One thing one notices when relocated from the city to the ‘burbs is all the flags. The only flags you see in the city are the orange, blue and white of New York City itself, waving in the breeze at the city’s various parks.
But once you hit the suburbs, you see all sorts of American flags–in all sorts of weather, I hate to say. I remember those flag rules from when I was a kid–you took your flag down in rain and snow so that Old Glory could retain its, ya know, glory. I think there was even some special way of folding it. Clearly those rules have slipped from people’s memories the last few decades.
Which brings us to Bel Paese. Since we moved in 2 1/2 years ago, Bel Paese represented the one true dining location in tiny little downtown Hawthorne–a commercial district so small it makes Radiator Springs look like a shimmering metropolis. Bel Paese became a victim of the recession, not to mention its own mediocre red-sauce cuisine, and closed in the recent months.
Yet an Italian flag, battered and tattered and rapidly fading, still “graces” the Bel Paese facade. With some of the brutal winds hitting the area recently (only those who bike to the train station each morning really, truly know was brutal wind is), the red part of the Italian flag–representing “blood spilt in the Wars of Italian Independence,” according to Wikipedia–has been torn off.
I don’t carry a single drop of Italian blood in me (though I did spend the better part of a decade noshing cheap Italian from one of the joints on 4th Street/2nd Ave. while watching The Sopranos on Sunday nights). Yet it still bugs me to see this symbol of a proud nation–a nation housing our pope, a bunch of soccer stars, and guys who don’t wear helmets when they ride mopeds–torn to bits.
Mr. Bel Paese, tear down that flag.