Deep in the Heart of Bavarian Staten Island

Three weeks ago or so, when Irene was just a hot breeze swirling around the Bahamas, Laura and I had an overlapping free weekday. Usually, we would head straight for Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge, to see lots of birds amidst not so many people as on a weekend. This year, however, the unseasonable torrents of August rain and an administrative / budgetary snafu have left the East Pond, where the water level is normally manipulated to maximize its attractiveness to migrating waders, far too full for any self-respecting shorebird to pause there. "What do you say we explore the oyster-baron mansions of Staten Island?" proposed Laura.

"The what?" The murky, industrial waterfront surrounding Staten Island includes graveyards of rusting tugboats, miles of petroleum storage tanks and semi-submerged, expired ferries. But one hundred and more years ago, these now dubious waters teemed with oysters, and great fortunes were made harvesting them and serving them in the oyster bars of Manhattan and beyond. What's more, Laura informed me, a few of the grand residences of the oyster oligarchs might still be standing along Staten Island's northwest shore, enjoying a harborfront view of Manhattan.

It now costs $13 to cross the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which is close enough to the ticket price at MOMA that we were determined to savor every moment on the "borough of parks."

The nouveau-riche have always been fond of reviving the Greeks, and apparently the oyster magnates were no different. Now abandoned, the front yard wooly and overgrown, this titan is just waiting for a little bit of love and elbow-grease. One suspects it comes with a fascinating midden of oyster shells somewhere out back.

The wrought iron-fences, the closest one can approach, are more art nouveau than nouveau riche. They're very nice, and I'm frankly surprised no enterprising recycler-looters have never made off with them.

Right next door, there is no house left at all, only competing wrought iron gates complete with the presumed initials of an oyster magnate in the style of a champagne bottle label, demonstrating a certain consistency in the dominant Staten Island aesthetic over the years.

We followed the shore south and west, around the channel of the Arthur kill. There seemed to be no further evidence of the splendid oyster epoch. Suddenly we stumbled into a corner of Bavaria, not far from New Jersey, and providentially just in time for lunch. Almost across the street from a shady and overgrown graveyard filled with headstones of first generation immigrants from the old country, we found Killmeyer's.

Except for the ATM sign and the slot-mounted air-conditioner one would swear one was in any of countless villages in the surrounds of Munich.

We made for the tented biergarten in the back yard, empty of people on this weekday noon, but crowded with plastic Wal-mart patio furniture. A dirndled waitress, somewhat surprised to see us, soon brought us the list of spezialitäten. A blackboard on the wall listed an impressive array of deutsche brews. Traitors to the south, we ordered refreshing tankards of Gaffel Kolsch, a beer so delicious that it inspires in me the hope of one day visiting Cologne.

Latkes, and spaetzle mit wienerschnitzel. The latter seemed perhaps to have been breaded and frozen somewhere back in the old country, but we weren't really there for the food. Apparently on weekends Killmeyer's features their own local oompah band.

After this unexpected transatlantic adventure, we wended our slightly blurry way back to Brooklyn, where we regaled our good friend and favorite saloonkeeper St. John Frizell with our tales of intrepid outerborough exploration. "OMG!," he said, "You've discovered Killmeyer's. I love that place. Did you see the bar? It was built by itinerant Czech carpenters. Apparently they just traveled around stopping into places and offering to build authentic Praguian furnishings. Isn't it spectacular?" Absolutely, we agreed at once, and made on the spot a vague plan someday to return together, and polka.

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Does anyone else find this unsettling?

I'm referring to the teutonic font complete with umlaut, the high impact red and black graphics, the marauding crusader flaunting the cross of St. George on his shield, his sword of wrath held high as he rears back on his horse, preparing to trample unwashed heathens and infidels under his white steed's hooves of justice and righteousness.

It might just be time for a rebranding campaign, as nobody seems to have thought about changing the label on Rwanda's favorite beer since the country was a German colony, way back before World War One. The beer is French in origin, from the town of Mützig in Alsace, that part of the Franco-German borderlands that seems to be continually confused as to whether it is in France, or part of Germany. Today, apparently, Heineken owns the brand.

The Three Pillars of American Collegiate Culture

Although it is not Oktober, no visit to München would be complete without an authentic beer garden experience, and so AK and I dutifully cycled over to the "Chinese Tower," one of Bavaria's most notorious, high-volume opportunities to trade your hard-earned euros for a full bladder. The hip people in Munich (both of them) consider the Chinese Tower to be a hideous touristic display of all the worst elements of south German culture, but we think, of course, that it is never the wrong time or place to drink crisp gallons of beer in the afternoon sunshine.



We all associate pretzels, beer and hotdogs with German culinary culture, but two beastly wars in the last century seem to have eroded America's full recognition of the cultural debt due our sometime enemies. Pouring down the liters and devouring delcious barbecued ribs as the oompah marches of the brass polka band wafted out from the second tier of the tower, I realized that, except for the lack of a couple dozen guys booting a pigskin up and down a field, I was at an American college football game. The combination of binge drinking, bad music, worse singing, and chicken and ribs drenched in molasses and mustard sauce reminded me of numerous Saturday afternoons back at the alma mater, so that the visit to the Chinisische Tor left me with a newfound appreciation for just how very much we owe to the German nation for providing the firm tripod of beer, grease and polka on which the collegiate experience sits.

Many litres meet their demise at the acres of green folding tables in the shadow of the Chinese Tower.

This dude is schlepping twenty pounds of beer, and that's not including the mugs.

Half chicken with kraut, slab of ribs, "German" potato salad, pretzel. Forget North Carolina, this was really good 'cue!


This worthy, and indeed his entire table, "livened up the joint" with a constant patter of drunken singing, asynchronous chanting that may or may not have been football (soccer) related, and various other embarrassments. Standing up and removing his shirt and then thrusting his pudgy arms in the air in triumph, as if the other thousand of us enjoying our pints had been waiting desperately for just such a display of sweaty corpulence, this brilliant specimen attempted to down a full liter of Munich's finest malted hops, funnelator-style. His table cheered him on at first, but when he interrupted his chugathon with a brief pause for air and sanity he was rewarded with a cascade of soggy french fries, crumpled napkins and cigarette butts, lofted towards his round, taut belly from every corner of the garden.


As Sarah Wheeler puts it in Travels in a Thin Country, "the deadly combination of hot sun and cold beer conspired to cause the afternoon to evaporate."