missed connections in the modern age
and the ukrainian diners fueling downtown art in nyc.
For over 100 years a concentration of Ukrainian immigrants have called New York City’s East Village home. Fifty years later when white flight started changing the American urban landscape, the artists showed up.
It started with the beatniks and jazz musicians in the 1960s. Punk, No Wave Cinema and graffiti ruled the 1970s. This paved the way for artists like Blondie, Talking Heads, Jenny Holzer and Jean-Michel Basquiat to make connections between the established art world and downtown in the 1980s.
During the nineties, the city’s music scene went dormant as we all sent our collective grunge gaze towards Seattle. Then as quickly as the millennium turned DFA was born, Is This It came out and the nascent internet brought the music world back to the East Village.
The remaining village of Ukrainians were ready to feed the return of rock and roll. Both the Odessa Restaurant, opened in 1965 as a bar, and Veselka, opened in 1954 as a candy shop, had expanded and converted to 24-hour diners in the mid-nineties. So when I read Lizzy Goodman’s oral history, Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City from 2001-2011, I was ready to hear about late nights that ended as mornings in Ukrainian diners.
However, somewhat predictably, consumption stories from the bands largely revolved around powder and pills. Not a lot of Eastern European comfort food stories amid the competition between The Strokes and Kings of Leon for who can have the skinniest jeans.
JAMES MURPHY: Sometime during this time, we celebrated my thirtieth birthday. For a cake Tim bought me Roxy Music’s Stranded LP with thirty lines of cocaine on it. This is the cocaine era of New York.
I was feeling the urge to write my own drunken perogi missed connection. But I searched on.
In Meet Me in the Bathroom we find out that Karen O’s first apartment was above Odessa Restaurant. Our first clue. Goodman’s chapter “New York, New York” from the Chan Marshall biography, Cat Power: A Good Woman, also references a “pre-internet world where entire relationships were built” on chance meetings at these two diners. But leave it to an original tastemaker of the NYC rock revival to not let me down.
Before millennial women turned mom blogging into a multi-trillion dollar business, Laura Young of The Modern Age and Sarah Lewitinn of Ultragrrrl were documenting the rise of early aughts indie bands online. Both contributed to Goodman’s oral history, but it was the resounding voice of other journalists and musicians that describe their crucial part in the success of many bands from the era.
Ultragrrrl was last hosted on blogspot in a quasi-searchable index world. My commitment to manually searching her whopping 1,037 posts between 2003 - 2005 was limited. In the end I didn’t need to because The Modern Age’s recounting of “The Greatest Week in NYC” from 2011, had just the confirmation I was looking for:
But this week was a total return to 2001-2003, down to going to dancing the night away at parties and then heading to Veselka at 4am to eat pierogies. (You OGs know what I’m talking about.)
Veselka was a place so ingrained in the moment, it became part of an insider’s reference.
East Village spinach salad with creamy dill dressing
Adapted from The Veselka Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Landmark Restaurant in New York's East Village because dry mushrooms are a scourge on salad.
what you need
1/4 cup plain yogurt ◾ 1/4 cup sour cream ◾ 1/2 lemon, juiced ◾ 1/2 teaspoon salt ◾ 1/2 teaspoon black pepper ◾ 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
4 strips of bacon, cooked ◾ 2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced ◾ 1 pound baby spinach ◾ 1 cup shredded carrots ◾ 1/2 cup fresh green beans, trimmed and halved
what to do
To make the dressing, whisk together all the ingredients in a small bowl. The dressing can be made in advance and even benefits from a day in the refrigerator.
Cook the bacon over medium heat in a cast-iron pan until very crispy, about 10-15 minutes. Set aside on paper towels to blot and cool.
While the bacon is cooking, bring eggs to a boil in a small saucepan and continue at a low boil for 7-8 minutes. Drain and dunk in ice water to stop the cooking and to facilitate the peeling process.
Assemble the salad and either top with dressing or top to combine.
What is the worst topping on a salad?
Reading - Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001–2011 by Lizzy Goodman (2017)
Watching - Mare of Easttown by Craig Zobel (2021) because even when I leave Baltimore that Mid-Atlantic accent seems to follow me
Smelling - Elizabeth Street Cologne by New York Shaving Company (2008) for anyone who wants to strong arm their partner into wearing cologne, but also sneak spritzes for themselves all winter
Listening - to a playlist inspired by Monday nights of the early aughts in Gainesville, FL at the University Club