Life Zouks, and then a Panini Grows in Lefferts etc

Here it is once again. Our neighborhood is right now the center of the Carnivalian Universe. Flags are everywhere. The basses be booming. Curry-Q's fill the air. It's Labor Day in the 'Bush, and whether you go to the fabled parade along Eastern Parkway or seal yourself in your boudoir for the weekend, you really can't miss it.

Just gotta note that the Q's loving the pop-up store Chocolate City at Flatbush near Hawthorne! The tan mannequins show off glittery lingerie in the window of what used to be Lily's Millenium, which for years ruled as by far the most Vegas-y salon on the avenue.

There are some seriously clever people working this "collective;" the guy in charge tonight told me that CC, or Chocolate 4 Life, is a float for the Parade, a band, a bunch of designers, and of course a ton of revelers.

The pop-up store is perfect for this kind of thing. They moved in a couple months ago and have been preparing ever since, while making some dough selling costumes and making videos and doing photo-shoots and the like. Can't wait to see the yacht-sized Chocolate City float on Monday.

Up the street on Fenimore, the folks that brought you 65 Fen have opened up a soup/sandwich joint next door that they're calling Delroys. Michael and Michael haven't exactly gone overboard with the decor, but if the wine store is any indication of their skill, the joint will build slowly and develop a steady clientele.

For now, you can BYOB from the "packy" next door. Not a bad biz model indeed, since the only decent vino you're going to get around here comes from 65 Fen. Wishing you luck guys; you were already out of panini when I got there, so I guess I'll be back.

Last but not least, the Q noticed a beehive of activity at the new Torres Tattoo parlor, also of the 'bush. I'm a fan of tattoos -- on other people. Frankly, I'm just glad that a joint opened up that ISN'T a cell phone store. Those places are like cancer, and not the GOOD kind of cancer. Which is a phrase you hear sometimes, and it never sounds quite right. If sailors on Fleet Week ever come stumbling down our main drag, at least they'll have somewhere to scar their tissue before heading back to sea.

And with that I'll leave you to the cacophony of tuneage, most likely Soca or Calypso, but listen close and you'll hear some variation to the dominant styles. There's something like a dozen different genres currently popular in the Caribbean, and you're likely to hear them all, at ear splitting volumes, all day and all night, through Tuesday early morn. It don't get much better than this, in my skewed sense of reality anyway.