Speaker A
how does the joke begin three men in a bar but it's not a bar imagine the bronx a corner bodega or maybe a luncheonette a diner three men strictly by coincidence find themselves in the same place at the same time sitting at the counter
Anthony Bourdain explores the Bronx, tracing the birth of hip-hop with DJ Kool Herc and Melle Mel, its ethnic food scene, and its reputation as a misunderstood, vibrant borough.
Key Takeaways
- Hip-hop was born in the Bronx through DJ Kool Herc's innovations in the early 1970s
- The Bronx is a diverse patchwork of immigrant communities with a distinctive food and music culture
- The borough's negative reputation obscures its rich cultural and culinary offerings
- Hip-hop's origins involved artists who were often later excluded from its commercial rewards
What the video covers
- Bourdain opens with the story of three men in a Bronx luncheonette and the birth of hip-hop in the early 1970s
- DJ Kool Herc's August 1973 party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue is presented as the origin point of hip-hop
- The Bronx's linguistic history shifts from German to Yiddish to Spanish as immigrant communities change
- Bourdain frames the Bronx's tough reputation as something that protects its authentic culture
- Food tour highlights include Cuchifritos on 188th Street, Puerto Rican pork dishes, and local bodega fare like the chopped cheese
- Baron Ambrosia serves as the Bronx's culinary guide, showcasing the borough's ethnic enclaves
- Interviews with artists including Melle Mel discuss early hip-hop as a departure from disco, reggae, and rock
- The episode critiques the borough's neglect and the impact of Robert Moses-era planning and gentrification
- Discussion of the Bronx's cultural pride, from loud music to spicy food, as a point of identity
- The episode closes celebrating the Bronx as a cross section of the world that deserves a visit
Chapters
- 00:00Birth of Hip-Hop: The Bronx Origin Story
- 03:00The Bronx's Ethnic Patchwork and Culinary Guide
- 05:20Cuchifritos and Puerto Rican Food
- 10:40Reputation, Identity, and Bronx Pride
- 13:00Early Hip-Hop Artists and Musical Roots
- 20:00Bodega Culture and Chopped Cheese
- 30:00Urban Planning, Neighborhood Change, and Closing Reflections
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
is africa bombata across the room is millie mel door opens at who walks in dj cool herc three men who created the musical style that's become the soundtrack to wealth the whole wide world they nodded each other lament how all of them got screwed over
Speaker A
cut out of the big money or just laugh at the absurdity of it all hip hop he came from nowhere else it could have come from nowhere else but the bronx felt the cool rain on my shoulder [Applause]
Speaker A
[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is the bronx you've probably heard about it you may even have a pretty solid image in your head of what it looks like what it is like or maybe you can't picture it at all
Speaker A
the south bronx sounds familiar as a bad thing and the bronx at one time was said to be burning wasn't it for the most part the bronx is overlooked the never visited burrow in new york city which is a shame
Speaker A
because the bronx is a magical place with its own energy its own food vibe and rhythm you've been to brooklyn maybe it's time you took a look at the bronx in august of 1973 the sister of dj kohlherk was holding a
Speaker A
birthday party for herself in the basement of 1520 cedric avenue as kulgirk was playing the music on his two-disc turntable he began to slow the music down slowly directly people stood up and took notice and they began asking him to do it again
Speaker A
he did it again they asked him to do it again and again he did it again he attracted more and more people to his performances and people began to imitate him and that was the beginning of hip-hop music it started
Speaker A
in the rocks [Music] moody's records inside rummaging for records just like he used to do is the man the legend one of the very select few who started it all who created the sound that hundreds of millions of people now claim as their
Speaker A
own google who created hip-hop go ahead you get dj cool herc it's a national landmark now isn't it sedgwick no it's not we're working on it work it out we're working but it's natural it's still the birthplace of l-pop on this beauty because i didn't
Speaker A
start with four guys in the club i was inside a residential building at the time it wasn't really receiving the building we had a watchful eye over the recreation room so she would watch for any disturbance it never happened and that's how it
Speaker A
survived because good music sell itself good drug sell itself yeah good anything sell itself and this was something good was there a moment when you realized whoa this is big this is gonna be this is gonna spread way beyond my name
Speaker A
never looking at that i saw the spreading but when i see barney rebel and fred flintstone dressed up like j masterj you know the the dm dmc fellas but i see that to sell commercial mad snapping i know it was
Speaker A
it was gone it was going it don't take a big lift so let's say i don't have money and all that now i'm rich in other ways but tom magazine said what music was creating inside the united states you got you got louie
Speaker A
armstrong for jazz you got elvis presley for rock and roll which that could be between him and chuck berry but as he got cool for help feel good very good historically from the last third of the 19th century into about 1920
Speaker A
the second language spoken in the bronx was german from about 1930 to about 1960 the second language spoken in the bronx was yiddish from about 1965 onward the second language spoken in the bronx is spanish and that's the way it is
Speaker A
today it's got a reputation as a tough place crime street gangs a lot of which goes back to the way it was and some of which well like i said it's got a reputation as being tough the bronx is let's face it a big blank
Speaker A
space in a lot of people's minds even people like me who live what 10 minutes away we don't know anything about that big area between yankee stadium and the bronx zoo what you should know is that the bronx
Speaker A
is big really big and that it's a patchwork of ethnic enclaves a cross section of the whole world every immigrant group you could think of justin fornale aka baron ambrosia has taken it upon himself to serve as the
Speaker A
bronx's culinary this ambassador the porcupine an evangelist for the cause of introducing the manifold splendiferous delights of this mighty burrow to the ignorant well like me he's got a show on the tv any foes parties where he serves
Speaker A
creatures that would make andrew zimmern turn grey can slump unconscious to the floor showman iconoclast explorer and gourmet [Music] bronx is so multifaceted but for some reason he's the first place i always take people because this just oozes and emanates
Speaker A
kind of that flavor of the bronze and he knows what i like places like this 188 kuchi fritos on 188th street in the grand concourse old school new york puerto rican good stuff get within 20 feet of this place and
Speaker A
prepare to lose your freaking mind the kuchifuto itself is basically fried pig the ears in the tongue chopped up and deep fried so off cut pig parts deep fried that's not the like about that is that the shank there yeah they put a
Speaker A
knee on the shoulder we're gonna get that in there oh yeah big piece of chichet on the skin just chopped up so skin fat skin in fact yeah it's almost like a little meat candy bar that's amazing it's amazing
Speaker A
someone see ya lord see up for sure always marcia and then what else we need some platinum yeah puerto rico i missed you the bronx to me became the place where i could really engage my baccanellian sensibility you know you
Speaker A
could really just come here eat drink wine woman's song and just an indulge this is pretty much the center of the pork universe as i've ever seen it in in new york i don't know when he plays porkier than
Speaker A
what i'm looking at this is exactly the kind of thing i thought we lost in new york that one after the other faded away in the neighborhoods i lived in and all along all along it was there right underfoot a gusher
Speaker A
of porky goodness i mean there's a thing there's a great line which is they say in france switch on bronx which is you know what do you think this is the bronx and you know this idea of you know
Speaker A
music's really loud or someone's making a mess to me i take that as a point of pride to be the bronx bronx is where the music is loud means bronx is where the men are tough the women are sexy the food is spicy
Speaker A
if those things weren't true you wouldn't know what the wrongs was so it's bad reputation is what protects it i think the perception to the perception of it being a place where the funk is alive incredible uh incredible spread yeah man
Speaker A
this is great this one place you'll just kind of dream about it i'm really there i'm going back we'll go back just make sure that place is really there you can't lay off this point it's insane i'm actually going to give it to god
Speaker A
[Music] yo love for my haters forgiveness for my enemies move spectators on the day that they shot kennedy [Music] i'm from the bronx new york and i don't beg your pardon i was 12 or 13 when hip hop was started
Speaker A
let's go and take a minute to listen to what these fools spit it's pure uncut garbage don't touch my fader just let me bump fill my energy up no logic a bunch of false prophets pushing a poisonous product
Speaker A
i'm not hard to find i'm right by the zoo by the gorilla cage holla at me baby [Music] watch it [Music] [Music] [Music] first to call himself an mc another pioneer mellie mel in 1982 he and grandmaster flash wrote
Speaker A
and recorded the message an album that was a complete and groundbreaking departure from the kind of lyrics and content up to that point before we started doing hip-hop music it was no hip-hop music so we played everything we played disco
Speaker A
we played reggae we played rock we watched hee haw that was like the favorite in our house that was one of the favorite shows he hauled you know and all of those things kind of became the components of
Speaker A
what became hip-hop music from the pouring rain to the burning i started out as a break dancer so i used to break dance you know my brother used to you know do graffiti as a good so all and all of those individual
Speaker A
elements wasn't really happening anywhere else so it was just something that could could only have went on right in that area yeah okay you may be thinking what about the sugar hill gang what about them they were an industry band
Speaker A
like the monkeys or the archies built to cash in quick on what was seen as a fad and they did cash in where were you when you realized holy [ __ ] there's there's money in this well that first
Speaker A
record i ever heard was king tim the third the second the the most popular record was rappers alike i used to live on the fifth floor walk up i walk out somebody was playing it next door was playing on the fourth floor
Speaker A
they were playing on the third floor second floor first floor somebody had a boom box outside playing it the car that drove by had it on right could hear nothing it was like a plague it was like it was like locust and that's when i
Speaker A
realized you know it was it it's something that was beyond what we was doing out in the street critically is not a great record but if you play it right now you still you know still a good record in this case at
Speaker A
least history has come around today nobody looks back at the sugar hill gang as having been originals or innovators people know who did what as far as hip-hop now like as far as the music now these guys are not trying to tell a
Speaker A
story at a time at all okay yeah they popped a lot of bottles oh yeah they had sex with a lot of women and they drove a lot of expensive cars and nothing else happened but you would never know that it was a black president
Speaker A
you would never know that it was two or wars you would never know those things because it's not reflected in the music and at some point somebody was supposed to step up and make those songs 20 years from now
Speaker A
they'll still be talking about the message and planet rock and all the classic records you know what i mean is that's what it is robert moses has been dead over 30 years now and people in the bronx for the most
Speaker A
part still hate him in his role as master builder he rammed the cross bronx expressway and the parkway system straight through dozens of working-class neighborhoods seemingly uncaring about the destruction of whole communities massive housing projects conceived as utopian solutions to stacking the poor
Speaker A
to centralized vertical ghettos were also his bright idea he did leave some pretty impressive damn works behind them like the triboro bridge flushing meadows park the verrizano bridge [Music] the bronx happens to be the home of the two largest parks in new york city
Speaker A
pelham bay and van courtland and you see stuff here you probably ain't seeing in central park the garifuna come from honduras guatemala and belize and they traced their ethnic group back to a single slave ship that crashed off saint vincent
Speaker A
and who's freed africans then mixed with kareem indians where is home for many of the garafuna community living in the u.s you guessed it the bronx living in the bronx you're able to kind of travel the world without
Speaker A
leaving the borough right and you know it's like an addiction when you go to another country that first day in the market yeah and all your dreams and to smell the diesel and you're just looking around where's that one thing i'm looking for
Speaker A
to be able to do that really in your own backyard it's cool we have a hudutu that's coconut soup with fish over here we had a tapo with uh banana buca malanga and coconut soup well that sounds good
Speaker A
yeah i'll go for some neck bones and uh plantains yeah let's do this let's put some plant in here in garifuna cuisine mashed plantains come with just about every dish plantains are just part of me that's part of peduto you never have
Speaker A
this without that right those like food yeah same method same right here same everything there's fish and coconut soup what kind of fish is this blue fish blue fish oh awesome i love blue fish and some nice smoked neck
Speaker A
bones with bananas and yucca that's uh officially awesome already oh that's tasty that's really good an underexploited fish one of my favorites so you know what i've noticed already the bronx is big how ludicrous and shameful is it that i
Speaker A
can literally see my house from here and i basically have no idea where i am no fault on your own but i think that's kind of what keeps the bronx so amazing is that you have all these in-touch ethnic
Speaker A
enclaves i didn't know there were hondurans here much less than 200 000 no clue right i've been saying the neck is the next big thing for years now still waiting [Music] people from all over the world reside in
Speaker A
the bronx as a matter of fact we have residents from every continent on the face of the earth and if you count the penguins in the bronx zoo that includes antarctica [Music] uh [Music] [Music] baby the wellspring of hip-hop is right
Speaker A
around here a mostly jamaican community in bronx river in the south bronx jamaicans began arriving here back in the 50s and still today jamaican food jamaican culture the music is all over [Music] sundial international headquarters makers of traditional tonics and herbal
Speaker A
remedies a bronx institution since the 70s this is one of the ingredients this is the mahogany bar this one is used for any type of bodily weaknesses or pops baba as he's called a grassroots bush doctor healer he uses recipes passed down from
Speaker A
mothers and aunties blends of roots spices herbs barks and woods if you take the wood root in the morning at a bit of that night don't care what is wrong with you you're going to show improvement whatever ails
Speaker A
he's got a cure wood root cure for the blood the body the nerves coramante an intestinal cleanser and traditional african man back helps you get your manhood back among other things it was about 1956 when i came to america
Speaker A
so i had to make it in the apartment in bronx river and then when i boil and lose the whole project smell off this root they used to drive them hey why father do it in there what kind
Speaker A
of what was focused in there doing you know i mean and i'd book it then go on the corn and i'd sell it in the bronx never leave the bronx is the best place in america i brought nowhere like the bronx
Speaker A
in the yard out back some freshly roasted coffee and this man a tyrannosaurus rex of music a man who changed the world for generations africa bambada bombata and pops baba go back together to the same housing projects you know james brown record papa don't
Speaker A
play no mess yes that's the big baba bella rashad he and his associates in the zulu nation were absolutely instrumental in shaping what became hip-hop culture break dancing graffiti djing and wrap is the story too that you soak your
Speaker A
records of water you take the label off oh yeah so either we put tapes on it or we soak the label off um you know you had spies in each other camps you know trying to find out what was that beating
Speaker A
them by the playing so i used to soak it up i used to put on tape the cover of the records and we was digging into crates hard you were unusually voracious in your musical taste of all the records in the
Speaker A
world how did you come upon craft work i came about digging in the crate down in the village i said this look type of weird out here so when i took it home and i heard this sound i said whoa
Speaker A
i said this is some funky i said man this is a futuristic type of funk here whether they didn't know they was doing some style of funk and dust came the birth of the electro funk sound the miami bass down and since the
Speaker A
beginning we always paid tribute to james brown sliding family stone and george parliament funk of daily clinton for bringing the funk from which the hip-hop came and the reagan and to you know all the pioneers of hip-hop [Music]
Speaker A
up north of ways in west jamaica another working-class community where subway service is pretty limited and yet people have to get up go to work and often make the long hump to another borough [Music] afterwards a person could use a drink
Speaker A
and if you're a jamaican person you could use the everyday go-to drink of back home any time of day or night ray and nephew nephew is a very strong jamaican white rum that we use for everything from baby fever
Speaker A
to drinks here in this bar you get it with cranberry juice with milk or water well water would be in any other borough that's what ray and nephew is in the bronx jesus is one half of the brilliant
Speaker A
podcast team dieses versus kid mero it's a very fast free-form rift diatribe on life in the bronx and what's happening on the news in hip-hop or last night growing up in a bronx here isolated from the rest of the city
Speaker A
you know what i'm saying so the other city has like city bike the bronx doesn't get any of that we're kind of abandoned up here people get on the boat and go to stat on before they ride up to the bronx
Speaker A
hey i gotta reluctantly kind of being part of that problem people always say you know the bronx is eventually going to be gentrified that's not happening anytime soon like it's not like you know barry there's the owner right
Speaker A
here there's the man right here who made today possible thank you i am happy here and i will drink more of your ray and nephew regardless of what it might be doing to my brain but then i will eat
Speaker A
oh hell i love this oh damn that looks good people sort of stop paying attention to the bronx when it wasn't burning anymore when ford apache was something we didn't have to think about let's just say that this is the
Speaker A
neighborhood where they perfected stop and frisk right did you you remember your first time i remember how do you feel first first time stopping for instance i cried and that summer 15 times stopped and frisk just thrown up against the gate
Speaker A
fingers through our genitals and cops looking for guns but you remember that you remember your first time when you lose you're stopping for virginity you know you remember it i've never been stopped in france i wonder why what is it is it because
Speaker A
you have a cnn show or is it just i've been arrested if you hang around here long enough i can get you stopping frisk they talk about diy culture about do it yourself and you better be able to do it your
Speaker A
damn self in the bronx because often nobody else is going to do it for you when you're going to bronze you're basically going back in time there are certain problems that will happen here that are not going to happen
Speaker A
in manhattan and brooklyn okay it's an obvious person really yes okay so there's still crackheads in here there's still crack there's literally crackheads in front of that bodega over there and they are getting their cracks and they're not bothering anyone and you
Speaker A
know the thing is they are respecting parts of this community you see them every day i've there's literally a crackhead that has been here for 25 years that takes some determination now listen if i could be a crackhead i would be the
Speaker A
best crackhead possible i was a crackhead [Music] all right look i'm thinking curry goat jesus's uncle vernon used to own this place but that was three owners ago now it's lambies and lambie took over from some people who put too much
Speaker A
cinnamon in their curry goat which as we all know is a sin against god lambie fix things curry goat and stewed oxtail with rice and peas collards and yes mac and cheese i can't resist man i mean correct me if
Speaker A
i'm wrong there's a lot of good food in the process there is there is if people would like you know get over their bias and come above 96th street they would find out i mean if the bronx were the
Speaker A
neighborhood of manhattan sort of shrunk down you'd have a hipsters crawl at all oh my god if you live in a rock it's not necessarily that you're going to ever leave the bronx go to manhattan because everything you want everything you need
Speaker A
is in the bronx so why would you go past right 149th street so all that wrapping my neighborhood the ethnic pride and all that stuff people definitely hold on to that and that's definitely true of rylander avenue the
Speaker A
italians to do ops so that stuff even this neighborhood was all white until the 50s it's very recent the whole immigrant expert in the 50s oh white people we got a white people white white like we enjoy milk white
Speaker A
like that kind of thing we're kissing dogs in the mouth but it's move forward now you have this and there's definitely this whole you know like i'm from 233rd you're from 225th every ethnic group that lives in the
Speaker A
bronx has that and i think the next group that's going to take over here is definitely mexicans and the thing is it's a it's an immigrant neighborhood so it's not a matter of who owns it it's who owns that what particular time
Speaker A
and they're next and i'm looking forward to that because i enjoy a good case of you yeah but i made a good decision i came to lambie's today so yeah it was a good move let's speak up big up lambies that means no i'm here
Speaker A
all the time i'm always here i live right there so i'm always here for the curry goat for the mac and cheese you know that means don't play man [Music] the twos and the fives here are the greatest trains because
Speaker A
they go from bronx through manhattan all the way through brooklyn so it's the only number of lines that'll get three boroughs you know visibility the bronx still here yeah it's still here but you know like even that i mean that brings me back tony that
Speaker A
that sound do you remember the first time you put spray paint on a wall yeah when was that summer of 70.
Speaker A
back then seemingly overnight they were everywhere princes of the city their pieces stretching across city blocks whole trains ever more audacious some like this man were artists in the late 70s to be on a rooftop like this with a brew
Speaker A
or whatever hanging out we're waiting for something to come through with a cool letter like oh my god look at that and so you know kids are screaming like oh my god look oh my god you know here
Speaker A
it comes here it comes there's mine there's mine but what if you thought the train you're paying you know was on the left side then you you kind of messed up oh no it's on the right side and no you're not screwed you just wait
Speaker A
until this train goes all the way to brooklyn so and comes all the way back this was the audience that you had in mind well i know my audience that mattered i think all of us spoke to each other back
Speaker A
then other artists yeah you know i mean it was just a rush of the event and then the accolades you may or may not receive certainly not from the public but from your peers futura 2000 his style and that of a few of his
Speaker A
colleagues spread across the globe i miss those trains others not so much i get it it went on and on until this seemed there wasn't an untagged unmarked unscrawled upon bit of wall or window in new york but for a while
Speaker A
it was a golden time well the whole point of being here yeah was to me what the bronx was about not just the music and the scene and coming up here to parties with the likes of bam and herc and you
Speaker A
know everyone of that era but it's watching trains it's what we used to call benching so you're watching each other's work go by absolutely art lovers this was his museum where he and his fellow artists would meet and exchange ideas and admire each
Speaker A
other's work and it's jarring coming to learn all those years later that it was really all about this about a few seconds as their pieces rode by to be evaluated by peers there for a moment then gone like well all of their work from
Speaker A
that time long since removed or painted over ultimately the legacy you know here here's our legacy you know we don't have a movement anymore the movement has been given to the world and if you go to trains in milan
Speaker A
and you know paris or wherever you know certainly not the russian system but you know if you go to some of these cities around the world they're bombed you know their their rail systems are destroyed but i mean today if i could have a train
Speaker A
running it would be epic and i think any artist picasso any artist from any generation if that concept was available like here's some public art guys let it run through our countryside [Music] okay [Music] um take the six train to the end of the
Speaker A
line then do the same with the number 29 bus technically you'll still be in the bronx but it kind of won't feel like city island is a fishing village turn what a parking lot for pleasure boats and a long established restaurant row
Speaker A
for new yorkers pick the perfect day to come out here jesus says this place and jesus is always right how far from your neighborhood my car my car maybe 15 20 minutes 20 minutes it seems like a world away yeah look
Speaker A
it's kooky i want to buy some nautical brick-a-brack while i'm here this is new york city this is a cape cod in the bronx you know many of my childhood memories like getting all excited to come out and we
Speaker A
get there and they're like oh the beach is closed cause medical waste it's not a day that you go in the water and come out with like a maxi pad stuff to you have to be in there so you were here
Speaker A
like waiting like yesterday i was literally here yesterday wow for my sister's graduation because every time you have an event of note in the bronx you have to come celebrate in city island i notice all the big catering halls yeah
Speaker A
if you get married you get arraigned uh the baby's not yours you come here seashore restaurant a massive fish factory on the water of a type i'm very familiar with having started my cooking career in one just like it
Speaker A
oh now see this this yeah i'm also a sentimental fool and i love this kind of thing steamers a true taste of childhood boiled striper and some snow crab and a nice cold beer yes thank you jesus it's like a
Speaker A
a nighting ceremony just kind of sit up and you're just like wow let's take it all in enjoy guys thank you yeah i could have done that myself but to have someone else that's part of it it's part of the ambiance
Speaker A
[Music] this is the perfect place for a date but it's the worst food for a day it's either a huge turn off or a huge turn on like it might give a lady a preview of what they're about to get
Speaker A
into right a little little bib a little sucking action instead of knowing the hour this would be you wow probably been missing all my life this is pretty awesome saturday night city island that's where people are going the first european settler to come to
Speaker A
the bronx came in 1639 his name was jonas bronk bronck in 1874 all the area west of the bronx river was a next to the city and in 1895 all the areas east of the bronx river was the next to the city
Speaker A
then in 1898 the city and decided that the two areas previously annexed should also become a borough but what to call it since it never had a name before they looked at the map and right smack through the middle of the territory ran
Speaker A
the bronx river so they named it after the river the borough of the bronx and that's why it is called the bronx and not just plain bronx if you have a question about the bronx chances are lloyd oltan has the answer
Speaker A
[Music] born and raised here he's never really left for over seven decades [Music] this is a disappearing aspect of new york for sure the real thing jewish deli leebin's is one of the last there used to be dozens of places where
Speaker A
you could get your brisket chopped liver a good pastrami some pickles with a black cherry soda or a celery of course to drink the world series is going on howard cosell is on the air suddenly you see a tongue
Speaker A
of flame licking up into the up into the sky and he says this is the kind of thing that jimmy carter saw ladies and gentlemen the bronx is burning the old image of the bronx says middle class overly mobile
Speaker A
healthy area had survived up until 1977. this shattered it the bronx was burning went the story and that stuck politicians making the south bronx a poster child for what was hopelessly wrong would always be wrong would never we were told get any better so
Speaker A
we now have what you call a slum lord essentially he's snapping up large numbers of buildings yeah first of all he takes out a huge fire insurance policy so as he goes to these junkies and he says listen
Speaker A
you see that empty apartment on the top floor i'm gonna turn my back you take all of the lead pipes that are in there but i have one request please before you leave turn on the water and the water comes
Speaker A
down driving everybody else out they then hire an arsonist and satisfied to the building they collect all the money and they leave i remember it well i remember those years things were bad are things borrow wide are things
Speaker A
getting better is the bronx better absolutely there is more home ownership in the south bronx than it ever existed in history that doesn't mean that we have reached utopia we have not how long it will take i'm a historian i
Speaker A
look in the other direction uh i would say my crystal ball is [Music] cracked is it the best hamburger in the world far from it my friends is it even strictly speaking a burger i mean it's small and square and steam it can
Speaker A
be especially when you eat a lot of them as one tends to hate yourself in the morning experience but if you grew up with white castle like i did and like handsome dick manitoba did this connects with some deep dinosaur
Speaker A
part of the brain evoking a powerful emotional response these are a great cultural part of my childhood we come here 24 hours a day there were guys on their dates there was a bunch of punk rock kids so
Speaker A
along with that potpourri of humanity i just described you had these guys from the mental institutions ah that's a community for you that was the problem that was the bronx man it was great maybe you know handsome dick from such pre-punk legendary bands
Speaker A
as the dictators dick grew up where else the athens the cultural geyser the font of art and music that is the bronx and back in the day like me this was his special warm and happy place i can go by
Speaker A
i need a full two and a half hour meal be stuffed i see someone eating a white castle i still want one you can forget mickey d's you can forget burger king you forget all those places if you need a white castle scratch none
Speaker A
of the cheap places will do i can't stop eating [Music] the bronx academy of letters is something of a cause for me an institution whose mission i see is absolutely vital if kids like these kids from a tough
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neighborhood often coming from tough family situations are going to do the things that they're capable of of having the things they want i believe that there is no way to realize your dreams if you can't articulate them if you can't with words convince others
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to give you the opportunities the chances you need to grasp so i wanted to talk today really i'm going to tell you in a short period of time everything i know about writing today i'm dropping by in my role as
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substitute teacher i'm from manhattan and i don't know anything about the bronx really i'm i'm ridiculously shamefully ignorant do you think people know about the bronx what it's like to grow up in the bronx everybody perceives the bronx as the
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emergence of hip-hop and all that the culture but apart from that bronx is actually lively at all times at night in the morning you hear people screaming from outside your window i've grown up with them since i was what
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exactly so yeah you know and it just happened that way so i thought the sense of community is like the biggest thing i've been teaching here for eight years and i think that what people forget is a lot of times we've talked about this
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in class they focus on lots of diseases health issues lack of education but i can be out with them just walking to the train to go to a field trip and they say hi to at least 30 people
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they know everyone what's what other bronx specialties should i be paying attention to well i don't know mcdonald's that works for you yes all right bacon tastes really good i like bacon mac and cheese sandwich yeah that's a classic that's a new york
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classic the total bodega classic love that now you walk outside and they have like italian icing so when it sounds like the weather gets nice and you're here [Music] so uh what what is it you're eating what is ch chopped cheese
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yes what is chopped cheese i have to i have to see where does this come from this um cheese this thing whatever it is it'll do just fine as long as you're reading orwell's essays while you're eating it kid
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i think it was somebody who just experimented in their house it's such a simple thing but it tastes so different than like a cheeseburger which is what it kind of is actually but it's really if you go way way uptown
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or like downtown you say can i get chopped cheese and they're like what right like what if you get it here they're like all right so this is a regional indigenous uh specialty and it's newer too right it hasn't been
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around that long i've been everywhere in the world and i mean just about everywhere in the world that you can think of as beautiful as many cities around the world are it's really in your blood in particular if you grew up here
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you're living in paris you're gonna wanna you don't wanna chop cheese sandwich and you'll be angry that you can't get one [Music] so there it is a peak a narrow slice of an old deep and noble subject causing your
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poor existence the morphine to a vicious remorseless law's relentless illogical compositing right there relatively unexplored a cross-section of the tasty original good stuff so gritty i'm grimy got my city behind me a petri dish for talent for culture the great unknown
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go look bx armageddon [Music] [Music] you
Topics:Bronxhip-hopDJ Kool HercAnthony BourdainParts UnknownBronx foodMelle Melurban cultureNew York Cityculinary travel
