#old cafe

Karasuyama, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo (April 20th, 2021)

The old cafe 🌲🏡

Outfit rundown Dress: second-hand favorite Cardigan: old from Boutique 1861 Bag: second-hand Axes Femme (with vintage wood bus pass) Blouse: old Forever 21 Boots: old Fluevog Hat: thrifted Coat: second-hand Mary Magdalene Brooches are handmade (by various artists and  myself) and vintage

I often see these middle aged (and older) Italian men hanging out at one of the last “real” Italian Bakery/Cafes in Brooklyn where I sometimes go to get my fix of old school Sfogliatelle. They are mostly retired, and have lived in Brooklyn for a long time, if not most of their lives; a part of their cultural makeup, a part of what still goes on in some small towns in Italy hangs on inside them, it’s a specifically male space — head space if you will. It’s maybe not so different from Moroccan men in their cafes, or Spanish men in the bar, or Irishmen hanging out in the local pub, etc. It’s almost like salmon going home to spawn — only there isn’t going to be a spawn, just a need to connect to an almost primordial social structure: To be with these like minded characters that hold on to a past and a sort of ancient rite of male bonding which has no other value but to know they are not alone and are cut from the same cloth. They are an odd bunch, really a dying breed. Nothing much goes on with these guys: they talk about their families, they bemoan some friend who is ill, or worse, they have committed some perceived offense toward them and have now shut them out. They talk soccer, politics (mostly of the conservative variety), the guy down the street who "had the balls" to sell his house to the Chinese, the sad decline of their once homogenous neighborhood — now dominated by Asians and Russians. If you walk within 6 feet of these guys you might get the scent of cologne — usually an odd, old-school Italian brand from their heyday like Pino Silvestre, but as you pass it might be augmented by the stale scent of tobacco breath and body odor. Some have taken to dying their hair because their once handsome, soccer field worthy looks have not held up with age — too many Marlboros and Cannolis I suppose. They stand around and look somewhat uncomfortable, while nursing their espressos with a dab of Sambuca, their fingers stained from years of smoking cigarettes down to the filter. All this posing will seem very peculiar to an outsider. But in the end, it’s all they’ve got left of their world — a world which they left long ago.

© 2021  Yiannis Krikis

The Northern Fish Restaurant, Elgin. Picture: ilike on Flickr

- Elie Wiesel, Dawn