Saint Bea

"This (the Law) means to do what is right, to be honest, to be good. This means to other people. Our life is hard enough. For everybody should be the best, not only for you or me."

- Bernard Malamud, THE ASSISTANT

Today is Saint Bea’s nameday. Saint Bea as in: Bea Koutros, longtime resident of Greenpoint, who passed away this last May, after many years spent serving and growing this neighborhood with every fiber of her unique being.

Of course, Bea as such is not a recognized name in the Greek Orthodox calendar. Rather, Bea is the calcified mis-pronunciation of Dee, diminutive of Demetra, who is both a classical Catholic Saint, Demetria — celebrated for her piety, her hunger strikes, and for faithfully dropping dead at the feet of her Roman oppressor — and a classic Greek God, Demeter — celebrated as a sister and lover of Zeus, mother of Persephone, and a giver of food and grain. And it is Demetra “Bea” Koutros whose name is celebrated in the Greek calendar on October 26th.

Yet, Greenpoint’s “Bea” comes about her own beatification no-less naturally. A Greek immigrant, who, together with her husband Lou, made her way to New York City by way of Argentina sometime in the early 1960s, Bea was bound to and by Greenpoint’s storied Sunview Luncheonette, the small diner she and Lou founded in 1963, and ran for the better part of 50 years at the corner of Nassau and Henry.

It was here at the Sunview that Bea inhabited her neighborhood in a state of living bliss as maker of hamburgers, shaker of milkshakes, convener of communities, and avatar of a New York City that was. Her life, and the culture it represented, may have been humble in scope, but it informed generations of New Yorkers in a mode of openness, generosity, and curiosity that resonates to — and against — this day.

And how do I know all of this, having never met Bea?

Easy: I talked to people who had.

ADVENIS IN GREENPOINT
Francisco moved to the far side of Greenpoint in January of 2001. He recalls a lonely time in a new and daunting city, a crumbling marriage, and a cheap apartment on Sutton Street — the Avenue C of Greenpoint at that time. “Pretty desolated,” as he describes.

His walk to the L train took him by the Sunview, which drew him in.

“I remember I was really amazed to see a real ‘50s or ‘60s luncheonette there,” he says. “And the lady was super sweet! You feel like you were in a sitcom: all the time, the same people — her husband, old friends. Just sitting there, making conversation.”

He looked over the menu, with its mystical prices, and ordered the $1 burger. And the $1.25 Milkshake. “I’m not a milkshake person,” he says, “but just being there, you had to order a milkshake.”

The glory of the venue bolsters his claim. A set-in-aspic vision of a New York Diner, with all the reassuring, puffy-grandeur of post-war, pre-'Nam Americana, the Sunview is resplendent with its industrial coffee urns, quilted vent hood, pie display case, and soda fountains like the necks of swans. It was and remains a space as worthy of archeology as Tutankhamun’s tomb — and easily as rare.

Seduced by its charm, Francisco returned shortly, and, in a story that is remarkably similar among all those who visited, came to inhabit the diner as something of a home over the course of a few years, becoming friends with Bea, finding his way into the specific world of Greenpoint he still inhabits today.

He recalls her stories of Argentina, her pride in her diner, her animosity towards tips (“You had to just drop the money and run…”), her evident beauty. “She was a strong woman, even though she was delicate,” he says.

He also recalls neighborhood locals manning the booths against the wall, and the occasional glimpse down the hall to catch the silhouette of Lou in the apartment they shared behind the luncheonette. He remembers the tang of onions in the morning, the smell of grease on diced potatoes, and Bea behind her counter, endlessly, patiently chopping. “Everybody who goes there has a very beautiful experience,” he contends, “and once you go, you’ll go for a long time.”

Chad moved to Greenpoint in 2000, and likewise found in the Luncheonette a haven of welcome in an unfamiliar neighborhood. “I can remember the first time I walked in, and she was sitting behind the counter, reading the NY Post,” Chad recalls. He remembers being struck by the familiarity of the place, the clear feeling of home. “It was old New York. It reminded me of ‘The Assistant,” by Malamud.”

Like Francisco, Chad too began to frequent the place, slowly putting down his own roots. As conscientious people then gentrifying and changing the fabric of a storied neighborhood (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, anybody?), both Chad and Francisco felt a keen awareness of their effect, and admitted that it could feel daunting. Yet Bea’s diner is remembered as a place where those generational and tribal differences were inverted, and turned into the weft of true and future community.

“I just felt so warmly welcomed, not just to the room but to the neighborhood and the community,” Chad recalls, “And it meant something very powerful for me to experience that, and it drew me back over and over again.”

In these and other recollections, folks who knew the Sunview Luncheonette converge on a picture of a place caught out of time and space; a venue at once eternal and resolutely present; a magical and real place built from the simple tools of old-New York: affordable real-estate, cultural diversity, mutual respect, hustle.

And we’ve not even talked about the $1.25 burgers!

One quirk of the Sunview was the old-world charm of her hand-made hamburgers, assembled from meat from just down at the local Polish store, patted into patties before your eyes, and cooked on her altar-like grill to rare perfection.

“It has a little bit of a funky flavor; but in a good way,” recalled Francisco. “We always joke that she has this meat, and then a little bit of older meat — like the starter, or the ‘Mother.’ And she would put a little bit of the meat mother in the burger, and….” Chad concurs: “Bea was the king of the $1.25 hamburger, that is for sure.”

The details accrue to paint a picture of a woman refining her craft, where that craft is the running of a small, community diner for the express benefit of neighbors. Like the “Living National Treasures” of Japan (literal name: Preservers of Intangible Cultural Properties), Bea plied this craft all but in defiance of a world that would have it slicked up, sold out, and repeated. Surely, as the neighborhood began down its fateful path towards manic real-estate bubbles and hurricane-force gentrification, the pressures on Bea’s space to change would have been powerful. As owner of her own building, she’d have seen her share of offers.

Who knows how she was able to sustain her vision, on a purely practical level. Perhaps it is just that nothing can buy what is not for sale? Certainly, her dedication to low prices, her lack of concern for wealth, her personal generosity, and her clear-eyed understanding of the basic human need to create community by contributing to it, represent a way of thinking and being at odds with much of what we now celebrate in Greenpoint, to say nothing of the City at large.

Not to burden her with the mantle of a revolutionary, yet there was something deeply insurgent at the heart of Bea’s principled iconoclasm, something urban and specific and elemental to this time and place, which can guide us to better inhabit our world in the present day.

VITAE SANCTORUM
And it is here that we find the final fodder for Bea’s beatification.

As Bea aged, and especially following the twin blows of a health-department shutdown, and the stroke-then-death of Lou, her ability to meet the demands of the Sunview Luncheonette diminished. A group of Bea’s patrons responded by collaborating with her to open the space sporadically, to keep alive what she had pioneered. Friends of Bea to a person, they staged dinners, hosted conversations, and even threw a Christmas party with a tree in the corner and Bea on hand. Their efforts culminated in the 2013 founding of the Sunview Luncheonette Social Club, a nexus of community, collaboration, and resistance operating out of, and in testament to, Bea’s former diner.

“The SLSC is a way to toast her grace, generosity, and fortitude,” notes founding member Dylan. “It was Bea who invited us in, and, when she liked our cooking that first night, invited us back ‘to do that more often’,” he recalls. The group has grown over the years, and now comprises 30- 35 active members, or “Roughly the number of folks who will fit in the full diner,” he says, with relish. “We are kind of an anti-growth organization.”

With an agenda built on a tripartite pact of artistic events (screenings, music, drawing), social engagement, and aesthetic preservation, the social club uses the Sunview as a place to convene community. Accordingly, weekly Spanish classes, a monthly Black & Pink letter writing group, a “Run a Luncheonette” Kids’ Summer Camp, and a Marxist reading circle (Members: 2) all find a home in the present space. A tool lending library and member-use Risograph machine are on the premises. An open door means come on in.

As for money, again, the Social Club follow’s Bea’s lead. Following a mission that is “Resistant to traditional forms of commerce, commodification, and gentrification,” the Sunview relies on dues to pay the bills, and eschews a pay-for-entry model. “Most of our members share some sense of non-monetary euphoria,” admits Chad.

Intimate, honest, broke, and confident, the Sunview is an anomaly in a world gone drunk with other things. The result is a physical space, and it’s attendant memories, that stands as something of a miracle in today’s Greenpoint.

QUOD ULTIMUM MIRACULUM
And it is this miracle that I submit as the final evidence in the Beatification of Bea Koutros.

For if a miracle is still required to secure the respect of the Holy See, than the Bea’s diner passes muster, as it is clearly through her intercession that the Sunview finds itself alive and well in today’s New York. After all, the principal values it celebrates are nothing less than the shared spaces between us, which by definition resist commodification, confront polarization, and — if allowed! — give rise to a hopeful shared perspective on all that is under siege in today’s New York City, to say nothing of the world at large.

So, it is fitting that here, on Saint Bea’s name day, we remember her — giver of food and grain, faithful convener of wayward spirits, queen of the $1.25 hamburger — and perhaps even offer up a prayer in her Sainted Name, to preserve and expand all that is good in Greenpoint, even against great odds.