Force of Nature | The mother of Grindhaus

As I write this I’m running a fever and I’ve still had to run service at Grindhaus. I was supposed to go to a 30th anniversary tribute to Purple Rain tonight, and Montauk this weekend for Endless Boogie.  I can do neither. It really f––king bums me out I have no life anymore. Damn it, I used to be a contender.

I’ve been in Red Hook a baker’s dozen years now. I proudly call this former Ghetto-Upon-Sea home: I can’t ever imagine getting her out of my hair or from under my skin. If I ever tired of her, I would have to leave not just New York but maybe the entire country.

But when you lack a Plan B you just blindly keep going, because you have nothing else and you dumped $300k into a space you don’t own

After six years of bureaucracy, bullshit and construction – and Superstorm Sandy (more like Muddy) – I finally opened a little restaurant called Grindhaus. It’s not supposed to be here, really. All signs over the past few poverty-stricken, desperate, monkey-wrenched years pointed to Step The F––k Away, Dumbass. But when you lack a Plan B you just blindly keep going, because you have nothing else and you dumped $300k into a space you don’t own and if you don’t figure out how to get it up and running then your beautiful parents, who have sacrificed everything they never had, will be forced to survive on cat food in their Golden Years. I really don’t want that happening, so I guess I conjured up this thing I never really knew I had called tenacity.

Back in February 2008, Grindhaus was supposed to be a sausage parlour. My friend Jens, who has lived in the Hook for close to 20 years, decided one day that we should dust off his meat grinder and make sausages. I never had before (and haven’t since). We made about three hundred sausages, in five or six different varieties of lamb and pork flavours. I remember being savagely hungover during the process, but that’s about it. After tugging and twisting a mile or so of meat, we popped into our local, the Bait and Tackle bar, to quell the shakes and stave off the DTs. We mentioned that we had all these sausages and anyone was welcome to come by Jens’s place, where there would be tubed goods on the grill. The Bait – like any good local pub – will always give social media a kick in the crotch, so the next day what seemed like the entire ’hood turned up, and a sausage party was had by all.

I woke up the next morning having dreamt that I had a sausage parlour called Grindhaus and that it looked exactly like it does right now.

I’ve taken exactly one night off from service so far. And what did I do with that one night off? I took mushrooms and tripped around the neighbourhood. I’m broke, so it’s cheap entertainment. It’s important to get out of your head every now and again. And I get to laugh. A lot. The kind of laughter that means your abs hurt the next day.

Red Hook has some of the best vantage points in New York to take in a sunset on the waterfront. It also has some of the city’s best curated art and culture happenings (check out our neighbours at Pioneer Works). Of course sometimes you stumble on the worst shit ever and can’t help but laugh hysterically – and I guess there’s merit to that.

As I write this, it’s been exactly one week since the New York Times review which has changed. . . everything. The reservation book looks like something out of a Stephen Hawking thought bubble

As I write this, it’s been exactly one week since the New York Times review which has changed. . . everything. The reservation book looks like something out of a Stephen Hawking thought bubble. I can’t go a few feet without fielding a call on the Haus phone. I pull over when I am out fetching stuff to answer questions and take reservations because I am the only one that can. I still have to show up for surprise last minute deliveries and I can’t plan on doing anything. Even walking the dog is f––ked –what you thought would be a nice hour of make up walk time gets interrupted by some emergency.

There is more pressure now. There is pressure from the kitchen to upgrade equipment and hire more staff. Everything about this place has been done by the balls of my ass, because that’s all you can do when you are doing it on your own, with limited resources. Some of these young guns think that it should just happen. But I am $350k in the hole, and there are holes in my shoes. I don’t need the added stress of complaints when your handsome check clears week after week and when you’ve been given a platform to shine without requiring a vested interest.

I haven’t slept properly in ages. I am fully grey under the bleach. I still keep the style because it means I get time with my hairdresser buddy Heart. I can no longer afford the necessary head meds to keep my productivity up, because I hand them out generously to staff  “for the cause”. I suffer greatly without even burning the candle at both ends like I used to do back in the good old days.

My crumbs of satisfaction come from kind words that come from more strangers than ever before, and how they like – no, love – what is going on in here. Sometimes I wonder if it’s enough to go on? Discomfort is all I know with regards to this thing. I think I should just change the name to Grind/Halt. But I keep going because there is no Plan B. And I ain’t got the funds to take up else where.

I have debts to pay and I am betting on the upcoming influx of bodies will make it a bit easier. I know what we’re doing is really awesome. I know it. Bitch is just really f––king tired of doing this on her own after all these years and a flood.

Investors are welcome. C

Grindhaus, 275 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231 USA
+1 718 909 2881; grindhausnyc.com