KEEPIN IT IN THE FAMILY

Memo to all Gowanus and Boerum Hill residents, and those Park Slopers who walk down 4th Avenue towards Atlantic to get to the subway: my favorite bodega, on 4th ave and Dean street, closed a few months ago, much to my sadness. It was the only Mexican bodega for miles - the next closest is down on 4th avenue at 16th street, and that's fucking far - and I used to get nopales in a jar there, and rounds of Mexican chocolate for cocoa that I would inevitably end up eating before I ever made cocoa, and I used to flirt with the bodega guy in TERRIBLE Spanish. I miss it.

Now there is a deli there. It is stupidly one-worded. It is called "Canteen," and to build it, they used those gigantic ugly cheap fake bricks that are currently marring urban landscapes nationwide and, to me, are the face of gentrification.

Last night Kevin, our beloved neighborhood bartender, told me that not only is it overpriced, the guy who owns it is an AUSTRALIAN who lives in MANHATTAN.

I am boycotting it on principle. If you have any investment in this neighborhood not going to shit and your rent going up astronomically because a bunch of fucking rich Manhattanites want to build even more yuppie enclaves for when the stadium comes and the rich people price us all out, you will boycott it too.

CANTEEN. Fuck you Canteen.