NEW YORK FORKIN’ CITY
Adios, Papaya Dog
That’s cholesterol, folks
You’re looking at 14th Street and First Avenue in New York. The East Village. That sign on the truck used to say “Papaya Dog,” because for 500 years on this corner, behind those closed metal gates, sat a dump that once sold the world’s shittiest hot dogs and papaya juice. Hence the name. If that combo strikes you as fuckin’ disgusting that’s because, my friends, it was. The owners, having given their final shits decades ago, chose to slap the words Papaya Dog right on the sign, like a HAZMAT warning. Or a dare.
I say “used to” because the place shut down a few weeks ago, like so many restaurants around here, due to the pandemic, or maybe because nature decided this particular gag had gone on long enough. It’s been boarded and padlocked and now the sign is on a truck headed for a long rest in the country, I guess. The East Village is still full of those ugly fuckin’ dining sheds (I wrote about those here), but the death of Papaya Dog leaves behind what it always was in life, a hole.
Mostly it was for drunks. It was open all night long, so if you found yourself hammered in the East Village (“if,” I know, redundant) and it happened to be 4 a.m., P-Dog was there to feed you, 24–7, in their beggars can’t be choosers kind of way.
Papaya Dog was not there to nourish you. It existed to inject carbohydrates into your mouth quickly and with minimal scarring. Their deep fried board of fare may or may not soak up the alcohol in your system, but that was OK, because Papaya Dog went straight to your lizard brain, which wants what it wants when it wants it. If what you want is to corrode your pancreas with battery acid, so much the better. This was food for bourbon-sweat vampires staring at taxis.
Even with your brain marinating in Old Crow, you knew those hot dogs were trouble. They were overcooked and smelled like burnt dildo, pinkish-gray in a where-did-that-meat-come-from kind of way. One night at 2:37 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, I bought the $5.99 two dogs and a Coke “special” (if only!) and sat down on a turquoise plastic chair made entirely of COVID.
Starving, stinking, I held that wiener, flecks of mold on its stale bun, up to my mouth. My entire G.I. system called 911. NO NO NO, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO PUT THAT IN MY MOUTH, YOU STUPID FUCK!! YOU WILL HAVE THE WORST SHITS OF ALL TIME IN EXACTLY TWO HOURS!!!
Of course, I ate it. And then I ate the other one. Fuck you, Common Sense. And then exactly two hours later, I had the worst shits of all time, made extra special because my body predicted it down to the minute like some Butthole Nostradamus.
My farts came out hurt, offended, bent on vengeance. Moist, exhausted, I took out a black Sharpie and scrawled the word “REGRET” on the toilet lid.
Four days later, I did it all over again.
If you went to Papaya Dog in the daytime it was like admitting you didn’t want to live anymore. You had stopped caring what went in your mouth, your body, your wayward soul. At that point, you could eat Papaya Dog or you could eat a fistful of dirt with glass in it, it was all the fuckin’ same to you.
Their sign was ugly and never cool. The inside, with its too bright fluorescent lights and sticky linoleum floors, was ugly and never cool. The people who ate there were ugly and never cool. What I’m saying is, Papaya Dog was perfect. We figured, if you came to 14th St and First Avenue and wanted something tasteful and nice, well, too fuckin’ bad, SoHo is that way. That awful, tasteless choke-and-puke on the corner sent a message to every yuppie dumbass noob who came to the neighborhood unawares. You change for us. We don’t change for you.
Beware of Papaya Dog.
Now their space on 14th and First will be turned into something nice and clean and the food will pass multiple health code inspections. The yuppie dumbass noobs will love it.
P.S. I never had their papaya juice. Who drinks that? What am I, a fuckin’ animal?