Out There

One of the reasons I became what people call a "food writer" was my clam-broth baptism in the behemoth, much-mourned Brooklyn restaurant called Lundy's. That fish palace on Sheepshead Bay coalesced a constellation of 20th-century American values: collective melting-pot festivity (it seated more than 3000), the promise of local unpolluted cornucopia, institutionalized racism (underpaid all-black staff), and working-class strife (a bloody strike).

My personal attachment, however, was identical to that of many Brooklyn-Jewish contemporaries: beaten biscuits hot enough to melt the icy butter-pat, sandy clams, salty bisque -- and a first view of fat, glistening lobster and its pillowy reward inside.

My father, who beamed to see his two boys join him in the pleasures of the table, had one signature selfishness (that I knew of, anyway): Lundy's lobster was his, only his. Mom didn't really enjoy it the way he did, and it was out of bounds -- as was most everything a la carte -- for Leslie and me.

Yes, Leslie. He hated his name, always said that I was the one who should have been Leslie. Sweet.

  We lived in a postwar apartment on Ocean Avenue, close enough to walk as a family on weekends to an early Lundy's meal. When we were led through the cavernous dining rooms, the immense din, the metallic kitchen clatter, the aural and visual evidence of irrevocable mass pleasure made me as happy as I think I have ever been.

Still, for me, growing up meant ordering anything I wanted -- and paying for it myself. Of course, I never did the latter when I was a restaurant critic. 

Anyway, once we brought Grandma. Mary Weinstein -- Mary? Is that a Jewish name? -- kept a kosher home, but my father, the black-sheep favorite of seven, had a trick. He began months before telling her that there was a special Weinstein dietary "dispensation" for lobster. He worked it, and worked it. Just for Weinsteins, he said, grinning his used-car salesman grin. Just for us.

"Here, Mom," and he lifted a chunk of his trayfe fra diavolo on his fork to her mouth. 

Can you imagine the expression of warring impulses on her face? I watched my white-haired grandma sink in luxurious defeat. Her darling Hashel could do that every time.

If they had had websites named "Renegade Kosher" then, "Weinstein" would have been a constant keyword.

So what drew out this piece of delicate nostalgia? I was recently asked to eat and rate the kosher offerings at the insultingly expensive Citi Field and Yankee Stadium by the folks at the Forward. Results? I hope you're a Mets fan, or at least can pretend for just those few hours that I'm your dad and allow yourself an online, adoptive, baseball-park "Weinstein dispensation."

Happy 4th of July,  

 

For an automatic alert when there is a new Out There post, email jiweinste@aol.com.

June 22 is the 40th anniversary of Judy's death -- like Marilyn's, the result of an overdose that whether accidental or intentional will never be clear. Some think that Garland's gargantuan two-day funeral -- 20,000 fans and friends attended -- was the last straw for the harassed and brutalized drag queens, faggots, dykes and proto-twinks who were pushed, hit, arrested and shoved into a big wagon early the next morning by the cops who raided the Stonewall Inn. What was happening on Christopher Street?

That sinkless, mob-owned, wretched bar was is where our Greenwich Village forebears could meet, flirt, and actually dance. New York police, many on the take, had the upper hand.  

Yes, dear readers, the boys and girls exploded that night and a number of nights after. Part of their neighborhood, and part of a whole city, joined them. Soon, a Gay Liberation Front formed, tired of the brave but docile and mostly ineffective efforts that preceded it.

Was Judy's death the straw that broke this miserable camel's back?

Some say yes, some no. Writer, critic and gay maven David Ehrenstein emailed me to say that "Judy's passing was 'in the air,' " and one of the "Stonewall kids" named Tommy who was there confirmed that to him. Others, noted in my piece for Obit Magazine out today, completely disagree.

As you can read in my salute to Judy and Stonewall, I think the truth, by its very nature fugitive, is somewhere in between. Both riveting spirits reward another look.

For an automatic alert when there is a new Out There post, email jiweinste@aol.com.

"I'm trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader," says Adam Lambert -- remember him? -- as he comes out in the new Rolling Stone. Quelle, quelle surprise, but congratulations nonetheless. 

Yet comments like that are as boilerplate as the mag itself.

Dear Adam: Popular culcha has long ago rendered any such division into schmaltz.

In case you have or anyone has any doubts about that, check out the quite subversive 1952 Disney cartoon short called Lambert the Sheepish Lion. See any parallels, sweetie? The gay-positive metaphors?

 

 

Oh, yes, the charming, witty voiceover is immediately familiar as that of the sterling Sterling Holloway -- who, by the way, introduced the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart standard "I'll Take Manhattan" in their very first tandem outing, a series of '20s romps called Garrick Gaieties. Holloway's raspy light tenor, what some have termed a near falsetto, was his calling card. Later, he collected modern art. His admiring bios include the boilerplate "Never married."

For an automatic alert when there is a new Out There post, email jiweinste@aol.com.