S04.E02: The Bronx

[Athena]

 

Bourdain explores the widely diverse cuisines and cultures found in the NYC borough just north of Manhattan. Bronx mainstays Afrika Bambaataa, Mellle Mel, and Baron Ambrosia help guide the host through the music, food, art, and other offerings of this often misunderstood part of the city.

 

[Snarklepuss]

Unfortunately, thanks to him, it's still misunderstood.  He fed into pretty much every negative stereotype.  All the time wasted on passing trains, kids playing, etc. and nothing about huge vast areas of the Bronx.  He talked about the many cultures but only concentrated on old school Hip Hop, crack and grafitti, all which are pretty much things of the past.  And again with the Hipster pandering.  WTF does that guy in the curlers have to do with the Bronx?  And White Castle - Sure I grew up eating it in the Bronx but what does that have to do specifically with the Bronx?  It's obvious to me that Tony really didn't care with this episode.  I felt like he dissed the Bronx.  He treated some places like he was a Brit visiting India in the 19th Century.  That guy going on about bragging about arraignments - Seriously?  What a freaking insult to my home borough.  I could have shown him some much more interesting, unique stuff that would not have made it look so one note - and bad.

[Julia]

Seriously, how do you visit the Bronx and not do Arthur Avenue or south Asian food? I kind of get that he was trying to humanize the South Bronx, but there are huge sections of the Bronx which have never stopped being middle class (including some in the South Bronx, like Throg's Neck), and a few which have never stopped being insanely rich. It was a strange hour. 

[Snarklepuss]

I could show him mansions overlooking the Hudson in Riverdale.  The BEST pizza on Arthur Ave. (Full Moon) - How about Addeo Bakery or Mike's Deli?  Irish pubs that hang on in Woodlawn and "The Punch Bowl" on W. 238th and Bwy.?  The best neighborhood diner ever, the Tibbett?  How about Morris Park?  Country Club?  Even his take on City Island was really lame.  Like nobody did any homework and just slapped this episode together.  Very disappointing.

[Julia]

I could show him mansions overlooking the Hudson in Riverdale.  The BEST pizza on Arthur Ave. (Full Moon) - How about Addeo Bakery or Mike's Deli?  Irish pubs that hang on in Woodlawn and "The Punch Bowl" on W. 238th and Bwy.?  The best neighborhood diner ever, the Tibbett?  How about Morris Park?  Country Club?  Even his take on City Island was really lame.  Like nobody did any homework and just slapped this episode together.  Very disappointing.

 

We lived on Sedgwick and 238 when my daughter was born. We wanted to move back now that my daughter is aged out of public school, but we're looking in Yonkers because (who knew) the Bronx is being gentrified. 

 

What's funny about all this is that I could swear the british country garden setting he used for his daughter to interview him in the season end special for last season was in Wave Hill...

[Snarklepuss]

OMG, Wave Hill, that's another place he could have gone.  Come to think of it, I think I saw that and thought it looked like Wave Hill too. I grew up on Sedgwick between Kingsbridge and Fordham.  My father still lives in the Bronx in the Kingsbridge/Riverdale area so I am down there often.  Despite being disappointed in this episode, I do want to go to that place Tony went on the Grand Concourse for chicken and other Caribbean food as it looked pretty good.  I know there are better places than that, though.  My Puerto Rican friends keep telling me about one particular place but I never seem to get there.

 

BTW, my father is 87, 11 years older than Lloyd Ultan and goes back 80 years or more in the Bronx.  He met Lloyd once a couple of years ago and they had a fascinating conversation about stuff that's long gone.  My Dad is a regular fixture at Liebman's Deli as we all grew up loving deli food.  Speaking of that, Bourdain could have discussed S&S cheesecake - The best and better than Junior's, IMO, and comes from 238th Street.  It's the cheesecake a lot of restaurants serve but you don't know it.

Edited October 6, 2014 by Snarklepuss

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I had a few issues with this episode. First one of the guys he talked to said that if people could overcome their biases and go past 49th St. (I may have the street totally wrong), they would discover how awesome the Bronx is. Then not ten seconds later, he said that everything he needs is in the Bronx so he never leaves. Has he ever stopped to consider that people who live in other boroughs are in the same situation? If you have everything you need in your own neighborhood, you don't have a good reason to go wandering around other neighborhoods, especially if you work full time and/or have kids so your free time is at a minimum. In other words, it's okay for him to be loyal to his neighborhood and stay there, but people who do the same thing in other neighborhoods are somehow too biased to come to the Bronx.

I feel like Tony was going for the everyday man attitude here by admitting that he didn't know how big the Bronx is or how diverse it is or how many different ethnic groups are there. But since we know that he has lived in New York for decades, it makes him look like exactly the kind of ignorant jerk who never goes to the Bronx that the other guy was talking about.

[buttersister]

Ignorant jerk (those others don't need a stand-in, Tony now Anthony) who's clearly more concerned with artsy footage than content.

[Julia]

I had a few issues with this episode. First one of the guys he talked to said that if people could overcome their biases and go past 49th St. (I may have the street totally wrong), they would discover how awesome the Bronx is. Then not ten seconds later, he said that everything he needs is in the Bronx so he never leaves. Has he ever stopped to consider that people who live in other boroughs are in the same situation? If you have everything you need in your own neighborhood, you don't have a good reason to go wandering around other neighborhoods, especially if you work full time and/or have kids so your free time is at a minimum. In other words, it's okay for him to be loyal to his neighborhood and stay there, but people who do the same thing in other neighborhoods are somehow too biased to come to the Bronx.

 

96th Street. It was always kind of a vague rule for fashionable New Yorkers that Manhattan just got more and more expensive and exclusive the further you went uptown until you hit Harlem. The idea was that people from lower Manhattan (read: white people) don't go north of 96th Street because People Who Are Not White live there and there are dragons.

 

If he hadn't said he was a native New Yorker, that expression would have been a dead giveaway, because that's changed drastically in the last twenty five years or so as Harlem has gentrified. For people of a certain age, though, what he said meant that nobody comes to the Bronx because everyone's scared of the Not White people.

 

Which, I have to say, is not completely inaccurate. I had a real estate agent say some really disturbing things to me about "a certain element" when I told her what neighborhoods I wanted to look in, and there are large pre-war apartments with fireplaces on sale for less than $100k (which is a fraction of what a parking spot in Manhattan costs) because they're in (a relatively safe part of) the Bronx.

Edited October 6, 2014 by Julia

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Ha, so the only thing I got right was that it was a number street with a 9? Sorry about that!

I am definitely crossing 96th Street if there are dragons!

[Julia]

I am definitely crossing 96th Street if there are dragons!

 

I think all the best dragons are in Chinatown and Flushing, but there's some really spectacular food north of 96th Street ;)

Edited October 6, 2014 by Julia

[ElectricBoogaloo]

No Harry Potter type dragons? Well, that's disappointing! ;)

[Snarklepuss]

Yeah, the 96th Street reference - I thought it made the guy look hopelessly out of touch with what's been going on in NY for the last 25 years.  I haven't even lived in NYC full time for 20 years but I know better than that.  Geesh, even the condos. in Washington Heights have been astronomical and "regentrified" for a while now.

 

I feel like Tony was going for the everyday man attitude here by admitting that he didn't know how big the Bronx is or how diverse it is or how many different ethnic groups are there. But since we know that he has lived in New York for decades, it makes him look like exactly the kind of ignorant jerk who never goes to the Bronx that the other guy was talking about.

 

That guy with Tony was incredibly myopic and typical of a kind of attitude usually associated with Manhattanites in decades past in which "Manhattan is the center of the universe and the only part worth knowing about".  I reference the famous "New Yorker" magazine cover in which a map of the US shows Manhattan huge and the rest of the country far off and teeny tiny.  Only this guy was that way about the Bronx!  Tony is in his own way similar, but in reverse about Manhattan - Like "Samantha" of "Sex and the City" who always said she "didn't do borough" and the only time she did was to go to Staten Island and it was kind of like "slumming it".

 

To me, Tony gives himself away as not being a native New Yorker in the sense that he has no idea what was going on in the Bronx in the '70s and '80s, not because he was in a snobby Manhattan induced Myopia, but because despite technically having been born on upper Broadway at what was then Columbia Presbyterian hospital, he grew up in New Jersey.  His idea of what NY was back then probably began and ended in the back seat of a car on Sunday afternoons and so he was just too removed from it to really know anything about the place.  In the 80's he started working as a cook in a restaurant in Greenwich Village that I used to frequent (never knowing he probably flipped my burgers until decades later), but again, his perspective on the City was limited at best.  In some ways I don't think he has overcome that limitation, at least when it comes to the boroughs and it showed in this stereotyped, shallow take on the Bronx.

OK, I have to admit that my experience with Brooklyn (despite having tons of roots there going back to the mid 19th Century) has been limited, but geesh, why come off as a total rube about it?  I would never do that.  Then again, being from NYC I had friends from all the boroughs because I went to a high school (and a college) with kids who came from every borough.  I don't know if I buy that Tony copped that ignorant attitude to make himself more "relatable" to his viewers, but then again he has been pandering to the entitled rich, young hipster segment since he started this series, probably in an attempt to increase ratings, so I actually wouldn't put it past him. 

Edited October 7, 2014 by Snarklepuss

[BronxGal]

I'm from the Bronx and after watching the episode I felt all of the cultures and communities of the Bronx were left unexplored. Yes, there is an enclave of ethnic groups from all over the world in the Bronx, but Anthony spent time focusing in on the Bronx's past. Everyone knows of and remembers the burning Bronx, but it is in the past.

 

If Anthony was trying to encourage other boroughs and visitors to explore the Bronx's "part unknown" he actually put me off. I'm trying to imagine that I am in the shoes of a Manhattanite who has avoided the Bronx for years. Why would I want to come here with the ignorant person you chose to represent as a Bronx authority? Why not a community leader? It should have been someone who has passion for the people of the Bronx, rather than portray it an ignorant standoffish attitude that is a thing of the past. The discussion he was having at Lammy's "People so white they kiss dog's mouths." Seriously? Then he rants about how crackheads have stayed in the community for 25 years and that they are permanent fixtures. Seriously again? With this ONE person view is of "The Bronx," how does Tony expect people will be willing to explore the "parts unknown" in The Bronx? It is ignorance. Why would anyone want to check out a place where they assume the people are going to have an ignorant view? Anthony painted a picture of the Bronx as a gang infested hip-hop culture, full of ignorant individuals, and a Bronx which will remain known as the burning Bronx. I believe people of the Bronx want change for the good. Keeping its culture, ending the violence, and discovery of the new. 

 

City Island was a great mention, but did he even think about the Italian communities - the famous "Arthur Avenue" and Pelham Bay? The Bronx is a cultural mecca and given it is only a one hour show I'll cut him some slack. The Bronx was represented with this one attitude that it is a tough, ghetto, crime, burning, community that is just a place no one will ever want to visit. I've asked Europeans what they associate with the Bronx and I always hear "It's a tough place. A burning, ghetto." This is where people live and are raised. The Bronx is a place that is much more than the view of White Castle and Jamaican Food. It is a place that welcomes all cultures and appreciates community. We stand by our communities. Did he even talk about Wakefield's Church Row? Seriously? No, he explored the graffiti on the subway cars. No, no one in Brooklyn ever did that????!!!! Seriously? No one in Brooklyn ever ran thru fire hydrants in the summer? Wow, it is only the Bronx that we can show a slow motion moment of kids running thru the streets. That really tells me a lot about the Bronx. Seriously? If you're going to do a show on the Bronx, do it right! At least devote more than an hour. Get it right and not one sided ignorance.  

 

Also left out....What about the New York Botanical Gardens and Bronx Zoo which also adds to the charm of the Bronx? The Bronx has recovered from a long history of the "burning borough" but with Anthony showing a portion of the Bronx, people will never want to come here. 

Unfortunately, thanks to him, it's still misunderstood.  He fed into pretty much every negative stereotype.  All the time wasted on passing trains, kids playing, etc. and nothing about huge vast areas of the Bronx.  He talked about the many cultures but only concentrated on old school Hip Hop, crack and grafitti, all which are pretty much things of the past.  And again with the Hipster pandering.  WTF does that guy in the curlers have to do with the Bronx?  And White Castle - Sure I grew up eating it in the Bronx but what does that have to do specifically with the Bronx?  It's obvious to me that Tony really didn't care with this episode.  I felt like he dissed the Bronx.  He treated some places like he was a Brit visiting India in the 19th Century.  That guy going on about bragging about arraignments - Seriously?  What a freaking insult to my home borough.  I could have shown him some much more interesting, unique stuff that would not have made it look so one note - and bad.

Totally in agreement with you. I also felt like he dissed the Bronx. 

Edited October 8, 2014 by BronxGal

[Snarklepuss]

Wow, I loved your rant!  We're not alone judging from all the similar comments on the "Parts Unknown" Facebook page.  I had the same thought about how differently he portrayed Brooklyn.  He shows his true stripe as basically a non-New Yorker in coming from such a shallow, ignorant angle.  No native, unless they were born with a silver spoon in their mouths on the Upper East Side would act so ignorant about the boroughs.  I almost seem to remember him saying once that he had relatives on the Grand Concourse when he was a kid.  It's hard to be part Jewish and born in NYC in the '50s and not have relatives in the boroughs.  So I don't believe his ignorant act.  I had no relatives in Queens but I went to college with people from Queens, and friends who moved to Queens, so I learned about it in my 20s.  I don't believe he can be 58 and that ignorant.  It just totally pisses me off, and my husband (who is also from the Bx) too.  He cracked me up today.  He called me just to tell me how he keeps getting more upset as the days go on.  I was the one who was initially mad but now he's getting madder!

 

And the graffiti on the subway cars was old footage.  None of today's cars have graffiti on them.  It was a total slam on the place to do that.  This show should have been titled "The Bronx of 30 years ago".  He could have done the same with Brooklyn and made it look pretty bad, but instead he focused on its newer culture.

[sunrisepink]

I've never been to NYC or any of its boroughs, but this show made the Bronx look like a straight up dilapidated hood.

[Julia]

The Bronx is very much a borough of neighborhoods. There are some really nice neighborhoods not far from where he was filming, and some others which were never rebuilt after the predatory landlords got done with them. Manhattan used to be like that too, to some extent, before the norwegian invasion. There are actually quite a few mansions within a fifteen minute drive from where he was filming, some really spectacular beach houses, and kind of a lot of luxury condo buildings.

[Snarklepuss]

Kingsbridge is a neighborhood that is mixed ethnically and racially but never succumbed to the devastation of the 60s - 80s.  And very slowly and quietly it has been regentrifying.  There's not a square foot in the square mile around my Dad's house that doesn't have a hipster condo. under construction right now. My Dad's neighborhood is mostly private houses and co-op apartments.  Solidly middle class, and for the most part stable.    Same thing in Riverdale.  Tony acts completely ignorant of areas like this, obviously to suit his own agenda, which IMO stinks of purposeful omission if you ask me.  My husband, the conservative thinks Tony is a liberal and motivated to make himself look PC by playing up the hood and dissing the middle class.  Who knows?

Edited October 9, 2014 by Snarklepuss

[Julia]

Kingsbridge is a neighborhood that is mixed ethnically and racially but never succumbed to the devastation of the 60s - 80s.  And very slowly and quietly it has been regentrifying.  There's not a square foot in the square mile around my Dad's house that doesn't have a hipster condo. under construction right now.  Same thing in Riverdale.  My Dad's neighborhood is mostly private houses and co-op apartments.  Solidly middle class, and for the most part stable.  Tony acts completely ignorant of areas like this, obviously to suit his own agenda, which IMO stinks of purposeful omission if you ask me.  My husband, the conservative thinks Tony is a liberal and motivated to make himself look PC by playing up the hood and dissing the middle class.  Who knows?

 

I think he's more like a libertarian, based on what little I've heard him say about it.

[Bronx Babe]

The Bronx episode was very P.C.  The producers were afraid of Tony on Arthur Avenue talking with the locals who would probably have voiced displeasure over the changing ethnicity of their old neighborhood.  At least they had him at the Jewish deli, lol.

[Dagny]

This felt like one of the weirder episodes I've seen. I know nothing about NYC and the only thing I got from this is a bit of Drunk History Rap and there are lots of other people.  It felt like he was trying to cover too much in a short time frame.

[Julia]

It's funny. I thought he covered too little. He started out by saying that we don't know the Bronx because our only image of it is dysfunction and poverty and isolation, and then he spent the majority of the episode discussing dysfunction and poverty and isolation. Which didn't you know - that there's a field at the end of the 1/9 that irish rugby players share with south asian cricketers or that people in the Bronx who like White Castle really like White Castle?

[Dagny]

I did catch that there were people playing cricket in the background of one of his shots, but there was not acknowledgment of that or those changes.

[heavysnaxx]

I generally like Bourdain's shows but this episode bugged me because, if all you had to go on was his footage, you'd think women have but one function in the Bronx: to serve food to The Men. I can't remember any scenes with women who weren't dishing up food, much less being the focus of an interview segment. He talked briefly to older ladies in a park but the exchange was incidental and not very informative.

[Julia]

I generally like Bourdain's shows but this episode bugged me because, if all you had to go on was his footage, you'd think women have but one function in the Bronx: to serve food to The Men. I can't remember any scenes with women who weren't dishing up food, much less being the focus of an interview segment. He talked briefly to older ladies in a park but the exchange was incidental and not very informative.

I hear you, but when has Bourdain paid attention to women?

[heavysnaxx]

 

I hear you, but when has Bourdain paid attention to women?

I believe he did so in Saudi Arabia episode. Which, unlike the Bronx, is chock-full of interesting, interview-worthy women.

[Julia]

I believe he did so in Saudi Arabia episode. Which, unlike the Bronx, is chock-full of interesting, interview-worthy women.

I'm elderly and prone to missing the nuances of teh intarwebz. That was irony?

Edited October 18, 2014 by Julia

[wovenloaf]

Why would I want to come here with the ignorant person you chose to represent as a Bronx authority? Why not a community leader? It should have been someone who has passion for the people of the Bronx, rather than portray it an ignorant standoffish attitude that is a thing of the past. The discussion he was having at Lammy's "People so white they kiss dog's mouths." Seriously? Then he rants about how crackheads have stayed in the community for 25 years and that they are permanent fixtures. Seriously again? With this ONE person view is of "The Bronx," how does Tony expect people will be willing to explore the "parts unknown" in The Bronx? It is ignorance. 

Yeah, that guy who kept "showing him around" was so awful. And then he's sitting there making jokes about how if he was a crackhead, he'd be a nice crackhead. Like, hahaha-crack-addiction-is-so-funny-look-at-this-guy-who-has-been-struggling-with-it-for-25-years-hahaha!! Seriously? And he's sitting there acting like people who don't come to the Bronx are ignorant and awful, while he is simultaneously making rude, undeserved jokes about those very people. And god forbid you are a white non-Bronx person -- then you get insulting generalizations about your race too! Lucky you! 

 

That guy seemed like he just wanted everybody to think he was real "tough" or "hard" or whatever. He had no interest in elevating the Bronx, bettering his neighborhood, or helping its residents better themselves (like, for example, the long-time crackhead that he finds so entertaining). He wants people to think it's nothing more than a gritty hood, so that when he says he's from there people will recognize how *hard* he his.

 

Tony acts completely ignorant of areas like this, obviously to suit his own agenda, which IMO stinks of purposeful omission if you ask me.  My husband, the conservative thinks Tony is a liberal and motivated to make himself look PC by playing up the hood and dissing the middle class.  Who knows?

The impression I've gotten from Tony in this episode and others is that he is part of the camp that views dangerous/rundown/etc. neighborhoods in American cities as some sort of place to go sightseeing, so then they can enthrall us with how "enlightened" about the state of America that they are. These are the same people that congratulate themselves for being so *open-minded* and *forward-thinking* for, gosh, daring to live in a neighborhood that is predominantly of a race other than their own. So Tony doesn't want to spend his hour walking around in, say, a wealthier area with beautiful well-kept homes, even if that area is just as much a part of the Bronx as areas with serious poverty and blight, because it wouldn't play into Tony's narrative that revolves around convincing the viewers that, gee, Tony can really hack it in the hood!

[Snarklepuss]

The impression I've gotten from Tony in this episode and others is that he is part of the camp that views dangerous/rundown/etc. neighborhoods in American cities as some sort of place to go sightseeing, so then they can enthrall us with how "enlightened" about the state of America that they are. These are the same people that congratulate themselves for being so *open-minded* and *forward-thinking* for, gosh, daring to live in a neighborhood that is predominantly of a race other than their own. So Tony doesn't want to spend his hour walking around in, say, a wealthier area with beautiful well-kept homes, even if that area is just as much a part of the Bronx as areas with serious poverty and blight, because it wouldn't play into Tony's narrative that revolves around convincing the viewers that, gee, Tony can really hack it in the hood!

 

Yeah, either that or my husband's theory is right that Tony is down deep a raging liberal or at least wants to appear like one to impress the liberals who are his viewers with his "enlightened", PC views.  As if he thinks he has matured into a force for political change to help or make appear noble the poor unwashed masses of any country/state/city.  To me it just seems like part of a rich white man's guilt complex.  He makes himself feel better for not giving all his money to those poor people he capitalizes on with his show.  After all, he makes a ton of money off of that.  Not sure what he gives away but it still seems motivated by guilt to me.

[Julia]

Nope. What little of his views he discusses are pretty reliably libertarian. What your husband appears to think of as liberals annoy Bourdain as much as they do your husband.

[Mozelle]

Yeah, that guy who kept "showing him around" was so awful. And then he's sitting there making jokes about how if he was a crackhead, he'd be a nice crackhead. Like, hahaha-crack-addiction-is-so-funny-look-at-this-guy-who-has-been-struggling-with-it-for-25-years-hahaha!! Seriously? And he's sitting there acting like people who don't come to the Bronx are ignorant and awful, while he is simultaneously making rude, undeserved jokes about those very people. And god forbid you are a white non-Bronx person -- then you get insulting generalizations about your race too! Lucky you! 

 

That guy seemed like he just wanted everybody to think he was real "tough" or "hard" or whatever. He had no interest in elevating the Bronx, bettering his neighborhood, or helping its residents better themselves (like, for example, the long-time crackhead that he finds so entertaining). He wants people to think it's nothing more than a gritty hood, so that when he says he's from there people will recognize how *hard* he his.

 

The impression I've gotten from Tony in this episode and others is that he is part of the camp that views dangerous/rundown/etc. neighborhoods in American cities as some sort of place to go sightseeing, so then they can enthrall us with how "enlightened" about the state of America that they are. These are the same people that congratulate themselves for being so *open-minded* and *forward-thinking* for, gosh, daring to live in a neighborhood that is predominantly of a race other than their own. So Tony doesn't want to spend his hour walking around in, say, a wealthier area with beautiful well-kept homes, even if that area is just as much a part of the Bronx as areas with serious poverty and blight, because it wouldn't play into Tony's narrative that revolves around convincing the viewers that, gee, Tony can really hack it in the hood!

 

So, I recently started listening to the podcast Desus v. Mero. Desus was the Jamaican guy who took Anthony to Lammy's and the other spot. I can say from listening to a few of the podcasts that that's Desus'...schtick, for lack of a better word. He's very flip about topics, coming in with the cutting snark whenever he can. I find him to be hilarious, so I'm biased, but I didn't get from his moments with Anthony that he was saying any of that to show how "hard" he is. 

 

In any case, it seems that a lot of the issues that folks had with this episode is that he didn't show the wealthy parts of the Bronx? Would doing that mean that Bronx could be viewed as worthy to outsiders? I'm trying to understand, I guess. 

[Julia]

So, I recently started listening to the podcast Desus v. Mero. Desus was the Jamaican guy who took Anthony to Lammy's and the other spot. I can say from listening to a few of the podcasts that that's Desus'...schtick, for lack of a better word. He's very flip about topics, coming in with the cutting snark whenever he can. I find him to be hilarious, so I'm biased, but I didn't get from his moments with Anthony that he was saying any of that to show how "hard" he is.

In any case, it seems that a lot of the issues that folks had with this episode is that he didn't show the wealthy parts of the Bronx? Would doing that mean that Bronx could be viewed as worthy to outsiders? I'm trying to understand, I guess.

The problem I have is that the Bronx is a hugely diverse borough - not just extreme poverty, but extreme wealth, large communities of the irish, south asians, orthodox jews (did you know north Riverdale is an eruv?), italians, and russians, among others, and some of the only large, stable middle- and working-class neighborhoods left in a rapidly gentrifying city (including the ones Neil deGrasse Tyson and Colin Powell grew up in). There are legendary public schools, a world-class university campus, (not that I'm bragging on it but) the freaking Yankees, beach houses in the South Bronx, the Zoo and Botanical Gardens and more history than you can shake a stick at.

Out of that, we got a whole lot of Music in the Bronx 35 years ago, some How the Bronx descended into a gritty urban hellscape, some Oh, look, the Bronx is a scary, scary place where whites dare not come, complete with showcase drug addicted street person (in a neighborhood I've been in, and frankly the meatpacking district was scarier back in the day) and some nice folks having a picnic in the park. So, yeah, extreme wealth does suggest itself as a narrative contrast to extreme poverty, but so does neighborhoods full of working people in single family houses or, for that matter, well-kept apartments a few blocks from where they filmed.

Frankly, I think Bourdain's friend was playing scare the gentrifiers, and although it's kind of hilarious that he's using Anthony "I arrived in Hell's Kitchen to play at gritty urban realness with the dust of Vassar and the CIA on my heels" as a tool for it, it's also kind of unfortunate that they had to disappear a lot of a really big place and its people to do it.

Edited October 21, 2014 by Julia

[Mozelle]

OK, I see where you're coming from. I think part of the issue is that they did spend a lot of time on the genesis of hip hop. In the end, they really only have just under 45 minutes of footage to air, which means that time should have been allocated differently. Some of the cutesy stuff about how DJ Kool Herc slowed down the record on his two turntables (again and again and again) could have been stripped. The bit about the crackhead could have hit the cutting room floor, too, but Tony routinely has some sort of mention of drugs in his series. When they went to Morocco that one time, there was a segment about the drug culture there and the aging hippie, ex-pat enclave. 

 

But what you say about Desus possibly trying to scare away gentrifiers makes some sense. I don't live in NYC, but from what I'm hearing, there are large swaths of Brooklyn where housing costs as much as housing in Manhattan. Because of that people are moving further out into Queens. If (or when) Queens becomes too expensive, the Bronx could be next.

[Snarklepuss]

Nope. What little of his views he discusses are pretty reliably libertarian. What your husband appears to think of as liberals annoy Bourdain as much as they do your husband.

 

If they do, he's got a funny way of showing it.  I don't even buy it completely.  Unless he's putting on the act of someone who is more liberal for the sake of PC-ness and to please the networks.

Edited October 24, 2014 by Snarklepuss

[Julia]

I think perhaps you're eliding "liberal" and "hipster douche," which is really not a safe assumption.

Edited October 24, 2014 by Julia

[Kromm]

I had a few issues with this episode. First one of the guys he talked to said that if people could overcome their biases and go past 49th St. (I may have the street totally wrong), they would discover how awesome the Bronx is.

Off by 100. I believe the reference used was to 149th Street, because that's a key subway station that's kind of a gateway to The Bronx.

I've never been to NYC or any of its boroughs, but this show made the Bronx look like a straight up dilapidated hood.

Well the show was being honest about the neighborhoods they DID show. They are that bad. In fact, far worse than they showed, because they edited out a lot of the cruddier looking stuff, I think, and filmed it with light exposure/filters that made it look a bit magical rather than bleached out and gray like a lot of it really is.

We got a few shots of places that look different like City Island, but as I say below (in the next post) if they'd focused too much on those, we might have had an entire other problem with the episode.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Kromm

[Kromm]

Unfortunately, thanks to him, it's still misunderstood.  He fed into pretty much every negative stereotype.  All the time wasted on passing trains, kids playing, etc. and nothing about huge vast areas of the Bronx.  He talked about the many cultures but only concentrated on old school Hip Hop, crack and grafitti, all which are pretty much things of the past.  And again with the Hipster pandering.  WTF does that guy in the curlers have to do with the Bronx?  And White Castle - Sure I grew up eating it in the Bronx but what does that have to do specifically with the Bronx?  It's obvious to me that Tony really didn't care with this episode.  I felt like he dissed the Bronx.  He treated some places like he was a Brit visiting India in the 19th Century.  That guy going on about bragging about arraignments - Seriously?  What a freaking insult to my home borough.  I could have shown him some much more interesting, unique stuff that would not have made it look so one note - and bad.

Seriously, how do you visit the Bronx and not do Arthur Avenue or south Asian food? I kind of get that he was trying to humanize the South Bronx, but there are huge sections of the Bronx which have never stopped being middle class (including some in the South Bronx, like Throg's Neck), and a few which have never stopped being insanely rich. It was a strange hour.

I think they gave it a fair shot, around the limitations of only having 43 minutes. About 10 minutes of that was probably wasted on stuff like White Castle and crackhead references, and maybe another 5 on stuff like watching trains go by that were interesting but could have been skipped, but honestly this needed a 2-parter to have had any chance of decent depth. Going to City Island, the old Jewish deli, and most importantly to the School of Letters to me did seem to say they were trying to convey there was more than Rap culture and bombed out lots and dirty streets. And he did have a pretty clear disclaimer at the end ("a small slice") when he was giving his wrap-up speech.

Think if he'd JUST done the nicer parts of The Bronx the flack he would have gotten for ignoring the poorer areas, and the Urban culture that came from them. Seems like he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. A better balance might well have been possible, but with so few minutes in the show, I can't say I'm that shocked, or angry.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Kromm

[Julia]

Think if he'd JUST done the nicer parts of The Bronx the flack he would have gotten for ignoring the poorer areas, and the Urban culture that came from them. Seems like he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. A better balance might well have been possible, but with so few minutes in the show, I can't say I'm that shocked, or angry.

 

I hear you, and I think it's unfortunate that the conversation is reading so binary rich/poor. What bothers me isn't that he showed a poor area as much as that he played straight to all the reductive stereotypes he said he was going to dispel, and his local guide's épater la bourgeoisie posturing was straight out of the seventies. If he had gone home with any one of those kids he ate storefront sandwiches with and eaten a home cooked meal I suspect he - and all the people watching - would have learned more about the current Bronx than anyone did from the episode he produced.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Julia

[Snarklepuss]

I hear you, and I think it's unfortunate that the conversation is reading so binary rich/poor. What bothers me isn't that he showed a poor area as much as that he played straight to all the reductive stereotypes he said he was going to dispel, and his local guide's épater la bourgeoisie posturing was straight out of the seventies. If he had gone home with any one of those kids he ate storefront sandwiches with and eaten a home cooked meal I suspect he - and all the people watching - would have learned more about the current Bronx than anyone did from the episode he produced.

 

Sorry for the delayed response - I just saw this - I totally agree with you.  It's not that he concentrated on poorer areas, it's also that he didn't do them justice either by making them look like they're stuck in the bad old days of drugs and graffiti trains, etc.  And yeah, wasn't he supposed to be dispelling those negative stereotypes instead of confirming them?  I could have done an hour in the South Bronx without once showing old shots of passing trains with graffiti all over them.  Graffiti on trains in the Bronx is a thing of the past.  And you're also right that he should have featured a home cooked dinner with a real Bronx family.  My Dad's friend Willie is 71 years old and a downright fabulous home cook who lives on 175th Street.  She would have been the perfect person to feature, but nooooooo we got curler boy instead.  My Dad has lived in the Bronx for over 80 years and at 87 is still quite the live wire, full of great old Bronx stories - Much better than even Lloyd Ultan could come up with (and yes he has met Lloyd and shared stories).  BTW, my Dad lives near Epstein's deli and goes there often.  In his lifetime he has lived in many sections of the Bronx.  Although born in Brooklyn he grew up in and went to school in the South Bronx.  Aside from a few years in Manhattan back in the 50's he has lived most of his life in the Bronx.  If anyone epitomizes the Bronx, it's him.