This is a tale of two bachelors — Ritchie (the Baker) Krins, 67, and John Czap, 65 — who lived separately and alone except for their faithful dogs on a narrow backwater street ominously named Dare Court in Gerritsen Beach.
Both wound up on a blind date with a femme fatale named Sandy.
Only one survived that infamous Monday night when the killer hurricane roared ashore with 14-foot swells out of a hidden sapphire called the Gerritsen Inlet and the charming Gerritsen Canal, lined with private backyard docks in this old, predominantly Irish-American fishing village in Brooklyn.
The wind-driven waves rushed down the labyrinth of Gerritsen streets and lanes, crashing into the brick and wood-frame one- and two-family homes, devouring cars and other vehicles and storming the basements where the foul waters rose to the 8-foot ceilings on a crazy spin cycle that swirled furniture, clothing, kitchen appliances, hot water heaters, and everything and everyone in its path into a rampaging night of indiscriminate carnage.
“Ritchie the Baker was a quiet, keep-to-himself kind of guy,” says Paul Sarubbi, an FDNY firefighter whose family owns the popular Tamaqua bar and restaurant and boat marina on Ebony Ave., a sprawling place that was the Gerritsen Village Hall until 1921 when his grandfather arrived from Florence, Italy, bought the place and made it into a restaurant that has remained in the family since.
PHOTOS: HURRICANE SANDY THROUGH THE LENSES OF THE NEWS’ PHOTOGRAPHERS
“Ritchie got his nickname because he worked as a baker in Golden Crust bakery off Ralph Ave. here in Brooklyn and lived alone in the basement apartment of the house he grew up in on Dare Court,” says Sarubbi. “He was a regular in the Tamaqua, a really nice, gentle guy who was born with some rare skin disorder that often made him break out in boils and blisters. He was self-conscious of it and probably why he was a bachelor. But he loved a good time, a few cold ones, and the ’80s and ’90s music our live bands play in the Tamaqua.”
On the night of Sandy, the water rushed into the Tamaqua and 20 diehard regulars retreated to the 6-foot-high stage to keep on drinking as striped bass literally swam around the bar. Electricity was restored with the help of Sarubbi’s backup generator.
Ritchie the Baker wasn’t one of them. “The way I heard it from people who saw him that night, Ritchie was really concerned about his dog in the storm,” says Sarubbi.
I ask what the dog’s name was. “Funny, I have no idea, and I used to feed that crazy dog every day when Ritchie was in the hospital for two weeks in the summer when his skin got real bad. The dog is a mixed German shepherd mutt that barked and growled at everybody, including me when I went in to feed him. But the dog was Ritchie’s sole companion in life and on the night of the storm, several people told me they saw Ritchie try to get into a local church where people went for shelter before the storm. But he was turned away because they wouldn’t allow the growling dog in.”
Instead, an hour before the storm ravaged Gerritsen Beach, Ritchie the Baker hurried with his dog back to his basement apartment on Dare Court and went downstairs and left a door slightly ajar so that the dog could come and go into the backyard at will.
That was the last time anyone saw Ritchie the Baker alive.
A half-block up at 31 Dare Court, John Czap, a retired state worker and former chief of the Gerritsen Beach Fire Department, the only volunteer fire station in Brooklyn, had just taken his collie, Champion, to stay with his ex-girlfriend in Bay Ridge.
“I rescued Champion when she was a pup found abandoned when I went down to work as a med-assessment team relief worker in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,” says Czap. “I didn’t want a great animal like Champion, who had survived Katrina, to die in Sandy. So I got her inland to safety.”
Then Czap returned to his Dare Court home in Gerritsen Beach, the prized possession he bought 28 years ago, to hold down the proverbial fort.
He did not see Ritchie the Baker that night, especially as the wild winds rose to a skin-pebbling howl and the streets of Gerritsen fell as desolate as a ghost town.
That Monday night, the two bachelors drew the shades and braved the storm on Dare Court. “Irene had been so minor that we believed this one would be, too,” Czap says.
Then along came Sandy with the violence of a she-devil on angel dust.
Sarubbi, who knows almost everyone in Gerritsen, led me on a tour of his beloved waterfront neighborhood a few days after the storm. Few escaped Sandy’s wrath. Many homes had big red Department of Buildings stickers plastered in the windows condemning the buildings as unsafe because the corrosive sea water had undermined the wood and stone foundations, leaving the structures frozen in the act of collapse.
Sarubbi’s own home was storm-tossed and sodden. Beds, bureaus, lamps, clothes, dishes, appliances in mildewed piles that smelled of death. “Probably dead fish and dead water rats and who knows what else under all that debris when they haul it all away,” he says.
Block after ravaged block, the basements of cops, firefighters, plumbers, moving men and fishermen and tug boat workers were all the same. Destroyed in a single treacherous night of Sandy.
Still, most of the good and gritty people of Gerritsen planned to rebuild.
John Czap planned to pack it in and leave New York.
“I loved my life here in Gerritsen,” he said. “I loved going out on my kayak in the early mornings with Champion, fishing, rowing, and working and helping neighbors in need with the brave vollies at the firehouse. But Sandy has destroyed all that for me. It’s too much wreckage. Too sad. Too much fear it’ll happen again. Maybe if I had a wife and kids I’d stay for friends and schools, but I’m single, no kids, and retired and I have a sister in Virginia and after something like this happens, you are reminded of your own mortality and you just want to spend what’s left of your life around family.”
A half-block down at 38 Dare Court, a loud dog barks in an incessant plaintive protest as Sarubbi leads me into the basement apartment the canine called home with a master named Ritchie (the Baker) Krins. The inside of the one-bedroom apartment is like a devastated house of horror. Smashed walls, ripped up flooring that exposes nail-jagged beams, kitchen appliances and a hot water heater lying at crazy angles, tables and chairs in a twisted pile. A spongy Samsung flat screen sits mute and dark in the living room. Three framed prints of colorful song birds add an incongruous splash of color.
“They found Ritchie the Baker floating face down right here in the kitchen in 6 feet of dirty water on Wednesday morning,” said Ray Leslie, a neighbor from across Dare Court. “His dog obviously swam out the back door and lived but wouldn’t stop barking, so cops finally came to investigate. Pretty damned sad. The poor dog still won’t stop barking.”
What’s the dog’s name, I ask. “No idea.”
Another neighbor, Joe Mastandrea, said he banged on Ritchie the Baker’s door an hour before Sandy hit and told him to get out. “He yelled, ‘I’m okay. I’m okay.’ His dog was barking. He didn’t wanna leave.”
Mastandrea didn’t know the dog’s name either.
I climbed up on Sarubbi’s truck to peer over the high fence at the dog barking madly in the rear of the neighbor’s yard. The dog’s wounded and bewildered eyes skipped back and forth in his head.
Back at the Tamaqua, Sarubbi pointed out a bulletin board picture of a smiling Ritchie the Baker surrounded by female friends at the Tamaqua.
“Ritchie was a really good guy,” said Sarubbi.
“He sure loved his dog,” a waitress said.
“What is this poor dog’s name?” I asked, again.
A bartender named Patti cocked her head, gazed at the ceiling and said, “I’m not positive, but I think the dog’s name might be Sandy.”
Everyone just looked at her as a hush fell over the Tamaqua in post-Sandy Gerritsen Beach.
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Rockaway Update: In a column last week, FDNY Lt. Tommy Woods who lost his home in the hurricane, mentioned that US Airways refused to relent on $1,800 worth of nonrefundable plane tickets. US Airways wins the “Corporation With a Heart Award” this week for changing its mind.
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