I was in South Florida when that record came out and I can assure you it was very big down there. In fact it had a reverberating influence because a lot of the freestyle dance acts of the 1980s used the “Planet Rock” beat or some variation of it on their records.
By the way, the #48 chart position was on Billboard’s Pop chart (Hot 100), and looking at that alone underplays the actual impact of the record. On Billboard’s R&B chart it went to #4 and stayed on the chart for 17 weeks. On the Billboard Dance chart it went to #3 and stayed for 20 weeks (about five months, highly unusual).
You’re lucky you’re still alive. Those places were notorious for leaving the food out *forever, *until some dumb shmuck (usually a tourist) bought it, no matter how fur-encrusted it had grown. And I once saw a homeless guy take an entire hard-boiled egg, put it into his mouth, then take it out and replace it. And don’t get me started on the hot food bars, with the food left out all day and night, until it was dry and burnt . . . and still for sale at an outrageous price. And did you check out the items in the rest of the store? Like the dusty canned goods with faded labels, that had been expired for years? They did have great produce though . . . at an outrageous price (whatever didn’t sell, and had gone bad, was recycled into the salad bar). Or the apples that had been given a spit shine. Literally.
Coulda sworn Unca Cecil taught me nearly thirty years ago that it originated in Florence, Italy (or whichever of those city-states Leonardo Da Vinci was charged with the defense of).
Those two struck me as funny choices, too. The cold cut sandwich should have been an Italian hero, for which you need to go specifically to a good Italian deli. With variations, it’s capicola, Genoa salami, mortadella, provolone, and either tomato or marinated peppers on a long roll with oil and vinegar.
Gyros – I’ve had better gyros in Chicago. In NY it’s usually called “souvlaki,” anyway. While they’re all the same thing (pressed chopped meat on a vertical revolving spit) it think the nomenclature depends on the ethnicity of the restaurateur.
Greek: gyro
Lebanese or Egyptian: souvlaki
Turkish: doner
In Western Europe you see mostly doner, because of all the Turks, and they put it on big soft rolls. In the U.S., the meat is stuffed into pita bread along with tomato, lettuce, and either tahini dressing or yogurt-cucumber dressing. Raw onions and hot sauce on request.
You eat buttered hamburger buns for breakfast in New York? Huh! that’s a new one for me.
Yes, as a matter of fact where I live a Kaiser roll is a hamburger bun.
No wait, looking at the linked provided by Colibri does NOT show a Kaiser roll as Loach named it
Souvlaki is Greek. It means it’s actual sliced lamb. Gyros is also Greek but it means it’s just a big meatloaf on a spit.
I’ve had Souvlaki in a little shop on Crete a long time ago. Therefore I would never order Gyros anywhere.
PS: When I first heard Planet Rock I probably just thought it was someone using Kraftwerk music to make a pop record, which I would not have been as interested in as a freshly composed piece. It’s just my prejudices I guess.
Yes, New York buttered rolls are often what would be called a Kaiser roll, aka a hard roll. They have a hard crust and a chewy center, and are often topped with poppy seeds or sometimes sesame seeds.
Many places serve hamburgers on what they call Kaiser rolls, but these are somewhat different from a New York breakfast roll. In particular, the crust is much softer. If you served a hamburger on a New York hard roll you would scrape your palate. They’re best eaten by themselves, especially dunked in coffee to soften the crust.
Growing up in the Bronx in the 1950s one of my fondest memories of Sundays was stopping off at the Italian bakery after mass and buying rolls for breakfast. (Catholics are supposed to fast before taking communion so we wouldn’t have breakfast until after mass.) There would always be a line, since everyone else was doing the same thing. I would usually have a couple of poppy-seed rolls and an onion roll. Sometimes we would also get crullers or lemon sweet buns.
Alas, the neighborhood has changed and it’s become impossible to find the right kind of rolls anymore.
I read it more like “I don’t like that music or those low-brow places you hung out in” but I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say he only came into the thread to insult that music and not me too.
Bulkie rolls have a soft crust. Kaiser rolls have a hard crust, which can vary from a little crispy to somewhat thick and crunchy. The crust of a bulkie roll is thin and and soft, barely there. The terms get intermixed somewhat since they both refer to a round sandwich roll.
I don’t know when buttered rolls for breakfast started in New York, they were a thing in Philadelphia in the 70s.
Sorry, I meant only I didn’t like the song. I don’t go to places that play that kind of music, but I’m quite comfortable with “low-brow” places. In fact, I always assumed the
“better” and more trendy clubs played music such as this.
In Boston in the '70s it was a grinder. They also had ‘cheese pizzas’. Which was a just a pizza. I always asked my dad if you ask for just a pizza do they serve you only the crust? But I guess a cheese pizza was better than a garbage pizza-- also very popular in Boston at the time. Yes please, cheese and no garbage, thank you.
