Watercolour
30 x 22cm
12” x 9”
2018
This isolated four-story green mirage stands all alone on a corner in the ever so slowly gentrifying Red Hook area of New York. The boarded over red windows are so desolate and Hopperesque. Founded in 1922, it is the oldest surviving eatery in Red Hook and is still owned by the Defonte family. It is one of the few surviving links to Brooklyn’s industrial and shipping history: business began by feeding dock workers who were “shaping up”, i.e. the old corrupt hiring system where longshoremen waited to be picked by gang bosses for a day’s work.