Como Pizza 4035 Broadway
★★★★★
$ · Pizza
A hot hot slice, a treat, the epitome of NYC, an orange bubble of oil shimmering on the surface of cratered cheese. A premature bite scalds the roof of my mouth, worth the day of tonguing stringy skin. Eve, RIP, always asked after my father, who’d come here after sweaty games of ball in ‘70s summers. John, RIP, threw the pies in and for a while they levitated between his palm and the oven door.
🚫 This location has closed.
Reme Restaurant 4021 Broadway
★★★★☆
$ · Diner
After Downtown left us heady and smelling like smoke, the A spit us up on the corner as the sky was just cracking open. Lina served us bottomless coffee and a decade of tired smiles. We had two eggs runny and sopped up the yolk with toast, hot crispy hash browns, golden laced and covered in ketchup. Lina told the story of the diner’s name as we turned out our pockets and laid down all our change: in the 40s, when they opened, it was Remel. In the 80s, the sign’s metal L fell off. Now, auction fliers dangle from clear tape on the windows.
🚫This location has closed.
C B Shoe Repair 4031 Broadway
★★★★★
$ · Shoe Repair
A snap in the strap of my favorite sandal made me do what I had promised never to: walk a block barefoot, like the 4 a.m. girls on the LES with bruised toes from dancing in too-pointy heels. Turning my gaze down from hot eyes, I watched my step to protect my soft pad from needles or glass, accumulating soot, exhaust, gum, shimmer. Then the C B sign came into view, a beacon of cow hide and shoe shine. Fernando tried not to laugh, gave me dollar flip-flops to get home.
🚫This location has closed.
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Alexandra Watson is the Executive Editor of Apogee Journal, a publication providing a platform for underrepresented artists and writers. She is a full-time Lecturer in the First-Year Writing program at Barnard College. Her fiction, poetry, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in The Bennington Review, Yes, Poetry, Nat. Brut., Breadcrumbs Magazine, Redivider, PANK, Lit Hub, and Apogee. She’s the recipient of the 2019 PEN/Nora Magid Prize for Literary Magazine editing. Find her at alexandrawatson.net or on Twitter @watsonlexis.
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