There’s Brooklyn and There’s the Rest of the World

5 Responses to There’s Brooklyn and There’s the Rest of the World

1. 

   jerry June 17, 2008 at 4:00 am #

   after living in bklyn for 14 yrs i finally made it to Sam’s on Court St. Ordered a veal parm that must have been a few months old….place is lovely, unchanged and charming. Food is awful….
2. 

   Steve June 17, 2008 at 7:55 am #

   It’s a shame this is so melodramatic. Show me one neighborhood that hasn’t changed over the past 50 years in New York City. NYC has been changing since it’s inception. It’s a fact of life here. This piece seems to blame the wave of new comers in the neighborhood for the change. But that’s ignoring the fact that in Carroll Gardens, many of the old Italian families were not forced out. In this instance, most of them weren’t renters. They owned many of the buildings they lived in. They owned many of the storefronts their businesses were in. But like in other neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the Bronx, many of the Italian families chose to sell their buildings and move out to the suburbs on Long Island and in New Jersey. Remember white flight? Every Italian I know in Nassau county has roots in Brooklyn. They’re parents moved there decades ago in order to give their children a better life. Lynbrook on Long Island was named after Brooklyn; the residents electing to flip some of the letters when incorporating the town. The remaining Italian families in our neighborhood seem intent on staying. My Italian landlord owns 4 buildings in the neighborhood and he’s holding on to them. The Italian grocery on the corner of Degraw and Court is a fixture and it’s owners are intent on staying.
3. 

   3hicks June 17, 2008 at 4:46 pm #

   I love “goo gootz”!! my grandma still grows the squash in her backyard garden, and we enjoy it every summer. not all of the “new” brooklyn is different.
4. 

   lifer June 17, 2008 at 9:12 pm #

   i have been going here since i was born (69). Louie was a teenager then waiting and bussing tables. He’s hilarious. In the 90′s,Mario won “the surliest waiter ” in Nypres’s best of Manhattan. My brother and I still joke that we are still waiting for that glass of water one of us asked him for back in the 70′s. I personally think the food is great, truly old school simple Italian. The top of the thick plastic menu reads “If your wife can’t cook, don’t leave her, take her to Sam’s”. And i have see them refuse service to “their own”, they have a sign “no tank tops, no slices”, and abide by both. The review from Sliceny (http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/06/sams-restaurant-pizzeria-cobble-hill-brooklyn-nyc-pizza.html) everyone gives it a much better review than the guys above. They have 3 sizes of calzone, 18$ 19$ 20$, wtf could the difference be?! i love that place. I remember i took a girl there for new years one year before we went out, we ordered the calzone, and she asked for some marinara on the side, they refused “we dont make it that way ” Louie said. She wanted to leave, i made her stay and order something else. Sals up the block however, started to allow people to order marinara on the side of their calzones, a nod to the new people moving in, and catering more to them than their own heritage, Sal’s fell of awhile ago.. too bad..Long live Sams, Louie, and surly Mario.
5. 

   Ramona August 2, 2008 at 5:42 am #

   My problem wiith gentrification is not with what ethnicity of people move into the neighborhood. Yes, neighborhoods in NY change constantly. But what basically remained the same was the social class of the people. Now, all of that is changing. That is what I do not like. Whether ir was the Jews living in ENY or the Blacks/Hispanics, it had always remained affordable. That is all changing–for the worse.