Metropolitan Avenue

... are obsessed with their cats.

There's this one cat in Williamsburg on Metropolitan Avenue, which I'm sure you know.

Uh, his name's Tiger and his owner's name's Chiku.

And, uh, Chiku takes Tiger home every single night, and he, he brought him to the bodega originally to be a, to be like a bodega cat to chase away mice.

I let her get a half block ahead, then followed, hiding clumsily behind traffic, feeling every bit the cartoon sleuth I'd become.

She turned north, entering the Metropolitan Avenue subway, and I let her slip through the turnstile before giving up pursuit.

She'd be home soon.

The question was whether I'd have the courage to finally ask her what the hell was happening.

Yeah.

We grew up on Metropolitan Avenue, and two blocks away was Manhattan Avenue, and that's where the bottling plant was.

When I was a kid, in the summertime, it was so hot, they would open all the garage doors, and we would sit there for hours and just watch the bottles go around the conveyor.

And I swear, I started drinking at, I had to be three years old that I started drinking.