A Castle in NYC?

We have more of those than you'd think!

Eden

May 16, 2024

This week’s newsletter contains a really fun (to me, anyways) excerpt from the Jane’s Tour I took of Washington Heights. My guide was amazing and literally spewed history for 3 hours, so this is truly just a little taste of what I learned that day. I also highlight a very cute stationary store I happened upon while I was in Greenpoint over the weekend. Paid subscribers get to read about my experience eating katsu sandos at Taku Sando and my thoughts on rewatching House, MD a decade after it stopped airing.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reaching out to me with recommendations or anecdotes! Yes, I would like to hang out with all of you. I’m going to start a Substack Chat because I think that’ll allow anyone to join the conversation vs just paid subscribers. I have no idea how this works so I guess we’ll see what happens 🤷

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1. Learning 🧠

Last weekend I took a Jane’s Tour of Washington Heights, an area that is completely out of my bubble. It’s truly another world up there and if you spend all of your time in North Brooklyn or LES, this is your push to take the A train uptown and see what the rest of NYC looks like. One of the most fabulous things I saw there were two large apartment complexes. Trust me, the buildings themselves were cool enough to look at, but the history behind them was super interesting! This is the saga of Charles V Paterno.

In the 1800s, Manhattan above 14th St was basically no man’s land. That’s why you have a building named “The Dakota” on 72nd St - this name was meant to evoke how far out there the building was (aka as far as the Dakotas). Eventually, the late 1800s would see upper Manhattan slowly become dotted with extravagant buildings for rich folks who could afford to live away from the business center downtown and instead surround themselves with pastoral views. Enter Charles V-mothafuckin Paterno.

Dr. Paterno (he had a medical degree that he never used, which probably made his mom sad) moved to NYC from Castelmezzano, Italy and would eventually follow in his father’s footsteps and become a real estate bro. He purchased land on Pinehurst Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard, between West 182nd and 186th Streets, overlooking the Hudson River and in 1905 he built a fucking castle.

nbd, just a goddam castle next to the GW Bridge

Paterno’s Castle was a 35-room four-story Neo-Gothic mansion with a modern interior behind the castle facade. The entrance was a 75-foot underground passageway. Each interior room was decorated in a different style: Louis XV for the parlor, Colonial for the dining room, Asian for the library. A $7,000 organ was rigged to chime at the top and half of every hour. The basement had massage rooms and Turkish baths. The castle had a fucking mushroom vault.

While living large in his bitchin’ castle, Paterno decided he wanted to create a nearby "garden community" of co-op apartments to attract the middle class to the area. It was here in 1923 that Paterno built Hudson View Gardens, a gorgeous Tudor-style complex with, surprise, views of the Hudson River. The times they were a-changin’ and now even middle class folks could live the good life (and pay Paterno rent). Today, these apartments are certainly not middle class friendly and are actually off limits to us common folk (according to the numerous signs nearby). The buildings are a private community complete with beautifully manicured gardens, a private children's playground, and U.S. mail delivered directly to each apartment instead of left in a pile in a lobby for anyone to rummage through (NYers get it).

Hudson View Gardens > HVG in the foreground with Castle Village behind

You know what’s bad for business though? Maintaining a fucking castle. In 1938, Paterno decided to demolish the castle that he only lived in for about 20 years and build Castle Village in its place. What’s interesting about these 5 buildings is that they were all positioned so that nearly every individual apartment within would have Hudson River views. Each floor contains 9 apartments and only the 1 studio apartment on each floor does not have the river view, instead facing the HVG complex. I learned this and a myriad of other facts about this apartment complex by the numerous residents who were milling about. Every single resident we spoke to was knowledgeable about the history of the building and was more than happy to tell us fun tidbits! There are even a few remnants of the original castle sprinkled throughout the grounds!

I think this picture I took from the street (left) shows this remnant of the castle (right)

You know who wasn’t happy about the Castle Village apartments though? The HVG residents. They lost their views of the Hudson and judging by the zero residents of HVG who spoke to us (one literally darted into their car to avoid us) they are still bitter about it.

2. Exploring 🛼

I dragged Lorenzo to Greenpoint on Saturday to force him to get some fresh air and we happened upon the cutest little stationary store, Yoseka Stationary. One of the owners grew up in their parents’ stationary store in Taiwan and wanted to bring the Taiwanese stationary experience to the US. Yoseka began doing popups in 2017, opened their first store in Sunnyside shortly thereafter, and has since relocated to the cutest little brick building at 63 West St in Greenpoint.

The centerpiece of the shop is the testing table!

Immediately upon entering you’ll see a long table running through the middle of the shop. This table contains pens, pencils, and markers that you can doodle with! There were even multiple types of erasers and cute little cars that contained brushes that would sweep away pencil shavings as you drove them across the paper. The owners of Yoseka believe that stationary is very personal and it’s important to find the items that feel the best for you.

I feel like a person’s choice of writing implement used to say a lot. Think back to when Taco Bells were decorated with pastel squiggles and your biggest worry was whether or not you fed your Tamagatchi: do you remember when pens were status symbols? Were you an early adopter of mechanical pencils while everyone else had to make the walk of shame to the communal sharpener? So cool. Did you have the fat pen that had multiple color options just a click away? You were royalty. Did you have different colored milky pens to color code your work? Congrats, you now have anxiety. I remember all of the different pens and pencils I cycled through in school and now that I basically do all of my writing digitally, I feel like those identity markers are sort of gone.

In addition to pens and pencils of all caliber, the shop has a huge selection of notebooks, inks, and washi tape. And they’ll be at Stationary Fest in August, which I just learned is a thing. If you’re looking for a specialty writing implement, or just need to talk to someone about exactly how fine a fine tip pen is, this is the place for you. Lorenzo emerged from the shop with a $27 mechanical pencil that he needs to color the frets on his guitar for some reason? I don’t ask questions anymore.

Tangentially related, I was working an event a few weeks ago and encountered a brand with my name - Eden Beans. They were giving away pens with the company (and my) name on them and when the guy learned that my name was Eden, he gave me a huge handful of pens. So now I have a bunch of personalized pens. Shibby!

3. What’s Good 😎

The Prospect Park Zoo is finally reopening!! It’s been closed since Sep 2023 when a storm hit and dit a ton of damage to the zoo, literally the day before I planned to visit. So I’m super excited to plan a Brooklyn Museum/Botanical Garden/Zoo day very soon.
Before I could even visit The Portal in Flatiron it’s been shut down due to “inappropriate behavior.” What started off as a very wholesome window to our friends across the pond soon took a turn for the “wtf” when folks started flashing swastikas, butts, and 9/11 images. Anyone with access to the internet could have predicted this would happen.
On a happier note, I get a ton of news from The City and they’ve just launched a Summer & the City offshoot of their publication that’ll share tips for how to “enjoy — and survive — the hottest months in the five boroughs.”
Solo Diner is a Filipino food popup collective and they’ll be hosting a good ol’ Filipino BBQ feast at Heaven and Earth in Bushwick on May 18. No word on what the menu will be, but if the illustration is anything to go on you can expect isaw (grilled intestine), betamax (grilled blood cubes, better than it sounds), and chicken feet! They’ll very likely have some tamer items like pork and chicken bbq slathered in banana ketchup, too.
Get your Spring Clean on by attending a Grow NYC Stop n Swap on May 18 in Crown Heights. Bring your gently used items and swap them for something new-to-you! It’s a sustainable way to refresh your wardrobe, bookshelf, or home decor while diverting items from landfills.
Do you think you live on the greenest block in Brooklyn? Enter Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s annual Greenest Block contest! Last years winners look lush AF. The deadline to enter is June 1.
I have two shows coming up in Bushwick that looks cool. Billie hosted my unforgettable karaoke experience and is headlining a variety show called My Kinda Night! at @dromedary_comingout on May 22. Open Mic friend Allie is putting on an Open Mic Bash at Hellphone in Bushwick on May 31.
Finally, the New Yorkiest thing to ever New York: we’re getting special pizza box recycling bins in Central Park.

Share Big City, Little Friend with someone would also have a mushroom vault in their basement.

4. Noshing 😋

I’ve been wanting to try Taku Sando in Greenpoint for a while now and figured there was no time like the present (which is now the past). Their menu is incredibly short, consisting almost exclusively of katsu sandwiches on housemade milk bread, so I figured they must be experts in the art of cutlet on bread. The line was also super long, which can either be the sign of good food, tiktok famous food, or an exclusive sneaker drop and I was certain this wasn’t sneakers.

I’m not gonna lie, the line moved pretty slow, but it was peak lunchtime on a beautiful Saturday so honestly, it was my fault. The inside of the shop is pretty small, but I was surprised to see that they actually have a pretty big backyard. Of course it was completely full on that beautiful afternoon, but Lorenzo was able to grab a table while I placed our order. We couldn’t decide between their pork katsu and chicken katsu sandwiches, so we got both, for science! We rounded out the meal with dashi furikake ribbon fries and a yuzu ginger ale.

The wait to get our food was as long, if not longer, than the wait to order and I’m chalking that up to the fact that they were busy but I think they’re always busy so 🤷. I was very pleasantly surprised by how thicc the wrapped sandwiches were and the massive potion of fries served loose in a paper bag a la Five Guys. Lorenzo and I immediately unwrapped our sandwiches and exchanged halves that way we could each try a half of chicken and a half of pork. The cutlets were pretty thick and juicy, but I found myself wishing that the coating was a bit crispier. The panko and the milk bread both got soft very quickly and although there was a generous bunch of shredded cabbage, the overall texture of the sandwich was mushier than I would have liked. I did really enjoy the katsu sauce though; it had a bit of a mustardy tang to it that was surprising!

The fries were not quite fries and were more like those tornado potatoes you get a street fairs. Some slices were thin like potato chips and some had a bit more chew to them. I actually liked these more than I thought I would upon first glance; the contrast between the softer pieces and the crunchy ones was nice! However, I did feel like the seasoning was lacking, but maybe I just needed to shake the bag better. The yuzu ginger ale was definitely the standout - no notes.

Terrible picture of bagged potatoes > tornado potatoes for reference

I would like to try Taku Sando again, but I would not wait this long. Better to catch them at an off peak time and hope that the quality is a bit better.

5. Watching🍿

Whenever I have long bouts of cat sitting I tend to binge movies or tv shows that I know Lorenzo has no interest in. Most recently, I’ve started rewatching House, MD. I watched the first couple seasons of this show when it was airing live (remember live tv?) and sort of trailed off after the cast switched and suddenly Kumar had given up smoking weed to become a doctor and make his father proud. I remembered the show being fairly funny, mainly due to Hugh Laurie’s crotchety ass Dr. House character. I also remember it being a mystery show essentially - guess the diagnosis! Upon rewatching, I have thoughts.

I know House’s character was always supposed to be an anti-establishment misanthropic fuck and in 2004 that was edgy and funny, but a lot of what he says in the show doesn’t quite hold up now. I like Black Comedy as much as the next weirdo, but like most old things, House just wouldn’t quite fly nowadays. The character is very casually racist and sexist and again, I understand that’s the character, but it’s to a degree that I think we would find to be overkill today. Barely an episode goes by that House doesn’t make stereotypical “Black” jokes at Dr. Foreman’s expense and the other characters don’t even bat an eye. I think this is similar to Steve Carell’s Michael Scott in The Office - the humor was edgy and silly enough for the time, but some of it would be considered a little too cringe now (these two shows were both on air around 2004-2013).

Medical jargon also hits different when you’re older and have actually had some of these tests performed or are on some of the medications mentioned 👵🏻. The other day my doctor actually told me she brought my case up during her weekly doctor roundtable to get other opinions and I was taken aback at being a medical mystery worthy of a group diagnostic consult. When I was younger and heard all of these terms thrown around, I felt like I was being let in on a secret language. Like yes Dr. House, get that patient an LP (lumbar puncture), prescribe the doxycycline, and I concur that it is most definitely not Lupus. Now that I actually know what a lot of these terms are, I’m noticing that they’re kind of just throwing around a lot of the same ones all the time just for the sake of saying big words. I still feel like the writers did a good job, but oh boy does medical stuff hit harder when you have a personal connection.

A lot of this is all hindsight being 20/20 and all and something I actually love doing with old shows is finding the patterns that we now consider to be trite. What used to be innovative and shocking is now passé and we’ve moved on to the next trend and to me it’s an interesting practice to look back and notice the trends of the time. I don’t watch a lot of network tv anymore (does it even exist?) but I feel like cold opens used to be a thing. At first cold opens would simply be shocking - what would we see in these initial 2-3 minutes, what would suddenly happen that would become the inciting incident for the episode? A car crash, an anaphylactic seizure? Then we got used to being shocked and the writers had to trick us - a kid would ask for their inhaler but then suddenly the parent would cough up blood. I love watching a tv show or movie and, using my powers of deduction and my useless film degree, predicting where the story will go. I can sometimes be insufferable to watch stuff with.

Sometimes the show is also just dramatic to the point of being absurd. In the most recent episode I watched, House trapped himself and a dying patient in an elevator while insisting that she had a tick on her. A full body search proved fruitless and then our genius doctor has a thought: what if the tick is inside the patient? So naturally House digs around in her vagina, finds the tick, the elevator doors open to her horrified parents, and then everyone kind of forgets about it. Like, you cannot do this today.

I’m only two and a half seasons in so far and I plan on watching the series through to the end, so please book me to watch your cat so I can get some House, MD time in. You never know when rewatching 8 seasons of an old tv show will be helpful - last night’s Wowza Trivia hangout featured a whole category dedicated to TV doctors and you know ya girl aced it!