Man Behind the Counter

He said I could take his picture, but I'm not sure he thought I was serious when I told him I was going to put his picture on the internet. How could I resist?

Portraits of a Ridgewood Deli

If you thought for a minute that I took this picture than I am very flattered, but I doubt you did. This digital translation of a c-print comes from the work of Hee Jin Kang, who documented her parent's Korean deli in Ridgewood, Queens either after or while studying photography at Yale.

Coming across Kang's work was one of my rewards for the risks I took last week which I wrote about in the Lessons of the Little Red Hen. While nervously renting strobes at Calument the wash of panic temporarily vanished and a vaguely blissful feeling came over me as I came across Kang's work in an issue of Nueva Luz they had lying on the counter. And I hadn't yet seen her newer series of work, Kissable.

Bliss in the tape...has packing tape ever looked so appealing? It's Dutch light falling on Ridgewood sundries. Who needs posies when a security panel looks so good? In a statement about the project Kang wrote "My parents would tell me repeatedly that there was nothing to photograph at the store. Where they saw nothing, I saw everything." It fascinated me that from viewing this series of images, entitled Sandy's Deli, that you can watch her seeing everything, all the everything we all see, consciously or not, the everything that with great unspoken tenderness becomes a medium binding us together like her luminous tape.

Brooklyn Royals

On the corner of 15th and 8th you find the Royal businesses, the Royal Deli on the South East side of the intersection and the Royal Supermarket on the North East.

The Royal Supermarket was just gutted and revamped, it is now brighter, cleaner and more spacious inside. The people who work their seem a little more cheerful, I hope they are enjoying the overhaul.

The new awning went up recently. I'm not sure how it is that the Royal Supermarket crown looks like a chef's hat and the Royal Deli crown looks like a really nice crown I would like to wear if I were the Queen. Or is it a king's crown, I don't know the difference. Was it on purpose that the newer one looks like a chef's hat?

I wonder who Nida is. That's a nice name. There's an eyeball sticker affixed to the pinnacle of the crown that says Nida's, perhaps to ward off evil. Curiously, that eye faces the armory directly, as if they are seeking protection from some of the energies carried by the more desperate people living in the shelter. I was in the deli once when some of the armory denizens started fighting with each other. My kids and I hunkered down in the back of the store until they craziness ended. (cue giggles from PS mommy haters)

But fights happen all over the place. Even in my hometown of Arlington VA you can get beaten up at the 7 Eleven if you are there at the wrong time. I'm hoping the Royals get the protection they'd like and the desperate people find whatever support they need so they don't have to act like that. I wonder if that would be possible.