A photographers view of the city and beyond

 On the Lower East Side, Egg rolls and Egg cream                This past Sunday afternoon, on a street on the Lower East Side Of Manhattan, not far from where the giant, noisy Manhattan bridge looms over a neighborhood of small restaurants and open air vegetable stands, a coming together of sorts, of two diversely different cultures in front of a restored synagogue.
     Eldridge Street, just off Canal Street, in the heart of what once was the center for the Jewish immigrant community, was the host to a uniquely New York cultural event. The first annual (maybe) Egg Roll and Egg Cream* festival. It wasn’t one of those giant street festivals that take up blocks and blocks of city streets this time of year. Instead this very modest affair took up only about a half a block of a street shared by Chinese and Jews alike.
     The festival was organized by the people who run the recently restored Eldridge Street synagogue, a building that was left to ruin before private benefactors stepped in to bring the place back to its original glory. The synagogue was once the cultural and religious center for Jews who came from the ghettos and schtetles** of an increasingly hostile (at least for Jews) Europe.
     Today the street is made up of businesses that cater to a predominately Chinese community who’s residents take pride in their culture as the Jews did almost a hundred years before.
     The Egg Roll and Egg Cream festival was meant to recognize the very natural melding of two cultures that, for some reason, have aways been linked via food. There is not any group of people in this country that has embraced Chinese food more than the Jews, a fact not left unnoticed by anybody opening a Chinese restaurant. Go to any Jewish neighborhood in New York and you will find a plethera of oriental cuisine. Jews are the Chinese restaurant’s best customers. Open up a Chinese restaurant in a Jewish neighborhod and your success is assured.
     Thus we have this event that sort of puts an official stamp on this Sino-Jewish relationship. I’d like to see this continue and expand with maybe some other dishes in addition to the egg rolls and egg creams.
The restored Eldridge Street Synagogue in front of which    
the Egg Cream and Egg Roll festival was held.

Eldridge Street. The Jews on one side the Chinese on the other.
Learning the ancient Chinese game of Mah Jong. The only people
I know of in this country who still play this game are old Chinese  
ladies and old Jewish ladies in Florida. And maybe these two.
Hand made yarmulke’s (skull caps). I’ll bet you don’t have
one.
How about a nice glass tea?. Who knew there was a ceremony
that goes with it.

Egg Cream fixins’. Sort of.
Here’s a guy drinking and egg cream and looking at an egg roll.
A Chinese string orchestra. I was waiting for them to do a
rendition of “By mir bist du shoen” but it never happend. Where
was the klezmer band?
The monks in front of the Buddhist temple,
which is right next door to the synagogue,
seemed amused at the whole thing. Maybe
they were trying to find the ZEN in egg creams.The first meal I ever ate in a restaurant when I was only four or five was at the Seven Eleven Chinese restaurant on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. In fact it was the only restaurant I remember from my childhood. The Chinese restaurant was our McDonald’s. You could get the lunch special, which usually included an egg roll, chow mein, rice, tea and desert for 75 cents per person. You left a 25 cent tip which meant that lunch for two cost $1.75. Take that Wendy’s.

*The Egg Cream: From what I could see nobody at the festival knew how to make an egg cream. At least not the way I know how to make one. I have the only official method of egg cream preparation as practiced by the “candy store” owners of Brooklyn. A method that I spent many a day observing in front of the counter of my local luncheonette on Bedford and Clarkson avenues. While there may be many so called official egg cream recipes only this one is the true official one as set forth by the Society for the Preservation and Perpetuation of the Egg Cream.1. Start with a clean glass. The glass should have the shape of a Coca-Cola glass.In fact it should be a Coca-Cola glass. You know the one.2. In to the glass pump two squirts (or two fingers if you are not at a fountain) of Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup. Not Bosco or Nestle’s, only Fox’s U-Bet.

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