A Visit to NYC Restaurant Beatstro ReAffirms Section Point

Family Fo Life

On September 21, my ride-or-die life partners (brother, Pete, and sister, Latoya) had the pleasure of brunch at  Beatstro, the first of its kind Hip Hop themed restaurant located in the Bronx. The endless mimosas went down nice and the food (I had a chicken and waffle dish called The Get Down) was banging. ‘80s & ‘90s Hip Hip played in the background while we were surrounded by classic old skool graffiti. Now, while the whole visit was fantastic, I couldn’t help but be struck by one glaring fact: that there was no female representation in any of the main graffiti pieces:

(Attribution: Beatstro.com)

 Skeme, an American graffiti artist, known for All City, a group of graffiti pieces painted on many trains of the New York subway system, painted the three pieces in the interior reception area. His Crew, TMT, painted the ‘subway’ cars above the kitchen. Their style of writing reminded me of the “Summer BBQ All-GRRLZ Jam” mural at the Tuff City tattoo shop in 2012, which featured the work of NYC Bomber, Missy17, ClawMoney, Are2, Anarkia, and Mrs. (Pabon-Colon, pg. 54).

All of these women were still writing and active when Beatstro opened its doors in 2018 so at least native NYer Missy17 should have been included somewhere. The whole deal reminded me of a quote I highlighted on page 46, “Women writers were always put on the back burner; they weren’t even on the stove. They were right out there in the trenches with some of the top dogs, and they were just forgotten about. Period.” (Pabon-Colon, pg. 46). And that is a damn shame….