I’M GETTING TOO OLD FOR THIS SHED
New York Forkin’ City
There’s a turd in the corner
So, you’re gonna tell me about cool, shitty New York restaurants? You kids wouldn’t know cool if it smacked you in the face, which is a thing we used to do to each other. Right in the face. For no reason.
You should have been around back in ’20, ’21, ’22, now THAT was a miserable fuckin’ dining experience. Me and my boys used to eat in one of those DIY curbside dining sheds that were manspreading on every East Village block back then.
Our crap-ass little shack on Avenue B was banged out one afternoon during peak Covid by a hungover line cook in between Uber shifts. Guy’s name is Ruben and he never dreamed he’d have to use his hands this way. I watched Ruben pancake both his thumbs with a hammer. True story.
The shed had two-inch plywood walls and a tin roof with two wobbly tables and four steel chairs that left waffle dents on your ass. The “windows” were plastic sheets, ripped, flapping and useless, like my leather pants.
Overhead hung two, bare 100-watt bulbs. You know, for atmosphere.
Know why we called it Our Little Shithouse? Cause there was a turd in the corner. Not an emoji. A turd. Dog, probably.
There are some places irony can’t go.
It was a sick joke. My boys and I drank in this cold, leaky outhouse because it was supposed to keep us safe. Turns out, the coronavirus could stroll in here anytime it wanted, but it took one look inside and said, “Oh HELL no. There’s a turd in the corner.”
The shed was covered with graffiti tags five seconds after it was built and then twice a day afterwards. Fifty coats of spray paint may have been the only thing keeping that sad fucker from falling over. That’s back when we had real graffiti, not your art school posers sucking up to the ad agencies.
Place was hideous. If the neighborhood property values were a person, he’d throw himself off the roof.
The waitstaff hated that shed and hated us for wanting to eat in it. They had to make all those trips in, out, in, out, with armloads of food and beers, sometimes slamming into pedestrians walking their dogs, which were pissing everywhere and barking full volume. Now showing Off-Off-Broadway, The Fur Flies, a sidewalk comedy starring Class Rage and Broken Plates.
Did I mention the food was cold? Like, Shackleton’s nuts cold? You ever eat a grape popsicle on the hottest day of the summer? That tasted like three-alarm chili compared to what the shed was dishing out.
In case you’re wondering, we never saw any rats, but we felt good knowing they were nearby, waiting their turn.
The neighbors really hated the place. No wonder. The shed was parked where their cars used to be. It sat right in the middle of the bike lane, too, so the cyclists hated that shed as only entitled pricks in lycra onesies and neon helmets can hate.
You think you’re loud? You’re loud like a hamster is loud. Those big, chunky headphones were invented because of guys like us. Anyone living on the first floor on up would get a 2 a.m. earful of our random wasted bullshit wafting up from the shed. They would open the window and yell down at us, and we would yell back up at them, and so on and so on, a call-and-response Fuck You Chorus echoing all the way down to Delancey Street.
Back then, everyone was scared and pissed off all the time. Shit was real. For the first time, my natural asshole personality fit right in. I was always reaching for bottom and now, I could feel the bottom reaching for me.
Where better to spend a shitty, ugly time than in this shitty, ugly dump?
That’s all over now. In 2022, the city made plans to tear down the worst of the sheds. After a crew finished demolishing our shed, one guy looked at the pile of lumber and said, is this before or after?
Now it’s 2024 and we still have outdoor dining in New York. But just like you, cupcake, it’s fake and clean and tourists use the right fork, and nobody shits in the corner just because it’s Thursday.
Too bad you missed all that. It sucked so hard.
