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This church, Pare de Sufrir, on E. 138th Street and Brown in the Mott Haven section of The Bronx, hides a great cultural history. The building was one the Forum Theatre. It opened in 1923 with 2,300 seats, offering a little vaudeville along with silent movies. It was an independent theatre, not owned by any big movie house chain. It also had a Kimball organ. After World War II, in 1948, with demographics changing in the area, it became the Spanish-language Teatro Puerto Rico, presenting stage shows. This was the theatre's golden age. It was quite the social mecca for the city's Puerto Rican population, and attracted performers from all over Latin America, and audiences from all over the city. Here's an image of the marquee back then. And here's the theatre . That lasted a long while. Later, if was the home of wrestling and boxing matches. It then closed for a while, and reopened as a performing arts center, presenting both live shows and movies, all in Spanish. We can ...

I encountered La Cross Pharmacy while on a recent visit to the Mott Haven neighborhood in The Bronx. It's on the corner of Saint Anns Avenue and 138th Street. I was attracted—as I often am with such places—by the the old signage running down the edge of the building. Added attractions included the indented, angled corner entrance, the metal pillar bearing the word "Drugs" in vertical letters, and the sad window display of a lonely wooden mortar and pestle. By the looks of the facade, I'm guessing La Cross has been around since the 1940s. It won't be around for much longer. The shelves were sparsely stocked, and there's a sign on the side of the building saying it is for sale.

Haven't done one of these in a while. But this pizzeria, encountered by accident during a trip to The Bronx, seemed to fit the bill, what with the corner space, the hand-painted signage on both sides of the storefront, and the upper signs with the illustration of the pizza man flipping dough. Golden Pizza is in Mott Haven. It's at the corner of Brook Avenue and 138th Street. From the looks of the place, it was founded in the early 1970s, and no later. But who can tell? Places like this, there's very little recorded history about. But it has the feel of that kind of local pizzeria that neighborhood people have been depending on for decades. For the record, it's owned by two folks named Harjinger and Manginda Singh.