We came down in February of 2023 over the Super Bowl to explore Savannah and try her out. All everyone could talk about was the St Patrick’s Day Parade that was going to happen a month later. I want to say that over 1M people packed all of the squares and it was a large time. This year they are expecting over 1.5M people and it is also the 200th Savannah St. Patrick’s Day Parade so this is going to be fun.
The parade steps off not too far from our house so I expect for Horner and I to waddle down to Gwinnett Street and see them off. We also can get our fix of bag pipes so if you see either of us downtown on Congress street wearing cotton in our ears is because it was too loud.
More to come but here are the pictures.
First Lets see what the weather will be like.
Low of 58 on Saturday is what I am talking about !
We live near the start so it will be easy for us to get out of bed, make a bloody Mary and then walk over.
There will be Absolutely No Reason to wear these back into the house. I will deposit these in the dumpster upon returning home.
Sadly Geranium’s hat won’t fit her. Thanks a lot Temu!
I needed $10.00 more on my order to get free shipping of the Kilts that Horner and I are going to wear so I got us some beads to give away.
Down on Jones Street
Pinkie’s is ready!
Oh look McDonough’s decided not to fix the green awning but hung with care those cheap Guinness Beer flag streamers instead. I can only imagine what this place will smell like on the Monday following the Parade Saturday and Sunday the actual holiday. I may not walk down Drayton for a couple days after. Incidentally – McDonough’s has a solid bar menu and the staff is great.
I see you Gwinnett Street!
The Savannah IG be pretty funny
Not sure what it was (these folks were pretty hammered but there was some type of a green dress charity fun) and downtown was full of green people 1 week early.
Some looked good, some….keep drinking Erin Go Bro!
More Bunting here than in Hells Kitchen
Hard to see but the Fountain is spraying green water. I may try to get the pick at night.
You can see the swan shooting green here
There could be a lot of good pictures next week or this may be my last post for a couple week because I am suffering from a real bad case of MPH.
Talk about becoming a spoiled New Yorker. One thing that I miss about New York is my beloved Astor Wine and Spirit Booze Delivery. Go online, not speak to anyone, place your order and you could pick the delivery day you wanted. This was key because sometimes I did not want Jose (Mon – Thurs) doorman to know how much I was ordering. So, I would sometimes have it delivered on Friday (Joseph would work the lobby on Friday) and he wouldn’t think to much about the 2 large boxes getting dropped off. Then, we always had the Saturday delivery option.
That was when Luciano would accept the order and then drop it off at our door so it wouldn’t be in the lobby collecting stares. By the way you got free delivery with a $150 dollar minimum order. Don’t go there Judge Judy. I have seen some of you walking out of Busters with a college kid loaded up like a pack mule.
We don’t have that type of service here and it sucks. We can get wine and beer delivered but it is a hard NO on booze delivery. This bugs me because we would really would like to use Costco more. That is where we order our Summer Seltzers and Geranium’s maintenance wine. You know what I am talking about right? Maintenance wine is the booze that keeps momma happy when it is post work time. Sadly Costco is too far of an Uber back and forth and that would mess with our bottle refund ponzi scheme.
Que the Seinfield JFK golf club episode where Kramer and Newman steal a mail truck to return bottles for deposit.
So at least once a week I will make a 13 minute jaunt over to our local package store with my old lady cart and speak to the Ganem Family. I am frequenting a family run store and sure the prices may be a tad more but I am always welcomed by someone when I hit the door. They are good people.
Here is what that walk looks like.
Some of you have asked what distances are like here. I can make this easy peasie on foot and it is a beautiful walk.
You can tell that we are serious about our air conditioning down here. Those boys are busy during those Non-R months and September.
I love the houses on my walk. Mind you they rent for 3K for a two bedroom but they don’t have a pool so what is the point in that?
So much character with these houses. I love this one.
Super Nice Lady who lives here and is always saying hello. She also has one of those Neighborhood Libraries out front of her house and I drop off some old books of mine that I have collected. She has my “Don’t Stop The Carnival” that I love.
I love this house. The owner dresses the house each month and they go all out. And look, we keep our Skeletons on the porch year round!
During October it is all done in Pink. And she is a Banana Fan too!
No wonder I am taking allergy medicine in early February. It is this crap that helps keeping me stuffy.
It is a neat street
It does not matter what day of the week I am walking by this church but I find that the pastor is always loading stuff into the church, by himself. I have offered numerous time to help but he always says he is fine.
I have also walked by this joint on a Sunday and it is a rocking and a rolling. The pastor has invited me to attend services numerous times.
FYI – These (they don’t call them mass, it is called a service) sessions can go long…..like 2 to 3 hours long.
Ok, I will say it – If I attended, I would be the only white face in the congregation. That doesn’t bother me one bit.
My Reasoning – I see the parishioners (probably not what they call themselves) walking in and they are dressed to the nines. I acknowledge that this is a very special day for their spiritual growth. I don’t need to be showing up as an interloper. I have been to Al Green’s Church and know what feels like.
Full Disclosure – I may have thrown a couple bucks into an envelope and put it in the mailbox. Pastor needs a better cart to carry the water up the ramp.
Let me say it loud enough for those of you in the back – WE HAVE A FUCKING GUN PROBLEM HERE IN THE UNITED STATES.
Ok, I am off of my soapbox. Here is my trusty steed. I did notice that her tires are going bald and her suspension is starting to ‘flex’. Lawd help me if she fails on a trip back when I have a Wine and Booze order from the Gaynems.
Hey Abo – I may need you to bring me a Whole Foods Old Lady Cart on your next trip.
Next week we are getting ready for St. Patrick’s Week. (Notice I said week and not just day) They are dying the Forsythe Park Fountain green at Noon on Friday.
St. Patrick’s Week is going to be off the hook. They are going to Green this sucker and I am all for it.
Have a good week and be nice to people…..even if you don’t look like them.
Happy Fat Tuesday to all of my friends who celebrate Mardi Gras. Get home safe and make sure you boil your shoes in bleach because they probably need it. We had a great weekend and had some friends up to stop over on their way to see grandbabies. Yesterday I got the house in order and managed to smoke a couple of sticks in-between rain storms on Monday.
Sucks to be a New Yorkers today. I was wearing flip flops and shorts.
“What are you doing at the ballpark Carbunkle? You get a job shooting the T-shirt cannon in between innings?” Sadly they won’t let do that job but I may possibly be the Mustard Bottle running around the bases for the condiment race. More to come.
Hey @SavannahBananas how about some dog merch?
Why not slam some Miller High Life Ponies
This is Kiaylo (Troy’s newest youngest sibling) and loves to come up and say hello to us.
Troy Troy is chill and likes to hang while the dogs frolic
Oh by the way averaging 15K steps and on occasional 40 flights does take its toil on your shit.
My poor folding shopping cart, still kicking after all those years.
This week we have my Godchild coming into town to tour SCAD. Geranium and I are kind of secretly hoping that she comes here. We really got to be so close with Abo and consider her part of our family. That and I think she wants to major in Theme Park Design.
I can already hear a couple of you snickering in the back who took the under. “Not even 5 posts in and he is already blogging about the restaurant business. Who does Carbunkle Trumpet think that he fucking is……Anthony Bourdain?“
Way back before online shopping, or even the internet, people used to shop “virtually” back in the day via a catalogue. Want to know something even crazier. We used to mail the order form in, along with payment (check or cashiers check) to that company. I am going to lose some of you with the next sentence, but humor me. After you mailed off your order to that company about 6 to 8 weeks a box would arrive to your house with the order in perfect packaging without any tracking or email notifications.
I know, you are probably thinking that it is time to put Carbunkle to bed because he is rambling again but honestly that his how we used to shop from home. Now when you would go to a department store in Memphis you would either head to Goldsmiths, Sears, or Fred P Gattas Company.
Ok, Ok, Ok, let me get to the point. I hear your grumbling that I am going off on another tangent there RMT and KLCMan. Stop yelling at me from your snow fort.
Mr. Gattas had a particular hiring test for any new salesperson or manager. When he had to do the final interview he would always make sure that their meeting or interview would happen over lunch. I don’t care if you were conceived with the sole purpose of working for the catalogue showroom. It didn’t matter that you had top honors at Memphis State and were being groomed to run a fortune 500 company. If you salted or peppered your food before tasting it, yo ass was not getting a job with Fred P Gattas Company. And that secret has been in the vault for a number of years.
I will go one further.
Coach Bob Stephenson, may he rest in peace, was the former athletic director at Christian Brothers University. He also would he take any future coach or staff member to lunch on Thursday. Where did you go have lunch with Coach you ask? You were going to Barkesdale Restaurant in Cooper Young District because they were serving Chicken Livers. Coach wasn’t so much making sure that you salted or peppered your food but if you were going to order a ‘meat and three’ from the daily special. If you did then you had the job. Now if you were going to wimp out and order a burger. Or even worse, ordering the 14 dollar salad, then I don’t know what would happen. Full Disclosure, I don’t like chicken livers but the meatloaf, mashed potatoes, peas and fried green tomatoes were excellent. Yes, that is how I was named the first head trainer at CBU and they only paid me a paltry $5K. And I took the position and was happy as a clam.
So here is is Random Thoughts With Robo – The next time you are eating a meal with people, pay attention to their eating habits and or dining mannerisms. Do they automatically salt their food before tasting? Trust me, you can learn a lot about how a person will act by the way that they handle themselves at the table.
I acknowledge a couple of things these past 6 months after doing some New Years Day self reflection. First of all, the bulk of the content for this worthless dribble has pretty much been our adventures in New York and on vacation. Some of you are probably are tired of “oh look here is a picture of us by the worlds largest ball of yarn” post and I am fine with that.
So what am I going to blog about? Where the latest Kroger shopping carts are located on the streets of downtown Savannah? Don’t laugh, but there already is an Instagram account for that. I am surprised that the Kroger on Gwinnett is still in business because there are more shopping carts in the surrounding neighborhood than in the grocery store.
I could talk about the number of trains that go screaming by the Park and Broad intersection in the morning. This, by the way, is primary excuse reason that all of my fellow “Fresh Praline” cart selling work family is late to work for the 10AM Line Up call.
What do I do? Wait I got an idea.
Back in the fall I would get on the Snapchat (yes I have a Snapchat account) and give a “Random Thoughts With Robo” post to my 5 followers. Every weekend I would share brief moments of brilliance that I would get when I took my first hit off of my freshly cut Perdomo Cabinet Series Churchill cigar. Some of what I was putting down, I have to admit, was some monumental shit. The latest was that Geranium is now wearing a Caftan and I have a velour track suit coming from Temu this week. I also spoke about being nice to everyone because this is an election year and it is going to be a rough one.
So ,the plan is for me to give you a brief weekly or maybe twice a week post of “Random Thoughts With Robo” I don’t know who that Robo fucker is but I hope he doesn’t mind me plagiarizing the hell out of him.
Random Thoughts With Robo Savannah Edition – I was on the phone today with my spiritual advisor. She doesn’t know that, but when we talk on the phone we pretty much pick up right where we left off. She is in a really cool orbit that ranges from Belize all the way up to Indiana and I really appreciate that she includes me in her circle. The first time I formally met her was when I showed up on a Sunday morning to her B&B on San Pedro with charcoal, tin cans, some Belikin beer, a lighter, a cigar and BBQ’d 12 chickens in her backyard. She still loves to share that story with friends because it was just a normal day in Belize. Then IGA Ken, Brussle Sprout dropped by and then Chunky and Ruth stepped in to help me shred chicken in her kitchen and it was a party. But I digress….
Today I am on the phone with her and offering advice on how to cure that hated burning when you pee sensation. After a lengthy give and take on the situation, symptoms and possible cure, I was offering her some suggestions when I smelled something from the kitchen. Without missing a step I said “hold on Kitty, HEY Geranium!!!! can you check on the bacon, I think it is burning” and returned to our previous discussion without missing a beat.
This led Kitty into hysterical laughter which she said “Only you could say that in the middle of a serious conversation!” This later led me to think; am I really as cornbread southern as my friends and family from New York say that I am?
Let me tell you, I got roasted by a lot of people on Manhattan for my southern accent. From the point that some people felt that I was mocking them because I would default say “Yes/No Mam/Sir” regardless if they are older or younger than I was. Trust me, this was a big thing for some old school New Yorkers. Then there were the “Oh you must be from Texas” folks who don’t know the difference between a Mississippi Southern Delta accent from a Southern Arkansas accent. By the way, I have a fraternity brother who would take 3 days to say the pledge of allegiance because (love you JD Walt) he spoke that fucking slow in his southern Arkansas accent.
So I guess that my accent is really profound. I know that Long Island Sam used to give me “My Cousin Vinnie” quotes and trust me when he visited Southaven MS for work you should have seen the messages I got from him. I also know that my Staten Island brother from another mother would giggle at some of my “Roboism’s” but I guess that is time that I have to embrace it.
Oh and for you remaining New Yorkers who are still on this thing. When someone says “Bless Your Heart” it isn’t a good thing.
So that is it. Let me know if you like this new direction. I am trying to keep the word count low so you can read this on your deck in Chicago smoking a cig or sitting on the can because I plan on still posting in the morning.
Love This Woman!
Going through some old pictures and found this one. Still was a good meal even though the cost of Ubers were double the price of dinner.
Back when I was beer butt smoking some chickens in the common area of Changes in Latitudes B&B on Ambergris Caye. I started laughing when Cindy came down with the heads for the chickens.
I wonder what happened to her?
Trying to download old pictures is getting to be a pain in the butt. Anyway I plan on posting on Tuesday Mornings as I take the Dot Bus downtown to sell “Fresh Pralines” let me know what you think.
If you follow Maya on IG you will notice that she is spending time with two other dogs this week. Geranium’s sister lives out in California with her wife, and they have a beautiful place here in Palm Springs. The 2 dogs in question; Poppy is three years old and Skipper is 18 months who was added to the family this winter. Much like ourselves, we want the very best for our fur babies. Last year they asked if we would come out to keep Poppy while they went to Mexico for vacation. We did such a good job keeping Poppy alive that we were asked if we could keep both of them this trip. Obviously Maya gets to go because it would defeat the purpose of going to keep fur babies if we have to leave ours at home.
This trip was a little different because Geranium had to leave Palm Springs for a work trip in Los Angeles this week. In other words I have been playing Mother Goose to all 3 dogs this week. The trip was also weird in that we got delayed heading out and had to spend the night in Denver. This afternoon Geranium gets back to Palm Springs so we will get to spend the weekend in this beautiful desert oasis with a pool. Oh yeah we still have to make sure that Poppy and Skipper get fed and extra belly rubs. But we will survive. On to the pictures
Good Thing that Maya travels easy. She knows when she has to be in her box and when she can sit in our laps.
Maya loved staying at The Benson in Colorado. They are dog friendly and it is really a nice place if you get stuck in Denver overnight.
Maya enjoyed the lobby at The Benson while we were waiting for our Uber.
To Quote the Late Grate (yes I know I used the wrong Great) Sonny Wilson “He a Rock and Roller” anyone know who he is?
The couple who sat in front of us decided to recline their seats during take off. So we learned that if you shoot your air vents forward you can freeze them out. The asked three times to have the air turned down and God Bless the United Flight attendant who saw what I had did, giggled at me and gave me an extra Tito/Soda.
Yeah this place is a baller place for sure. And yes that is the 3 of them at the door.
Maya on the left, Poppy in the middle and Skipper is on the right. They are buddies.
Frolicking Time with the cousins.
They have a biscuit here in Palm Springs just like in Savannah
When in California, One must pay homage to Tony Bourdain
What you are seeing is a Double Double Animal Style with Fries Animal Style too! Don’t judge me, I have not eaten fast food in over 6 weeks.
This is going to be a long one…so buckle up Back when I was in my younger years I was required to attend the 10:30 high mass at St Louis Church in Memphis. We would always sit midway on the Mary side of the church with my mother and sister and we would always see Mr. Angelo Luchessi. He was a super nice gentlemen always dressed in a suit and would say hello to me and my sister.
Later in life – I recall listening to Drake and Zeke Logan (May God Rest his Soul) on the radio and they were interviewing Angelo on the radio. Turns out that he was the Jack Daniels Sales Rep who introduced Frank Sinatra to Jack Daniels.
To me that is pretty cool and I felt a connection to Francis Albert Sinatra.
So, the other day I swung by Desert Memorial Park to pay my respects to “Old Blue Eyes.” Go back up to the picture and look at it again.
I wonder who put that NYC Subway Bottle (the airplane mini) on the grave. I may have also poured another one out for him.
This week I found out from ZM that when Frank was in residence at his Palm Springs home he would hoist a Jack Daniels Flag between his two palm trees to let his friends know it was “party time.”
God Bless You Frank and God Bless you Angelo Luchessi!
I will say it again for those of you in the cheap seats – NOBODY HAS DIED FALLING OFF OF A BEACH! Also – WHY WOULD YOU PAY GOOD HARD EARNED MONEY TO FREEZE YOUR ASS OFF WHEN YOU CAN DO THAT SHIT FOR FREE AT HOME? I rest my case.
Seriously this place is beautiful
The view sucks here
We will be here for 6 more days. It is hell but we are surviving out here in Palm Springs. I have to admit, life out here isn’t that bad. And I now have realized why Palm Springs was a frequent spot for all the Rat Pack, it is 2 hours from LA and all of these houses are beautiful.
Shameless Plug, can you follow Maya on Instagram? We are trying to save money to afford a place next door to Poppy and Skipper’s house.
First off, yes we are taking this serious. Yes, I went to the store and got a case of bottled water. I almost had a cardiac arrest rolling that heavy ass stuff back home in my old lady cart but it is done. I have located the bucket should we need to get pool water to flush the toilets. Shout out to Grainbin Gurl who taught me to fill up the tub for this reason but unfortunately we only have a walk in shower.
All that being said. Are you Friggin Kidding Me? The last hurricane that hit Savannah, I was 9 years old!
So we woke up on Monday to reports that Tropical Storm Idalia was in the gulf brewing up some trouble and some spaghetti models had it swinging fairly close to Savannah. This morning, the radio was saying “you better head to the grocery store and make preparations in case we lose power.” They aren’t calling for evacuations (how much would that Uber cost) and I spoke with some people in the building that we won’t experience flooding, just a lot of rain and wind.
I had to GTS the name of the Hurricane that flooded the Broad Street NYC Subway J/Z Line last year (Walter) but looks like I get to add another one to my list.
Hurricane Elvis 2003
Hurricane Calipari 2009
Hurricane Walter 2022
She don’t get listed till she give me a little blow
Maya is Ready!
I never thought that I would be working on a Hurricane Prep Blog post but tune in next week to see what we did to get ready. And don’t worry, I have plenty of Booze to move us to the top of the list should the Cajun Navy have to come to Savannah to get us off of the roof.
So how is everyone’s summer going so far? Personally, we just got back from Belize where we vacationed with the Knuckleheads, RJ & Mallory, Otter & Mrs. Otter, Big Jim & Ruth and please meet a new character to the blog, Abo. Belize was a blast and we really enjoyed ourselves.
If you have been stalking me or the dog on Instagram you may have noticed that we have changed latitudes. More on that in a minute but let me throw out a quote from a favorite movie of mine.
Folks the rumors are true, Mary Louise Geranium, Maya and I have left New York and now live in Savannah Georgia. Now please allow me to explain. A lot changed during the panarama (NO SHIT SHERLOCK) but Geranium’s job went fully remote. My job as a double decker tour bus ticket seller went hybrid and we started to realize that we needed a little bit more space to live and work. As much as we loved moving from Brooklyn to Hell’s Kitchen and then to Lower Manhattan to take advantage of cheap rent we knew that we would have to pay the piper one of these days. I won’t go into detail on how much our building in lower Manhattan wanted but we made a decision that we needed to save some money for our next adventure. Honestly doing remote work from the most expensive city in the world makes you question some lifestyle changes.
Now let me be very transparent, as much as the media and people like to throw rocks at New York City and talk bad about it, we absolutely loved our time here and we walk away with deeper friendships, and are so happy that we did this 8 year experiment. We made the decision to leave Manhattan over Thanksgiving of last year and then started looking at new locations for us to consider. We found out that we really enjoyed riding the ferry to the Beaches of Queens, Brooklyn and Island of Long so we wanted a place that was close to a beach but not a beach town. We decided that the Eastern Coast was in play but Florida scared the hell out of us. We looked at Charleston, SC but she was as expensive as Nashville and Austin, TX then we started looking at Savannah.
Savannah really checked off a lot of boxes for us; good airport, close to the beach, downtown is walkable and because they have SCAD the public transit is not half bad. Oh and Uber’s are like 7 bucks so we decided we wanted to take a trip and check out Savannah firsthand.
We made a trip over the Super Bowl weekend and we found out very quickly that we found our next future city to live in. I do love the above “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” quote but I was telling someone that “Savannah is kind of weird and funky like the East Village but with a Southern Accent.” I also found out something by living 8 years in the Northeast…..I hate being cold and really hate winter!
Our lease ended at the end of May but due to a prior commitment we extended our lease by one month so that we could attend a memorial service for a dear friend of ours. Incidentally, on June 1st I wrote checks for an apartment in Manhattan, Savannah, and we still own that condo in Memphis so June was an expensive month for us.
With our trip to Belize looming we worked with the moving company to have them pick up our stuff mid June so that it would travel down and be in the condo by July 1st. God Bless Vivian and Stone for allowing us to crash at their Park Slope Brooklyn Brownstone for a week. Poor Maya was all kinds of confused as we left Manhattan to go hang with Scratch (Viv & Stone’s dog) but she loved going up and down the 3 levels keeping an eye on everyone. Thank you Viv and Stone, we owe you dinner at Raouls when we come back.
This Little Shit really thrived while living in Brooklyn
4 days before the trip to Belize we decided to book our one way trip to Savannah and left so that we would have enough time to meet the movers, get the house in order and then pack for Belize.
97 Boxes left Manhattan and were heading to Savannah
You still with me? So the movers went a couple days outside of the window which is fine for someone who didn’t have a vacation looming but Geranium ended up flying down on that Saturday. I stayed behind, met the movers with the dog on Sunday. We got the stuff in the condo and a huge thank you to Tater Chip Chelle and Bourbon Bill for keeping Maya among all the boxes. Belize was great and I will post about that at a later date. So what is in store for us in our new city?
I left the Double Decker Tour Bus Ticket Sales Job. Geranium is making her own moves and in 2 weeks will be teaching people how to use a different bed pan. We kind of look at this move much like we did when we arrived at 1330 First Avenue in the Upper East Side some 8 years ago. New place and new beginnings. Oh and I am really looking forward to Carbunkle 2.0, I would like to add I didn’t have a job when I moved to New York and that turned out just fine. Even if I did briefly throw bags for American Airlines. (Pro Tip – Never check your luggage)
For those of you wondering, yes that is a pool out the window. We also have a pond. A pond would be good for some of you.
Now with leaving New York we had a flood of emotions and for those of you reading this who are still north of the Mason Dixon line I would like to use a quote from former Giant’s head coach Tom Coughlin. “It is not goodbye it is see you later.” We have plans on being up in Manhattan a lot and there are 5 daily direct flights from New York to Savannah. Don’t worry we will always be friends and I look forward to picking up our conversation where we left it.
I am going to miss the daily interactions with this one but I have a feeling we will be knocking back some Kettle One on Third Avenue sooner than later.
Savannah is very much a dog town by the way.
We are looking forward to our next chapter and for you dozen or so readers I have already gotten some story lines going. Our Kroger, local grocery store, is a couple blocks away and the poor bag guy was very confused why I sounded like him but wanted him to put all the heavy stuff into my old lady cart. “You mean you don’t have a car?” This is going to be fun so stick around.
So without further adieu, Good Morning and if you are reading this across the pond Good Evening!
Stop yelling at me you dozen Memphis readers. We came into town a while back for the lady killer’s graduation party and we were there on a very short itinerary. We will be back over Memorial Day Weekend for a trip and hope to see everyone. We got you.
Saturday afternoon of the Memphis trip we had some down time and also we needed some food. I was in the rental car when Geranium asked me to fetch her some lunch. Back Story -we had already purchased BBQ Bologna from our dear friend Ernie Mellor at his Hog Wild BBQ store on Yates. Momma wanted two things; BBQ Bologna sandwich with a side of BBQ spaghetti. Where did I go since I was staying at my mothers house? Corkys BBQ on Poplar of course.
We got a half pound of BBQ Bologna from Hog Wild on Yates and carried it over to my mothers fridge. Ba had made over 250 of her famous marinated Christmas crackers. We made this creation and let me tell you. This may be the next BBQ Nacho. Holy crap Batman! That is good shit! As a New Yorker of 7 years the Styrofoam to-go threw me off. Who cares if To-Go presentation is off, they were excellent. I wished that I had the beans from Nick and Charlie’s joint downtown but these were good. BBQ Bologna with Slaw was damned good! Memphis’ Dry Seasoned Ribs. Maria my dove, your banana pudding is still the best. This was good but I have had the best. And your banana pudding is still the tops. Do you see what I did there Baby in the corner? Step it up.
I apologize to my brother from another mother Staten Island Sam and Brother Don for this post. I will make it up to you both. #FatKidsForever
Again, I don’t want to hear any grief from my Memphis Famiglia. We were on a very short trip. Text me and lets plan for Memorial Day weekend. We didn’t even see Rock-Mo or have one of his burgers. Same for Max’s and we didn’t get to see La-Dash-A at her pulpit.
WE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO SEE THE KNUCKLEHEADS.
Honestly, we hope to see you in late May. Just text me.
There are only a few times in my adult life that I have gone against the judgement of my consigliore, Maria. Both times were met with a lot of cowering and agreeing that “My Aunt Bette” was right. For those who don’t know – When you give the title of ‘consigliore’ to someone you are entrusting everything to them. That trip to Aquaduct….. she was right. We had no business going there but I like to think that trip was why we didn’t worry about what was in the vaccine.
When I started this silly Saturday Sandwich blog post Maria was adamant that I visit Katz’s Deli on Houston and Ludlow. This is where I had my ‘moment of dumbass’ where I almost dispatched her suggestion. I had already tried Katz’s Deli and I thought it sucked. Let me back up, I was eating Katz’s Deli at Dekalb Market in Brooklyn when we lived in Boerum Hill. I had never visited the location in the Lower East Side to which Maria was referencing. Full Disclosure I was scared because of the tourist popularity. Ok FINE Maria, I will try it per your suggestion.
This past Friday I texted my consigliore and inquired when we would make the trip together. Sadly Maya’s BFF is nearing the end of her his life so Maria was spending time with Scratch and asked for a rain check. I said of course but what she did tell me was MUSIC TO MY EARS.
“Order to go food and then pick it up, you won’t have to wait in line and it is a pro NYC Hack. (You are welcome Non-New Yorkers)
I did not have time to go get a Knish, I was preoccupied but more on that later. Jesus this is BRILLIANT!!!!!!! Only cost me $2.75 each way on the subway. Mobbed! This place is mobbed Crazy Packed!!!!Not as Thick as the one from Sarge’s Deli (later post) but it looked good. Jewish Penicillin To Quote the Late Great John McNicholas – They better not screw you on the half sour pickles. Katz’s does it right. I mentioned earlier that I was ‘preoccupied’. I lost my wallet when I went to the grocery store prior to going to Katz’s Deli. I come home with my Pastrami and enjoyed lunch but I WAS PISSED. Then the First precinct called me saying that they have my wallet and some cards. GOD BLESS WHOMEVER PICKED IT UP AND TURNED IT IN!!!!!!! GOD BLESS YOU!!!!!I was with John McNicholas one night in Manhattan when he got pickpocketed. He was as mad as I was today. I would like to think that the Sour/Half Sour pickle made him make it where I got my wallet back.
And Maria for the record, the Pastrami Sandwich from Katz’s Deli is TOPS. The Pastrami was so good and ‘when we bit into it was like pillows of pastrami’. You are always right MY AUNT Bette.
You need to accompany me to one of your favorites. Yes, you are always right.
You mean to tell me that you don't have Sweet Tea? 