anthony: how does the joke begin? three men in a bar? but it s not a bar. imagine the bronx a corner bodega, or maybe a luncheonette, a diner, three men, strictly by coincidence, find themselves in the same place at the same time. sitting at the counter is afrika bambaataa. across the room is melle mel. door opens, and who walks in? dj kool herc. three men who created the musical style that s become the soundtrack to, well, the whole wide world. do they all nod at each other? lament how all of them got screwed over, cut out of the big money? or just laugh at the absurdity of it all? hip-hop it came from nowhere else. it could have come from nowhere else but the bronx. i took a walk through this beautiful world felt the cool rain on my shoulder found something good in this beautiful world i felt the rain getting colder sha, la, la, la, la, la, sha, la, la, la, la, la, sha, la, la, la, la, la, sha, la, la, la, la anthony: this is the br
anthony: justin fornal, aka baron ambrosia, has taken it upon himself to serve as the bronx s culinary ambassador. baron ambrosia: let the dinner begin! baron ambrosia: this is the porcupine. woman: ah! anthony: an evangelist for the cause of introducing the manifold splendiferous delights of this mighty borough to the ignorant, well, like me. he s got a show on the tv and he throws parties where he serves creatures that would make andrew zimmern turn grey and slump unconscious to the floor. showman, iconoclast, explorer, and gourmet. baron ambrosia: the bronx is so multi-faceted, but for some reason, this is the first place i always take people because this just oozes and emanates, kind of, that flavor of the bronx. anthony: and he knows what i like places like this.
born and raised here, he s never really left for over seven decades. this is a disappearing aspect of new york, for sure. the real thing jewish deli. liebman s is one of the last. there used to be dozens of places where you could get your brisket, chopped liver, a good pastrami, some pickles, with a black cherry soda or a cel-ray of course to drink. lloyd: the world series is going on. howard cosell is on the air. suddenly you see a tongue of flame licking up into the, uh, up into the sky. and he says, this is the kind of thing that jimmy carter saw, ladies and gentlemen. the bronx is burning. the old image of the bronx as middle class, upwardly mobile, healthy area had survived up until 1977. this shattered it. anthony: right. the bronx was burning like the story, and that stuck.
i m going to tell you in a short period of time, everything i know about writing. today i m dropping by in my role as substitute teacher. i m from manhattan. and i don t know anything about the bronx, really. i m i m rid ridiculously, shamefully ignorant. do you think people know about the bronx? what it s like to grow up in the bronx? male student: everybody perceives the bronx as the emergence of hip-hop and all that, the culture. but, apart from that, the bronx is actually lively at all times. at night, at in the morning, you hear people screaming from outside your window. female student: i ve grown up with them since i was what, like second female student: like seven. female student: yeah. you know? and it just happened that way. so i feel like the sense of community is like the biggest thing. teacher: i ve been teaching here for eight years. and i think that what people forget is, a lot of times, we ve talked about this in class, they focus on lots of diseases, h
lloyd: is the bronx better? absolutely. there is more home ownership in the south bronx than had ever existed in history. that doesn t mean that we have reached utopia. we have not. how long it will take? i m a historian. i look in the other direction. uh, i would say my crystal ball is cracked. white castle employee: i got four cheeseburgers coming up! anthony: is it the best hamburger in the world? far from it, my friends. is it even, strictly speaking, a burger? i mean, it s small and square and steamed. it can be, especially when you eat a lot of them, as one tends to, a hate yourself in the morning experience. but if you grew up with white castle like i did, and like handsome dick manitoba did, this connects with some deep, dinosaur part of the brain, evoking a powerful emotional response. handsome dick: these are a great cultural part of my childhood. we d come here 24 hours a day. there were guys on their dates. there was a bunch of punk rock kids. so along with that p