It was the Worst of Times, it was the Best of 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.
Out of all my questions, there was one I was dying to ask.
“So, five brothers,” I said, “do you fight a lot?”
Without pause, Anthony put his younger brother, Peter, in a mock-head lock. “Nah, we don’t fight” he said with a smile. “But seriously, we get along pretty good. There’s disagreements, but not fights.”
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. One month later, on the couple’s first wedding anniversary, Burger King opened across the street. A beginning one might categorize as foreboding. Still, the hardest times were yet to come.
On July 13th of 1977, a massive blackout catalyzed waves of looting on Knickerbocker and elsewhere in Bushwick. Storeowners had to defend themselves by force. Arson followed and dozens of buildings were burnt beyond hope of repair by the next morning. Yet, Tony’s remained unscathed, alive to serve pizza another day.
This, however, was not the end of Bushwick’s trials or Tony’s Pizza’s tribulations. After the 1977 blackout, things went from bad to rock bottom. Dilapidated buildings were torn down by the block-full and the Knickerbocker shopping area became known as “the well” for its seemingly endless supply of drugs. Not surprisingly, Bushwick experienced a massive exodus as residents sought safer neighborhoods.
When I asked Mrs. Pollizi how she and her husband managed to weather these worst of times, she replied happily and in a thick Italian accent, “It took a lot of sacrifice, a lot of raining days, and a lot of tornados. But after the tornado, the light, the sun comes up, and shines.”
Today, as Bushwick becomes an increasingly popular destination for artists, young professionals, and families seeking affordable rents and safe streets, Tony’s green awning serves as a historical marker, tracking the changes of the neighborhood over the past thirty-one years. It has remained the same - a place where anyone can grab a $2 slice of pizza, strike up a conversation with the booth next to them, and think, oh yeah, this is why I live in Bushwick.
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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.
By now, everyone who follows the news has heard about the Myanmar government viciously oppressing its monks for participating in a demonstration that has been called the Saffron Revolution, but few New Yorkers know that the local center of the Burmese community is a three-story temple in Clinton Hill called Universal Peace Buddha located on 619 Bergen Street.
It looks like just another brownstone on a residential street of Clinton Hill. The faded brick façade of the building is tagged with graffiti, and the buzzer looks like it’s broken. Once it's pressed, however, a burgundy-robed monk leans out of the second-story window to let visitors into the building.
Anyone can participate in the hour-long daily zazen (meditation) that begins every day at 6 p.m. At the chiming of the hour, the monks seat visitors in front of the Buddha statue and for fifteen minutes chant the same “loving-kindness sutras” that are being recited on the streets of Yangon, the capital of Myanmar where the bulk of the clashes between the monks and the military have happened. The rest of the time is spent in still and silent meditation that will strain the attention (and the backs) of even regular practitioners.
Following the session, anyone can sit cross-legged – or lotus if you can swing it – with the chief monk, Ven. Sayadaw Ashin Indaka, who answers any questions you may have about meditation and Buddhism. Free classes are available to those who are interested, but expect a rigorous course. The temple practices and teaches a strict observance of Buddhism that the sayadaw compares to orthodoxy of Western religions.
In Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, the corrupt detective agency owner Minna is a Buddhist that practices at the Yorkville Zendo, a place where he also conducts illicit business meetings. The bad news is that there’s no such place, but the good news is that there is another Zen temple in Brooklyn where one can find out more about the religion that plays such a prominent role in the novel. The sect first came to Japan in the thirteenth century, but it is finding a home in our borough now.
Located on the ground floor of 163 Prospect Park West, the Boundless Mind Zendo invites people to sit with them for a half hour on Tuesday through Thursday evenings beginning at 7 p.m. In fact, “just sitting” is the literal English translation of their meditation practice shikantaza. San Francisco’s Zen priest Teah Strozer will be visiting in December to lead a retreat. Details will eventually be posted on their website www.brooklynzen.org.
