Jennifer Blowdryer

DUMBO

I tooled down Jay Street to Pedro’s, a Spanish restaurant with a bar that’s been in Dumbo for a long time. It felt homey right away. “So what?!” a guy yelled “I was Drunk!” Andrew J. Lederer, an extremely talkative comedian, producer, and storyteller, was my tour guide, and I couldn’t have been happier. I used to associate story teller’s with women wearing unfortunate robes, but all that’s changed. He’s an outer borough expert, and doesn’t seem broken by New York, like so many of us. He loves Pedro’s – “Once the bathroom was broken and they let me use the bathroom next door, I said don’t people live here or something? And they said ‘nah, it’s alright’.” A small family came bouncing out of the building g and Andrew said happily: “Look, its some people from the bathroom!”
“This place is real homey type” said a friendly fellow named Orlando, “If I wanna hear some Nirvana or some Doors they say ‘let’s see if we can find it” and they’ll play it for me.

Dave Walentes of 2 Trees Mgt owns a lot of DUMBO, that is the part that’s not owned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I saw at least three large buildings with the ominous Watchtower sign. What can they be doing in there, converting the dead? Oh right, that’s Mormons.Walentes was an early speculator in Soho, and learned his lesson – get in there early and spread out.

I had only been to DUMBO years ago, to this studio where they made Cat Spat Magazine, one of those hack pornography outlets that every other girl has passed through, I enjoyed leafing through a huge stack of them and identifying which band member and performance artist was seen wrestling Melee, an older dom type who lived in the space and was in most of the magazines. It was a porn cottage industry, and one day the boom came down and the low tech Cat Spat residents, who also made videos for private customers and staged live fetish wrestling events, had to move in the middle of the night.

Now everything’s a bit shinier than that, 68 /Jay is a nice little bar in a former welding shop, Front Street Pizza, which was once a shack, was allowed to stay at the base of a crisp new building, and the hip Superfine originally spun off from a bar called Between the Bridges, a nice old building which rumor has it may be a CVS.

There’s some controversy about what exactly constitutes DUMBO – Grimaldi's, a top Zagat rated pizza place, had a big DUMBO sticker on the door, but faces Brooklyn Heights, which is just across the street. “DUMJBO is new. This is not new, no matter what the sticker says” We turned the corner, and went to Five Front. “We walked around the corner, and it’s New, so it’s DU MBO.” Andrew clarified. The bartender, a San Francisco transplant, agreed: “We claim DUMBO”

Five Front’s been there since August, and they’re poised for the new block to get going, “They’re going to have to pass by us to get to the main street” said the Manager hopefully. The main street, it is palpable, will be Waters Street, home of the Water Street Restaurant and Lounge, St Ann’s Theater, and chef Jacque Torres’ chocolate shop and soon to be bakery. “You can rarely see the future” Andrew opined, “But here you can see the vaporous image of what it to come. It is written!” There’s a beautiful basement with extremely high ceilings in Water Street, where Andrew once ran a weekly comedy show, and I could feel the productions that were going to come. The chef, Reggie, has worked at the Union Square Coffee Shop and the Noho Star, and is just waiting, “Once we get the atmosphere people’ll start coming”.

Walking around by the water, one the wide empty messed up cobble stones, we looked at the interior view of Manhattan past the water, “People want to feel like danger, but they don’t want it to be dangerous” said Andrew. “That’s the beauty of DUMBO.” It reminded me of old Williamsburg, but nicer and without the child abuse. “Attention FDNY” a sign noted. “Artists Loft in Building” Andrew chuckled. “That’s to let the Fire Department know you have to save people, even though it looks like a dumpy piece of shit warehouse.” We were right by the beginnings of Brooklyhn Bridge Park, which will be developed to stretch to Atlantic Avenue, somehow wending its way past the venerated River Café, which used to be at the end of the world but is now part of something.

The Nest is a large art warehouse that just let us stroll right in, a kid called David Mauro was hanging his video game paintings for an Old School Video Game Tournament; a small movie theater was in the back. Some kids ignored us, Mauro didn’t even try to promote himself, and it generally felt free. Back at Pedro’s Francisco, the bartender/food server, was so damn graceful that he practically bowed. I got back on the York Street F feeling refreshed – summer in DUMBO is going to be sweet.

If you want Jennifer Blowdryer to come visit you in your neighborhood, or a neighborhood you know well, in the evening, you can email me at Blowdryer1@aol.com.