August 25, 2006
PARK SLOPE IS CLOSED
I've only lived in Brooklyn for about a year and a half. I try to work overtime, meeting and talking to people, however, so that I feel like I've been here a few years longer. Here in Park Slope's late-night demi-monde--and that has to be the most mild milieu ever described in print--there is an afterhours Switzerland named Bageltique. It is neutral territory, where the latest-of-the-late bar customers mingle with impunity among late-shift police officers from the 78th getting breakfast. I've seen raving drunk lunatics get into fights five feet from a pair of cops, but there appears to be an unwritten law that says "what happens in Bageltique stays in Bageltique."
Aside from the curious chaos that Bageltique engendered, the true appeal of the place was that it was open 24 hours a day and had truly glorious food. Its sandwiches were nearly perfect and it had about a dozen varieties of cream cheese, including bacon and chives. The bagels were made on the premises in an early morning process that was fascinating to watch. And so I've switched to the past tense.
I went to get dinner from Bageltique last night; it's good enough to cause fortnightly hankerings that will make you wander a few blocks out of one's way. And then the horror: Bageltique is closed. The Park Slope institution that's been serving neighbors for about 50 years is boarded up, and not for a late-August vacation. I went into a nearby bar that knows the neighborhood's business fairly well and asked the bartender "Seamus, what the hell happened to Bageltique?"--I was fairly hysterical. Bageltique's property has been sold and currently undergoing renovations. I found the new owner and he said it will re-open in approximately two weeks. No answer on whether it would remain a 24-hour establishment or whether it would continue to make its own bagels. In the meantime, cops and the more-suspect side of Park Slope wait with baited breath at the border of Gowanus between President and Carroll Sts.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at August 25, 2006 7:37 PM
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