Went to Brooklyn and saw nothing. Returned with dinner from Fairway's, above. Ham on the bone from Maine, good, but a little smoky. Dried fruit, gherkins, tomatoes and salami all excellent. Top right are dried cherries marinated in Dow's 5 year old Tawny port. Extravagant you might say but the dried cherries were extremely sour and I already had the port which was too sweet to enjoy. But it did a wonderful job of taking the excessive sourness off the cherries.
"I get in at 9.30 every morning. The bar maids get in at noon. I am eighty-three and I have cancer."Earlier, Esther was outside her bar supervising the delivery of supplies. Caroline asked her if we could have some water for the dog. She beckoned us in and produced a large Tupperware full of water for Louis and put it on the floor for him.
She has owned and run The New Casablanca for forty years, more than twenty of those years with the man she eventually married. "One New Year's Eve he asked me - I thought he never would."
Her husband died eighteen years ago. She hunted the shelves and cupboards under the bar and brought out her wedding album. "I get it out every so often." It was a large white leather book with sewn gilt borders on each page.
She thought Bedford Stuyvesant was still neglected by the city. In the last election Mayor Bloomberg got fewer votes in her district than any other. "He ought to come and see us more."
"May I photograph you?" I asked.
She thought for a moment. "Do you work for an attorney?"
"No, I don't."
"That's O.K. then."A window was flung up and a head appeared. "I'm going to charge you for using the door space."
The couple posed and I asked them to move a little. "Can I punch him in the nose?" And nudging him with her elbow, "Stay sexeee."
They came out of their house in Bedford Stuyvesant as we passed. They were off to catch a train to Dance Africa in Fort Green.
We wondered why her daughter was wearing plastic sandals. Maybe her dancing shoes were in her mother's bag.
I wasn't paying attention and I missed my chance as this girl and her friend came out of the gate of their house in Bedford Stuyvesant. I hesitated and they were gone. An hour later we ran into them on the same street coming in the opposite direction. One does not often get a second chance. I took them together but this shot was the best I thought.
