Tickets, Please!
A piece of history in the subway and a visit to an izakaya from my college days
How the heck is January almost over? Like suddenly the sun is setting after 5pm and my winter sads are already starting to dissipate a bit. I spent the weekend revisiting some favorite spots - I had a very grown up breakfast of hot chocolate and cacio e pepe potato chips at Bar Pisellino and then met a friend for tacos at Carnitas Ramirez (big fan of the surtida and oreja tacos). I really wanted to try Sunday Morning Cinnamon Rolls on opening day but they were sold out when I got there 😭 🔜
I ended up revisiting Bar Pisellino during the week and having a second hot chocolate/potato chip combo with my old boss Ben - who is also BCLF’s newest paid subscriber! Ben was the one who recommended I try the burger/chocolate chip cookie combo from Gramercy Tavern in last week’s newsletter and I always trust his food opinions. Thanks for the support, Ben 😊
For this week’s newsletter, I dug into my phone’s photo archive to get some inspiration. Lest you think I’m one of those girls, I would like you to know that I absolutely do not have fun new experiences every single week, but I do end up doing enough stuff that a lot of it inevitably gets buried and I forget to write about it. Half of my camera roll is cats and the other half is pictures of things I saw and wanted to write about. This week I pulled an old photo that I took in a subway station of a bygone relic - an original 1904 ticket counter! I’m also throwing it back to a meal I had on Christmas Eve. Lorenzo and I were going to get Chinese food like good Jews, but we ended up taking a detour and eating at a place I used to frequent on St Marks Place instead. Read on for some good stuff 😎
Wall St (4)(5) Station Broadway & Wall St Neighborhood: Financial District Entrance: West side of Broadway, in front of Trinity Church
Like most New Yorkers, I have a love/hate relationship with the subway. Sometimes it is miraculous - it gets me to where I need to go on time (sometimes early!) for less than $3. And sometimes it’s the fucking worst - it smells, it takes 20+ min to arrive, or my train is rerouted so I have to wait with everyone else on a crowded platform or worse, leave the station altogether and abandon my travel plans for another route either by bus or walking, all the while raging that I paid $2.90 for this bullshit?? I think part of being a New Yorker is holding this dichotomous relationship with our subway system and recognizing that it deserves as much praise as it does hate. That said, did you know a subway ride used to cost 5 fucking cents?? Ok apparently 5 cents in 1904, when the subway opened, it equivalent to $8.87 today but still. I’m not writing a diatribe complaining about the price of a subway ride, I’m writing about some relics visible in a subway station that come from the days of these 5 cent subway rides.
The (4)(5) Wall St station is interesting for a few reasons, the first of which is visible before you even enter. This was one of the first subway stations in the city and it was part of the IRT Lexington Ave Line that initially ran from City Hall to 42nd Street. Eventually, the line was approved to extend south into Brooklyn, so the Fulton St station and then this Wall St station both opened in 1905 (they would eventually make it into Brooklyn by 1908). While the interior of this station is designated as a NYC Landmark, this original exterior hood has somehow managed to stay put for over 100 years despite the street level changing quite a bit around it (a Whole Foods opened a couple years ago across the street).
The hood is made of cast iron and has a cute little leaf motif. A carving on the side of the hood notes that it was made by Hecla Iron Works in 1905; on their website they boast about creating tons of historic iron works around the city from “the towering Flatiron clock to the the 133 original kiosks for the IRT subway system.” This hood at Wall St is only one of two that have survived - the other is at Borough Hall in Brooklyn. The Hecla Iron Works building in Williamsburg is also a NYC Landmark - and is now being rented as office space.
But the fun doesn’t stop outside of the Wall St station - if you head inside, you’ll be treated to a literal last of its kind wooden ticket booth! Remember when I mentioned subway rides costing 5 cents? Well before OMNY (2019) and before the Metrocard (1993) and before subway tokens (1953), there were subway tickets. Tickets were used up until tokens were introduced in 1953 when the fare reached a whopping 15 cents.
Upon entering the station, folks would buy a ticket from a person at this booth. Then at the entrance turnstiles, they would hand the ticket to another person who would clip it at a ticket chopper.
The station’s old ticket chopper actually used to sit right next to the current turnstiles, but it was moved to the Transit Museum sometime before the pandemic. I love the look of this old wooden ticket booth so much; it has so much more character than the booths we have in stations today 🥲 And how fun would it have been to be a ticket shredder? Like the practice of just turning that crank and fuckin shredding tickets all day sounds like such a good time.
This Wall St station also has lots of other really nice details that were restored from the original design. The walls have blue-and-green tile plaques with little Ws all over. Above these "W" plaques are mosaics that depict a gabled house in New Amsterdam with a wall in front of it, a reference to the namesake of Wall Street. In addition to the hooded entrance I mentioned above, this Wall St station also has a bunch of random entranced underneath nearby buildings. I think most of them are closed now, but it used to be pretty common for large buildings (especially restaurants and hotels) to have their own semi-private subway entrances. One entrance was under the Trinity Building that I used to work in, appropriately situated within a Subway restaurant that has since closed.
Have a look at some old subway ticket designs I found (and definitely take a trip to the Transit Museum if you want to learn more)
Kenka 25 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10003 Neighborhood: East Village Open: Everyday, 5-11pm Order: Okonomiyaki, yakitori, any booze you like
Despite being a fixture on St Marks Place for at least 20 years, there is surprisingly little information available online about Kenka. I found some 20 year old news blurbs and a single video from 10 years ago. Here’s what I was able to piece together about the spot’s history:
Located in the ground level space at 25 St Marks Place, Kenka is owned by Yuji Umeki. Umeki also owns Search & Destroy, the vintage/punk clothing store upstairs and the more upscale Beron Beron on 1st ave. Kenka and S&D are both very reminiscent of the early 2000s punk vibe of the block that I remember; I used to buy my manic panic hair dye from S&D and then enjoy a cheap meal with friends (complete with sake bombs) at Kenka downstairs. I got my tongue pierced at nearby Whatever Tattoo and then rode the D train an hour back into Bensonhurst. Life was good.
As you can see in the picture above, Kenka doesn’t even have an English sign out front. I didn’t know the name of the place until years later because there just wasn’t enough internet back when I was going here regularly. We just referred to it as “that Japanese drinking place on St Marks” because we‘d never heard of an izakaya. What a long way we’ve come! I definitely don’t go to Kenka as often as I used to, but the place is an absolute vibe and is one of the few restaurants that has actually stood the test of time on this block that seems to reinvent itself every few years.
Cut to last month, Christmas Eve, and Lorenzo and I were looking for a spot that might be open for a bite. The construction figure in front of Kenka literally beckoned to us in the night and before I knew it I was walking through the sliding doors, past the steamy food prep area at the entrance, and being seated right next to the random Shibari room.
If you want to experience sensory overload, you’ve come to the right place. Kenka tends to attract a younger crowd (cheap food + proximity to NYU) and it’s a place geared towards drinking, so it’s usually quite loud inside. The music playing switches from Japanese pop to current hits and is loud, but not so loud that you can’t have a conversation. The walls are also completely covered in erotic movie posters, ads for Japanese products, and all sorts of eclectic artwork. It’s a bit like someone started collecting Japanese memorabilia and simply couldn’t stop. Once you get past all of the visual noise of the space, you’re hit with a menu that looks as crazy as the decor. Kenka is a great place to bring someone if you want them to think you’re cool.
What I love about Kenka is that there’s a little something for everyone on the menu. They have affordable beer and sake if you’re drinking, as well as one of those beer towers that I definitely enjoyed when I was in college. Because the food at Kenka is relatively cheap it’s definitely not very high quality, but that’s actually ok because at least 1/3 of the menu is fried and frying anything makes it taste better. Kenka has sushi on the menu, but I can’t with good conscience recommend that you get it.
On our last visit, Lorenzo and I got the okonomiyaki, takoyaki, various yakitori, and grilled onigiri. Okonomiyaki means “grilled as you like it” and is one of my favorite foods. Kenka’s okonomiyaki comes with thin slices of pork and little bits of octopus and is topped with dancing bonito flakes that sway in the steam coming off of the pancake. It’s a great dish for sharing and is also like 70% cabbage, so it can be considered a vegetable. Takoyaki is a dish that I have difficulty with sometimes because 1) the inside is always the temperature of actual lava and 2) the amount of octopus in each ball is always so fucking small and (refering back to #1) is suspended in lava. Despite my misgivings about takoyaki, I always order it and I always end up enjoying those savory little octopus donut holes.
Yakitori is another dish that I could eat all the time. If you know of a good yakitori spot in the city, please let me know, because a lot of my favorites have closed. The yakitori at Kenka is basic, but how fancy do you really need meat on a stick to be? We got the BBQ chicken and chicken skin skewers and both were good! We asked for the chicken skin to be extra crispy and they crisped that shit up 👏 A lot of places don’t take us seriously when we ask for crispy skin but like who wants to eat floppy skin? The BBQ chicken was moist but wasn’t super flavorful and I wish they had togarashi at the tables for a little extra pizazz. They have a lot of other yakitori options with more unusual cuts, but we played it safe this time around.
The good news is, the food comes out pretty quickly. The bad news is, you’ll sit around forever unless you manage to flag down your server to get the check. The best news is that once you get that check, you also get a tiny cup filled with sugar that you can turn into a treat with their cotton candy machine located outside the entrance. Now I know what you’re thinking: how sanitary can a cotton candy machine located out in the open on St Marks Place be? Shhhhhhhh don’t think about that. Just pay your bill, take your little cup of sugar, and make yourself a delicious fluffy treat. It’s fun and you deserve a little treat.
Kenka opens everyday at 5pm and there’s usually already folks lined up; we were lucky to walk right in on Christmas Eve. If you show up and there is a line, just add your name to the wait list outside and walk around the neighborhood for a bit. There are lots of places you can grab a drink in the area (RIP Dallas BBQ though), Videogamesnewyork is a fun place to browse retro games, or you can walk towards Tompkins Sq Park and see the building from the cover of Physical Graffiti!
If you’ve also been wanting to check out Soft Butch in Bed-Stuy, then I’ve got a great excuse for you to stop by this weekend: they’re hosting a skill share event all about the mysteries of health care on Feb 2! Bring your insurance card and get some personalized help from a healthcare expert in the community. Free notary services will also be available!
Lunar New Year kicks off this weekend 🐍🧧 I shared some events last week and @nyc_forfree shared another great roundup of free events here!
I recently came across a cool art exhibit at The Arsenal in Central Park - Christopher Spinelli: Brooklyn Dreamland, Land without Shadows. Paintings and drawings by Christopher Spinelli depict a bygone era of Coney Island. It’ll run through March 14!
Ugly Baby closing will never not be sad, but some of the former employees are opening a new spot in the same space called Hungry Thirsty. They’ll still be serving Thai food and some items will be riffs on Ugly Baby faves. Hungry Thirsty opens Jan 31!
- wrote about her experience having jury duty in NYC and, as a civic participation nerd, I found it to be a super enjoyable read! I served on a jury 10ish years ago and I had a great time.
Bibliotheque, a wine bar in SOHO, is hosting movie nights all Feb. While the price is a bit higher than your regular movie ticket, the $30 admission price will get you 10% off your first drink. Showtimes are at 5 and 7pm and you should probably make a reservation. Here’s the lineup:
2/3: 13 Going on 30
2/11: Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You
2/17: Bridget Jones Diary, Pretty Woman
2/24: When Harry Met Sally, Casablanca
La Cantine in Bushwick is having a winter clothing drive! Drop off some old items in good condition and receive a coffee on the house. If you’re hungry while you’re there, I recommend grabbing their poblano egg and cheese sammy.
BCLF fave Drawing Room will be throwing their 1st Birthday Party this Sat Feb 1. Celebrate with crafts (letters/collage, cusom birthday hats, so much more!), a piñata (with special prizes!), and plenty of food/drinks.
At my last job, I organized monthly lunch and learns where employees could teach literally anything they wanted; we learned how to play mah jong, how to make kombucha, and had a wine tasting hosted by Ally. Now, Ally is expanding her services and would love to teach you about wine! I will absolutely be looking for any excuse to bring her into my new job for a fun wine night and if you’re interested in learning more about wine in a very chill and accessible way, Ally is your girl.
I searched through my camera roll for pictures of you getting your tongue pierced at Whatever (surrounded by walls of vagina piercings), but I came up blank - was that an event we commemorated on camcorder? It was VERY millenial of us, then!
Oooh I need to check out Videogamesnewyork to fill the void that 8 Bit & Up used to fill. Also you probably know this but there’s a cute tea shop in the Physical Graffiti building called Physical GraffiTEA, which is lovely, and I bought a great mango blend from there once!