The Bay Ridge Digest
A bi-weekly hyper-local Bay Ridge magazine-style podcast combining everything from culture, restaurant recommendations, history stories, current events, interviews, humor, and human interest.
The Bay Ridge Digest
The Bay Ridge Digest Podcast - EP017: Summer Winds
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In The Bay Ridge Digest Podcast episode 17! We visit The Mighty Functional Fitness studio, grab a bite at the new Schnitzel Haus, and wash it all away at Coney Island.
Featured in this episode are these segments:
• Fred Urban of Schnitzel Haus (@schnitzelhausbk) on renovating and opening up the new location at 114 Bay Ridge Avenue, the public support, what’s on the menu, and what’s on tap.
• Summer vacation jokes with Freddie Friday (@freddiefridaystoryfuntime) with a PSA for the Itty Bitty Kitty Bay Ridge Cat Rescue (@ittybittykittynybayridge)
• Victoria Salerno of Mighty Functional Fitness Studio (@mightyfunctionalfitness) on opening up the studio inside The Green Spa and Wellness Center (@thegreenspa) and what training courses she offers
• Coney Island in the 20th Century with some words of wisdom from the late, great Jean Shepherd.
Coming this Monday, June 29th, The Bay Ridge Digest Monday morning roundup email. It’ll feature local events, classifieds, restaurant recs, human interest, and other important Bay Ridge happenings. It’s free to receive. Sign up for this at bayridgedigest.com.
Know of important stories or events that will be happening this Summer? Please send them to me! My goal is to make this the most jam-packed Bay Ridge email out there. You can submit things to me in the forms at bayridgedigest.com.
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SPEAKER_14Honey Island, the world's greatest fun fry, with its big muscles, long, peppered with people, the place where Merriman is king. Let's mingle with one million folks. Folks who are just like all of us. 600,000 youngsters and oldsters. All swimming, playing, or resting, all getting their share of the sun and the fun. All refugees from the city heat. Here where the beach meets the cool Atlantic. Here in this great whirlpool of joy. Here for a mark at Coney Island.
SPEAKER_03I have to make at least one trip to Coney Island every summer. And there was a time I probably made at least 20 each year. When I was a kid, my family would load up multiple cars at nine in the morning on a Saturday, complete with sandwiches, iced tea, fresh fruit, beach toys, and lots of water and head over. Usually more of our family would meet us there. And before you knew it, there was at least 15 of us hanging out. And it's not like that made us unique. There were giant clusters of families all over Coney Island Beach. Who remembers the fudgy wudgy guy? Hey ISIS, hey fudgy, or the middle-aged lady with a giant sack of ice cream. Or the guy in the Timberlands who yelled, I'm cold spring water here. You know, for eight generations, Coney has been a place of budding romance, unbridled fun, sex drugs, and some of the highest highs. The smells have been salt water, hot dogs, cigars, alcohol, the sounds, amusements, carnival barkers, screams, laughter, seagulls, and radio. And whether it's Nathan's, Astro Land, the Aquarium, Ruby, the old Grill House Cafe, the Coney Island Lighthouse, or Tatiana's over in Brighton. Coney Island is not only part of the American Lexicon, it's part of all of our personal history. Welcome to the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast, episode 17. My name is James Scully. Tonight, we visit the Mighty Functional Fitness Studio, grab a bite at the new Schnitzel House, and wash it all away at Coney Island. Subscribe to the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast everywhere you get a podcast. For more info on how to submit a story lead, please go to BayridgeDigest.com. You can also get in touch by emailing Bayridge Digest at gmail.com and follow on Instagram at Bay Ridge Digest. Coming this Monday, June 29th, the Bay Ridge Digest Monday Morning Roundup Email. It'll feature local events, classifieds, restaurant recs, human interest, and other important Bay Ridge happenings. It's free to receive. Sign up for this at BayridgeDigest.com. Know of important stories or events that'll be happening this summer? Please send them to me. My goal is to make this the most jam-packed Bay Ridge email out there. You can submit things to me in the forms at BayridgeDigest.com. I'm selling logo placements in the weekly emails. For one monthly fee, your business's logo can appear in weekly emails with a link out to the destination of your choice. I've sold out of all the larger slots, but I still have slots available at $30, $60, and $90 per month. And once again, that's one monthly fee to be featured in four to five emails per month. Interested in this and want more info? Check out my media kit at BayridgeDigest.com. Already know you want to be a sponsor? Do so at patreon.com/slash the Bayridge Digest. And if you're a person who wants to support, you can do so for as little as five bucks per month through the Patreon. Click the red tier personal supporters tab in the memberships section. Anyone who supports the newsletter and podcast through Patreon will have their names listed in both the weekly email and on a sponsors page at BayridgeDigest.com, beginning on Monday, June 29th.
SPEAKER_08I always said, you know what, a journal restaurant will be really cool because the only place we can go is Zoom Fantasy in Queens. And I said we should have something local, and it was a place in Staten Island. And the bar right down the block was called limestone's that we replaced. And the owner said he wanted to get out of the restaurant business. I was like, maybe we will open a bar. And I was like, well, and I talked to my wife, I said, why don't we open a journal restaurant? One doesn't exist in Bay Ridge. And I said, let's look into it. And next thing I know, I'm signing papers and we're buying a building, and yeah, but unfortunately it was 2007 and Roshesson hit. And I went back to Verizon's. I was working in the restaurant, running the restaurant, and working at Verizon. And I was doing programming on a site.
SPEAKER_03This is Fred Urban, co-owner of Schnitzel House at 114 Bay Ridge Avenue.
SPEAKER_08Hi, my name's Fred Urban, co-owner of the Schnitzel House, along with my wife Amber Urban, family business. I've been around for about 20 years. We just relocated to 114 Bay Ridge Avenue from Fifth Avenue, where we were located for 20 years. Finished the renovation point, we finally opened. We're about four times the size of the space that we were. We have a nice party room now, main dining, bar, and we also have a game room with pool table and darts.
SPEAKER_03What inspired Fred to open up the original Schnitzel house back in 2007?
SPEAKER_08I was co-owners in a bar prior to that, but my family history, we're from Austria, and I wanted to keep that cuisine alive in Bay Ridge since it really didn't exist. My parents and basically a lot of people said that's never gonna work, you're not gonna last a year, and knock on more than 20 years later, we're still here.
SPEAKER_03For those who don't know, Fred's a first generation American whose parents are from Austria.
SPEAKER_08Actually, first generation here. My parents came over, my sister was born in Canada, and then they came here and had me. Been back to Austria numerous times, but unfortunately. Yes. German and Austrian are a little different dialect, but I can understand everything. I can speak it fairly well, unfortunately. Since my parents passed, nobody else really kind of speaks it, so I get to practice every now and then when people come here. If I call back home and speak to my cousins. And the funny thing is, in Germany and Austria, they learn English starting from grade one all the way until they finish. Their schooling is a lot different. So all my cousins, when I call them up and I try to speak to them in Austrian, they're speaking English to me. And I'm like, no, no, no, I want to speak Austrian. Again, yeah, I can understand it very well. We had people that come in. Matter of fact, we had one couple they were celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary. 65th? Yeah. Crazy. They came to the States, and a friend of mine is a tour guide. And he says, I have this group that came in. Their kids and their grandkids are sending them to the United States for their wedding anniversary. I was like, okay, why would they want to come to a German restaurant? Well, it was pouring rain out there. It was like right around Hurricane Sandy time. And he's like, There's nowhere else to go. Everything slows down. Manhattan's flooded. I was like, what German people don't want to come to a German restaurant. So, long story short, at the end, the wife had called me over and I was like, uh oh, I'm in trouble. She wants to speak with me. I went over and she started crying. And I'm like, oh my God, was food that bad? What happened? In German, she basically told me that she has been homesick since they got on the plane. And this is the first time that she felt like she was back home and she made me cry. The father got up and he gave me a hug and a kiss, and it was like the most fantastic feeling that you can have owning a restaurant to have that kind of response to something. Unfortunately, I kind of lost my drive with the restaurant like six years ago. Our son passed away. It was always his passion. He was always so proud of what we made to Schnitzel House on Fifth Avenue. And we wanted to keep that going. When he passed, I kind of lost that a little bit. And we were originally not going to reopen. I wanted to go do a full-blown construction. I have a master's degree in computer programming. I was going to go back and do that. My wife also has a degree in computer programming. I didn't know what we wanted to do, and we both sat down and said, you know what, we're going to do this for Richie. Here we are. We're keeping his memory alive as well. If you go out to the front foyer, of course, in the bar, you'll see a big homage to him. What do you think he would think of the space? He'd be very proud. And there were nights that I believe that I kind of lost faith for a little while after he was taken. But I feel he rekindled something in me. And a couple of nights I was here and I was just like, I'm tired of going home, and another drive came over me and said, Hey, you gotta get this done, or this is the way Richie would have set this up, or Richie would have done this. Very intelligent kid. I think he had a lot to do with some of the facets of way. I did certain things and hung certain pictures in certain places. And I feel Amber was driven by that as well.
SPEAKER_03But then you have other kids.
SPEAKER_08Two daughters.
SPEAKER_03What are they involved with?
SPEAKER_08So Heidi actually has a very adult job. She's 19. She works for Solomon Kettering. And she has a job that most 30, 40-year-olds would want or had worked their way into. She got into that and she's doing extremely well. And our other daughter, Arielle, is going to Adelphi, criminal psychology.
SPEAKER_03Those of us from around here knew 114 Bay Ridge Avenue as the home of Casa Pepe for two generations. But that restaurant closed in 2019. And I was curious, in what condition did Fred find the space when he was checking it out?
SPEAKER_08It was actually very, very short notice that we were going to come here because we were hoping that the landlord was going to extend our lease. We had to own the building years ago, but we sold it. We looked on Third Avenue and unfortunately we couldn't find any locations that were available that we liked. And then we found this place, although it was derelict for like seven years, really kind of in disrepair since I do construction work. Oh, absolutely. We are here many times.
SPEAKER_03When you walked through that door after it sat empty for seven years, what was the condition of what you were looking at?
SPEAKER_08So basically, when we walked in, there was no power, so we did everything by flashlight. We met with the prior owner of Casa Pepe. I was the son of the owners of the building. And long story short, they had a lot of leaks from the apartments upstairs, and basically they busted open ceilings, they fixed the problem, left debris all over the place. Then the owner's son, who left Casa Pepe enclosed in 2019, was basically utilizing the place as a storage for his construction business. So there was a lot of plumbing, hot water heaters, all anger. It took us basically two 30-yard containers just to get rid of the garbage that was here. And then we were able to start construction. We're talking mold, mildew, any of that stuff? End the basement, yes. We had to remove all of that and get rid of everything, and then we had to resheet rock and whatnot. The plumbing not being used for seven years and having all that grease in the lines and whatever else, uh, all basically had to be either gutted out or had to be snaked, and the kitchen was basically non-existent because all the equipment was shot. So we had to replace everything in the kitchen and new Ansel system, fire suppression system, and then we have some issues with an illegal extension in the back and a disgruntled neighbor.
SPEAKER_03How did Fred go about changing the interior decor and making this massive space the new Schnitzel house? When you walked in here when it was Casapepe, it had everything but a bullfighter, basically. You know what I mean? Like you knew I'm an Hispanic.
SPEAKER_08It did. It was the weirdest place I ever walked into. The bar was the weirdest thing because it looked like a cave that you would find out in Mexico. And I keep joking that they must have sat here one night and drank a lot of wine or something and took a bucket of compound and just threw it at the walls because everything was stuccoed.
SPEAKER_03Now that was all still here when we came in.
SPEAKER_08Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03But you're not a Spanish joint. You're a German.
SPEAKER_08Not a Spanish joint, that is correct. And that bar did nothing for me when I came in here as Casapepe. And the first thing I did was rip it out. So we were very active. It was old school anyway.
SPEAKER_03I mean, well, it was. It was like it Casa Pepe felt like the kind of place where the bartender would have a black vest and a red boat tie on or something like that. You know, correct. So can you talk to me about the process of saying, okay, I want to bring this into my heritage, my culture? What were things that you were thinking of?
SPEAKER_08The party room we wanted to make more generic, just make it a spruced-up kind of thing. They had these very old sconces from like, you know, the 1930s and 40s. They were beautiful, but the owners took them anyway, so it didn't matter. I wanted it more modern for people to come in and say, you know, this is nice and refreshing, and it's generic where it looks great, and anybody's gonna have any type of party here. It's not per se German. And then as far as main dining, we added our own aesthetics of pictures from Germany and different places in Germany. We want to try to get that aesthetic going for main dining. The bar is modern. We're really not a sports bar. We want people to come here mainly for food and whatnot. The party room is for events. We do bingos on Wednesdays, we do trivia on Thursdays, we're gonna do karaoke, we do have bands on the weekends. So a lot of things are happening in this particular room. We have the big 10-foot projection screen, we have TVs all over the place, but now we also introduce ourselves to a game room. We want to have we have a pool table, we have dartboards, and we're gonna try to get into leaks and whatnot. We wanted a place for the community because there's really nothing around here where they can go at night, you know, the husband and wife, get a babysitter, play a game of pool, play a game of darts, just sit down on the requires and watch TV if you want. Just a more relaxing atmosphere, and that's something this neighborhood doesn't have. We're predominantly a restaurant. We do turn into a bar at night. We're usually close by 10 o'clock. We do have bands on the weekends, but they're not allowed. We keep it within the legal terms of what we can do because we have to be nice to our neighbors. If our neighbors are not gonna support us, then we don't have a business. We need the community to support us. So if we're gonna piss them off, it serves no point because they're just not gonna come in and I won't exist. So we want to give back to the community. We also want the community to support us. I've checked with my tenants upstairs and they're like, hey, listen, you're a bar. Well, we get it, but I'm not gonna have them play until one, two o'clock in the morning and piss them off. And not I won't do things intentionally. One of the people that lives upstairs came down and enjoyed the band.
SPEAKER_03No, and I bet they they know if they're living upstairs, this has been an abandoned space below.
SPEAKER_08Well, that's the downside. A lot of people that came into the neighborhood don't know that this place ever existed. Just so it was an empty storefront, like a lot of unfortunate places in Bay Ridge. Just because it didn't exist when they moved in doesn't mean they couldn't become something again, which it did. So you have to kind of roll with that as well. This was a bar, most likely a bar may go back. So if you move into a neighborhood, you kind of do your due diligence and say, What's around me? Oh, there's a bar too, but it's empty, but it could become a bar again. Two people that were at first unsure actually have come in here and introduced themselves, and they said thank you for opening up in the community. That felt really, really good.
SPEAKER_03We'll pick up with Fred Urban at the Schnitzel House later in this episode of the Bay Ridge Digest podcast. Hello everybody and happy summer. It's me, Fred Fred Friday, back with another popular joke session. You wanna be ready to digest podcast. You know what I'm saying, Purdue. So happy summer! Happy summer, Freddy. Yeah. And if we're recording it on Juneteenth, which we are Friday, June 19th, you know, the Knicks just had the parade yesterday. Go no, you're gonna you're gonna. That's right, the Knicks are the world champions of basketball, Freddy. Yeah. Even though they only play in the United States. But that's how we do things here in this country. Maybe we'll be the world soccer champion soon for FIFA, you know? You know? I hope so. Yeah. How Coney Island's doing? I love Coney Island, people. But I gotta get to some jokes, you know? You do, yeah. So tell them why we're here. Tell them who we're trying to support. Well, before our jokes, we'd like to mention the Itty Bitty Kitty Bay Ridge Cat Rescue. Stop in the Henry Hardy's, it's at 93143rd Avenue, and you can donate 25 bucks and get a free t-shirt for helping to save cats. All the proceeds go to vet visits, cat food, and supplies. You can also visit their website at ittybittykitty ny.org and donate that way. Yeah, and t-shirt shipping is available, you know? So to see more of these cats they're helping, where will they go? So you can visit the Instagram page at ittybittykitty ny bayridge. Yeah. You ready to tell some jokes? Yeah. I'm in a good mood Friday, you know? Well, I guess we're going under the hood there and tell you when we're recording it because I hear that my producer he's putting out a new Bay Ridge Monday morning roundup email beginning June 29th, you know, next Monday. That's true, Freddy. Yeah, so he gotta get a jump on this, you know. Well, let's get a jump on these jokes then. A couple me or Rosamur? Okay, let's go. Well, you know, I was gonna make some Nick's and Coney Island jokes. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. But I gotta joke for all the teachers out there. The math teachers specifically. Oh yeah?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Where do math teachers like to go on summer vacation? And if they do, they'll probably see a lot of soccer fans these days or football, you know. Why is that? Well, you gotta wait for the punchline. Where do math teachers like to go on summer vacation? People think about it. You know when you hear the answer. I don't know, Freddy, where? They like to go to Times Square. Oh boy. That's a light order one. Okay, listen. One more thing. You know, I know we're gonna do episode before this, but you know, Shark Week is coming up soon. When is Shark Week? Uh, July 26th? Yeah, yeah. So, where do sharks like to go on vacation in summertime? You know? Oh, this is like vacation jokes? Yeah, it's summertime, you know. Where do sharks like to go on vacation in summertime, people? I don't know, Freddy. Yo yo yo should. It's kind of obvious. Like Times Square was, you know. Where do they like to go, people? Finland. Finland. SRT can out the ST canon in reference, huh? Yeah, you know, let's go Rangers back in 1994, you know. Well, that's all I got for you, Teddy people. Trying to keep this one short and tweet, you know. So tell them what they can do if they want to get in touch with us. Tell the people, you know. Well, if you'd like us to mention a specific animal rescue center, please email where Freddy. Bayridge digest at gmail.com, you know? Or DM at Bayridge Digest on Instagram. You can also see Freddy's archives of jokes and stories. And Freddy Friday's Story Funtime on Instagram. Yeah, I've taken several trips to Coney Island, you know I talk about it. And Freddy Friday on YouTube. And that's spelled what, Freddie? What I spelled my name F R-E-D-D-I-E, you know. So until next time, people. Yeah, until next time, Freddie. What do we always say, but what do we say, Freddy? Doodles. To the one you love. Doodles and happy summertime, people This is where your business's commercial spot could go. Interested in advertising your business on the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast? Get in touch with me at James of the Wallbreaker.com. Now, enjoy this teaser for Burning Gotham. What's Burning Gotham? It's an historically accurate audio fiction soap opera. Set in 1835 in New York City. I created, produced, directed, and co-wrote it. The first eight episodes are out anywhere you get a podcast or at Burning Gotham.com. Episodes are 10 to 15 minutes in length. Burning Gotham made the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival as an audio selection.
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SPEAKER_06I don't need to be rolling this giant tire across the gym. They asked me to do it. I, of course, the first in my mind I think, oh great, I'm gonna push this tire, I'm gonna challenge myself. But at the end of the day, I'm like, what am I doing pushing a tire across the gym? Is it absolutely necessary? Is this what I need or can I do something else? And I don't want to hurt myself because when you're pushing a tire across a gym or throwing it around, you have the potential if your form is not correct, and your form might not be a hundred percent correct all of the time, you can throw something off. And I don't need to throw anything.
SPEAKER_03In the last episode of the Bay Ridge Sages podcast, Victoria Salerno mentioned that the birth of her daughter caused her to focus more on motherhood and spend less time worrying about staying in shape. When she went back to the gym, she started working with personal trainers, but felt that they weren't necessarily taking into consideration her specific training goals. It also made her realize she wanted to create a safe space for women to learn how to exercise. Soon after, Mighty Functional Fitness was born.
SPEAKER_06In my mind, I thought, you know what? I think I just want to open up something for myself, not just for myself, but for women like myself who might not be happy or interested in going to a gym where it's so crowded. Also wanting to work out with a trainer, but the cost could be prohibitive. I knew Sheila and Maria and Maureen here at the Green Spa for many, many years. I was very close to their cousin, and I knew that they had space in here that they rent out. So I approached them and you know, we had a conversation about it. I decided to rent a space here. That was last year. That was in June. In July, I set about and spent the whole month of July, and it took one month to build out the space. It's about 500 square feet. We have some really great equipment. We're going to be going on a year. We are trying to make it affordable for women to come and work out.
SPEAKER_03And for those who don't know, what makes the Green Spa and Wellness Center at 8804 Third Avenue so significant?
SPEAKER_06So the Green Spa has been around for like 28 plus years. It has its own ecosystem, it has its own following. It also is known as the wellness space. And what they are doing is renting out pieces of their space like a co-op type of thing. On different days, certain people rent out different rooms. There's an acupuncturist, a trigger point therapist. There is a nurse practitioner who is a diabetes coach. There's another acupuncturist who focuses on holistic women's health. There are two doctors here who are functional medicine doctors. There's myself with my gym. And then upstairs on the third floor, which I think you've interviewed them before, we have Transformational Tones. They do wonderful work with sound healing and other types of events. So this whole building is its own ecosystem of wellness.
SPEAKER_03When you book an appointment with Victoria, the first thing you'll get is a consultation, an intake body scan session.
SPEAKER_06It's a nice space, it's a private space, it's one-to-one. We start out by doing a full body assessment by using an in-body machine. That in-body machine doesn't only tell us the weight in the BMI, because really BMI is not that important because BMI uses the formula of height and weight. Now you can be a tall person who has a lot of muscle, and because you have a lot of muscle, you can have a high BMI. So BMI is not really the measure. The percentage of body fat is the measure you want to go with, and you also want to go with your skeletal muscle mask. And this machine tells you both. It also tells you about hydration, your intramuscular hydration, which is how well your muscles are hydrated, how well your tissue is hydrated, and your extracellular hydration, which actually is an indicator of swelling and inflammation. Then it also tells you about your visceral fat. We all have visceral fat and we need visceral fat. It's the fat around our organs in our abdomen. And if we have too much visceral fat in our abdomen, then it becomes cautionary for our organs. It might lead to things such as high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke. The great thing with visceral fat is as you lose weight, the visceral fat burns away. So it's not something that once you have visceral fat, it'll never go away. So we look at all those things, and then I'm a certified personal trainer, but I'm also a nutritional coach. So when we do the consultation, we also look at what you're eating. And then we look at your stress because there's also cortisol. And we know as women we're highly stressed, whether you're perimenopausal, menopausal, postmenopausal, hormones play a big part in this. So we look at everything. We look at it holistically.
SPEAKER_03The intake scan is followed by one-on-one training sessions.
SPEAKER_06It's like a 45 to a 50-minute session. We do breathing, we do stretching. It's functional fitness, which means that functional fitness is for every day. So walking up the stairs, picking up our bags, going overhead to put something away in a cabinet or reaching in a cabinet. So we don't have a bunch of machines that you see in the gym. We work with, it's called a stole bar. It's on the wall. It looks like a ladder, but from it we also have heavy resistance bands, and they also look a little different than your regular resistance bands that you might use at home. But we use these because it is using all of your body. Your form, your stance, activating your core. The stole bar is very good with this, and using the bands with the stall bar is very helpful.
SPEAKER_03Victoria also spends a lot of time training teenagers and teaching them nutritional skills.
SPEAKER_06We do have male clients as well. But our main primary focus, I just want to say that, is women. And also we do work with young teenage girls. So if there is a girl who wants to go to the gym, some parents feel like it's better to send their child here because they're not at a gym where there's a bunch of people hanging out watching their child.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so let's talk about cost and how often someone should train if they want to see results.
SPEAKER_06So the first thing is to book the consultation because everybody has different needs. I mean, we do show on the site if you want to buy a package, but honestly, you know, if you know right offhand that you want to sign up, please buy a package. You know, buy it on the website. Once you buy the package, I will reach out to you and then we will set up a time for consultation. It's always free. So if you buy a package of, let's say, eight sessions, that consultation does not count towards your first session.
SPEAKER_03So what is the cost?
SPEAKER_06We offer a package right now. You get the full consultation, you get the full body workup, you also get a nutritional consultation, and that's $99 for three sessions. And we've seen a lot of people continuing. And so for those people, I've made it $60 a session. But also what we're seeing is people working out once a week. And here's what I tell everybody ideally, you should be working out about three times a week if you want to see change. But I understand people have lives, cost of doing that, etc. So if you're gonna do it once a week, I will teach you how to work out. Also, a lot of people have gym memberships somewhere else. And because gym memberships nowadays, you can go to Planet Fitness for $10 a month, and people think that that's exciting, and they go to Planet Fitness, but again, they don't know what they're doing. So if you're gonna do it once a week, you need to watch what you're eating and the times that you're not here. You need to walk during the week on your own at least 30 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes a day. Basically, if you watch and you walk or you do some kind of exercise on your own, then supplementing it with coming here once a week, you will begin to see a change in your body.
SPEAKER_03By the way, you can also stop into the Green Spa and Wellness Center at 8804 Third Avenue. If Victoria isn't in, just tell one of the ladies at the front desk that you're looking to schedule a consultation. So make sure to get the message to her. You can follow on Instagram at Mighty Functional Fitness and on Facebook by searching for the same. Once again, Victoria is running a $99 special. In that, you get a consultation, in body assessment, and three personal training sessions. You can book that on the website immighty.as.me.
SPEAKER_08We couldn't even find a place to services or sausages and whatnot, so I decided to start making a movie ourselves and make homemade sausages and everything. So it's difficult because I think the everything for German food is kind of dying. And I wanted to keep that alive. Sausages, like I said, we had a place where we used to use cold mortgage or family recipes to make the sausages, but I didn't have a license to make them myself. So they would produce them for us with the family recipes, they closed down. I decided to work with another company where I did get my license and I go to their facility, I rent the location, and I create my own sausages and everything there. So every couple of weeks I go make about a thousand pounds of sausages. A lot of work, but I know what's in it. No fillers, no preservatives, nothing like that. It's not store-board stuff then, you know, because people are like, oh, these are Johnsonville brats. No, they're not. I make them, I can tell you exactly what's in them, and there's nothing in there that's bad for you. Predominantly romantic is gluten-free anyway. As far as schnitzels and whatnot, a lot of people walk in the door, they don't know what a schnitzel is. A schnitzel is basically a breaded cutlet. That's all it is. So you've gone to an Italian place, you got chicken porn, take away the red sauce and take away the cheese, and you have basically a schnitzel. It's a breaded cutlet. That's all it is. We Germans use beer gravies and mushroom gravies.
SPEAKER_03Hey friend, now that the new Schnitzel house is open at 114 Bay Ridge Avenue, what kind of menu items can customers expect?
SPEAKER_08We do a Prem Rib Thursday. We did revamp the menu a little bit. We have old traditional German fair still there, but we added steaks to the menu now. We added more fish options to the menu. We also created a bar menu, which we never had and everybody always wanted. So let's do sliders, my chef said. I was like, okay, we experimented a little pulled pork and a little mini burgers and stuff. People are just going crazy for them. That's just turned out so well. We do spatzeli and we make that. It's like a small little uh dumpling. This is homemade love. As long as you have a good solid base of, you know, your food's of good quality. The biggest problem that we have here is people come in and they order like a pork shank. Pork shank is like an asabuco, but an asabuko is you know the size of your fist. Our pork shanks are the size of your head. It takes a long time. We parkook them in the morning for almost 45 to an hour. And then when somebody orders it, there's a disclaimer on the menu, it's 45 minutes at least minimum cook time. Everything we have here is predominantly not frozen. I don't like freezing anything. Even the sausages, when I create those, we don't freeze them. They're fresh because there's no preservatives, they only last about a week. So it's either sell or throw away. I don't serve anything that's old and I don't like frozen stuff. Hamburgers, and even down to that, you know, I get a blend made from Romeo Meats. They make me a special blend that I like for my burgers, and we make everything fresh. We've served them, and if we don't serve them next day or two, I mean they're still good, of course. After that, I throw them out. It gotta be freshness. Until we moved here, actually, from COVID on, we never even increased our prices because I said we want to keep our customer base happy. A lot of restaurants turn around and start gouging. Yes, you can. Yes, you can charge this surcharge and you can charge us 4% on your credit cards and everything else. We didn't want to do that. Customers, they keep your doors open. You gotta keep them happy. Even though we're not making as much as we probably could be, because people come in, some people say prices are too cheap. You gotta raise your prices. Some of our vendors that come in is like, I'm sorry, some of your prices, I know what I'm charging yet. You gotta raise your prices. I don't want to do that to my customers. And we keep it happy, customer base, and people keep coming back in.
SPEAKER_03So, what have people been saying about Schnitzel House over the years?
SPEAKER_08Funny story, we had one woman that came in, she was vegan. Asked what vegan options we had. I said, Well, Germans aren't really vegans. We do have a vegetarian teller, and we brought it out, and one of the other women was eating the sauerkraut, and she wanted to try it. She goes, Can I get a small bowl of sauerkraut? And I brought it back to the table. I came back, and the woman that was apparently vegetarian was eating the sauerkraut. And they were like, Shh, don't tell her. And she said, This is the best sauerkraut I've ever had in my life. I didn't have the heart to tell her, but I did a few minutes later. I was like, those little pieces of what looks like bacon is bacon, and we make it with pork fat. That's what makes it taste so good. She was a little pissed with her friends at first, but loved it.
SPEAKER_02That was the last night as a vegetarian.
SPEAKER_08She may have been. I don't know. I didn't see her again after that, but she left happy, so that was a good thing. Although there's not too many German people or Norwegian people left in Bay Ridge, we do still have some that come in and try things out, and they're like, this feels just like when I was back home. And because these were all the people that were actually born in Germany and they moved here. We have a couple of war vets that came to say I was stationed in Hamburg or stationed here. And when I come in here, it just reminds me of all the great food that I had when I was stationed in Germany. You know, it's a nice feeling. It's nice to hear that.
SPEAKER_03And hey, what would a good German restaurant be without German beer? So what makes German beer so good?
SPEAKER_08So there's a purity law that Germany follows. If you don't follow the very specifics of the purity law, it can't be considered a German beer. All the beers that we have on tap, if you're gonna get a German beer, it's not brewed anywhere in the United States. All German beer is brewed in Germany. Same with Belgian beers. When we had COVID, we couldn't get a lot of the beers because all the container ships, everything else couldn't get to the United States. People are like, why can't I, you know, get another keg of Hofrau or Weinstefan? I said, Because it comes from Germany. No, it's not, it's probably brewed somewhere in the United States. No, it comes from Germany. The German beers, in my opinion, are the best beers that you could possibly get anywhere on the market. IPAs and stuff, I'm not into that. I'm into you know traditional German beers. First beer I ever had, I was like 10 years old in Germany, because that's accepted the day. You know, and you know, on Sunday there was only one mass, and the women went home with the daughters and they cooked, and all the guys would go to the bar. The kids would go to the game room to play football, and every now and then go out to see dad grab some peanuts off the bar and have a sip of beer. That was acceptable. My first beer was at Raderberger, Pilsner. To this day, I still it's basically doing the beer. That records life because if I sat here and had a beer with everybody that wants to buy me a beer on a Friday or Saturday night, I wouldn't be able to walk home.
SPEAKER_03But they're not five percent either.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, they're more like eight, nine, ten. They're a lot stronger.
SPEAKER_03So, for those who don't know, what do you have on tap?
SPEAKER_08Well, it changes. Certain things are seasonal, like the My Box that's made May from the harvest. We have Wine Stefano, we have Ko Stricher, we have Hofbrow, we have Hofbrot Dunkel, Coast Stricher Dark, Radaburger, Gaffel. That's the traditionals. But like Wine Stefano, they make a wheat beer, they make a dark beer. There's different versions of it, and depending upon the year, because in the summer you don't want to drink a dark beer, so you're not going to get a coast or dark. So people come in and say, Can I get a Guinness? I'm like, um, Irish bars up the block. But we have a coast stretcher dark, and people that try it are like, this is almost like a Guinness, but not as thick, and I actually like this better. You know, so there's comparisons that are out there depending upon your taste. We do have domestics, we try not to tone people, we don't keep them out in front, we hide them underneath. But you know, people come in and say, uh, I want to try one of these, and they'll try five beers. We give them a little sample, and they um, what would you like to have? Uh give me a Bud Light. You know. So we try to turn people in and educate them a little bit more, and then we have people that specifically come here for the German beer.
SPEAKER_03I think one of the many reasons Schnitzel House is successful is that it feels like both of Fred's homes, Brooklyn and Austria.
SPEAKER_08Our Friday, Saturday, and Sundays, as of right now, knock on wood, we're jam-packed. This is unique because we just relocated, but a lot of people down here didn't know we existed anyway. They're walking by, like, oh my god, a restaurant. They come in and they're looking around and they wind up staying and having dinner or coming back and having dinner. I like to see more people coming in the game room. It's beautiful. Two huge TVs to come hang out in. Some people have started noticing it and coming in for we're gonna show every one of the Fife games. We're not a sponsor of them, they're kind of sponsoring us. We have a put in an application. As long as we promise to show every single game, which we will, they put our name on the website as a place to go to to watch all the games. We like to see people come in, you know, and check out all the football uh soccer. I call the football. I've been calling the football since I was a kid because growing up and playing football, uh soccer over there.
SPEAKER_03So how much time were you spending?
SPEAKER_08Every summer. So the school was out, went on a plane, we went over to the rest of the year. Yes. We basically went over there. My mom and dad disappeared with their brothers and sisters and did what they did, and I get to hang out with the kids.
SPEAKER_03And what town is this?
SPEAKER_08It's a little town right outside Graz, it's called Everau. Most people know where Graz is because Schwarzenegger is from there, honestly Schwarzenegger. It's about 82 kilometers outside of Vienna. Beautiful location. Yeah, it was gorgeous. And Vienna is unbelievably the most beautiful city I've ever been into in my life.
SPEAKER_03What are the Schnitzel houses hours? And what are the weekly special events?
SPEAKER_08So Monday through Friday before the closing. Kitchen closes at nine. If there's people here, there's a game on, we stay open.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so for example, next we're on late, feel like we were here until like 1.30 in the morning.
SPEAKER_08Because people after the game are excited, they had a couple of beers. As I tell people, hey, you're spending money at the bar, I'm staying open. I don't have any issues with that. Saturdays we open at 12, kitchen closes at 10, Sunday we open at 2, kitchen closes at 9. But again, the bar stays open later. We have bands, bar stays open later, some people playing pool. We have people playing pool here until 1 o'clock in the morning the other day. So yeah, you're spending money, I'm staying open. But the kitchen does close the weekdays at 9 o'clock, unless something's planned. Somebody comes in and says I want to have a party, and we accommodate. Wednesdays we do bingo with Tommy Eyebrows. Thursdays we do trivia. We're gonna start karaoke again once a month. Bands on the weekend. We're thinking about doing a game board night. So far, everything that we've started doing, like the bingo has taken off. This place was packed, trivia was packed. Game board, I don't know yet because we haven't tried it. Karaoke, we always bring in people for. So the bands we all were always packed. The first night that we had a band here a couple weeks ago, chain reaction, it was standing room only. It was crazy.
SPEAKER_03Stop by Schnitzel House at 114 Bay Ridge Avenue and check out the website schnitzelhousebk.com. The Instagram is at Schnitzelhaus BK, and that's spelled S-Z-H N-I-T-Z-E-L-H-A-U-S-B-K. You can also find Schnitzel House on Facebook and thinking about starting a podcast and not sure where to begin? You can contact me for a consultation at James at the Wallbreakers.com. If you're a regular listener of the Bavers Digest Podcast, you can hear everything from fully produced history segments to wacky jokes. Thanks, Freddy, to narrative interviews. Here's a commercial spot. Special thanks to Brett Solomini for lending his vocal talent. See what else he's been up to at Brett Underscore Solomini on Instagram. That's B-R-E-T-T underscore S O L I M I N E.
SPEAKER_04Hello, sir. You what do you want? You know what I want. How could I possibly You're roaming through the city? You have a voice, use it. I'm trying to use it. Ah But are you using it correctly? What do you mean?
SPEAKER_03Isn't it obvious? Script writing. Narrative nonfiction, audio fiction, editing, producing, mixing, directing, acting.
SPEAKER_05What does it have to do with you following me through the street on a rainy night? Have you utilized any of this?
SPEAKER_03No. Well then, it's time you launched a podcast, or at least some kind of audio production.
SPEAKER_05Why would I need to do that?
SPEAKER_03You're in one already.
SPEAKER_05I am?
SPEAKER_03What do you think this is? Stalking! No, you're in my commercial spot. I'm James Scully, I do all these things.
SPEAKER_05Wait, you mean you wrote, directed, produced, and mixed this?
SPEAKER_03Yep. Reach me at James at the Wallbreakers.com.
SPEAKER_04Well, do I get paid for my time at least?
SPEAKER_03I hope you like pepperoni on your pizza.
SPEAKER_14With amusements here, there, and everywhere, it's hard to decide where to start. Reapers of humanity in carnival mood pour through Coney's mini streets.
SPEAKER_13Hurry, hurry, step this way, the strangest sights on the island. Rick from the four corners of the world.
SPEAKER_03The first day of summer in 1944, June 21st, was unseasonally cool. If you were at Coney Island, you would have found Steeplechase Park closed. Edward Tillew, the son of the late George Steve Tilew, passed away after a long illness on June 19th. The park remained closed for the following three days. Two months later, on August 12th, the fire gutted half of Luna Park. Nearly a dozen main attractions were destroyed. Unfortunately, building materials were strictly rationed because of World War II. Luna's owners charged a dime to view the ruins. The park was never fully reopened. In 1946, Luna Park's land was sold for $275,000. The new owners announced their intentions to build a housing project on the property. On October 5th, records dismantling the park touched off a four-allon fire. It burned for 10 hours. By the time it was finished, only the park's administration building, ballroom, and pool remained. Simultaneously, as Americans began to flood the suburbs, New York City's Parks Commissioner Robert Moses saw an opening. He hated Coney Island's working-class entertainment. Moses was hard at work getting the amusement land rezoned. He planned to wipe out any traces of Coney's past. During the day, the area was still a hotbed for beachgoers, sunbathers, and Nathan's hot dogs eaters. In fact, in July of 1947, the New York Daily Mirror, in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force, promoted an air show and fireworks display. It was estimated that 2.5 million people showed up. On sweltering summer days, Coney was still the best place to beat the heat. But after dark, now filled with vacant land, Coney transformed into a seedy underworld. In 1949, Moses was successful in getting the land rezoned for housing projects. He also moved the boardwalk back from the beach several yards, demolishing many structures, including the city's municipal bathhouse. Although he built the New York aquarium and the Ape Stark ice skating rink, more land was taken by Moses than needed. For decades, much of the old amusement area surrounding the boardwalk was a mess of vacant weed overgrown lots. In 1950, electronic games at Coney's arcades were banned. And four years later, the old Feltman's restaurant, predecessor to Nathan's, was auctioned. On August 15, 1954, Steeplechase family matriarch Mary Tilew passed away. She was 84. The four living Tilew children borrowed money from their realty company. They wanted to maintain their lifestyles rather than improve their business. Although the Arthur Godfrey television show began broadcasting from Steeplechase in 1955, public perception had turned against Coney Island. It was now seen as a low-rent, high crime area. Making matters worse in 1956, a 16-year-old boy was shot by a friend at the Pravilion Shooting Gallery. The next year, the New York Aquarium opened where Dreamland Park once stood. And then April 22nd, a fire destroyed the Steeplechase Pier. It stayed closed for over a year. On December 26, 1958, George Tillier Jr. died of a stroke. Many of the older independent concessionaires retired or sold out. The potential customer base had already found plenty of other places to spend their leisure.
SPEAKER_09The New York City Planning Commission has rejected a proposal by Park Commissioner Robert Moses to spend more than seven and a half million dollars on six new recreation centers. The Commission acted unanimously to follow a recommendation of Budget Director Abraham Beam, disapproving the proposal. There'll probably be some fireworks before the sun goes down tonight.
SPEAKER_03By the 1960s, many would say that Coney Island had become a breeding ground for rival gangs. Just visiting became dangerous. People arriving by subway would sometimes dash the 1,000 feet to the Steeplechase gate. Teenage boys could be robbed. A customer pulled a knife on a park employee. And vandals damaged the go-kart ride along the boardwalk. Frank S. Tillieu, the last of the founders' sons, died on May 7, 1964, leaving Steeplechase under control of the last daughter Marie. In August, she announced her intention to close and sell the park. On September 20, 1964, Steeplechase Park finally closed. Marie Tilliu sold the land to real estate developer Fred Trump. The abandoned park sat for two years in stillness before being bulldozed in 1966. Trump sold the vacant land to the city in 1969. Today, the only structure that marks Steeplechase place in the history of the world is the lone surviving parachute jump. It made its debut at the 1939 World's Fair. In the late 1970s, New York City wanted to open casinos on Coney Island. The prospects created a land boom. Some of the last remaining amusements were bought and cleared in anticipation. It left West Brighton void of rides for the first time in a century. But gambling was never legalized in Coney Island during the 20th century. Much of the land remained abandoned into the 1990s. But it's not as though Coney was deserted. People never stopped visiting, especially in the summer. As I said at the beginning of this episode, I was there most weekends with my family as a kid. I remember watching the demolition of the old Half Moon Hotel in 1996. My grandfather explained to me the significance of its history. And the steeplechase Coney Island Pier was still popular for fishing and sightseeing. In fact, Coney never really lost its popularity. Don't believe me? Just ask Gene Shepherd.
SPEAKER_11You know, it's just like the second time I went to Coney Island, I'm walking along, and they have a batting cage there. One of these cages where you put a quarter in the slot, and this pitching machine pitches ten balls at you. And you stand up old Warren Louisville slugger. Have you seen that thing? And you swing away at it, ten of them. And you can pick the kind of pitch you want. And you can set the meter. And there's one that says slow lobber. And just throws a lob ball. You know, the kind that fat guy's playing the skinny guys at the picnic, this kind of a ball. And then there's an underhand pitch by a left-hander. Slow, easy, comes in right over the plate. But it's not quite a lobber. You can set it all the way on up to Carl Hubble type fastball. Ryan Dern dusts you off. And I'm telling you an exact story. This is truly what happened. I'm not embellishing this one bit. I want to see somebody, of course, I don't have the guts to step up to the plate. But be that as it may, I'm walking along there, you see, and I see this batting cage. Now, this is a thing that has a deep primeval interest to all men. It's, in a sense, is a synthesis of life, which is a challenge, of course. Some machine off there in the darkness throwing fastballs down over the inside corner of the plate. And we better swing, boy. You don't get another one. And it is, it's a synthesis. And you put everybody starts out with the same thing quarter in a slot. Throw it in there. You put a quarter in the slot, you start out, everybody starts out the same. Mike Todd, guys living in the Bronx, other guys who learn how to be airplane pilots, guys who play second base for the everybody starts out with the same quarter, see? And I'm walking along that street in Coney Island. By the way, I'd like to recommend this. If you ever go to Coney Island, go to Coney Island on the days when Coney Island really isn't working. The kind of off days, like at the end of the season or before the season really begins. Then you, in a sense, get much more of a clear picture of what mankind is up to when he creates these vast seaside Babylonian Bacchanal centers. And I'm walking along and I see this batting cage over there. Now, for those of you who don't know what it is, a batting cage in the Coney Island sense is a cage. It's a big cage. And down at the other end of the cage, let's say the nether end of the cage, there's a big green curtain. And this green curtain says home run. Or it says pop-up, out, strike out, that kind of thing. You see, wherever you hit the ball and you drive it up against that green curtain tells what kind of hit you got or what kind of out you made. And next to the home plate, there is a home plate down at our end of the cage. Next to the home plate is a rack that has maybe 25 terrible old clubs. They're not even bats, they're clubs. Which is incidentally also, I believe, very symbolic of our life. So he picks up, the customer picks up one of these clubs, he pays his quarter, puts it in the slot, and sets the machine down at the other end, down there by that green curtain down there, is a machine that throws baseballs at you. This is truly, you know, this machine does this. And this machine throws baseballs at you, and you can set a dial to determine what kind of balls you want thrown at you. Now, if you were to pick the kind of curveballs you want thrown at you in life, what kind would you pick? I mean, what kind do you hit the best? I mean, assuming that there is an element of chance in everybody's life, no matter how it's worked, what kind of curveballs would you want thrown at you? Well, let me tell you what happens. Generally speaking, you figure that you'd put in the quarter and you'd set the machine to throw these little looping balls that are thrown at you at the skinny guy, fat guy picnic softball game, you know? But the actual secret of it is when you're faced with it, you don't. You really don't. Because every man secretly likes to think that he is a Viking, standing at the prow of the ship about to meet the biggest dragon in the Western Hemisphere, and he's going to deal with them as best he can with a very small, but very agile, very wiry lance. And so here I'm standing there waiting for some guy to come along, and it's one of those vaguely watery Saturday afternoons late in the season, after the last Ferris wheel rider has sort of disappeared in the distance, and the last kid with the Nathan hot dog has disappeared. Coney Island is slowing up, and it's it's the beginnings of October or November or something, there's a little cold air in it, and along comes a little guy. The true thing, and I'll I remember this to the dying day. And I'm standing there watching this, and I my mind goes back immediately to this little short fat man who somehow got himself involved with Coney Island on a Saturday afternoon. And so he's working his way down towards the sea, and I'm standing across the street, waiting to see who's going to play this batting cage thing. And he stops and he looks in. He looks around and he notes that there are hardly anyone hardly anyone on the street who can get away with at this time. And by the way, I think most of us, if we were given the choice, would play out our lives in absolute privacy so that no one suspects what we're doing. And this is all connected with the concept of original sin. And so he's standing there, looking the business over, reaches in his pocket, and pulls out a quarter. And he pops inside the cage, throws his quarter in the slot, and looks back at the rack and picks himself out a bat. One of these great big worn clubs with tape on the handle. And it is interesting to note that he picked one of the largest bats in the rack. This little short, round man who had long since passed had gone past the 45-year mile post long before. He picks up one of these taped bats and steps up to the plate. I couldn't see how he had set the machine. And I figured, you know, naturally, I figured he's going to get this little lobbing ball that flies out from the fat man and the skinny man pitcher there. And the next thing I knew, this machine's been let one go. You see, you set the meter, and the end meter all the way over at the end says Carl Hubble Bob Feller. That's nothing but a fast straight ball right over the outside corner of the plate, waist high. And he sets his thing and it goes like that. It went past him like a shot. And his bat just moved slightly. He steps up to the plate and kicks the dirt a little bit. He's waiting for the next one. I figured he's gonna set the machine again, you know. He's waiting for the next one. He chokes up a little bit on the bat and hunches down over the plate. And you hear the machine. And it goes into the into the catcher's mitt back of it. They had a big concrete catcher's mitt. Zoom. And he looks down, steps back out of the box, and hitches up his pants. That's two strikes. Steps back into the box, and this time he chokes up on the bat a little more, hunches over, and I can see all of his old kid baseball playing is coming into the picture again. This time he's kicking the dirt a little bit and hunching his left shoulder down. This time he keeps the bat sort of half over the plate, you know, hunched like Eddie Stanky used to. Eddie Stanke was not a naturally good batter. He just kept the bat hanging out over the plate all the time, and if the ball hit it, well, he was off, you see. That's the way he batted. And this is the way he the guy's hunched down over there, and I can see this guy's been playing life like this all the time. And he just ticked it, a foul tip that skitters off to the left of the plate and into the screen. Steps back, he got a piece of it that time. It's got seven more coming now. You get ten balls for a quarter. And suddenly the machine wound up and threw him a change of pace. A small, easy, looping inside curve ball, and he missed it on He swung like that. And he stepped back and protested the decision.
SPEAKER_10Oh, what a beautiful drama of man's inability to cope with his own ambitions. Speaking of ambitions and the inability to cope, this is W-O-R-A-M-N-F-M, New York. We'll be here until two o'clock this afternoon.
SPEAKER_03The sun has set at Coney, and it's time to go home. Luckily, there's a huge subway terminal at the corner of Stilwell and Surf Avenue across from Nathan's. The area is much safer these days. And don't worry, it's not like we'll be alone. The reading material used in today's episode included articles from Charles Denson's History Project at Coney Island History.org, David Sullivan's Heart of Coney Island.com, and Jeff Stanton's research at Westland.net slash Coney Island. Thank you to the guests, Victoria Salerno, the late Gene Shepherd, and Fred Urban. Coming this Monday, June 29th, the Bay Ridge Digest Weekly Monday Morning Roundup email. It'll feature upcoming Bay Ridge events, local classified, restaurant recs, human interest, and other Bay Ridge happenings. Want to sign up for this and find out more? Please do so at BayridgeDigest.com. To support all these Bay Ridge Digest pieces of media for as little as five bucks per month, please go to patreon.com slash the Bayridge Digest. For more info on how to submit a story lead, please go to BayridgeDigest.com. You can also get in touch by emailing BayridgeDigest at gmail.com. So until July 9th, my name is James Scully. This has been the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast episode 17. And I'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you very much.