· I am, above all things, a creature of habit.
· Squaring the circle is an obsession of mine.
· And holidays, bars, restaurants and political campaigns are all part of that equation.
In talking about my old home of Sheepshead Bay, as I am often wont to do, I tend to wax nostalgic about the Jewish style restaurants of yore and the adventures had within them.
A few months ago, I took the occasion of Yom Kippur to tell a long rambling tale of about political spite, endeavoring to make every seemingly meaningless or unconnected digression connect by the end, with the Waterfront Alehouse reappearing as a sort of libatious leitmotif, as it so often is in my life.
New Year’s Day means a party in the afternoon at the Alehouse spent with the family meeting old friends while Popa Chubby and the Black Coffee Blues Band usher in the year with roots music, squaring the circle with all the same people I see every year (and again in the fall at the Atlantic Antic) .
So, I was taken aback, overhearing Domestic Partner on the phone telling a friend we were spending New Year’s Day on the beach at Coney watching her 83 year old mother swim with the Polar Bears.
Hopefully, warmer heads will prevail, but it felt like another old tradition biting the dust.
Eight year old Dybbuk is even more upset than I, but was soon silenced by a lecture about the proper treatment of 83 year old Holocaust survivors.
Such are the perils of encounters with DP’s family, the Rootless Cosmopolitans. It is telling that the only Atlantic Antic I missed since moving to coastal Brownstone Brooklyn in 89 was the one in 2002 (the only one ever held in the spring) because DP insisted on going to Woodbury Commons for a sale on Wedding Dresses.
Which brings me to the subject of Aunt Suzie’s.
DP and I met on November 13, 2001. Two weeks later, and now hopelessly in love, we set up a big party at her mother’s house for her 40th birthday.
We got the food from Aunt Suzie’s.
The last time we dined there was ten years later, on her 50th.
A few weeks ago, I conceived of a New Year’s piece similar to the one done for Yom Kippur, mourning tonight’s demise of Aunt Suzie’s, which arrived in Park Slope from southern Brooklyn in 1986, the year I made the same move.
MR, my girlfriend at the time, had agreed to live with me, but Sheepshead Bay was not going to do. At the time, it was home to a lot of single people, but they were all living on pensions, and the local definition of “hip” was something you had replaced. It was sort of like South Florida without the sunshine. So, when MR agreed to come to Brooklyn, she agreed to come to the Slope.
Suzie’s, along with another Aunt called Sonia’s (alev ha-sholem) and a wine bar called Divine (alev ha-sholem) soon became our local haunts of choice. Later, each of us served with Suzie’s owner, a former school teacher named Irene Lo Re, on the local Community Board, though before my stint, I repped the Board for three different electeds.
I was originally going to begin the piece talking about the time in 1993 I set up lunch for Mayor Dinkins at Aunt Suzie’s with the leadership of the Park Slope community, but that led to a digression about how and why I ended up in the Mayor’s Office, which pretty much swallowed the piece before I’d abandoned it.
Anyway, together with 200 Fifth Avenue, Suzie’s was the first pioneer on the long road to today’s trendy Fifth Avenue, which back then was the part of the Slope one did not go to.
Like Boerum Hill during the same era, the west Slope was then considered a desirable location only on a block by block basis. Whether or not changing that was Irene Lo Re’s intent, that is what she helped to do.
Doing business on Fifth Avenue in that time and place lead to civic involvement as a matter of survival. My first real encounter with that side of Irene came when I showed up as the Mayor’s rep at a meeting she’d organized about crime on Fifth Ave., in which I was drawn and quartered in a firm but friendly manner.
Irene’s civic involvement also led to a seat on Community Board Six, where at the time she served as Budget Chair.
Sometime in the summer of 1993, I got a call from my boss, Michael Kharfen.
“I want you to set up a lunch with the Mayor for the thirty key people in Park Slope.”
“And who” I asked, “are the thirty key people in the Slope.”
“Telling me that is what I hired you for.”
“Well, Michael, if you don’t know who the key people are, how do you know there are thirty of them?”
As word got around, the list soon expanded to about fifty, but while the list was uncertain, the location was clear.
Gate: “You must hold this at Aunt Suzie’s. Every civic event is held at Aunt Suzie’s.”
Michael was insisting on McFeeley’s Pub, but after I was joined in my eye-rolling by his Executive Assistant, and a Deputy Mayor, cooler heads prevailed.
Unfortunately, the Mayor expected the Park Slope leadership to be as dazzled by his presence as minority resident of Coney were by a somewhat similar event I'd done at Nathan's, but the Sloper's wanted Q and A, and the Mayor left them SOL.
Irene told me that the publicity from the event yielded her her best week ever, but though it got me and my girlfriend a free meal, I suspect that Irene still voted for Giuliani.
Suzie’s became a big part of my life. I attended the opening of the Manhattan branch (alev ha-sholem) later in that year, and the two Suzies became my default first date places. Good enough food in a decent enough setting at cheap enough prices.
Irene eventually Chaired Board Six, taking every occasion to lovingly and publicly bust my chops for the sake of a laugh. I don’t think she ever introduced me at a meeting using my last name.
I can’t say Irene wasn’t a great Chair, because she was, even though she suffered sporadic bouts of eccentricity, like her delusional, but serious as a heart attack campaign to be appointed School Chancellor. I think I may have been the first person from an elected official’s office who had the guts to tell her to wake up and smell the coffee.
Perhaps I couldn’t resist the opportunity to have her drink my coffee after being served hers so many times, both literally and figuratively.
But in squaring this year’s circle, I come back to Sheepshead Bay.
On 12/31/1o I wrote a piece which essentially predicted the next year in New York Politics.
In Anthony Weiner’s race, his opponent, Robert Turner, actually ran a race, which was largely ignored by the press. Turner took 39.14%. Now, I am not going to claim that Turner got all those votes from Orthodox Jews; he clearly targeted conservative White Christian areas and rampaged through communities like Marine Park and Gerritsen Beach.
But Turner targeted the Orthodox as well, and it worked.
In the 48th, Turner beat Weiner 50.90% to 49.10% and in the 45th, he won 50.15% to 49.81%.
This is jaw dropping.
Weiner is a Citywide figure who these voters once backed for Mayor. Unlike Nadler, who is at the right end of left Zionism, Weiner’s buff card could accurately read “Likud.” If there was ever a member of Congress to have taken the necessary steps to insulate himself from an Orthodox revolt, it was Tony Weiner.
But, it is more than that.
Not only has Weiner represented most of these voters in Congress for nearly a decade and a half, but these voters largely track the original district that elected Anthony Weiner to the New York City Council in 1991.
In other words, Anthony Weiner was this year rejected by the voters who know him the best and for the longest.
That is a pretty profound message…
The real lesson is clear. This year, being a Democrat running among Orthodox Jews was an obstacle to be overcome. The once sacred Orthodox pattern of holding down-ballot Democrats harmless for perceived transgressions at the top of their ticket has finally come to an end. This year, the default vote was Republican, and it was the GOP who was held harmless down-ballot for transgressions at the top of their ticket…
Am I saying Orthodox voters are permanently lost to the Republicans?
Not yet…
What I am saying is that Orthodox Jews hate Barack Obama and the Republican are poised to take advantage of it down ballot in a big way.
It is now a year later, and we are in the midst of another election in the same turf, but those who laughed at me a year ago, or who wrote off the stats I quoted as a mere anomaly, are no longer laughing today.