![]() ![]() I recently finished Hammer of the Gods after several months of picking it up and having to put it down. Though the music was all written before I was, it speaks to me in a way that no one else can. But in reality, Led Zeppelin is probably it. And it probably is I grew up with the music, I lived in the time it was created. When people ask what music I’m into, I always tell them that my favorite band is Nine Inch Nails. Let’s face it- it’s way more fun to sit here and daydream about all that could have been rather than what will never be. Maybe I feel that if I make believe enough, I can really make myself believe it. It’s like the adult version of imaginary friends, and it’s perhaps my favorite pastime. Meaningless relationships become meaningful, unrealized potential becomes actualized. I have an immense imagination because I can see reality better than many, I cope with it by imagining alternate versions in my head. ![]() I’m stripped back down to the quiet, awkward only child who sits at home in The Compound, a small town Texas version of poor little rich girl. But the moment I get back here, the HRC persona becomes…frivolous and impractical. From the moment I step into the Austin airport to embark on my monthly trips to LA, I’m her. HardRockChick is an exaggeration of my real personality she’s confident and edgy, she’s fun and playful. I’ve been spending a lot of time as mine lately. But I know that it was her alter ego, presumably a ‘cooler’ version of her that I would be ok with opening a little note from in my brown bag in front of my friends. I’m not really sure where it came from, and honestly I spent most of today pissed off that I couldn’t ask her once I started writing this. X’ is how my mom would sign notes she would leave in the lunches she packed for me in elementary school. The line “please have a full life” plays in my head frequently. I found the note in a drawer on the eve of her death. I know it will be hard for awhile but time will heal. Whenever you want to talk to me just close your eyes and think of me. I am sorry to leave you so early but know I will always be looking over you, at your side. From the moment you took your first breath till I take my last. And Bar Milagro, the downstairs watering hole that has a separate entrance on South 6th Street, is wild, with more than 2,000 milagros, or lucky charms, hanging from the ceiling (Boetto had his family ship them up from Mexico, and the team spray-painted them gold) and a strange shrine of sorts by the door.I want you to know how much I love you. In addition to the Carmen-the-xolo installation (xolo is short for xoloitzcuintle, the revered Mexican hairless dog breed the name “Carmen” was found etched into a steel door handle when Boetto and crew moved in), that love and lipstick also includes lots of plants, prints, and a number of paintings by co-owner Gigi Boetto. It just needed a lot of love and renovation and lipstick.” “It had been practically abandoned for like six years, but it had good bones and it was a restaurant at some point so it had a kitchen setup. “During the early pandemic I used to just walk around the neighborhood aimlessly and I saw this old building,” he says. Local restaurateur Jorge Boetto, who co-owns Xolo and Bar Milagro as well as nearby Zona Rosa and Mesa Coyoacan, tells Brooklyn Magazine he found the spot quite by accident. The lavender-lit diorama of a xolo, or hairless dog, named Carmen that dominates the dining room is also pretty cool. That, and the fact that the west-facing windows command dramatic views of the bridge’s latticed towers. All of this, of course, only adds to the appeal of the place. (According to Forgotten NY, it’s named after David Dunham, an early-1800s steamship enthusiast who drowned in a boating accident.) This is not a patch of North Brooklyn that you’d frequent unless you lived right exactly here.Īnd the building itself-a stocky, 112-year-old, two-story brick house-feels like one of those great neighborhood holdouts, squatting amid the luxury development along the waterfront down here. Located on the corner of Dunham Place, which even long-time Williamsburgers would be forgiven for not ever having heard of, given that the street’s entire length is a single block. ![]() There’s something of a hidden-gem vibe to Xolo, a new Mexican restaurant down under the Williamsburg Bridge, and its subterranean sister spot Bar Milagro. ![]()
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