Another Dubrow's reference

My cousin Steven Green sent me this screenshot he found of a reference to Dubrow's in the novel Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst.    While being sold as fiction, it has a character named Abby Hoffman, and it is that character's wife who apparently scrounged for food at Dubrow's.  Who knows whether that really happened or not, but it makes a good story... 

Another Dennis Ziemienski painting

"Dubrow's Cafeteria"
Oil on canvas, 36x48

This painting looks very similar to the one in this previous post, but the dimensions are different.  Also, this one is little lighter, as though it were the same scene, but in daylight instead of at night.   If I had the money I would totally buy this painting.  Go here if you can do so in my stead.

Dubrow's was the site of the movie Boardwalk

Henry and Dorothy Jablonski's daughter, Elaine, sent me a TON of photos taken from when the 1979 movie Boardwalk was filmed there.  It featured the actor Lee Strasberg playing an employee of the Dubrow's on King's Highway - I believe that's him in the photo above.  I've started uploading the photos at the Buzznet site where I store copies of the photos.  Check back often, because it's going to take me a while to upload all the pictures.

But I'll post some of the best photos on the blog, as well. As you can see, there's some great shots of Dubrow's, including some more photos of the famous murals at the King's Highway location.

Dubrow's at L.A. MoCA

I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles today and guess what I stumbled upon?

This photograph was taken by Garry Winogrand, who was born in 1928 in New York and died in Tijuana, Mexico in 1984. It was titled "Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Campaign, New York, 1960."  I snapped this photo of it with my cell phone, but the resolution is no good.  However, here is the website for a gallery where the photo is shown in more detail, and it even says it's for sale.  I contacted the gallery and was told it costs $9600 (yikes!) but the curator did email me a copy of the photo.  Please do not re-distribute this photo without contacting the gallery directly for permission.

"Dubrow's was like an indoor sidewalk cafe"

Found this reference to Dubrow's in the historical novel Subway Music by Reynold Joseph Paul Junker.

"Now I paused and looked left and right again.
'We used to go but I wanted to step around here to the left a minute. I wanted to see something else first. I wanted to see if Dubrow's is still here.'

I turned left. She followed. We walked the short distance to where Dubrow's used to be on the corner of King's Highway.

Dubrow's was gone from the corner of King's Highway. Dubrow's had been a single story cafeteria with floor to ceiling windows looking out over the sidewalk. Dubrow's was like an indoor sidewalk cafe. Families when to Dubrow's to enjoy "home cooking." We went to Dubrow's to stare and make creative faces and simulated retching noises through the windows at families enjoying their "home cooking."

'There used to be a Dubrow's Cafeteria here,' I said.'The firemen from the firehouse on 14th street used to send us there for takeout food - mostly veal cutlet sandwiches. There was no fast food in those days.'"

Poem by my mother

On the 25th Anniversary of My Sister’s Death
(for Laura Kaplan Levin, 1946-1980)

by Bonnie Lyons

I looked up and you were there, smiling.
You’d arranged for a baby-sitter, driven to Trenton,
taken a train to Penn Station, caught a taxi to the Hilton
on West 54th and in the maze of meeting rooms
found the correct one by 8:30 AM just to hear me
read a paper I can no longer remember at the annual MLA convention.
A few hours later we were standing in line at Dubrow’s
when this old couple, unaware that Dubrow’s was Daddy’s cafeteria,
told us the Chinese food was terrible. The more they warned us,
the more we laughed. The more we laughed,
the more they warned us. Between bites of scrumptious blintzes
and sour cream (who orders Chinese food at a Jewish cafeteria?)
we looked into each other’s face and collapsed into giggles.
Then you glanced at your watch, gasped, and we sprinted
back to Penn station just in time for your return trip.
Thirty years later I clearly see us running
side by side, laughing all the way.

Poetic tribute

I think this is an amazing poem, and I love that it references Dubrow's, but what's interesting is that I don't remember there being any waitresses there.

Waitress
By Jason Shinder

Originally published in Every Room We Ever Slept In, Sheep Meadow Press, 1993
Reprinted in Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants, and Bars, 1997

There is a table in the back where she opens
her mouth to red lipstick, lets her eyes down
for a touch of blue mascara, and rests

her bunioned feet. Six more hours
before she can sip Coca Cola and sleep
in front of her father’s new Magnavox 14 inch Black & White,

Milton Berle running across the screen.
She touched Mr. Berle’s hand once in 1948
when he raised his right arm for her

and a roast beef sandwich. The world shrieked,
rang in promise. She knows it was then the twitching began
in her left eye. Esther is still

waiting tables at Dubrow’s. Sadie still hanging coats
at Sutter’s. Sunday, she’s got her cousin Lenny’s
green Chevrolet. The tall kitchen doors swing back

and forth, parting the hair on her forehead.
She can taste the salt at the back of her throat
thinking of the man

who will lean into her one night. Not the girl
smiling, balancing three bowls of soup on her left arm,
but a woman who could claim all beauty hers,

not to keep it, but to hold it long enough to change.

Poetic tribute

This comes from my cousin David, too:
 
"As I might speak of e. e. cummings enormous room or Swann's Madeline
you speak of Dubrow's Cafeteria and Mallomars."

It's from the poem "You Could Live If They Let You" by Wallace Markfield, but I can't find a copy of the full poem. I'm hoping David will send it to me, but if anyone else has a some of Markfield's poetry lying around, send it this way. He sounds like a poet i'd like to check out.

Painting of Dubrow's

Late Night "Nosh", Acrylic/canvas, 24"x30", 1996, by Ivan Koota

My cousin David sent me a link to another one of Ivan Koota's paintings of Dubrow's. Here's what Koota had to say about it:

"Dubrow's was  also one of several  congenial neighborhood eateries in my area of Brooklyn where  both young and old, the “elegant” and the casual, the couple or the single, could all gather together for a late night “snack.” Either after the wedding,  after the movie,  after the party, or after the gin game,  it was time for everyone to fill up with a danish and coffee or a soda and sandwich before the evening was finally over."

Painting of Dubrow's

Dubrow's Cafeteria, 30" x 40", Oil/Canvas, By Dennis Ziemienski. Go here for more information about the artist or ordering prints of the painting.

Dubrow's gets a poetic tribute

Dubrow's gets a verse in the poem "I L(o)ve NY" by George Dowden, featured in GRIST On-Line Magazine #4, January 1994:

"Legendary cafeteria Dubrow's, 7th Avenue and W. 38th
Street, what food selection, steam tables, steel
cookers, small inferno, now respectable middle-class
eatery but what New World stories here at all of the
tables!"

For the full poem, go here.

Painting of Dubrow's

"Dubrow's Cafeteria" by Ivan Koota. Acrylic/canvas, 1993

Here's what he says: "At one time, there were several Dubrow's cafeterias in the city but "ours" was located on the corner of King's Highway and E.16th. The prices were right and the choices astonishing, especially the sliced meat sandwiches and the desserts. And following Sunday lunch, we often went to a movie at either the Avalon or the Kingsway. And it made no difference if you came in the middle of the film, you just stayed on to see it again."

I love this painting. It is close to the dim memory of a memory I have of my grandfather's restaurants.