[Leshko's on Avenue A at Seventh Street circa 1979]
Name: Angel “Petroleum” Luis Roman
Occupation: Security, Construction.
Location: East Ninth Street and 1st Avenue
Time: 4:10 pm on Monday, Aug. 26
I’ve been here since 1952. I was 12 years old when I came to the neighborhood from Puerto Rico with just my mother. It was a big change. Rent used to be $17 a month.
I graduated from Seward Park High School in 1958. I retired last year from security. I used to work in construction for awhile. I worked as a security guard and I worked in the stock market from 1986 till 1994. I used to be what you call a messenger.
One of the oldest places around here is Katz's Delicatessen. I worked for them for awhile. I used to wash dishes for them — making a living, you know. I also occasionally work at Moishe’s for the Jewish holidays sometimes. Sometimes they need me to work for one week. I like working with people.
I saw this neighborhood grow up. It was a poor neighborhood. Years ago people used to play dominoes in the streets, getting fresh with the ladies, throwing beer bottles on the street. Now you don’t see that. To tell you the truth, there were a lot of gangs, a lot of racketeering, but it was better than it was now — 100% percent better. Give me the old neighborhood and I would take it anytime. I liked the Dominican places, the Puerto Rican places, but I don’t eat in restaurants so I’d go there to drink my beer and that’s it.
For fun, I’ll have a few drinks with my friends — enjoy myself. You can ask anybody around here, you know Petroleum? They will know me. They call me that because I can outdrink them. I also used to go to the skating rink. I used to be a good ice skater. I’d go up to 57th Street.
The old people that used to live here, the Puerto Rican, the Jewish, whatever it is, they moved to New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Miami. A lot of people moved to Florida. I like to live right here. I’ll tell you one thing, I love New York, but I don’t recommend nobody to come here. It’s tough. The good thing about New York is that it is one of the safest places to live now. You go to Puerto Rico, Miami — it’s much more dangerous. Here I am not afraid. New York is one of the safest places.
I have my wife and my daughters. They are doing good. One is 41 and one is 37. They’re doing better than I did. They have houses with pools in New Jersey.
Lately many of us have watched in horror as one of our neighborhood's churches is being violently torn down.
Especially difficult for some of our neighbors whose stations of life were honored and celebrated where now is only debris.
The Mary Help of Christians Church had been a steady presence for generations in our ever changing neighborhood.
Generations of immigrants formed communities there to help each other find a path into the American dream.
For more then a year now I have watched them quietly gather and pray outside exposed to every kind of weather.
They are the very last few of an once huge vibrant mostly Italian, Irish and then Puerto Rican community.
So [tonight] they will gather for the last time in front of what was their church and recite the rosary once more.
I will be there, as I hope many of our neighbors, to pay respect to the dignity of their expression of community and its history.
Owner Joe Dobias and his wife, Jill Schulster, will transform the old JoeDoe space—which will relocate in the spring—into a nostalgic blue-plate-special spot, offering comfort-food gone quirky: French-dip dumplings with roast beef and mozzarella, tacos with duck confit and radish, and chili topped with Fritos and jalapeños.
