Pikesville used to have two bagel shops, now it has one. It used to have five delis, four closed and only one new. The five synagogues within a square half-mile of each other with sanctuary capacity of well over a thousand haven't been more than half-full in twenty-five years. Sure. Pikesville has other bagel shops, other delis, other synagogues, but no others have the officiaity of a ‘name.’
When you said you were going to ‘Joan & Gary’s’, everybody knew you're getting bagels. When you said Suburban House, everybody knew you're getting deli. When you said you were going to ‘Beth Tfiloh’, everybody knew how to drive to the tucked away shul where Old Court Road makes a sudden hard turn and becoes simple farm land which all Pikesville used to be until we Jews moved there - a land without people for a people without land.
For deli we have the Essen Room, opened four years ago; enough of a deli that nobody complains about missing Suburban House - Emperor of Delis on the property of the Suburban Club, where rich Jews belonged who wanted to hide their wealth - unlike he Woodholme Club, where rich Jews went to display their wealth.
Everybody complained about Suburban House when it was open… the Suburban House was a ticket to a non-stop show of middle class Jews yelling at each other, yelling about food, yelling at kids, yelling at waiters, yelling about the bill. But it was Suburban House... where you went to celebrate events and for the best Tuna Sandwich in Baltimore, usually served with a free side of local Utz potato chips and a pickle spear sour enough to pull you through a wormhole. It was Suburban House, why would anyone stop going?
One day ten years ago it burned to a cinder, and h Pikesville as anyone understood it burned down with it. It re-opened six blocks up Reisterstown Road nearer the Beltway in Pomona Square, where rival Attman's had its county location, but Suburban House was never the same.... It closed the very week the Essen Room opened, and the Essen Room has an ersatz vibe of Jews now too old for deli. Only Lenny's is still there on Pikesville's northern border with Owings Mills, and Attman’s only has the downtown location where it's been since 1915. Pikesville Attman's went out of business 30 years ago, so did Kaplan's in westerly nextdoor Randallstown, which became a goysiher outfit near Catonsville for corporate deli trays. A few years ago closed Miller's, the low class deli where sandwiches gave instant diarrhea and the floor had the same grease as the hot dogs; and Snyder’s, the upper-middle class deli in the 'Pink Mall,' a mini-mall painted pink, where teenagers went before seeing a movie at Loewe's, and families went after shopping for bar-mitzvah suits at Cohen's.
For kosher supermarkets, dear Shapiro's is a memory so distant nobody remembers. All comers since like Miracle Market and Seasons never lasted. Now it's Market Maven's turn to get stoned, but all that's left is Seven Mile Market; an edifice so Herodian it no longer fits on Seven Mile Lane. It requires store-space large enough to accommodate an historic monument of modern Judaism meant to last as long as the Methusaleh: the single largest kosher supermarket in the world. Parking in the lot you hear it crow "I am Seven Mile, kashrus of kashrus, look upon my varnishkes, ye mashgiachs, and despair."; a kosher market as big as a Walmart and like Walmart, of quality somewhere between meh and feh.
For bagels, Joan and Gary's is also a 20th century memory, but there’s still ‘Goldberg’s, so successful it franchised to the DC suburbs.
Goldberg's is as extraordinary a place as the last living link with the old Pikesville should be. All the megashuls still stand, even if you have to explain now how to get there. The only thriving food business is the caterers; old mainstays like O'Fishel's and the Knish Shop because every Shiva House needs food.
But Goldberg’s is the ‘shtetl square’ baruch hashem... The owner’s a virulent asshole, and one should not excuse the behavior of great geniuses, but dear god does the pandemic made us all miss that place: old frummies haggling Talmud, orthodox mothers shushing their children, old ladies with platinum perms playing bridge while they complain about middle aged children while gossiping about everybody else’s. The gorgeous bubbly frummette in her 20s they force to take the orders so that we’re put off from yelling at the staff from the moment we enter. The mentally challenged guy always wiping down the coffee station. The guys behind the take home counter always yelling at each other. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is Bagels.
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