Fifteen floors on the 34th street block sit stacked next to glittery new Miami-like mirages of time-shares, adjacent to Hilton brand-recognized rooms and metal cranes threatening views too precious to waste. Destination Virginia Beach, a Mecca for tourists from as far north as Quebec to as far west as Michigan, we get it all. Those who travel here to vacation will take their family on a Bus for a $1 to Labor day weekend festivities and think this is the greatest place on earth to vacation, but it is not until that very next weekend following Labor Day that the locals step outside, take a deep breath in, feel the beautiful cooling weather on their shoulders and realize college football.
Matt and I live in a city central along the East coast. We live in the closest to what I could find to my old stomping grounds in my early twenties where I lived on McKibben Street in Bushwick-Brooklyn apartment 3, minus the roof-top access and hipster hieresses. Most days I find a lively, Matt, after work drinking a in the basement den at Boneheads.
The 34th street block, home to an epic pancake house, Pocahontas Pancakes. Walk in through an authentic tepee made out of your grandma’s quilts and feel yourself time-travelled backwards by twenty years into a questionably decorated diner where butter balls await you on every warm fluffy flapjacks.
“It’s a long way down for a chaser,” rasps Skip. A freshly opened PBR lands in his open hand from a skilled slide down the bar. He’s returned from a resourceful few shots of chilled cinnamon liquor taken from his newly renovated 5th floor apartment. He exits to the pit, where Robert and the others are smoking their dried tobacco sticks on a mild early-summer evening.
Stan, the cook, is moving I am informed. He’s on the other side of the bar tonight meaning he’s not sweating in the kitchen, where i suspect a delicious homemade meal is sure to be found.
Teal checkered mosaic glass tiles the length of the bar from where Grandma sits every night next to her television playing Jeopardy and sometimes Nascar, where she quietly judges from her perch the drama. There is one thing you do not mess with it is with Grandma and her television. Technically that’s two things. Don’t mess with either. They were here long before you arrived.
Elroy leans in on the other end of the bar to catch the action of the football draft on the big screen, when I walk in. “Baby-girl, What do you know about the football draft?” I have only come down to pick up some food and beers to go, but I stay to learn that the football draft life. Mrs. Elroy has personality for days and stops cars with the morning energy of a six year old.
Then there is Sheila. Thats resident mom. With vodka. So many stories to tell.
