We had spent that spring and summer hanging out. I was sort of single for most of it, which is the best way to be in the summer. We saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and drove to Atlantic City afterwards; we got pulled over on our way out at 3 in the morning and my friend flirted with the police officer and didn't get a ticket. I was in a band with her boyfriend and a couple other guys. Everyone needs a girl in the band but I wasn't quite winsome enough, or musical enough. I had played piano as a kid; how hard could it be to play keyboards in an indie-rock band? It was hard. They bought me Piano for Dummies for my birthday. I wrote a song about life on the moon and quit the band. We had a studio, a massive loft space in Kensington in a former factory building that cost $1000 a month. I said maybe I'd go there to write. I went there to hang out. I had the landlord build a darkroom and then never developed any pictures. We had a party and grilled s'mores outside and afterward went to Hollertronix, the dance party that was thrown every few weeks or so in the in the basement of a place officially called the Ukrainian-American Citizens Association, which everyone just called the UACA or the Ukie Hall. There was another place, the RUBA Hall, which was officially the Russian Ukrainian Boating Association, that also had parties. No one did much boating there.

Hollertronix parties were sweaty, messy, dirty affairs. They were the best parties in Philadelphia. You went to them to get drunk and dance all night. The DJs—Diplo and Low Budget—were kings. On Halloween there was a special edition of Hollertronix and there were rumors that M.I.A., who was dating Diplo, was going to show up and perform. Diplo had met M.I.A. when she was producing her first album, Arular. Diplo had remixed the songs on Arular from his apartment in North Philadelphia and turned it into a mixtape called Piracy Funds Terrorism, whose tracks had leaked online.

There was a debate about where to go on Halloween. One of our friends was having a party, but a lot of our friends were also going to Hollertronix. I was dressed up like Punky Brewster. This was not so much of a stretch; when I was 8, everyone said I looked just like her. (She later had her breasts reduced. I did not.) My boyfriend was dressed as Superman, in a costume that in retrospect erred too much on the side of male ballet dancer. Moe and our other friend Jessica were dressed up as Grunge, or maybe The '90s.

I can't remember why, but we decided to go to the friends' party. Probably because it was closer and we wouldn't have to wait in line to get in.

Everyone said the Halloween Hollertronix was the best one ever. M.I.A. threw copies of Piracy Funds Terrorism into the crowd. It was insane; amazing; off the chain. The party we went to was boring and we left early. Even though I saw M.I.A. perform at the UACA a few months later, she had already gotten famous. It wasn't the same.

Moe moved out to live with her boyfriend, then moved back in when they broke up. Jessica and I moved to New York. I stopped going to dance parties.

Doree Shafrir is a writer living in Brooklyn.

UPDATE: OOH! And also Richard Lawson! It's like nostalgia or something! Something GOOD!

ALSO: It should be made clear that Doree is only returning as a two-day-a-week contributor. A two-day-a-week contributor, okay? It is apparently very important that we clarify: Doree Shafrir back at Gawker as a two-day-a-week contributor. We hear those days are Thursday and Friday, but whatever days they are, it will only be two of them.

On Hanukkah, Jews are supposed to cook food fried in oil to commemorate the eight days that the Maccabees' lamp stayed lit with very little oil, as Sarah Palin has so helpfully reminded us. The latke is the most widespread of the fried foods that Jews tend to cook, though doughnuts are also popular. (FYI, Dunkin' Donuts are not all kosher! Check with your rabbi.) Other options: fried Snickers bars, fried dough, tempura broccoli.

But we're not here to make tempura broccoli! (Though if we were, I would tell you that you can get Panko crumbs at the Red Hook Fairway on this random shelf near the olive bar. You're welcome!) We're here to make LATKES! So first, it helps if your mom, like mine, made you a cookbook a few years ago featuring all of the time-worn Shafrir family recipes, handed down lovingly through the generations. Such as my grandmother's famous flank steak recipe: Marinate one flank steak overnight/all day in half a bottle of Wishbone Italian dressing in a nonmetallic container, broil/barbecue on each side for approximately 5-10 minutes, and slice thinly against the grain. Now that's home cooking.

For latkes, you'll need the following: 4 Idaho potatoes, 1/2 small onion, 3 large eggs, 1 teaspoon salt, 2-3 tablespoons flour, and 1/4 teaspoon baking powder. This should make at least 20 smallish latkes. Now let's do some math. A 5-pound bag of potatoes (so, like, 15 potatoes probably) at FreshDirect is $2.49, so that's approximately 17 cents per potato, so that's 68 cents worth of potatoes. A two-pound bag of onions, which is approximately 7 onions, is 99 cents, so 14 cents per onion, and since you're only using half, that's 7 cents. A dozen large eggs costs $1.99, so we're looking at approximately 17 cents per egg, so that's 51 cents' worth of eggs. I'm just going to ASSUME that you have salt, flour, and baking powder around. If you don't, okay, let's add another 50 cents on there. Oh and then of course you need oil, which my mom doesn't have in her list of ingredients. I would not use peanut oil because it gets too hot. I like vegetable oil. You can also use canola oil. Don't use olive oil, even though I suppose that's the most technically historically accurate thing to use, because then your latkes will taste gross. So a 24-ounce bottle of Wesson vegetable oil is $3.99, and you'll probably use—let's be generous here—maybe half the bottle (no one said these were healthy!), so we're talking like 2 bucks worth of oil. That is, if you don't already have oil around, which you might.

So your 20 latkes will cost $3.76 if you don't have oil or flour or baking powder or salt. That's the MAXIMUM they will cost. That's 19 cents a latke.

And you're still going to order them from Russ & Daughters? You must not be Jewish.

(Ba-dum-dum!)

So now, the fun part! Well, actually, this part kind of sucks, because I am a purist and I believe that you should grate the potatoes and onions by hand. This is by no means required. Some people like to use the shredding blade for their food processor. I personally believe that latkes require some sweat equity, and so I hand-grate. You'll want a box grater. Grate the potatoes and squeeze out the water. This is very important, or your latkes will be too soggy. If you have cheesecloth for this step, use it. Then grate the onions. You can mix them together now.

You should be wearing an apron, by the way. Shit's about to get messy.

Separate the eggs. Put the whites into a large mixing bowl and beat them until they're stiff. I use a hand mixer. If you use a whisk you'll be there for days. Once you've done that, you can start heating the oil. Not too much oil—you're not deep-frying—but not, like, that little soupçon of oil that you sprinkle onto the pan when you're sauteing a piece of fish. You know? You want those latkes nice and crispy.

So the oil is heating. You want that oil HOT. Now, mix together the potatoes, onion, and egg yolks. Then you fold in the egg whites and add the salt, flour, and baking powder. It WILL look gloopy. Don't be scared! However, if the mixture is really soupy you can add a LITTLE bit more flour, but not too much. You know how crabcakes sometimes have way too much filler and not enough crab? Same idea.

Once your oil is hot hot hot, drop the mixture by tablespoons into the hot oil.

OMG I can't believe I almost forgot something really important—you want to use a CAST-IRON pan. If you use a nonstick pan I will fucking kill you. Cast-iron is the only way to go. I mean, you really shouldn't be using nonstick pans anyway, because they give you cancer, but here, especially, you want to be using a cast-iron pan. Very, very important.

Okay. Whew. So you're dropping the mixture into the pan (the CAST-IRON one) and you want to be really careful about not crowding the pan. Just fry a few at a time. We're not in a rush here! It's Hanukkah. If people are getting antsy, throw a dreidel at them and tell them to shut the fuck up. Or just give them another glass of wine—I guess that would be the quote-unquote "nice" thing to do.

Remember how I said drop the mixture by tablespoons? You're not making monstrous oversized American IHOP-style pancakes here. These are supposed to be small. You are supposed to eat several of them, and they are more delicious if they are small.

Cook them for a minute or so on each side. You'll know when they're done. While they're cooking you should also set up a plate with a couple paper towels on it and have some extra paper towels hanging around, to drain them. When they're done, put them on the plate and pat them lightly with the paper towels. Call over your impatient guests and serve them. They can help themselves to applesauce and sour cream from the fridge.

Happy Hanukkah!

Previous recipes from The Awl Cookbook

Today, the vestiges of this once almost wholly Italian neighborhood are in the social clubs, behind anonymous doors; restaurants like Sam's, at Court and Baltic; and Damian Hair Styling, the wood-paneled barber shop on Court near Third Place; and the Scotto Funeral Home, at Court and First Place, opened by Patsy and Rose Scotto in 1926. Now the funeral home is run by their son, Salvatore "Buddy" Scotto, a longtime fixture in the neighborhood political scene, who has for years allowed community groups and other political organizations to meet there. In January 2008, the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association announced it would be moving its meetings to nearby St. Mary's Church, partly because of Mr. Scotto's controversial stance on the rezoning of the Gowanus Canal area; Mr. Scotto was in favor, while many of the newer residents were opposed. (Still, as one former Brooklyn Paper reporter recalled, holding meetings at the funeral home was always pleasant because Mr. Scotto provided comfortable seating and free coffee.)

But Mr. Scotto's devotion to redeveloping the Gowanus Canal area is nothing new. In fact, as the New York Times noted in September 1969, the Carroll Gardens Association, as it was then called, led by Mr. Scotto, had in the previous year hired an architect to work on a redevelopment plan for the canal.

"Carroll Gardens is a new name for one of the oldest neighborhoods in Brooklyn," the Times reported. "Until five years ago the 60-block area of tree-lined streets and privately owned brownstones was usually considered part of the larger, predominantly Negro neighborhood of Red Hook."

And so a group of second- and third-generation Italian-Americans, led by Mr. Scotto, decided to rename their part of the neighborhood in 1964. There was already a Carroll Street stop on the old IND subway, and a Carroll Park, and so this group decided to start calling themselves the Carroll Gardens Association, and then the real estate brokers started using it, and then it stuck.

As Mrs. Agnes Bianco ("a blond mother of three boys") told the reporter: "A few years ago, when I tried to take a cab home from my sister's on Ocean Avenue, the driver would ask me where Third Place was and I would say Red Hook. Sometimes the driver would refuse to take me. Now I say Carroll Gardens and there's no problem."

But despite the name change, the neighborhood still had problems—and many of them were connected to the Gowanus Canal, the fetid body of water that Mr. Scotto would still be obsessed with 40 years later. "Look at this," Mr. Scotto told the Times back in 1969. "Here we are 30 minutes from the heart of Manhattan, and what do we have? A miserable, stinking parking lot."

And Mrs. Bianco added: "I could just see my kids enjoying the canal, playing around it, seeing fish instead of garbage in it. They'd come and stand with their mouths open if it's anything like the way I picture it."

But even back then, the plan for the canal's redevelopment was running into obstacles. For one, the area, which was zoned for manufacturing, provided 11,400 jobs. For another, the housing component of the plan, as envisioned by the neighborhood association, would be integrated public housing. "The possibility of an influx of nonwhites into the area worries many residents of this solidly white, working-class area. They are cautious about expressing themselves on racial issues. They say, instead, that the neighborhood is too small to support a high school, or that they fear a 'wild crowd' in the area."

Previously: Sweet Georgia Brown, Of Arthur's Tavern

It seemed a Dr. Harry B. Smith, who lived at 131 Fort Greene Place but was moving to 419 Park Place, in Prospect Heights, had "put the house… in the hands of an agent," who had sold it to a Hiram S. Thomas.

When the neighbors got wind of the transaction-thanks to a General Molineaux, who lived on the block, and who had seen Mr. Thomas in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where Mr. Thomas was the proprietor of the Lake House, a large hotel there-they tried to get him to sell the house to them instead, but the price he named was too high.

Also, the article pointed out, Mr. Thomas was a college graduate, and his children-a son and daughter-were, at the time, enrolled in college. And according to his obituary, from 1907, he was the steward of the Capital Club in Washington, D.C., during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, and had been born a free man, in 1837, in Drummondville, Ontario.

No matter, said the neighbors! They did not want him there.

But they had not figured on a prominent clergyman getting involved. The Rev. S.B. Halliday, the former assistant pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, under Henry Ward Beecher, wrote a letter to the Times that read, in part:

I have supposed that the residents of Fort Greene Place were so eminently respectable that they could not have feared that their respectability could ever be called in question by the coming of half a dozen respectable families of color settling around them, much less by a single family. What a pretty story it is to get abroad over the country that a black man cannot move into a respectable neighborhood without stirring up a rebellion. It is not, it seems, that he is poor, only that he is not white… I would as soon have a respectable poor
colored man live next me as a white man, and I would not fear his coming would lessen the value of my home, and if I thought so, poor as I am, I would not object to his coming. I think our city is disgraced by the presence of such a spirit in its midst.

Smackdown!

The article concludes: "Mr. Thomas has decided now not to sell under any circumstances."

But according to building records obtained by by Carl Hancock Rux, Thomas never occupied the house, selling it two months after his purchase, even though the Times wrote on October 3, 1894 that the purchase was complete and "his family will move into their new home about the middle of the present month."

Hiram Thomas was well-known in Saratoga for taking over the famous Moon's hotel and restaurant and renaming it the Lake House. "The famous Moon's Hotel and the pretty little pagodas on the elegantly laid-out grounds were largely patronized," wrote the Times in July 1888. "Mr. Hiram Thomas, formerly head waiter at the Grand Union, is the proprietor of this place," though the hotel itself was owned by an Edward Kearney of New York.

Another Times article from later that month introduced the "prominent arrivals" at various hotels, and explained that "there were several moonlight parties to the lake this evening, and the orchestra at Hiram Thomas's Lake House, formerly Moon's, was kept at work until a late hour."

In 1892, an author identified by the Times only as "W.D." wrote a travel piece on Lakewood, New Jersey, where he was delighted to be the recipient "of great honors in the Lakewood's dining room, for who should be the head waiter but the dignified and portly Hiram Thomas, from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, who has 'head-waited' upon me many times in that establishment; and Mr. Thomas stood by me while I ate the Lakewood's Little Neck clams, and we talked about Saratoga and about Henry Clair, who is soon to open a hotel on Lookout Mountain, at Chattanooga, and about the Lakewood and its grand dining room. It is no small honor, you must understand, to have the dignified head waiter in a big hotel devote his time to you and even stop to talk with you. But I wore my laurels as modestly as I could."

Thomas' obituary, however, raises another mystery by naming him the originator of Saratoga chips-what we now know as potato chips. But the conventional wisdom about Saratoga chips is that they were invented in 1853 by an African-American cook named George "Speck" Crum-who, not coincidentally, also worked at Moon's Lake House.

Interesting.

According to the official website for Saratoga, "local legend" has it that Crum invented the chips after a patron found the thick-cut fried potatoes too thick and soggy, and sent them back twice, and so Crum responded by slicing the potatoes extra thin and over-salting them. But the legend itself is murky; his sister, Catherine Speck
Wicks, who also worked at Moon's, laid claim to the invention as well.

It's possible, of course, that Hiram Thomas invented the chips, and that the older Crum took credit for the invention. However, we don't know when Thomas started working at Moon's; his obituary only mentions that "as a youth [he] served as waiter in hotels and as steward on the Great Lakes," and lists no source for the claim that he in fact invented the potato chip.