Steve's C Town on 8th Avenue Closing

 

I can confirm from reliable sources that Steve's C-Town Supermarket at 4511 8th Avenue will be closing it's doors within a month. The property which had been bought by a Chinese developer a year ago has allowed the lease for the Supermarket to run out. C-Town has been at that location for well over 40 years and was the last remaining American supermarket on 8th Avenue. What will replace it is unknown at this time. With the closing of C-Town the Avenue will almost exclusively become a haven of Chinese businesses with a few bodegas left on the Avenue. As the demographics of the neighborhood change we may very well see them gone as well.

Massive Development Planned For Sunset Park

 

An article on another development  in downtown Brooklyn had a link to this story that somehow went under my radar in The Brooklyn Paper. Apparently someone has big plans for the empty lot next to the N train station on 62nd street and 8th Avenue. The lot recently changed hands for it's previous owner for, get this, an astounding $51.5 million. That kind of outside money coming into the neighborhood is what is changing the dynamics of the hood. With mainland Chinese money being heavily invested in New York City (The recent sale of the Waldorf Astoria to the Chinese for example) it would only be natural that one of the places it would end up would be what has become New York's premiere Chinatown our own neighborhood of Sunset Park. According to the article the plans are for a "Plans call for a three-story, Chelsea Market-style retail space to cover the entire site, which is covers an area about as big as three football fields. Rising from that base will be a 150-room hotel standing about 10 stories, two 15-story residential towers with a combined 350 apartments, and an office tower standing 17 stories". Additionally plans also call for "A public green space and sculpture garden will cover exposed sections of the retail building’s roof, and a library, computer lab, and space for a pre-kindergarten program will serve the area’s burgeoning immigrant population". Nothing this massive has ever been done recently in the neighborhood. With all the additional money coming into the Industry City area on the other side of 3rd Avenue we will see a completely different neighborhood in the next ten years if not sooner increasing a process of gentrification that has snowballed into an ever increasing acceleration in the last two years. The question for our neighborhood is whether to oppose it, accept it or ignore it. The only two places where we can make our voices heard in whichever direction you fall is The community board and our local City council member Carlos Menchaca. Notice that none of this was in the news and most of us in the neighborhood are the last to hear about it. And yes, the plans include yet another Hotel in the neighborhood. It might be good for tourists but I'm not sure about the rest of us. I have to wonder what other projects are being planned in the neighborhood that we are unaware of. With billions in Chinese investment money looking for a place to park you can rest assured this neighborhood will get a chunk of it. Trying to stop it will be difficult for us peasants with limited resources when reality and history shows that "money talks". Hold on to your seatbelts, we're in for an interesting ride. I urge all readers of this blog who live in the neighborhood to pick up the phone and call the community board to voice your opinions and throw in Menchaca's office as well, don't let him off the hook. To read more about this you can read the whole article right here.

 

 

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Huffington Post Does Dumplings in Sunset Park

One of the food blogs on the Huffignton post did a write up of some of the local dumpling eateries with pretty decent reviews. The article is worth a read. Often times people live in a neighborhood and only venture within a six or seven block radius of where they live and and unless someone points them to something new in the neighborhood they don't take notice of the changes and goings on around them. The article covers 6 dumpling places. I know two of them very well since I go there often and it's a cheap eat. My favorite dumpling place is Great Taste Dumpling since I live only a couple of blocks from there and was even recently reviewed by Robert Siestema. They have a vinaigrette soy sauce which I prefer with my dumplings and it's convenient. If you're there try the Stir Noodles which are made from noodles using semolina flour. I always think of them as Fettuccine Chinese style. It's very rare to see semolina noodles in a Chinese place. They have a full menu as well so you can also get standard fare and other dishes unlike some of the other dumpling places..

If you want to get a clue where the best food in an area is, watch where the cops eat. For dumpling that would be Kai Feng Fu Dumpling. I haven't been there of late since Great Taste opened nearby but if it's convenient for you to go there by all means try them. The article mentions that Hob Bo Kitchen serves fried shrimp dumplings. I guess I will have to trek up to 58th street and give them a try sometime soon before I forget. Sunset Park has been getting a lot of attention in the food area and not just Chinese cuisine. We'll post on the other reviews when we stumble upon them in the future. For addresses etc. check out the article.  Bon apetite...

Year of the Horse Celebrations Scheduled for 8th Avenue Tomorrow .

Tomorrow is the scheduled day for Chinese New Year celebrations along 8th Ave. As it has been for quite a few years now the four hour celebration will probably start on time and finish a bit late. It is a great photographic opportunity if you haven't been to one of these celebrations. You should show up a bit early. The Avenue is usually clogged with people by the start time at 11AM. There will be many featured speakers on the stand setup at the corner of 50th street and 8th Avenue. Mostly local and city celebrations. Expect our new Mayor De Blasio to show up along with our Borough president and all those vote hunting politicians whom we seem to elect and re-elect with boring frequency even though they don't do much for the neighborhood at all. Definitely bring your camera. Expect Lion Dancers and a variety show by school children as well as martial arts demonstrations at the event. It is one opf the more colorful and memorable events of the neighborhood. And as I mentioned before. BRING YOUR CAMERA!

Photo of the Day

Strolling along late at night along 8th Avenue in my nabe of Sunset Park I passed this Budhist temple that had it's doors open and the lit statue of Budha at the rear. Always carrying a camera is a good thing. You never know when you come accross something. Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York..

Picture for the day.

 

Golden Budha in a curio shop, Sunset Park on 8th Avenue...

Picture for the day..

Fixing watches on Sunset Park's 8th Avenue..

Store of the Day: Dragon Bay Bakery

One thing that 8th avenue has a lot of is chinese style coffee shops. In many ways I think they are superior to Starbucks. However, they don't have the much needed wifi that some of us crave. These places are fast moving and it's a get in have your coffee and get out kind of place. Dragon Bay is a a chain and has at least four of these places along 8th Avenue. I am not familiar if they have any others in other chinatowns. They do have some pastries that beat anything Starbucks carries by a mile. My favorites are French Toast, the fillet of Chicken and cream coconut bread. Their coffee is not bad either. This one is located on 8th and 58th. The tables are stainless steel, but if you're thinking of hanging out there while sipping a coffee, this isn't the place. Drop in and give them a try anyway, you may like some of their stuff.


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Store fo the day: Red Apple Fast Food

Buffet style food is not my idea of fast food. Red Apple Fast Food has a sign that sticks out in the middle of the block. I suppose it's the red and dayglow green sign that they hoisted. It does catch the eye. I didn't get a chance to step inside as I was on my way somewhere. Maybe a reader can post a review of the place and let us know if there is anything edible by western standards besides chicken feet and other unmentionables that one finds in some of these places that cater to a strictly chinese crowd. They're located on 8th between 48 and 49th streets.

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Stores of the Day: Wah Fung Mall

With the success of Good Mall it stood to reason others would follow. Among them is Wah Fung Mall. When they firs opened two years ago most of the spaces were empty and unrented. Today it sports more than forty booth size stalls selling a variety of products and services. Many of the booths sell woman's apparel and costume jewelry as well as handbags etc.. Some booths sell expensive jade jewelry and there is a table where you can purchase health plans. It is a regular hive of activity in there. These malls are quite popular and numerous in places like Hong Kong and make maximum effective use of limited space. It is the total opposite of American mega malls that are cities in themselves. It will be interesting to see how many more of these will be sprouting in the neighborhood. Once someone sees they're making money you can bet your bottom dollar there will be more of them.

The 8th Avenue strip is soon running out of space for stores and some of the activity is spilling over to 7th Avenue. In time it too will be full of stores. If you  haven't been to Hong Kong and can't afford the plane trip drop by Sunset Park and you'll get a general idea what Hong Kong is like..



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Stores of the Day: Good Mall Inc.

Good Mall was the first mall on 8th Avenue having multiple stores and businesses inside subletting. It's located off the corner on 8th and 60th street. Profitable for the lease owner and utilizing space efficiently. I first encountered such malls in Hong Kong where space is at a premium and capital for budding entrepreneurs was scarce. I also saw similar malls in Tokyo. Besides Chinatown I don't know anywhere else the concept has taken off. It seems particularly a Chinese innovation in New York City. The shops inside offer an eclectic collection of woman's apparel, computer repair and the usual cellphone peddlers. They do make it an interesting place to visit. An even larger mall with more than 50 micro stores has been operating between 55th and 56th streets. But more on that tomorrow.


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Store of the day: Popeye's Chicken of Sunset Park

It's been open about a year and appears to do a bristling business. Located on the corner of of 64th street and 8th avenue right at the border of Dyker Heights. It's part of the Popeye's restaurant chain offering the standard chicken fare. It's too far from either KFC or Kennedy's to give them any competition and it appears that their target demographics is the Chinese community. At least now you know where there is a Popeye Chicken place in Sunset Park. Yes, they do speak English at the counter.




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Store of day: Y & L Gift Shop

Located off the avenue on 59th street and 8th this is a rather eclectic small shop of Chinese Bric-a-Brac and other curios. It more reasonably priced than similar stores. Chinese vases, dragons, ancient coins etc. Just what mom ordered to decorate your office with Chinese themed oddities. Drop in and say hello to them.


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Eatery of the day: Dumplings House on 53rd.

I finally got around to trying out the dumpling place on 53rd street off 8th avenue..It's much smaller inside than the other places in my last two reviews. When I was there I was thee only customer so I got a seat by the window and had my lunch. The dumplings are slightly larger than elsewhere. I found them to be just as good as the others. The sauce they serve at the table is of the vinaigrette type, so if you want just regular soy sauce you will have to ask for it. The place caters to the mostly Chinese residents of the area and none of the people there speak English. Next time you're in the area try them out...



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Store of the day: Number One Ice Cream

The owner had a love of ice cream and decided to open an ice cream parlor. It's as close as you're going to get to an Italian Gelateria in this neighborhood.  They're located at the southern edge of the neighborhood at 8th Avenue between 64 and 65th streets. Go check them out and tell us what you think...

More In Search of Dumplings in Sunset Park.

Being a creature of habit sometimes has it's advantages and sometimes not. One of the more popular posts from a while back was my review of the only two dumpling places at the time.  Prosperity Dumpling has been open for just over a year. I remember making a mental not to myself that I would have to drop in there at some point and try their dumplings. I only live three blocks from the place so I really should not have had an excuse to avoid it. But life sometimes isn't a planned thing and I never got the chance to walk in there until this last week. I had read the few reviews of the place in Yelp (and BTW they have the nabe wrong) and though them intriguing. Well, I can report I was not disappointed. The dumplings were great. the place is clean and has a more restaurant look than the other two locations in the nabe. I decided to get 12 dumplings for $3 and what a full plate that was. The dumplings were not as greasy as one would expect. The soy sauce they use at the tables is a bit vinegary much the same as they use at Family Dumpling. I would have hoped that they would have a choice of soy sauce without vinegar but nevertheless I found the dumplings fresh, tasty and quite filling. I have not tried their sesame cake yet but will next time I drop in. Now I have no excuse to avoid the place. perhaps when I'm there I can recommend that they put plain soy sauce on the tables.  Oh, and BTW it's located on the corner of 44th street and 8th Avenue.







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Dollar vans in Sunset Park may be here to stay..

According to a piece at Streetsblog those dollar vans that clog up traffic in the mornings along 8th avenue and 7th avenues will likely increase in their operational scope.According to the article :

Mayor Bloomberg announced a new pilot program to provide livery van service for transit-starved neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, a proposal stemming from his 2009 campaign transit platform. The push to provide more mobility options in the wake of MTA service cuts is to be applauded, as is the administration's willingness to experiment with something new.


That's all well and fine, but as anyone in the neighborhood knows those vans are a pain in the *ss. The only reason they exists is not to supplement the MTA, it's because they provide direct service to the other Chinatowns in New York. They skirt the law by picking up passengers just as taxis are supposed to do driving slowly up the avenue and stopping whenever it suits them to pick up passengers. The result is a commuting nightmare if you happen to be driving by in the morning as I do. The reason there has been no enforcement of the taxi laws is purely political so as not to aggravate interests in the community. The vans only benefit those whose destination is the other Chinatowns in the city. How will this alleviate the problem for other residents of Sunset Park who need transit to other parts of Brooklyn or Manhattan. Are they going to clog the streets with more expanded dollar vans? And who is going to inspect these vans insofar as safety and other issues? Are we going to set up another bureaucracy while we cut the MTA budget to oversee the problem? What about liability? If you think are streets are clogged now, wait till this brainchild takes off. I personally think it's a bad idea who's time hasn't come.

The problem with our city is that too many agencies have come to exists to provide jobs for political cronies. The reason our MTA is in the red is because it was not designed to make a profit as it is constituted now. It has become a machine to provide employment and n expanded membership base for transit unions who are powerful backers of the politicians in city hall. Aggravating the problem by "legalizing" these dollar vans is not the solution to our transit problems. If the MTA was run as a private enterprise the cuts would not come in service, it would have meant lay offs. Nobody wants to make sacrifices in this town any more, or for that matter in the rest of the country either. The result is that we are broke, robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Commuter vans, like this one in Sunset Park, could become a more common sight on New York's streets. Image: The Brooklyn Ink.

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Changes in our Little Chinatown in Sunset Park

Not being Chinese I did not notice changes in the Chinese side of the nabe. It took a visit to the Wikipedia article on the nabe to inform me of changes occurring right under my nose. I had not realized that the population makeup had shifted from Cantonese to Fujianese. From the article;


Brooklyn's Chinatown is now very quickly becoming the New Little Fuzhou(小福州) or Brooklyn's East Broadway(布鲁克東百老匯) and is now surpassing the one within Manhattan's Chinatown as the largest Fuzhou population/community in NYC unlike the Little Fuzhou within Manhattan's Chinatown remains surrounded by areas that are mostly Cantonese populated and in some parts moderately Cantonese populated. The Fuzhou ratio out of total Chinese population in Brooklyn's Chinatown however has already surpassed the Fuzhou ratio out of total Chinese population in Manhattan's Chinatown and it is rather becoming Fuzhou Town(福州埠) because it is also emerging beyond the current borderlines of the Chinese community on 7th and 9th Avenues and north onto 50th-42nd streets. Even though the Chinese community is starting to become a Chinese Fuzhou community and there are now hardly Cantonese residents residing there, there are still many Cantonese people living in ethnic-integrated areas near the Chinese community, there are still many Cantonese shops between 50th-62nd streets on 8th Avenue, however it is slowly on the decline in replacements to Fuzhou shops emerging and many Cantonese people coming from other parts of Brooklyn and other areas come into the Chinese community to go shopping and to eat in restaurants to meet up with family members and friends for socialization on the weekends. The Cantonese community identity is fading away very quickly unlike Manhattan's Chinatown still successfully continues to carry a large Cantonese population and successfully continues to retain the large stable Cantonese community/business district where the Cantonese residents still have a place of gathering for shopping and going to work that was established in the western portion/main section of Manhattan's Chinatown decades ago. By 2009 many Mandarin-speaking people moved to Sunset Park.

I frankly had not noticed the change and all this came as news to me. I did notice a change in some of the businesses opening and closing, but I took that to be the result of the ebb and flow of the business cycle. I suppose a part of me would have preferred that the neighborhood would have become a mix, rather than one group driving another one out. When I moved here back in 1970 the neighborhood was an eclectic mix of ethnic groups. 8th Avenue had a fair number of Italian, Irish and Scandinavian shops sprinkled with many Dominican and Puerto Rican bodegas. All of that is gone. The neighborhood once the home to large Puerto Rican and Dominican population is far less so with Puerto Ricans moving out of the neighborhood in what could only be called droves. Dominicans still remain, but even they are moving out, being replaced by Hondurans, Ecuadorians, Salvadorans and especially Mexicans.

The only thing it seems that is remaining constant it appears is me. I have been here 40 years, but I wonder sometimes if I won't be swept out of here by circumstance. So what do we do when the last Cantonese restaurant closes? Will there still be Mexicans in the neighborhood in ten years? Will I still be alive by then and will I even care?

One thing that is constant about this neighborhood is the constant change. Sometimes though, I let my memory wonder to the past. To shops that used to be, neighbors and friends no longer here. And while some buildings do remain the change is constant. Will I even recognize the neighborhood in ten years?

Heck, I would not have noticed the change along 8th Avenue if I had not read the Wikipedia piece, Chinese all sounds the same to my ear. Being of Latin American origin Spanish is my venue and those changes I have noticed. But I ask myself, are there other changes I haven't noticed? Is this the way it is all across this land? Is the America I emigrated to in the 60's a vanishing place? I suspect it is, and while English is still a predominant language I wonder how much longer the mythical America called the United States will exist. It is metastasizing to something else, and I suspect the old America will vanish in a generation or two into something else that none of us who are alive today will even recognize.

Maybe I am wrong, I may have to revisit this post in a few months and have a totally different perspective. Then again maybe not. One thing is certain, the old neighborhood and the old America only lives in our fading memories and when we die it will perish with us.


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Year of the Tiger This Saturday at Sunset Park, the Park

This Saturday there will also be a celebration of Chinese New Year at Sunset Park starting at 12 PM @ 43rd street & 7th Avenue. If you can't make the one on Sunday where thousands of people show up, make this one and bring your camera...

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Prelude to tomorrow's year of the Ox Celebrations

In a prelude ot tomorrow's festivities I was rambling along 8th Avenue earlier today and stumbled on these Lion Dancers from some martial arts school doing the rounds of all the stores along the avenue. Tradition dictates that they will do a dance inside the store to ward off evil spirits for the coming year, in return of course, for some monetary renumeration. It's a way for these schools to raise some money. I suspect there will be other Lion Dancers doing the rounds up the avenue for the rst of the day. It would be neat if they extend the tradition to fifth avenue as well.

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