The Ten Year Itch

             For little more than three weeks I've been giving alot of thought to fast fast chains and I was laying in  bed trying to remember when the last time I walked into a White Castle. It probably had to have been around 2002 or 2003 when I was attending Fordham University, and there is one located on Fordham Road. That doesn't mean I haven't had any White Castle burgers since that time, I have eaten some as a result of them being made available at a party or some type of social gathering. As for setting foot inside a White Castle, ordering up some of their vintage micro hamburgers, and dining in, that had to have been about ten years ago. Although there is another White Castle located right where I live, for some reason the Fordham Road White Castle seems the most authentic of White Castle experiences, so I was going to make my return there.

             With red lights and more useless roadside construction projects that will take the next five years to complete, I arrived at Fordham Road with my car and luckily this location offers a parking lot in which there were plenty of spots. The outside looked completely different from what I remembered, which sported a brick European castle-look in place of the old white siding (that was growing ever more filthy). The inside was renovated and re-arranged as well. The counter and kitchen used to be in the middle, hidden behind thick protective glass. The rest of the inside had those grimy benches with a harsh and cold feeling to go along with the meal. This new 2012 version had a completely different look and feel to it. First of all, the counter and kitchen area was moved to the left of the building, opening more space to comfortably seat more patrons. The soda machine was on the outside and is self-serve, similar to what Burger King does. In keeping up with the times there is free Wi-Fi available, and overall that harsh grimy atmosphere has been replaced with a clean homely environment. In terms of fat and calories, the White Castle hamburger might actually be the best option in terms of portion of nutritional score. Each burger only goes for 140 calories, with a side of small fries that are higher at 350. In order to keep my aorta from shutting down, I kept my order to three hamburger sliders, a side of small fries (which I was only going to eat half of), and a diet coke. White Castle sprinkles their burgers with small onions tips, and of course there is that annoying pickle which gets removed automatically. I was finished in less than five minutes and found myself wanting to get more, but I maintained the line I drew before I walked in that I would only get three. I took a final look at the inside and still needed to adjust to all the changes that were made. I wished it was that nice ten years ago when I was across the street almost every day.

             My appetite had been awakened, and with more White Castle burgers out of the question, I knew there would be other options on Arthur Avenue, just a few blocks away. The area, known for its Italian heritage and wide variety of Italian cuisine and pastry, always comes through when someone wants something good to eat. My first stop was at Cosenza's Fish Market, not to buy any fish, but in the front during good weathered days, they offer a raw bar out front in which you can eat oysters and clams on the spot. I slurped down two blue point oysters at $1.50 each and continued on my way. The next stop was the Arthur Avenue Retail Market, a large indoor market with over a dozen different vendors selling pasta, meat, pizza, cheeses, cigars, clothes, and more. I saw myself perhaps spending too much money if I stayed in there, so I made a quick circle inside and was out there door before I allowed anything to entice me. Anytime I go to Arthur Avenue I can't leave without a stop at De Lillo, in my opinion the best of the bakeries in the area, although all of them are rather solid, but I find the dessert options and setting inside De Lillo to be the top of the line. I felt cheesecake might be a little to much since I just came from White Castle, so I went with a lighter slice of strawberry shortcake with a cup of coffee. Del Lillo has both indoor and outside seating, but even in the nice weather, I still prefer to be inside and in view of shelves and shelves of cakes and cookies. There was one last stop I needed to make before getting into my car and heading home. I haven't made ravioli in nearly two months, so a visit to Borgatti's to pick up some fresh ones couldn't have come at a better time. A staple of the neighborhood, Borgatti's has been making fresh pasta and an assortment of other foods since 1935. Their ravioli are their signature item and that's all I had on my mind when I walked in. They offer a box of twenty-seven large cheese ravioli for thirteen dollars, perhaps a few more bucks than average, but the taste and quality of Borgatti's is always worth it.

              With White Castle and Arthur Avenue fresh in my stomach, the first thing I did when I got home was grab my bicycle and burn off those calories.....

A Bag of Dog Food

             Leaving Yankee Stadium after a disappointing Yankee loss and without a ride home, I wanted to experiment with a different mass transit route home instead of the more conventional 4 Train downtown to 125th Street to catch the 6 Train heading back uptown. Although the 4 Train runs frequently after the games, the train cars are usually overcrowded for the couple of stops to 125th St., a station that has been sweltering all summer long, and with it being rush hour on an weekday afternoon, there was a strong likelihood the 6 Train would also be overcrowded as well. I wasn't feeling the prospect of the constant standing up, holding onto filthy handrails with my wrist, and sweat from the steaming Harlem station, so I decided to take the B or D Train to Fordham Road in order to catch the Bx12 bus that would take me close-enough home.

             It turns out the D Train runs express on weekday afternoons and does not stop at the Yankee Stadium (161 St. - River Ave.) station, which meant I had to wait for the local B Train. As I predicted, there weren't many passengers at all on the B and I was comfortably able to get a seat and enjoy the small handful-of-stops ride to the Fordham Road station. I was looking forward to seeing corner of Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse since I hadn't been there in quite a long time. Probably the last time was back in 2003 during my final year attending nearby Fordham University. The bus I needed to take was the Bx12, a bus line I rode for eight years while doing four years at Fordham Prep (high-school) and then the final four for the University. The only slight catch with this particular bus stop was that is was for those new Select Bus Service lines in which you must purchase a ticket before riding, and this special edition bus makes a limited amount of stops. It was my first time ever using it, but I was able to figure out the ticket thing very easily. I just dipped my metrocard into the machine and it gave me a paper receipt that I assume I would have to hand over to the bus driver upon boarding.

           While I waited for the bus to come I gazed around to study the comings and goings of the streets. There was alot of energy out and about with loud music, yelling, horn-honking traffic, and the sirens from police cars filling the air. One exchange that left me confused was when a young gentleman was walking around displaying a sign that advertised a free phone promotion from a Boost Mobile store across the street. The odd part this girl in her late teens, passing by and the man approached her shouting, "Hey Miss!", then basically took her by the arm and walked her across the busy Fordham Road to the inside of the Boost Mobile place. In some ways it seemed like they were strangers to each other, but she seemed okay by his forcefulness, so I guess she must have known him. Naturally, she was half-covered in tattoos and had three painful looking studs pierced into her lower back to complete the graceful look. She was only in the store for a couple of minutes and left empty-handed it would seem. The guy chased after her for a few yards when she exited, but he gave up and returned to my side of the street once again with his advertisement sign to perhaps pull someone else across the street. A few minutes later the bus arrived and that's when the real fun started.

           Again, I've never used one of these Select Bus Service (SBS) before so I'm not completely sure of all the protocol that goes with them. The bus pulled alongside the curb and both the front and back doors opened. I remember that boarding the bus from the back is technically stealing a ride, but the bus stop was crowded and I was caught in a sea of bodies that was heading this way. I didn't want to interrupt the flow so I went along and ended up boarding from the back door. There wasn't any bus operator to take my ticket receipt in the back, yet I saw reasonably law-abiding folk (or as close to it) entering that way and no yelling from the driver up front about an illegal entrance, so I figured it was an okay thing for the SBS. Besides, I did pay for the ride before entering, so it's not like a stole a fare. My crowd-number predictions didn't work out so well for the Bx12 as it did with the B Train. I ended up standing in a very uncomfortable position towards the very back of the bus that was jam packed. While on the bumpy ride my eyes were instantly drawn to a seat occupied by a large yellow bag of dry Pedigree dog food. The bag had to be close to fifty pounds worth and it was so large it looked like a human being sitting there with a yellow shirt on. One of the other people who got on with me, a motherly-looking lady in her late-forties, took exception to the seat being used to host the bag and started commenting out loud about it. A response was swift from this tiny and cagey woman in her mid-thirties, also featuring a number of tattoos and piercings all over the place. With her was this slumped over young gentleman half-asleep in another seat with tattoos on both his arms. From his face it seemed like he couldn't have been older than sixteen years old, yet this sassy street woman referred to him as "her husband" at one point that had me shaking my head in confusion.

          Each side refused to back down and it snowballed into a full-scale shouting match that came close to the street veteran attacking the motherly complainer. The older woman called the younger one "ghetto" in which the younger woman cleverly replied that the "whole bus is ghetto", which I guess made me ghetto for the twenty-minute ride home. The younger woman eventually got to threatening to beat the other one up, prompting the older lady to take out her cell phone and threaten dialing 9-1-1 if she did start attacking. Although the older woman said it would be a felony, once again, the younger woman displayed some wit and made the correction that the felony charge is only for hitting the bus driver, apparently making everyone else on board fair game. Speaking of the driver, there was plenty of volume on the shouting, but either he didn't hear it or (more likely) is immune this type of behavior by now and just kept driving along as if it was a quiet Sunday morning.

          The tension kept building in the back of the bus and the small children all around were getting treated to a whole page of new words before the start of the new school year. The husband/son/nephew/neighbor or whatever that was with the younger woman didn't do much to diffuse the situation, instead he just laughed and egged the other two along. Despite her foul language and poor manners in public, I would have to agree with the younger woman who owned the bag of dog food. This bag was humongous and simply leaving it in the aisle would've blocked passengers from being able to move around as it gets very cramped towards the back. If it the bag wasn't in the seat, well then the younger lady would've just taken the seat for herself and placed the bag in the aisle near her feet, so what's the difference to the older woman? Either way (huge bag of dog food or younger lady) the seat wasn't going to be available, so there was no need for her to open her mouth in the first place and light the fuse. Luckily, Ozzie and Harriet got off a few stops later and the battle was officially over as they took the tension with them out the exit.

              The entertainment and thrill factor left me wondering why I never tried the SBS sooner....