A few weeks ago, I went to Jalopy. It’s hard to get to as it’s on Columbia Street way over near the entrance to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. So I took Eastern Car Service. I’d called the shop the day before o see if they had a 4-string banjo and of course they did.

I got  there at noon, exactly when Lynette Wiley, who owns the shop with her husband Geoff, told me to. She was just opening up and about to walk her trio of dogs. They had to go but she told me they could wait, that she wanted to show me that 4-string banjo.

"My husband is sorry to see this one go," she said. It was a small, vintage 4-string banjo. I’d never seen a banjo so small. But that’s the way they are, 4-string banjos.

"It’s a gift for my son," I told her. "So I might have to bring it back. Is this returnable?"

She said sure and I decided what the hey it can’t hurt to buy this beautiful thing. I wondered where her husband was. He’s the instrument man, the one who fixes the instruments. He’s obviously passionate about vintage guitars, banjos, and ukuleles.

"He’s upstairs. We were out late last night," Lynette told me. "It was my husband’s birthday and we tried to keep him out all night."

The shop is in a 3-story building owned by the Wiley’s, who live upstairs. They bought it a few years ago when they moved here from Chicago. They built a theater in the back, which looks like an old vaudeville music hall with a red velvet curtain. Highly atmospheric in there. In the shop, too.

The NY Post article about Jalopy was posted on the expresso machine on the cafe side of the store. In the article, Geoff is quoted as saying:

"I was reading a book on Dada art, and how it had started out of
this one café, and it just started running around in my head that what
had slowed me down for most of my life trying to create art, theater
and music was not having anywhere to do it…So
I’m reading this book, and this whole thing just started around this
one little room. And I said, ‘What we need is a room.’"

Well, they’ve got a room alright. And quite a bit more. It’s got a real old-timey feel. The antique oak counter, the vintage instruments hanging on the wall. The dusty music books behind glass, a plastic case of picks. Cool very cool and atmospheric. Like something you’d find somewhere out west, in your dreams, in a galaxy far away called Red Hook.

The Wiley’s run a bunch of businesses in there now. They started by selling coffee to neighbors. Then they hosted a night of music. Now they’ve got the instrument shop and they offer music lessons in guitar, banjo, mandolin and ukulele. They have a license to sell beer and wine, too.  There’s that wonderful looking theater with the tin ceiling, the brick walls, church pews and folding chairs scattered about where they present music and theater shows. Lynette told me about a theatrical collaboration between neighborhood kids and police that was scheduled that evening. They show movies in  there, too. It’s a real cultural center at this point.

Just like they hoped it would be.

Lynette put the banjo in a bag. "It’s made out of some kind of recycled material," she said of the bag she gave me. I carried it home. It was a cold, windy Monday. The wind blew me down Columbia Street and I stopped in Margaret Palca for soup but the line was long so I wandered across the BQE to Naidre’s Cobble Hill outpost. Had some soup there and sat with my banjo on the seat across from me.

The woman sitting next to be enjoyed being seated next to a banjo. It was a special day my banjo and me…

To be continued.