caveat lector + the county of queens, part two

The best part of the whole Lemon Ice King of Corona experience is eating your ice while watching bocce in the little park across the street. The park is tiny, and feels more like an old-fashioned town square than like New York City. With festive multicolored electric lanterns illuminating the nighttime scene, it even reminded me of certain zócalos in Mexico.

The whole town seems to come out to watch the balls fly. The court itself is of impressive construction, complete with ceramic lion busts adorning the low concrete walls (I promise to go back and get some pictures) and a beautiful green clay playing surface. On the far side of the court was ranged a veritable peanut gallery of old Italian men in short pants and garters, wheezing and muttering and occasionally crying out eccola quà! after a particularly good play. To my immediate left was a young Mexican boy wearing a purple Zorro mask, sitting on the ground with his chin resting on the wall, intently watching the balls fly hither and yon. Next to him a Chinese boy discussed the game excitedy with his grandfather.

I felt very far from the velvet-rope madness of Manhattan on a Saturday night, and was glad for that.


Pope John Paul II playing bocce, probably after enjoying a peanut icie at the Lemon Ice King of Corona.

The players all had their distinctive personae, from the superagressive "shooter" who would hurl the ball with such force that we'd all instinctively duck, to the distinguished old gentleman in white shorts and black kneesocks who would gently and precisely roll the ball to exactly where it needed to go, to the mustachioed young buck who had the same wheeling arm and crouching knee of a bowler throwing at ten pins. We watched, transfixed, for an hour, maybe two, before moving on.

My friend David had once told me that it was great fun to bike amidst the abandoned relics of the 1964 World's Fair at nearby Flushing Meadow Park, and I thought that it might make an interesting nightime walk, as well. This was the same Fair that had introduced the world to the concept of the Belgian-Waffle-as-dessert, after all, so there was no telling what we might find.

Entering the park, we encountered the Jetsons-like New York State Towers, seen below in a contemporaneous View-Master image.



At night, with their blue lights illuminated, the towers still have a certain Unidentifiable Flying Intrigue.

Then it was on to the famous Unisphere, beacon of World Peace and Understanding Among Nations.



Although the Unisphere ultimately failed to eradicate the scourge of war and misunderstanding, its grates and walls did become a popular proving ground for skateboarders, and we watched a couple of them rip and shred in the Fountain of Continents until the wee hours.

Eventually, we ascertained that there was still a little space left in our stomachs, and realized that we were ideally positioned to track down the elusive Sainted Arepa Lady, known to frequent Roosevelt Avenue beneath the 7 train in Jackson Heights late on Friday and Saturday nights, selling her ambrosial Colombian corn cakes from a little cart. Jim Leff once wrote this about her arepas:

The arepas [...] are snacks from heaven. Coursely ground corn, fried in pancakes about 6 inches in diameter and an inch thick, slathered with butter and topped with shredded white cheese, they're brown and crunchy, chewy and a little bit sweet, the butter and cheese imbuing the whole with salty dairy meltiness.

With those words, Leff set off a stampede of clueless but eager gringos to the neighborhood more avid than anything since than the Jackson Diner. The real lure of it, of course, was not simply that the arepas were great, but that tracking them down was so difficult, almost even dangerous. To confound matters further, there are several arepa ladies who frequent Roosevelt Avenue in that area, but only one Arepa Lady.

I first tasted the magic a few years back, with the aforementioned intrepid David, but this was Emily and Matt's first time. They got a single one to split, and I (stupidly) declined to get my own, because I was feeling stuffed. In the end, I think they were slightly disappointed with the arepa (the mythology surrounding the quest makes for very high expectations), whereas I think I actually enjoyed it more than I had before, probably because I had already lowered my expectations to more earthly levels, or perhaps simply because we want what we don't have. Unfortunately, I also made the mistake of getting a Colombiana La Nuestra! Kola Champagne to drink, which seems to consist nearly entirely of corn syrup, artificial flavors (bubblegum?), and food coloring (FD&C Red #40, FD&C Yellow #5, FD&C Blue #1, to be exact). To make matters worse, I had made the mistake of ordering the same drink only a couple of weeks earlier at the godawful new Bogota Bistro, seduced by the name La Nuestra. Word to the wise: Colombians make great corn cakes, but give their sodas a pass.

One final note:

The little old "Arepa Lady" is better known in her hometown of Medellín as Judge Maria Piedad Cano. As the New York Times revealed in an article last year:

She didn't prepare these traditional snacks until 1986, two years after she fled her home in Medellín. She was a judge, she said, and the drug wars made her beautiful town, and her job, too dangerous.

Colombia's loss has been our gain, but I do hope she gets to go back home someday.