South Brooklyn Profiles: Anna Romano

Anna Romano
"It's what I call insanity," says Anna Romano of the rental costs in Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. She's been observing the changes in costs and attitudes in South Brooklyn from her table at the Red Rose for the past 17 years. She, her husband, and son own the Smith Street Italian restaurant that exudes the sweet and homey intimacy of an idealized small town: when you walk in, you assume you'll find someone you know. For one, you expect to see Anna herself, who usually sits at the second table from the front. She has a quiet but glamorous presence, always carefully dressed, her hair coiffed, nails manicured, what my parents would call in Italian "linda e pinta"--in perfect order, her ringed fingers loosely holding a cigarette while speaking softly to her husband.
But that sense of cool is easy to penetrate: she's direct and warm in conversation, thoughtful about her life in Brooklyn and in the restaurant business. She's effortlessly social and gets a kick out of talking to people. Before the Red Rose, she and her husband owned two restaurants in Manhattan, one right next to CBS where she met Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Art Carney. They also had a food store on Cheever Place, a long block parallel to Henry Street in Cobble Hill, where Anna grew up -- they lived in the house she was born in. Of course, she knew everyone. They would shop on Columbia Street, then the neighborhood center of commerce with pushcarts lining Union Street from Hicks to Columbia. You could see movies at either the Luna or the Happy Hour and meet your friends at the big clock on the corner of Columbia and President. If you were sick, she says, you could bet that someone on the block would send over a pot of soup or cook for you if there was a death in the family. "But there's no closeness at all now," she says without bitterness; that's simply the fact. "When someone moves in, they may move out a few months later. You have no chance to get to know them." Still, she's sure her son, the reassuring and easy host of the Red Rose, had a good childhood in the neighborhood. She and her husband sponsored some of his athletic teams, and he was surrounded by a world of friends and relatives. The newcomers today, she says, are very friendly, nice to say hi to, but there's little deeper, little time for more.
In a way, though, that makes Anna's graciousness, her pleasure in meeting new people, all the more essential, providing a bit of the community she took for granted as a girl and young mother. She arrives at the Red Rose well before it opens, but stays past closing time: "Until the last person leaves, I talk."

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This project is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Development Fund of BAC/Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc., which is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.