Julio’s Musings Around Columbia County, New York

Needing to escape the horror of a baby shower in Carroll Gardens , Brooklyn, my father and I took a quest to some of our old haunting grounds in Brooklyn. We took the look drive (long because any drive in Brooklyn is long) to Sheepshead Bay to visit a place from my youth call Roll-N-Roaster. It is just celebrating it’s 39th year in operation on Emmons Avenue.

Of course on the way there, something (who knows what) was going on the Belt Parkway and decided to take the side roads. 86th Street was the way to go , home of the soldiers of cosa nostra. Of course the West End elevated subway occupies the last few mile stretch which resulted in an obstacle driven, mayhem filled stop and go 3 miles to the vicinity of Sheepshead bay and the entrance to Emmons Avenue.

Nevertheless the long slow drive was worth the wait to get to the order line. A succulent roast beef sandwich, a dripping cheeseburger, some fries and french fries were ordered with the seltzer water as the drink of choice. The anticipation building, now the next wait behind all the other orders. It was 2:30pm on a Saturday but it may as well been the height of lunch time.

The wait squared did not disappoint though. It is still scrumptious just like I remember during my youth and just like my youth, dad paid which was an added benefit.
Oh, and it is not a chain. You have no choice but to visit Brooklyn to enjoy. That remains one of my favorite things about New York City. Oh yeah, of course most if not all chains including an Applebees no less on Emmons can be found but it is still a place for the entrepreneur to stake a claim as the best of something. Most fail of course but here is to Roll-N-Roaster and 39 Years of delighting New Yorkers and the few non-New Yorkers that know.

[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares, Brooklyn New York, Roll-N-Roaster]/tags]

I found this juxtaposition worthy of snapping it with my camera. A vacant storefront on Broadway on the Lower East Side with one of the ubiquitous hot dog stands selling its dirty water hotdogs.
Actually the few blocks around where this picture was taken has a disproportionate number of empty store fronts which is indicative of what is happening all over as people just pull back in their wanton spending habits.
Though I have not taken a scientific survey I would suspect the “Hotdog man” is doing just fine. How can you beat a lunch of hotdogs and soda which probably comes to less then $5. Forget about the health effects, who cares! They taste good and the economics are just right and you won’t die from it till many years into the future anyway.

Tags: Julio Hernandez-Miyares, New York City, Recession

I love the juxtaposistion of man and nature in new York City. A summer like spring day in Bryant Park on 42nd Street not far away from “The Great White Way” induced me to take the picture. Frankly I was trying to take a picture of the large greenish behemoth on the right of the photo but the scrawny thing that passes for a tree was in the way. I figured it would add to the picture and I was too into my Witchcraft goat cheese sandwich I didn’t want to move to a different position anyway.