Chock full o’Nuts in Brooklyn

[519 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. Click for a larger view of the many details, including the plucky luncheonette next door.]

The 1940 Brooklyn telephone directory lists two Chock full o’Nuts locations. This is the one for which there’s a tax photograph.

The strange part: when I was a kid and our family went shopping on weekends, we’d get lunch from Chock full o’Nuts. Abraham & Straus, a department store of the day, stood at 422 Fulton Street. We may have been getting lunch from this Chock. As I remember it, we’d eat in the car. It was no doubt impossible to find four open stools in a row on a Saturday.

Abraham & Straus was subsumed by Macy’s in 1995. Everything changes.

Thanks to Joe DiBiase for catching my mistake with the address and putting the location of this Chock full o’Nuts — 519 Fulton, not 159 — back on the map.

*

An informed reader informs me that in the 1970s there were two Chock full o’Nuts outlets on Fulton Street, at 451 and 538. Here from the blog Then and Now is a post with a photograph of 451 (now a pawnshop). Note also in the post the addresses of present-day Chock Cafés in Brooklyn: 1510 Avenue J and 1611 Avenue M. It appears that only the Avenue M outlet is still going.

Thanks, Brian.

Related reading
All OCA Chock full o’Nuts posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

[A caution: there’s one very slight spoiler at the end of this post.]

I think it’s safe to say that the Newsday Saturday Stumper is back. Every Newsday Saturday crossword since August 7 has been a Stumper. To quote Peppa Pig and friends, “Hooray!” Today’s puzzle, by Greg Johnson, is chockablock with clever clues. Remember when people used to say “chockablock”? Me neither. But someone must have. It is, after all, a word.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

1-D, nine letters, “French zipper (no, not a minor boast).” I had no idea this word exists.

3-D, nine letters, “They tell only half the story.” A wonderful clue.

14-D, five letters, “Inedible chips, frequently.” Aha.

26-A, four letters, “Stand-in for absentees.” The clue adds value to a common answer.

32-A, three letters, “Construction site carrier.” I am a tileman’s son, so I better know this, even if it’s not used in tile work.

33-D, nine letters, “Uncommon bank deposit.” A recent puzzle or two readied me for this clue.

37-D, eight letters, “Six-decade game show panelist in A Night at the Opera.” This clue might be better phrased like so: “Six-decade game show panelist who appeared in A Night at the Opera.” There was no six-decade game show panelist in the movie. But the person in question did speak at Elaine’s graduation from Juilliard. Our household is a 37-D-friendly zone.

35-A, seven letters, “Above-center piano key.” I am a piano player of sorts, but I was not familiar with this term.

38-A, seven letters, “Serving in a paper cup.” A much nicer answer than I anticipated. I was thinking of the dispensation of meds in institutional settings.

55-A, four letters, “Carbs around fillings.” Clever.

60-A, eight letters, “Log-shaped desserts.” What? I’m sure they’re chockablock with goodness.

One clue I would take issue with: 54-A, five letters, “Big name on cake boxes.” Well, no. An alternative (and maybe arcane) clue: “Fatha of ‘Rosetta.’”

No real spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Sisyphus in Harlem

It’s still Saturday. John Grimes is sweeping.

James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).

Also from James Baldwin
“The burden is reality” : “Every corner, angle, crevice” : “Life is tragic” : “She was Sanctified holy” : “Somewhere in time” : “What we make happen”

Manufacturing vinyl records

“A couple of years ago, a new record could be turned around in a few months; now it can take up to a year, wreaking havoc on artists’ release plans”: The New York Times reports on the difficulties of manufacturing vinyl records.

Centrist?

From The New York Times:

Five veterans tapped to advise Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, resigned from their posts on Thursday, publicly accusing her of “hanging your constituents out to dry” in the latest sign of growing hostility toward a centrist who has emerged as a key holdout on President Biden’s agenda.

It’s difficult to understand how being a “key holdhout,” a party of one, makes someone a “centrist.”

[Maybe it’s a party of two, but it’s impossible to know, because Sinema, unlike Joe Manchin, gives no indication of what she’ll support.]

New directions in academia

In the news:

Staff shortages at Michigan State University prompted an unusual request this week: A senior administrator asked colleagues to volunteer to clean tables and prepare and serve food in the cafeterias.

“Faculty and staff from around campus are invited to sign up to assist in the dining halls!” wrote Vennie Gore, senior vice president for residential and hospitality services and auxiliary enterprises, to an email list of deans, directors, and chairs. “We have specific needs during evenings and weekends. I ask that you share this message with your departments and units.”

“Faculty and staff from around campus are invited to sign up to assist in the dining halls!”: I like the cheerful exclamation point, which is obligatory in missives trying to make what’s unappetizing seem appetizing. No pun intended.

“Senior vice president for residential and hospitality services and auxiliary enterprises”: in other words, he is one of the people who run food services. His salary in 2020: $292,857, “274 percent higher than average and 354 percent higher than median salary in Michigan State University.”

Will time in the dining halls (eight hours a week!) count as university service, to be applied toward retention, promotion, or tenure?

Thanks, Diane! (Yes, that’s a cheerful exclamation point.)

[A longer article in The Chronicle of Higher Education requires an account.]

“Every corner, angle, crevice”

It is John Grimes’s fourteenth birthday. He is cleaning his family’s Harlem apartment, as he does every Saturday.

James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).

I think of James Joyce’s “Eveline”: “She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from.”

Also from James Baldwin
“The burden is reality” : “Life is tragic” : “She was Sanctified holy” : “Somewhere in time” : “What we make happen”

[“He who is filthy”: Revelation 22:11.]

Firing Frank Lloyd Wright

“I am sick and tired of hearing people say Mr. Wright is wonderful, but he is not practical”: “”How to Fire Frank Lloyd Wright” (The MIT Press Reader).

Thanks, Elaine.

Related reading and listening
“Usonia 1” : “Usonia the Beautiful” (99% Invisible)

Diacritics with an external iPad keyboard

With a Mac, iPad, or iPhone, you just hold down a key to get a display of characters with diacritics. With an external iPad keyboard, diacritics are not especially intuitive. The Option key (⌥) is key. Briefly:

⌥ + E, followed by letter: acute accent

⌥ + `, followed by letter: grave accent

⌥ + I, followed by letter: circumflex

⌥ + N, followed by letter: tilde

⌥ + U, followed by letter: umlaut

⌥ + C: cedilla

Thus déjà vu, fête, mañana, Mädchen, garçon.

The key combination that needs glossing is ⌥ + `, which uses the sadly neglected accent that sits below the tilde in the upper-left corner of the keyboard. Yes, it might be mistaken for a single quotation mark.

Skullface

[Click for a larger skullface.]

It appears to be faintly smiling. I think it knows something.

[My first thought was “Cookie Monster.” But the skull shape is so clear, and Halloween is approaching. I say Skullface.]