our borough that are worth a visit...
The Ballad of Harris the Kid
The New Bushwick Music Makers
It all started with a Billy Joel concert.
Harris Novick, vocalist, keyboardist, guitar player and songwriter for the band We Tigers, remembers being completely dazzled by the spectacle of Billy Joel onstage at Madison Square Garden. Novick was 8, and it was his first concert. He went with his parents, who made him wear earplugs.
Novick, 22, no longer wears earplugs, not even when We Tigers ratchets up the amps in their basement practice room in Bushwick, Brooklyn...
