Finally Went to the "White House"

Here I mean to use the quoted "White House" as the translation for the Casablanca, a neighborhood bar Corrie and I have passed thousands of times in the three years living here, and this past Friday ventured inside for the first time.

This establishment seems to keep strange hours...it's a bar that's more likely to be open on Wednesday morning than a Friday night, so planning a trip over there is difficult. But since it's closer to us than our closest subway, it's the kind of a place you needn't plan to go to. It is directly down Malcolm X Blvd, before the halfway point to the A-train.

We finally saw it looked open when we had some time and some cash money with us, and checked in. The door was locked and bolted. A small elder lady came up (I could see her from behind a small rhombus window), opened the metal gate, then unbolted the door, to see what the commotion was. I asked if it was okay for us to come in and get a cocktail. She eyed Corrie and I closely, and eventually let us in. She was the only person in the entire place.

I never caught her name, but she was about five feet tall, and shrinking, looked in her sixties, but moved like she was in her eighties. She could sure pour a drink, though, and at a reasonable price even. The interior reminded me of the Goodfellas scene when the kill Billy Bats; the lighting and the decor looked just like something out of the early seventies, and the great soul-music she put on fit right in. We would've stayed longer, but I had the market the next day. Corrie was sad to leave her alone again; she(Corrie) even offered to wash our cocktail glasses. The bar elder told us she'd owned the place for forty years, and that she lives on our street, up on Halsey.

We will be returning.

That trip prompted me to want to visit inside a simply titled Brooklynite Gallery, just a block south of the New Casablanca. This gallery has been here for a few months, but, also due to strange hours, Corrie and I haven't been able to get there, besides passing it everyday. Usually, the problem is we have groceries coming home that need to be put away, or are on our way out of town...the hours are like 7 pm to 10 pm Thursday through Saturday, maybe one of the days it opens at 3...

There is this cool thing over the facade, though.

(If you clicked on the link, there is a pause button on the left-side that stops that music. My bad.)