The quality of life outfit Mount Pleasant Today is informing residents that there is a “Train Station Meeting” regarding the Hawthorne and Valhalla stations March 22 at Town Hall.

It will be residents’ first opportunity to address new Town Supervisor Joan Maybury, who took over when Hawthorne’s own Rob Astorino tapped Bob Meehan for a county job. Police chief Louis Alagno and Highway Superintendent Peter Sciliano will be there too.  

Here’s something to discuss–the awful oil slick where the cab company fixes its busted cars behind the station.

As our 3-year-olds frolicked about recently, a local cop friend started bending my ear about the book Circle of Fire, which tells the tragic tale of a Swiss nanny in Mount Pleasant and the gruesome death by fire of the newborn, Kristie Fischer, she was tasked with minding.

Not my thing, I thought. But being a polite fellow, I nodded and said I’d keep the book in mind.

When our kids were around 3 1/2, the cop friend started talking up the book again. This time, he actually slipped me the hardcover copy of it. What could I do, except read the damn thing? After all, the guy’s a cop, and my only good contact on the local force.

Sixty pages in, Circle of Fire isn’t bad. The writing (by Joyce Egginton) is B- work, and the story is interesting, though newborn murders are not exactly heartwarming fare.

As coincidence would have it–and I didn’t realize this until just now–the fatal fire on West Lake Drive took place exactly 18 years ago today: Dec. 2, 1991, and perhaps forever sullied the term “Swiss au pair”–though Olivia Riner was acquitted.

What’s really interesting about Circle is that it’s such an under-the-microscope look at the Thornwood-Hawthorne-Valhalla area. Cop chief Louis Alagno is in there, and Mount Pleasant supervisor Robert Meehan is too. In fact, the book suggests considerable ill will between local government and local police–though not specifically between Alagno and Meehan.

The dour entertainment options facing a young nanny in Thornwood, NY are painstakingly depicted.

“She was allowed the occasional use of a family car; even so, it was hard to imagine where in the Thornwood area a girl like Olivia might want to go. Certainly not to the bar by the railroad station [Editor’s Note: the boozy watering hole Gordo’s in Hawthorne, or the more family friendly boite Valhalla Crossing in ‘halla?] or the neighborhood McDonald’s, which were popular meeting places for local young people.”

Egginton makes some errors that only local residents would notice or care about. One page one, no less, she describes Thornwood as “rural” (was it really rural as recently as 1991?) and refers to it as an “exurb” of NYC (Exurbs lie beyond the suburbs. Thornwood is a suburb.) And Egginton repeatedly refers to Thornwood, Valhalla and Hawthorne as “villages,” though they’re in fact hamlets.

“At its hub the three adjoining villages of Thornwood, Valhalla and Hawthorne are so interdependent as to be essentially one community. Thornwood has the two neighboring shopping centers, Valhalla has the town hall and police headquarters, and Hawthorne the railroad station on a commuter line to New York City.”

Of course, Valhalla too has “the  railroad station on a commuter line to New York City,” but that’s picking nits.

Some smartass has penned an essay on walking to the train in Mount Pleasant. “I Walk Alone” appears on the southern Westchester community site GetinLoop.com.

I’ve seen suburbs where walking is part of people’s routines. Our Mamaroneck friends walk to the train station, Miller’s Toys and, more recently Molly Spillane’s. Pleasantville types have an art house theater, upscale restaurants and pubs within walking distance. Typically towns such as these were established before the almighty automobile took over, where sidewalks link neighborhoods to a train station and shops. Likely many of the residents are former city denizens, well versed in the ways of the pedestrian.

Not out by us. Hills are foreboding, sidewalks are almost non-existent, and so revered is the automobile that it’s not uncommon to see one parked in the middle of a front lawn, like a giant chrome bird feeder. To be sure, I do see dog-walkers and, in those narrow windows of flawless weather in fall and spring, people walking for the sake of walking—most of whom I’m fairly certain are being mandated to do so by their doctors. But, as we approach three years in Westchester, I can’t say I’ve seen another person from my neighborhood embark upon that mile schlep to the train.

You can read the whole of it here.

We’d lamented the demise of the Westchester section of the NY Times, as it was always a good source of local news, much of it transit-related, because all we truly care about in the ‘burbs is a smooth ride to the city each day.

Well, the replacement for the Sunday Westchester section (not to mention the Jersey, the Long Island, the City, etc.) is the all-encompassing Metropolitan section. And the most recent one actually has two interesting stories about local transit–three, if you include the surprisingly moving Lonelyhearts subway poetry culled from Craigs List.

One story looks at the weird conundrum of train stations with long waiting lists for spots, juxtaposed with the fact that lots of people are laid off and no longer need their parking spots, at least for the time being. So there are long lists of people who cannot park at the station in their town, while spots are unoccupied because a permit holder is sitting at home, sending out resumes for jobs that will eventually get him or her back into the city.

Our fearless forefather Robert Meehan is quoted in the story.

Roughly 100 of the 573 spaces at the parking lot in Dobbs Ferry were free at 3 p.m. on a recent Tuesday. Over in Hartsdale, Stephanie Kavourias, executive director of the public parking authority, figures that about 90 of the station’s 900 permit spaces are empty on an average day now. And Robert Meehan, the supervisor of the town of Mount Pleasant, which includes Valhalla (191 spaces) and Hawthorne (355), has also seen growth in vacancies.

“I went down to Valhalla on a recent Monday and there were 30 spaces empty,” Mr. Meehan said. “Before the recession it would always be full.”

Some are pushing to allow permit holders to rent their permits (and spots) until they need them once again.

Elsewhere in the section, Timesman Ray Rivera offers an offbeat solution to the modern annoyance known round these parts as Fremix–the unwanted overspill of noise emanating from a fellow train riders’ iPod.

I sat down in the first car, empty but for about half a dozen people, including, of course, two teenagers blasting iPods. Each was playing different music, and the overflow collided in a discordant shrill that flooded every cubic inch of the car like a swarm of angry mosquitoes.

I sat two seats away and pulled out my crossword puzzle for the half-hour ride to Inwood. But those mosquitoes. … I gave the boys a stern look to telegraph my annoyance. They ignored me. Finally, I said, “Excuse me,” tapped my index finger to my earlobe, pointed to their headphones, and pantomimed, “Can you turn it down, please?”

“Go sit somewhere else,” one of the boys said.

“You can hear it through the whole car,” I said. Nothing.

Then Rivera gets clever.

Finally, a bit of subterranean poesy–with a System of a Down reference to boot–to brighten your otherwise unspectacular Tuesday.

metal train guy

i dont use this craigslist thing.

i was sitting right next to you.

long awesome Shavo style beard (soad).

you had headphones on.

chain around your neck.

backpack. big guy.

i had some tattoos.

my arm was touching your leg.

you got off at 42nd street and yes!

you looked back at me for a millisecond …

and i saw a very sad face.

im sad too.

[image: LACityBeat.com]

The Missus and I and assorted other parties actually got out to a restaurant for dinner twice this weekend, thanks to her folks being in town.

Saturday, we opted for one of the few high-end options around us, the consistently good Iron Horse Grill, located in the old Pleasantville train station building. We wanted a special-occasion kind of place to mark National Train Day–not to mention our anniversary. We got Little Miss C down early and actually snuck out early enough to enjoy a drink at the bar.

The restaurant has a subtle train theme paying homage to the building’s origins; the name of course refers to trains, there are old train photos on the walls, and even a little Edward train from the Thomas the Tank Engine set above the bar (or was it Gordon?).

We got put in a small room off to the side which features just a pair of two-tops and a big round table for eight or so. Not the best spot in the place, but it did prompt me and the Missus to wonder what the room used to be–the ticket-taker space? A storage room for luggage?

The food was very good–I got a nice sole dish and The Missus got the duck, which featured a very tasty sauce. Owner Phil McGrath is very visible around the place–he stopped by to chat about the dishes, and was even about to take our order before a server wisely stepped in and saved McGrath the trouble (and likely saved his own job). McGrath does his flitting about in a very low-key way–none of this “I’m, Phil, the owner!” nonsense–we only knew him because of a framed review on the wall with his picture in it.

Speaking of framed reviews, The Missus spotted one in the bathroom with a real anachronistic quality–it was about a decade old, and talked about the depressing (and dodgy) downtown area surrounded Iron Horse, full of nail salons, empty storefronts and a crazy person or two. Priusville has come a long way.

I’d love to say we had a similarly terrific experience at Cabin, the recently rebooted restaurant in the cozy lodge on the Greenburgh/Valhalla border. We’d eaten there before and had a wonderful time–ambitious menu, surprisingly winsome ambience, considering the somewhat rundown exterior, and really good service–actual servers, not high school kids.

We went last night with the Mother In Law (MIL), Father In Law (FIL) and of course Little G and Little Miss C. Much like the night before, we got put in the junior varsity room–a dining space in the bar area, where you can’t help but watch golf and local news on different screens, not to mention the constant parade to the men’s room, while trying to converse with your table mates.

We ordered the fried shrimp (or Fried “Shirmp” on the menu…The Missus and TJ are career editors and no menu typo gets by us) for Little G and asked the server to please bring it with our salads. No problem, she said.

To be fair, it was Mother’s Day. But the restaurant wasn’t really that slammed–I’d say it was 75% full when we got there, and everyone was ordering off a prix-fixe menu, which makes life much easier for the staff.  

Well, our salads came, and no fried shirmp. The salads had lovely toasted goat cheese pucks or croquettes or whatever, but none of the four we ordered had the sugary walnuts the menu promised. No big.

Well, our salads were consumed, and still no fried shirmp for Little G. The kids started getting restless. The Missus walked Little Miss C around and I engaged Little G, compelling him to crayon a picture of the new Roary the Racing Car toy MIL and FIL picked up for him on a recent trip to England. Little Miss C was put back in the high chair, got cranky a little while later, and I took my turn walking her around. Little G joined us in a quick tour of the place.

Still, no fried shirmp. The waitress even came by, saw our long-since picked apart salads, and said, quite rhetorically, “The shrimp hasn’t arrived yet?”

Finally, it showed up, and Little G returned to his seat. I occupied a bench about 20 feet from our table with Little Miss C, midway between the main dining room and the bar area, trying to entertain her as her bedtime approached.

Alas, the fried shrimp was hard as a rock, and Father in Law sent it back.

“This is totally unacceptable,” FIL said politely but sternly. “This is hard as a rock.”

Mind you, we’ve been here about an hour and only now were getting the kids meal, with the grown-up meals still in the works. Some frustration poked through.

The waitress took the inadvertent Rock Shrimp and headed for the kitchen. She stopped to talk to what I suppose was a floor manager, about 10 feet from me and Little Miss C. The waitress did a pretty unflattering imitation of my father in law:

“This is totally unacceptable,” she said in a whiny voice through a sneer. “This is hard as shit.”

OK, now there’s trouble.

I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the father in law curse in the decade I’ve known the guy. I also don’t believe I’ve ever seen him be anything but completely cordial to a server, especially a female one who’s half-decent looking. I felt my blood boil as I watched this hack (and inaccurate) impersonation.

Finally our entrees came about an hour and ten minutes after we first sat. Alas, they brought the wrong thing for Father in Law (he wanted crab cakes, they brought a Cape Cod casserole). He told them not to bother bringing his desired entree–we were hungry, and the kids were absolutely done.

It was one of those meals where the entree becomes an after-thought; you just want to finish and get home. Little G’s reconstituted fried shirmp never showed, and we were finished in 10 minutes.

It didn’t quite end there. The Missus and I asked for our chocolate bread pudding desserts to go, while FIL and MIL asked for them to stay. We got the kids up and got the heck out of there.

Alas (yes, another “alas”), all the desserts came to go, accompanied by the check. Then FIL and MIL had to wait another 10 minutes or so for the check to get picked up; when the waitress never came for it, FIL settled up at the bar.

Fittingly, the desserts were a bust too. Granted, no dessert really holds up in to-go form, but the bread pudding was painfully mediocre (neither the Missus nor MIL ate theirs, and I only did because I would eat cardboard if it was smeared with chocolate). FIL’s “berries” dessert featured two strawberries–two, 2–cut in half. Technically, yes, they were “berries.”

In their defense, the Cabin did not charge for Little G’s meal (mind you, he never got his meal), or FIL’s Cape Cod Casserole. That smoothed frayed feelings to a degree.  

As I’ve said, we’ve had very good meals at the Cabin, and were very happy to see a good dining option to all the uninspired red-sauce joints in our area. But last night sure was a dud.

I ventured into the city Saturday night for a concert, fooling Little G into thinking it was an hour earlier (much harder these days, with daylight savings time and all), and headed out the door for the 7:53.

Downtown Hummerville was quieter than quiet. I’d forgotten the parts of the Times I’d meant to bring on the train, and picked up my pace so I’d have a minute to duck into Pop’s Deli and grab one.

Alas, Pop’s was out of the dailies.

“Saturday’s a big reading day in Hawthorne,” the cheery proprietor told me.

They had a pair of Irish papers, the Echo and the Voice, which seemed sort of fitting to read before going to see the Pogues. I picked the Voice, which had Jimmy Fallon on the cover. The guy was about to ring me up when he spied a Times, separated into its various sections, behind the counter. He pieced it together, folded the Sports back into its original order, and dealt me the rag for a buck fifty. I put Fallon back on the rack on my way out.

A minute before train time, I didn’t see a soul–not one soul–on the platform, which of course got me thinking there was no 7:53, which would pretty much ruin my whole evening’s plans–or force me to salvage them with an expensive cab to White Plains. But a moment later she came chugging from behind Gordo’s, lights blazing in the dark night. A few bodies emerged onto the platform from the foul-weather greenhouse.

In the rare event that I’m schlepping to the city for a Saturday night, I tend to grab a semi-private 1 3/4-seater. The amateurs on the trains on the weekend tend to think these seats are off-limits (seasoned commuters know much, much better), and the Saturday evening train is louder than the Union Square platform with both a 4 and and 6 pulling in at the same time.

Alas, the two 1 3/4-seaters I tried were locked in the upright position. I found a seat amongst the boozy proletariat and cracked open the Sam Adams I’d brought from home. As I’d expected, it spilled a bit, shaken up from the walk. I lamented spilling beer on my sleeve, then remembered I was going to a Pogues show and would be covered in spilled booze halfway through “Streams of Whiskey.”

The beloved 1 3/4-seaters were again locked up when I hit the 12:06 heading for home. I had a trio of guys in their early 20s near me, loud and sort of drunk and kind of funny. The guy facing me a few rows away looked like he’d perhaps been at the Pogues show at Roseland too–Irish tweed cap pulled low over an Irish-American mug, Doc Martens, tattoos all over his neck (both in the shape of names in cursive and a pair of hands merged in prayer) and tats on both sets of knuckles spelling HOPE and LOVE–not unlike the cover of the Pogues album that shows PEACE and LOVE on a boxer’s knuckles.

There was another trio of young guys a few rows past them in a five-seater. Those guys were drunk as well and two of them were engaged in a slap fight, which prompted the punks near me to start mocking them. The punks had surmised that the slappers were preppy college kids and started lobbing the likes of “Dave Matthews Band!” and “Lacrosse!” and other preppy trappings their way, trying to egg them on. The preps, meanwhile, kept slapping each other.

I got up to use the bathroom and got a look at the rest of the punks. They weren’t the slightest bit thuggish, which surprised me that they were needling some other guys toward fisticuffs. I shut off my iPod and listened to their conversation. Turns out they were in a band, and were making up funny and melodic rhymes for the various station stops on the schedule.

Still, they kept egging on the preps, who’d ceased their slap fight around Fordham. The slappers didn’t take the bait. All taunting and slapping would stop momentarily when a young woman would happen down the aisle to use the bathroom, and both parties would try every single trick they knew to get the woman to stop and chat. At the risk of sounding like a schoolmarm, I can’t get over what the young chickies were wearing, both on the train in and the train home. Where were these slags when I was 21?

The rest of the ride was mostly uneventful. The punks eventually tired of taunting the preps, who became pre-occupied with a young woman in a dress cut mid-thigh who actually stopped to talk to them.

Around Valhalla, an intense smell of pot wafted through the train. Everyone in the car’s heads swiveled about in search of the smoking gun, so to speak, but no culprit was forthcoming.

Finally, the kid in the tweed cap said, “That’s not pot. That’s a real skunk.”

Mercifully, the 12:06 ambled into Hummerville moments later.

The Town of Mount Pleasant is aiming to add 104 spaces to the lot at Valhalla train station, reports The Examiner. The state orginally approved the plan, which calls for an extra 27,000 square feet of paved surface, back in 2003. But the town did not go forward with it at the time because the lot wasn’t usually full.

It’s a different story these days, says The Examiner. The plan would take 6-10 months to complete and would see the town plan a row of evergreens in between the extended lot and the Bronx River.

We had the pleasure of dining out at The Cabin over the weekend, a smallish lodge-style place on Rte. 100 on the border of Valhalla and Greenburgh–not far from Westchester Community College and about three miles south of Hawthorne train station.

The Cabin reopened over the summer after sitting dormant for two years; LoHud foodie wiz Liz Johnson was quite chuffed when she learned it was reopening. To be honest, it still isn’t much to look at from the outside–a fairly forlorn little joint sitting at a busy intersection. But some festive holiday lights perk the exterior up a bit, and the inside is lively and nice to look at.

And the grub–call it upscale comfort food–was very good. I got the cedar planked salmon ($15.95), which was a terrific piece of fish, though I could’ve done without the pool of butter. The Missus had the pan-seared scallops ($17.95), which were big as snowballs; she couldn’t finish one of the three, so Little G was more than happy to take it off her hands. I had a pint of some private label dark ale whose name I don’t remember, which tasted OK and was way too cold–something I seem to see a lot of in Westchester. (For a free beer-guy Sam Adams at Grand Central–which Mount Pleasant pub brags about “the coldest beer in all of Westchester?”)

The Cabin was expansive and the service pretty attentive. As dinky as it looks on the outside, you have plenty of elbow room once you’re seated, even with a giant coal pizza oven jutting into the middle of the dining room. The motif is Adirondack lodge-y, with an actual bearskin rug over by the bar (not sure if they were trying to be ironic or not).

I like the way the bar is set up, a sizeable offshoot to the dining room, where one could presumably make lots of boozy noise and not really bother the diners.

We went the day after Valentine’s Day, which is certainly an odd night for restaurants. Most everyone in the place was between 60 and 70, and Little G and Little Miss C were just about the only kids in the place, which is peculiar for the ‘burbs.

We definitely recommend The Cabin, and definitely remind getting The Missus’s folks to pay, as I did Sunday night.

PAST RESTAURANT STUFF:

Iron Horse Grill in Priusville

Hudson Line Pub Crawl

Mount Pleasant’s town hall, a charmless concrete edifice that looks like a minimum security prison, will come to life Wednesday night as the townsfolk argue for, among other things, a nicer train station in Hawthorne and more active downtowns in Hawthorne, Valhalla and–that third tenor of The Three Tenors–Thornwood.

“It is our goal to make a positive change in the community through community involvement,” says a local activist group that’s been hanging flyers around town. “Many of us want change, positive change, long term change, by opening up the lines of communication.” 

That may include an online community board, not sponsored by the town, where residents can discuss community matters, such as schools, the train station, and the dinky selection of shops in our hamlets.

Regarding the latter, the town board reportedly shot down a Dunkin Donuts a few blocks from the Hawthorne train for parking reasons. The storefront has been vacant for close to two years now.  

Also regarding the latter, Little G got his first-ever real haircut at the new barber shop across from the DK gas station, and the hairdresser lady Amy was very nice to him, even letting him take an extra lollipop. We also had an enjoyable visit to the little pet coiffeure next door, where some dogs were playfully resisting makeovers. The proprietor raved about Lily Winzig’s memorable roast beef sandwiches.

Indeed, it would be nice if Hummerville could boost its walkability a bit.

With the British graffitti artist “Banksy” auctioning his art in London, we thought we’d tip the Stetson to some priceless graffitti offered up on one particular Harlem line train.

It was a poster ad for the Summit, a gargantuan office complex on the border of Valhalla and Hummerville from Westchester’s own Robert Moses, Louis Cappelli.

“RISE TO THE SUMMIT!” bellows the ad.

Then there’s a list of bullet points highlighting the Summit’s considerable attributes.

Easy Access to the Saw Mill Parkway, reads one.

But one jokester crossed out “Saw Mill Parkway” and scribbled in “My C**T.”

[image: Marcon Group]