Two Bridges

In an era where everyone is taxing you for their “personal taste”, it’s refreshing to be at a place that chooses not to tax the greater consciousness simply to reassure itself.

New York is always moving.

Speaking as a transplant, the neighborhood you first find your people is most likely your neighborhood. For me, it was the Lower East Side living on top of the Arivel Furs store on Orchard between Rivington and Stanton where I met my people.

I’d pop into Orchard Bar to parachute pills, make out with girls, and sit by the big fan in the back. I’d watch Knick games at Epstein’s dolo, sell t-shirts on the train, eat at Castillo de Jagua, and I remember waking up at 11am most days seeing a pair of Orchard Street Dunks on the power lines.

I thought I lived in the center of the universe that first month in NYC because they were shooting a Cuban Link video at Zozo’s on the corner that eventually became Noodle Bar and God knows what now.

Yes, you read that correct. WATCHING A CUBAN LINK VIDEO MADE ME FEEL LIKE I WAS PART OF SOMETHING. I try to remember that now whenever I see some asshole walking through Essex Market with a selfie stick and tell myself that this is their Cuban Link video.

A few years later, I opened Xiao Ye on Orchard. My best friend, Raf, would frequent after work and we bounced from Xiao Ye to Pianos and back most nights alongside Maxwell and Tobias watching our homie, Greig, sing in a band called the Wellington Papers until I threw an all-you-can-drink Four Loko party and got shut down by the ATF.

Whoever your people were during those formative years in NY are forever a part of your DNA and even as you evolve or perhaps grow apart, they hold a special place in your heart as does the neighborhood. Whenever that neighborhood eventually moves and changes, you resent it.

You reach for scapegoats and explanations, you read articles about the new girls in the West Village and complain about their Aperol Spritzes, but weren’t you the ladies drinking Cosmos wearing sneaker wedges?

***

I used to go outside looking like this with a Star of David Pinky Ring so I am not allowed to speak on anything.

Personally, I’m patiently waiting for the next “Orchard Street”.

For a second it felt like Delancey was the gateway to the city and Procell was its triumphal arch, but then the Public Hotel opened and the corridor got weird.

The internet has definitely tried to make the Dimes Square thing happen and I love that for them, but it’s not a “neighborhood” as much as it is a goofy branded square whose existence now hinges on a dispute over a parking spot out front of Le Dive.

I prefer the blocks directly adjacent to Dimes where Time Again sits by a Fung Wah Bus Station, Super Taste Noodles holds down Eldridge, or where karaoke is sung upstairs on Canal.

There is a nice pocket on Broome between Orchard and Ludlow where Barrio Chino lives and has served some of the most mediocre food in New York City on one of its best corners for over two decades. Eel Bar — on Broome as well — is hands down one of the most exciting restaurants in recent memory and I’ll write about it in the future, but that block isn’t a neighborhood to me.

There’s a difference between a hot block that everyone descends on and a neighborhood. It’s easy to get a block hot, especially with the algorithm. There’s a formula, a mood board, and it’s literally just playing developer wack-a-mole. No one on a hot block lives within 3 blocks. These people are simply thirsty Vampires of Resy searching for Orange Wine before dawn.

A neighborhood on the other hand has regulars, it has open tables, it has value, warmth, and oddities.

When I unfortunately began living more in LA around 2016, my friends were just starting to move to Two Bridges on Market and Monroe in large part because of a great clay pot rice (bo zai fan) spot nearby and Mr. Fong’s which opened in 2015.

It was the perfect bar tucked into an IYKYK part of Chinatown with good music and even better people. The vibe was similar to the old Happy Ending on a weekday in the early-aughts where you could do demure drugs, see your friends, and not meet anyone who wasn’t a friend-of-a-friend or a neighbor.

I feel the key to a good neighborhood “It Bar” are good prices, capable bartenders, a nice music format, and amenable management. If management endears itself to the neighborhood and lets your friends throw parties for t-shirt releases, other weird downtown creative start-up businesses, and the occasional narcissistic birthday party with a neurotic “It Girl” screaming at everyone because she has imposter syndrome and isn’t sure if the party is GIVING, your bar will be It.

The “It Bar” actually shouldn’t have too much personality or control. Over designing or curating a bar immediately makes it not-It. The bar must give itself to the neighborhood and allow the idiosyncratic personality of its residents to flow through it like a Bodega Cat. That’s what the owners of Fong’s understood.

A see-no-evil, hear-no-evil bathroom is also appreciated.

I liked Fong’s so much that I set it as the central location in a 1-hour Chinatown Noir Drama that I sold and developed at Amazon for years, but eventually the cool executive on the project moved to a better job and the show stalled just as growth was hitting a wall in Two Bridges as well.

With the Pandemic, neighborhoods like this were the first to get nailed. Shops closed on Market and Monroe, dreams were shattered, and everyone hung on for dear life. But I think it was a good thing. The huge luxury high-rise project at One Manhattan Square went online in 2019 and is one of the most spectacular real estate failures in recent memory.

After 6 years of sales, the building is still only 69% sold. When you go to the website there are huge pop-up ads for 4 years of free carrying costs and if you call the office they’ll offer to pay 2% of your mortgage rate for 3 years.

I considered living there when we fled the fires in LA, but remembered the scene in Seven where Brad Pitt’s apartment shakes like shit and Gwyneth Paltrow gets no sleep then ends up with her head in a box.

I wanted no part of that so now I live in Murray Hill.

People ask me why I chose Murray Hill and I tell them the biggest perk of living in Murray Hill is that I’ve never slept with anyone from Murray Hill. More than a doorman or pool or 3 free months of rent, is the ability to sleep at night knowing that my Wife will never “run into” someone in Murray Hill and then decide to ruin my day because of something my dick decided to do decades ago.

You really have to think prophylactically once you have a family.

***

But a few weeks ago, after the Knicks defeated the Pistons in Game 1 of our first round playoff series, I decided to hit Two Bridges with Raf. These days Raf has a nice car, a nice watch, and I had Knick Blue Cartier Buffs on so my eyes were darting around knowing how we used to move and how people still move.

He tried to park out front of Bar Oliver on 1 Oliver Street, but we eventually settled for parking next to a ball field about 5 blocks away.

“I fucking hate parking down here.”

“I don’t think anyone drives down here,” I joked.

He understood.

We are gentrifiers who will still fight you for calling us gentrifiers, but no matter how that fight goes we are in fact gentrifiers. About two blocks into our walk, a man was selling a woman one loose rock outside a dimly lit Bodega.

“I give it to you for $15.”

“15!” she screamed.

“Look, I’ll light it for you right now too!” he said breaking out the BBQ lighter.

Three blocks later, we arrived at Bar Oliver with a full sidewalk of smartly dressed children at loosely arranged tables. It was a beautiful thing to see on a quiet block of New York City in the shadow of an unoccupied luxury building and the as-advertised two bridges.

They sat us at the booth in the back and we ordered the Bay Scallop Pintxos, the Montauk Red Shrimp, the Tortilla Antonio, some olives, Chistorra, and a Wagyu Hanger Steak. Raf got a glass of Chenin Blanc and I had a red wine with coke.

The food was warm, inviting, and comfortable just like the rest of the space with its broad causeway between the massive bar and cushy booths manned by a self-assured waitstaff that never bothered to mention the farm their produce or meat was from. My personal favorite was the attentive manager with a fire tattoo that started on his skull and went all the way down his neck and arm peeking out from under the sleeve of his suit, which I noticed when he dropped off a 20-year-old Malaga dessert wine at the end of our meal.

Now, if you want to watch a kitchen in 5th gear pumping out an exciting chef-driven interpretation of Basque food go immediately to Eel Bar. There is an expediter screaming “HANDS” every time hot food hits his station and every single dish is on a rope.

But the food at Bar Oliver is the type of shit you sit around for hours with your closest friends picking at between conversations. I imagine its the Spanish food Spanish people want to eat like how that clay pot rice spot served the Cantonese food Cantonese people want to eat.

The hanger steak was wonderful when it arrived, but it’s actually even better an hour later with some of the mustard from the fries smushed into the last few pieces sitting in drops of its own blood. My favorite dish was actually the Chistorra that came out looking like Vienna Sausages in a bowl, but the bowl turned out to contain about 15 tiny sausages and I started liberally applying the Chistorra like hot sauce to every starch on the table just to give it character.

People like to compare and contrast restaurants based on the advertised cuisine, but there couldn't be two restaurants more dissimilar than Bar Oliver and Eel Bar.

When thinking about restaurants, you need to first discern the intention of the proprietor.

The proprietor of Bar Oliver is Aisa Shelley, who I happened to meet recently. Wonderful gentleman who brought you Mr. Fong’s, Primo’s, Casino, and used to be at Hotel Delmano where all of us Vice degenerates used to get hammered.

I say that to say there is a consistent intention in the places he opens. They all have a logos, pathos, and ethos that exude neighborhood, besides perhaps Casino, which people fought for months on Resy to get into and sits directly caddy corner to Dimes Square.

When you enter Bar Oliver, you immediately notice the sidewalk dining, the triangular architecture of the building, and the astute decision to build it around the bar. Frequently people advertise restaurants as wine bars, but you walk into a room with tables and the first thought that pops in my mind is where the fuck is the bar? I hate when people equate drinking wine with a table and a chair because I’d like to drink wine and congregate around a bar like a dirt bag having filthy martinis.

You can do that at Bar Oliver.

You can order a $150 dry-aged ribeye steak that looked phenomenal hitting another table.

But you can also snack like Raf and I did, have a couple drinks, and get out for a HUNDRED DOLLARS in 2025.

When the bill hit the table, I was ecstatic. I immediately did the math and realized they’d comp’d us a round of drinks graciously, but still, A HUNDRED DOLLARS for a wonderful tapas meal in a cute restaurant with a vibe is not only fucking crazy but generous.

It’s the type of act that creates golden eras in neighborhoods. Some would argue its the end of a neighborhood, but that’s an argument for another day about a restaurant that’s truly criminal. Bar Oliver could be charging a lot more for this food, they could be assholes and not let people loiter for hours outside sipping wine and coke, and they could be in the West Village or Tribeca, but they’ve chosen to plant their flag in Two Bridges.

In an era where everyone is taxing you for their “personal taste”, it’s refreshing to be at a place that chooses not to tax the greater consciousness simply to reassure itself.

I wish there were more neighborhoods like Two Bridges and restaurants like Bar Oliver but because of the never-ending cycle that Jane Jacobs once called The Death and Life of Great American Cities, you only get them for a moment like hitting a loose rock for $15.

Enjoy it while you can.