“Us” or “them”?

Photo: Lisa Vosper

A Latino in West Indian East Flatbush

“Care for some peanuts?” asks the pretty West Indian bartender. It’s her way of breaking the ice with a kid who is clearly out of his element. “You’re the only one here early enough to enjoy them.”

Apparently it’s my promptness—something I’m told is uncharacteristic of a Latino in his early twenties—that pegs me as an outsider at Sunsplash Sidewalk Cafe (1398 Nostrand Ave between Linden Blvd and Martense St, 718-462-2711). That and the fact that I am even at this lounge in East Flatbush, a slice of Brooklyn heavily populated by immigrants from the West Indies.

My hectic workdays are spent lampooning Hispanic stereotypes for Guanabee—a blog that’s kind of like the Latino Gawker—so I’m happy to be sipping rum and Coke to the sound of steel drums in an area I’d never visited before.

Sunsplash Sidewalk Café

Photo: Lisa Vosper

My trip had started hours earlier with a stroll down Church and Nostrand Avenues, where big-name franchises are outnumbered by markets with names like Michael’s Prime Meats (1412 Nostrand Ave) and Peter’s Fish Market (1444 Nostrand Ave). The stores were teeming with ladies in braids and dudes in dreads who greeted each other as neighbors. Not quite a West Indian Pleasantville, but close.

Crossing the street, I was drawn by reggae blasting from an old-school speaker to Jamaican eatery KC Cuisine (1425 Nostrand Ave between Church Ave and Martense St, 718-826-0992). Inside, an illustration of Rastafarian leader Haile Selassie presides over the room, and the unfamiliar menu—items like cow’s foot, oxtail and five kinds of roti—left me perplexed. I’m a chicken-and-rice guy myself. Happily, Kirk, the 28-year-old server, suggested the curried goat. We bonded when I complimented the spicy, tender dish. Although I struggled to understand his thick patois, he taught me something about handshakes—our hands clasped with index fingers touching, forming a ring of brotherly love between a pair of complete strangers.

Curried goat at KC Cuisine

Photo: Lisa Vosper

The warm feeling was short-lived, though: I soon bumped into three homeboys shooting the shit outside an auto shop around the corner. Cool in his Air Jordan basketball shorts and gray Phillies track jacket, their unofficial spokesman stepped forward to figure out what I was doing here. When I said I was just trying to find a club Kirk had recommended, Wayne, 24, chuckled and my anxiety melted. “Man, all you’re gonna find at Temptation is a bunch of knotty-headed Jamaicans!” he laughed. “But they won’t sweat a Hispanic dude going in there to make friends. Matter of fact, they’ll be like, ‘Damn,’ and give you credit for it.”

Yet I ended up in the low-key lounge at Sunsplash. On the way there, I noticed that at 11:17 on a Friday night, many more people were gathered in the avenue’s numerous barbershops and hair salons than were hanging out at the bars. Some were getting their hair touched up, while the rest sat cracking jokes and sharing gossip. Their forums are nothing like the binge-heavy, end-of-the-week release I’m used to having with my old college buddies at dives and sports bars in the city.

East Flatbush

Photo: Lisa Vosper

Three Myers and Cokes later, the steel drums had given way to R&B and hip-hop, and the crowd had grown. I realize I’m swaying to the music, so comfortable and so sure of myself that when I see them grooving atop their stools, I could swear the others at the bar have followed my lead.

Further south is Lord’s Bakery (2135 Nostrand Ave at Flatbush Ave, 718-434-9551), a local institution that is open till midnight. Asked if gentrification is forcing out locals, longtime staffer Loukas Zannotoulous says: “Downtown prices don’t work in Flatbush.”

Near the subway, I pass a band of withered old men talking shop on the sidewalk; they sit on five-gallon buckets that gleam ultrawhite in the streetlights. Wayne had called these elders “fixtures that come with the land.” I definitely have the feeling they’ll be on that same corner the next time I visit Flatbush.—Carlos Nobleza Posas

Brooklyn’s black population decreased 1.8%in the past six years, despite the burgeoning West Indian community