El Valle Restaurant’s lunch special: a quarter chicken, rice, beans, and a soda for $5.99. Can’t beat it. While I was there a few officers from the 41st Precinct came in for lunch. In 2013, it’s hard to believe, but this wholly normal, seemingly safe, busy urban area was “Fort Apache, The Bronx” thirty years ago.

I wonder if this scene on Barretto Street would make a good setting for a Fiat 500 advertisement?

An impressive looking school just off Southern Boulevard.

Remember on “Law & Order,” when Lenny would say to some young punk, “And when you’re sent to jail this time, it ain’t gonna be picnic like the good ole days back in Spofford.” Here it is, in all its razor-wire encircled glory – Spofford Juvenile Detention Center. I did not ask for a tour.

Hunt’s Point is like an industrial version of Alice’s Restaurant. “You can get anything you want … on Barretto Street.” The warehouses and lots are full of pallets, ice cream trucks, hub caps, scrap auto parts, carpeting, steel rods, etc. etc.

• Bronx,
• Hunts Point