Park View Civic League
News and Notes
June Tips from the Park View Garden Club
The Portsmouth Loop and Segundo Restaurant
by David Seletyn
Public transportation, especially in the form of a bus, has long been seen as inglamorous, that the only people who take the bus are those that have to. This weekend, I got to take the bus, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. For nearly two years, our neighborhood of Park View has had bus service. More recently, the service has been free. Saturday night, Jodi and took the bus – the Portsmouth Loop – downtown as part of the first “Park View Night Out”. We haven't ridden the bus often, but this was the second time we had ridden it in a month get dinner or drinks downtown.
The bus, happily, run on time. When Jodi and I went with Harold R. a few weeks ago, we three walked up to the corner of Hatton Street and Crawford Parkway just as the bus pulled up. This Saturday, we arrived 15 minutes early, waited in the chilly dusk, until the bus rolled up Crawford at its apointed time.
After dinner, Jodi and I , joined by our new neighbor Daryll, arrived ten minutes early in front of the Courthouse Galleries, waited ten frigid minutes (I was underdressed for the weather), and stepped aboard the bus. Here is the deal for using the bus to get between Park View and downtown Portsmouth: the bus leaves Park View going downtown at the bottom of every hour (4:30, 5:30, 6:30, etc), and it leaves downtown going to Park View at the top of every hour (5:00, 6:00, 7:00, etc). There is, from my experience, no advantage in arriving early unless you like standing around. The catch is that if you do miss the bus, it will be anouth hour until you see it again heading the direction you you want to travel. The good news on that is it is only a 15 to 20 minute walk to get downtown.
So, we had dinner at the new pizza restaurant downtown called Segundo – the “Park View Night Out” for February. Segundo is the second location of the Port Norfolk restaurant called “The Pizzza Box” and came highly recommended by Donna, so we were looking forward to a good meal downtown. People have lots of things going on. I had received a few “tentatively attending” responses through the Park View Civic League Facebook group, and a couple of emails declining the event. It therefore looked to be a date night out for Jodi and me.
Segundo just opened and doesn't yet have a storefront sign. A chalk written sandwich board marks the entrance.
You step inside to the swankiest looking pizza kitchen that I have ever seen. It has a rich, dark décor that is left over from the previous tenants Court Street Cordials. Looking around, I saw a walk in safe in the back that identified the building as an old bank. Photographs of different Portsmouth buildings hung on the wall and a half century old cigarette vending machine, nonfunctional, stood to the side. We sat down, and just as we finished ordering, Daryll walked into the restaurant to join us. It got to be a Park View Night Out, after all. Besides our trio, several other groups were eating. The groups created a varied crowd that ranged from younger people wearing torn jeans to older people dressed for a night on the town.
The food was good. The menu and waiter shared with us the wide range of pizza choices and some unusual appetizers. We shared an artichoke, herb, and goat cheese pizza and appetizers of roasted beets and duck tacos (no kidding). The pizza sat heavy, being a cheese dominated pizza, but was very tasty. The roasted beets tasted very good and were the fanciest presentation of the vegetable that I have ever seen. The duck tacos were different, but the waiter described them so passionately and thoroughly, that it would not surprise me if they were part of every other meal served there. The tacos were prepared in some fancy way, using the types of cuisine phrases of which I have to hide my ignorance by looking the waiter in the eye, grinning slightly, and nodding sagely. The prices are a little high, and Segundo would do well to hide the fact that they charge two dollars more for pizzas served at dinner than they do for the same pizzas served at lunch.
We three had good conversation at dinner and learned a bit about one another; what we do for work or for study, what we like about the neighborhood and Portsmouth in general, and about different places we have eaten. It was good time on a nice, late winter
evening. We easily arrived downtown, had dinner over the course of an hour, and returned home in good order. It's the kind of no stressouting that is quick enough to allow you time to do other things later in the evening.
Any views and opinions expressed here are strictly those of the author and do not constitute policy statements of, or endorsements by, the Park View Civic League.
Read what the Virginian Pilot is saying about Park View.
by David Seletyn
Public transportation, especially in the form of a bus, has long been seen as inglamorous, that the only people who take the bus are those that have to. This weekend, I got to take the bus, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. For nearly two years, our neighborhood of Park View has had bus service. More recently, the service has been free. Saturday night, Jodi and took the bus – the Portsmouth Loop – downtown as part of the first “Park View Night Out”. We haven't ridden the bus often, but this was the second time we had ridden it in a month get dinner or drinks downtown.
The bus, happily, run on time. When Jodi and I went with Harold R. a few weeks ago, we three walked up to the corner of Hatton Street and Crawford Parkway just as the bus pulled up. This Saturday, we arrived 15 minutes early, waited in the chilly dusk, until the bus rolled up Crawford at its apointed time.
After dinner, Jodi and I , joined by our new neighbor Daryll, arrived ten minutes early in front of the Courthouse Galleries, waited ten frigid minutes (I was underdressed for the weather), and stepped aboard the bus. Here is the deal for using the bus to get between Park View and downtown Portsmouth: the bus leaves Park View going downtown at the bottom of every hour (4:30, 5:30, 6:30, etc), and it leaves downtown going to Park View at the top of every hour (5:00, 6:00, 7:00, etc). There is, from my experience, no advantage in arriving early unless you like standing around. The catch is that if you do miss the bus, it will be anouth hour until you see it again heading the direction you you want to travel. The good news on that is it is only a 15 to 20 minute walk to get downtown.So, we had dinner at the new pizza restaurant downtown called Segundo – the “Park View Night Out” for February. Segundo is the second location of the Port Norfolk restaurant called “The Pizzza Box” and came highly recommended by Donna, so we were looking forward to a good meal downtown. People have lots of things going on. I had received a few “tentatively attending” responses through the Park View Civic League Facebook group, and a couple of emails declining the event. It therefore looked to be a date night out for Jodi and me.
Segundo just opened and doesn't yet have a storefront sign. A chalk written sandwich board marks the entrance.
You step inside to the swankiest looking pizza kitchen that I have ever seen. It has a rich, dark décor that is left over from the previous tenants Court Street Cordials. Looking around, I saw a walk in safe in the back that identified the building as an old bank. Photographs of different Portsmouth buildings hung on the wall and a half century old cigarette vending machine, nonfunctional, stood to the side. We sat down, and just as we finished ordering, Daryll walked into the restaurant to join us. It got to be a Park View Night Out, after all. Besides our trio, several other groups were eating. The groups created a varied crowd that ranged from younger people wearing torn jeans to older people dressed for a night on the town.The food was good. The menu and waiter shared with us the wide range of pizza choices and some unusual appetizers. We shared an artichoke, herb, and goat cheese pizza and appetizers of roasted beets and duck tacos (no kidding). The pizza sat heavy, being a cheese dominated pizza, but was very tasty. The roasted beets tasted very good and were the fanciest presentation of the vegetable that I have ever seen. The duck tacos were different, but the waiter described them so passionately and thoroughly, that it would not surprise me if they were part of every other meal served there. The tacos were prepared in some fancy way, using the types of cuisine phrases of which I have to hide my ignorance by looking the waiter in the eye, grinning slightly, and nodding sagely. The prices are a little high, and Segundo would do well to hide the fact that they charge two dollars more for pizzas served at dinner than they do for the same pizzas served at lunch.
We three had good conversation at dinner and learned a bit about one another; what we do for work or for study, what we like about the neighborhood and Portsmouth in general, and about different places we have eaten. It was good time on a nice, late winter evening. We easily arrived downtown, had dinner over the course of an hour, and returned home in good order. It's the kind of no stressouting that is quick enough to allow you time to do other things later in the evening.Any views and opinions expressed here are strictly those of the author and do not constitute policy statements of, or endorsements by, the Park View Civic League.
Read what the Virginian Pilot is saying about Park View.
