009 | BAR REPORT: Locals Love Carmine and Sons Pizzeria
Experiencing New York like my excellent neighbors.
To experience New York, you must go where New Yorkers go. I am no stranger to checking out the latest downtown cafe by day/wine bar by evening/club by night establishment, but there is something indescribable about going to an establishment that has been around longer than TikTok, or all social media for that matter.
When I first moved to Brooklyn, I was determined to become a real neighbor. The kind that can hold your spare key for you, get your packages if you are away, offer you butter and sugar because Lord knows I’m not using them. While living in Manhattan, I lived in buildings with revolving doors of neighbors, and to be frank I also moved every single year due to downsizing roommates one by one until I eventually moved stag to my one-bedroom here in the Italian area of Williamsburg.
Unlike my previous arrangement, my building has been untouched by modern influences, with stairwells that feel like old hallways of someone’s haunted home rather than an apartment building. My fridge is white, cabinets are honey wood, and I wouldn’t change a thing. It feels untouched. I don’t miss the elevator or the silver appliances or the rich recent grads living below me.
In those apartments, I was never rooted. There was no perennial opportunity in sight. I grew up moving around often, attending three high schools alone, so while the act of moving is stressful and brings up more unresolved trauma than I’d like to admit, I never thought of it as unusual or a burden. I just thought it was something people did. I never even considered staying in one place. I was constantly thinking about the next apartment.
I am proud to say that I am a changed woman (for now). I am not only going on my second year in my current apartment, but I know every single person’s name in my building along with their cats’ names! I hold exactly one spare key, have brought in countless packages, put salt on the stoop when it is icy, and even helped one neighbor move things into her apartment after her mother went to a nursing home and had to downsize immensely, leading to the most boxes I have ever seen in an already furnished and full apartment.
After that, we sat and talked until three in the morning, with one other neighbor from my building who drove her all the way to her mother’s house out of the city to get the towering boxes. We each drank one bottle of wine that they got on their trip to Italy last year. At first I thought they went together, but I came to realize they went separately, visiting their own hometowns, and they told me a lot of people from the area did that over the summer, mostly to southern Italy. The late-night conversation was worth the severe hangover, as many are.
It was that night that I learned about where I really lived. Several of my neighbors have lived in the building for over thirty years and are now on their second landlord here. More than one person moved into the building after moving out of their family homes, located right down the street. They are not just from the area, they are the area. They know everyone. Everyone knows them. I feel lucky they always have their doors open for me, an outsider with a history of rotating doors.
I talked to my neighbors that night about my pursuits to be the best I could be and about everyone I’ve met from our area. The woman at the laundromat, the man who sits outside and tells me who to vote for when I walk by, the contractor who says he will do literally anything to my apartment if I pay him. They knew them all, they knew their siblings, they knew their parents, and some of them they were even married to at one point. They also slid in that the movie Donnie Brasco is filmed right in our neighborhood.
Along the way, I mentioned that I asked our landlord if I could mail him my check for rent, and he responded absolutely not, but I could drop it off at Carmine’s and Sons pizzeria, not to be confused with Carmine’s in Time Square. I can only pay my landlord by check. He comes by every first of the month, unless that first of the month is a Sunday; then he comes on Saturday. To my surprise, my neighbors thought that dropping it off at Carmine’s was incredibly reasonable and an even more favorable thing to do than mailing it. Lucky me! As they went on, I realized Carmine’s is equivalent to the Vatican of Williamsburg for my Italian neighbors. Holy. Unmatched. Run by a pope-like man everyone respects (named Carmine, of course). If you mention the pizza shop Tony’s Pizza to my neighbors, which is directly across the street from Carmine’s, they will tell you it is no competition at all. That place is completely different. It doesn’t serve the same purpose as Carmine’s. It is a pizza place, it’s not Carmine’s.
If you ever find yourself at the Graham Stop in Williamsburg (my neighbors said to never call it East Williamsburg under any circumstances), you must stop by Carmine’s. It is split into two. On the left side, you can get pizza, and there’s a sign for an espresso bar. On the right you will see the sports bar and restaurant in the back. Technically, the left is called Carmine’s and the right is called Carmine’s and Sons, but everyone just calls the whole thing Carmine’s.
Carmine’s has been around for about 47 years. Gaetano Gangone, the original owner, was a baker in Italy and Venezuela before moving to the United States, where he continued to work in bakeries and pizza shops. Ten years after living here, he opened his own pizza place, calling it Ray’s Pizzeria. When Gaetano’s son Carmine took over the family joint in 1992, it was renamed Carmine and Son’s.
While walking to work, I will see older gentlemen at the aforementioned espresso bar, which is actually just the pizza counter with an espresso machine in the back. When I walk home, I see people with bar slices looking like they’ve been sitting there for hours. Even at lunch during the workday, people are in there. Every day of the week, except for Tuesdays, Carmine’s acts as a meeting spot. It isn’t a gatekept place kept only for the old guard. It is open and welcoming. I have gone countless times alone to grab a slice of pizza, and it is a typical spot for watching games with my friends. I am too intimidated to go in during the mornings for espresso. Maybe one day.
There aren’t very many places I can think of that so greatly accept the old and the new across age demographics quite like Carmine’s.
Legend (InstagramI has it that they have a batting cage on their roof, which I believe considering that they sell shirts for the Italian Baseball League on their website.
When the Knicks won a game recently, Carmine’s lit off fireworks in the street. He paints the fire hydrant outside in the colors of the Italian flag. At the Italian festival, which my neighbors have been involved with since childhood, Carmine’s sells pizza. It is a true New York establishment if there ever was one.
During the night with the wine and the boxes, one of my neighbors mentioned he worked there for years. The other told me she has known Carmine’s family since she was a kid, and when her own son passed, Carmine’s gave money to the foundation made in her son’s name that offers college scholarships. Carmine’s runs deep.
While I was at Carmine’s for a Knicks game, I got talking with one of the employees, Joe (who is fondly referred to as the priest on Carmine’s Instagram). I mentioned the neighbor who kindly drove all the way out of the city to get the boxes, and in response Joe went on for five straight minutes about how my neighbor is the best guy around. (He really is.) The people of Carmine’s know and love their people and love their community.
It is a place that is respected. It is a place that is trusted. Regulars might be people who have lived here for sixty years or six years.
To be a neighbor doesn’t mean living next to others. It doesn’t even mean bringing in packages or putting salt on the stoop. It’s being a part of the neighborhood itself, which takes time. If you want a community, it takes effort, and years, and resigning leases, and going to get pizza with everyone even if you really don’t want pizza right now, because as they say, convenience is the cost of community.
I will continue to try, in my second year, to be a better neighbor than before, becoming a bit more like the essence of Carmine’s.
To experience New York, you must go where New Yorkers go. New Yorkers go to Carmine’s.
